Reviews by Andrew Schultz

As a big fan of absurdist sports writing from the likes of Every Day Should Be Saturday, Fire Joe Morgan, Blackheartgoldpants.com and PFT Commenter, I'm always on the lookout for the next funny and surreal thing. BBOS is it. Whether you like Bill Belichick or hate him, this game transcends mere sports loyalty without resorting to the usual stuffy literary devices that critics say transcends this, that or the other. And I bet even if you hate American football, you'll like this, too.

For those not aware, Bill Belichick coaches the New England Patriots, and he's won quite a bit with them, all the while being kind of crotchety to the media and having his own fashion sense. He has an ability to take players nobody else thought was all that good and turn them into superstars. And so BBOS is, superficially, about his uncanny ability to do that, and his day-to-day operations as he looks for that next hidden superstar or designs that killer offensive play.

If you've read the introduction, though, you probably figure it's not going to try to be very realistic. At every stage it's largely unclear what is the best option, because the game puzzles purposely make as little sense as possible, except when the answer is obvious on purpose. And even if you guess wrong, you get a funny ending to back-arrow out of, complete with nonsense final score.

Your first big decision is whether to sleep in or get to work, and navigating the game's navel-gazing successfully gets you 1/7 of a code to put into a computer to design the ultimate offensive play. It's a purposefully annoying end sequence that still manages to block anyone wanting to cheat their way through, but there are spoilers on the 'net if you just want to win and see Pixel Bill Belichick earn even more atrociously practical gear to wear when he paces the sideline.

Still, sifting through Bill Belichick's other "boring" tasks to get all the codes is worth it, and it goes pretty quickly because the game doesn't pull that 5 second delay some needier twine games like to. You'll find codes in an impossibly huge hardware store where you click through about 40 aisles to find a doorknob, behind a rock band you need to "fight" (anybody having fun is a distraction, you see,) set a clock radio correctly, or win some weird board game. You get another piece for (Spoiler - click to show)assembling a superstar wide receiver from spare parts, which is a superior option to trading for one, drafting one or signing one in free agency. The game's rather rough, there. There's only one choice that's right. I picked it, but then I made sure the others did something cool when you made the wrong choice. They did.

The bad-good graphics and captions had me laughing, from the ways you swim through a pile of clothes to the various aisles in the hardware store, and really, it's just a pleasure to mess around and say, wait, I didn't poke that yet?

I'd really like to see more Twine games like this. It's about as inexcusable as you can get without resorting to profanity, and that suits me fine. It shouldn't take more than an hour, and maybe you won't think of it at all when it's done, but in an ideal world, we'd have a string of games like this we could just play and enjoy, so that doesn't really matter.

Wait, no. That's not quite true. When watching highlights this fall, I fully expect to remember some random stupid part of this game I didn't think I would when I see Belichick grouching on the sidelines, and that will be awesone.

Endless Sands scared me off with the title: were the sands endless? Algorithmically generated? Thankfully not. But it feels that way at first. You've been bitten by a vampire queen and need to find your way inside before light. You have about four hours of game time, or 240 moves. TLDR: it's a funny small-to-medium game with lots of nice big ideas that feels a bit loose, but there's no shame for a first time effort.

There are four possible endings, each with its own series of mildly annoying hijinks. When I say mildly annoying, I mean that they were just the right silliness to get under your skin without pushing you away. It was a good idea for the author to implement all four, though, as different players appear to have gotten stuck on different ones. And this provides a depth that so many other silly games don't have.

As you'd expect there's not a lot of NPC interaction, and what there is is a bit guess-the-subject. I maybe should've thought of (Spoiler - click to show)giving the werewolf something to chew. But the dialogue didn't point there, even though I found an actual subject that worked, I laughed. I think the puzzle for escaping below the surface was much fairer, and it had wacky humor and even a clever bit of programming where a radio gives static half the time. It was a nice little wait-nag as you had (Spoiler - click to show)seven colors to put in order, so when each had a 1/2 chance of appearing in a message, missing one wasn't critical. Or you could just brute-force.

This review is for version 1 of the game. The author, a first-time writer, showed interest in a post-comp release. So a lot of the cluing that's off (I assumed certain places were off-limits,) or the slapstick that misfires (though you see what the author's trying to do) or the technical stuff (command rejects can waste a minute) is forgiveable and easy to fix.

I had fun with the game, warts and all, and I hope the author writes a post-comp release. Even if they only have time to fix some of the bugs, I bet people will replay it gladly, if only to see the endings they missed.

EXTERMINATE! is a speed-IF that focuses really well on its concept. I saw the idea on move 2, but I didn't see the command to list everything you could do. But the game was nice and hinted me on move 6. This is an extra meta-puzzle, if you are curious, but only if you want to feel extra smug and brainy. I'm slightly sad I didn't, but I enjoyed the game well enough.

I was also highly amused that the game responded to a hidden command not listed. It was a juvenile try at profanity, and I'm impressed the author thought of a funny riff on the standard reject. It was also in good taste (Spoiler - click to show)the fella excluded another).

This is one game where I'd welcome an update version very much just because I bet it's hard to find everything in 3 hours, even if you (Spoiler - click to show)grep -i "ate$" complete-word-list.txt. Still, the game had more than enough. It's well planned, it doesn't overstay its welcome, and it has a few time-paradox jokes and alternate endings.

But this is enough. I shouldn't (Spoiler - click to show)Bloviate.

I'd read of this game as uniquely mediocre in its own way, due to its heavy-handedness. So it seemed like the sort I wanted to attack one day. I was a bit worried it would be long and convoluted and I'd get sick of it.

It's not really that bad and long--there are only three puzzles, and they feel like multiple choice (which direction do you go, and the game cues why.) Before that, an angel meets your character, and I was worried some sort of hideous death would befall me if I didn't ask enough questions, or if I asked too many. Even that introductory part is cringy--the game seems extremely well meaning, but the lack of details combined with spoon feeding the player to push on felt kind of bad. That, and there seem to be two good choices based on if your personality is introverted or extroverted. Sorry, (Spoiler - click to show)introverts! You lose! Thankfully, the ending text gives some explanation, even if it's not too rigorous.

Imagining how huge the game might be, though, gave me ideas how to construct something moral. And the few times I saw this game mentioned, I built it up as a Pilgrim's Progress, and it was anything but. Of course, I could've saved time by playing the game and maybe having all those ideas a bit quicker. And it won't be the last time I'm faked out by a big-sounding name.

So, the moral? (Yes! I have some over-general advice of my own!) If something seems intimidating, and you sort of do or don't want to look into it? Give it a shot and plan to try a few things out, then move on! And that goes for reviewing or playing something old. Don't worry if it might be too good or too bad, or you're saying something too obvious or too obscure.

I think religious and non-religious people agree this is good, if overgeneral advice. Of course, as in the game, there are pharisees who get this principle wrong, but still, it's good advice, and following through will be more gratifying than getting 3 out of 3 on a multiple choice test. I hope I can say this without snark that I appreciated the sort of failure that resulted from this game, and it was easy to see how I might fall into the trap. And it was a less painful reminder than something more robust. Not that it's a good idea to do this all the time.

PGRTAG was one of the first games I played when I came back to text adventures and judged for IFComp 2010. It doesn't seem to break any theoretical ground or have grand arguments. It would be easy to disqualify as dashed off, and I suspected once I saw ten or so games like this, I wouldn't be so high on it.

But after testing and playing a lot of games, I still haven't found many that reached this level. In so many humor games, I see what they're trying to do, and I say good job, but this one's jokes are immersive. I was worried from the title that the game might be overdone, but it feels balanced right.

Though originally I figured, sure, I enjoyed it, but it's not going to last. I figured once I learned more and saw more, I'd be glad I played it and all, but I really need to learn from more sophisticated efforts.

It's several years later and I'm still coming back to it, though, while games that discuss structure are more over my head, or I don't feel as invited to learn from them, or I figured I got their lesson and I'd like to move on. This game does pretty much everything it wants to, right. It's a spontaneous affair, and it has those touches I wish I'd seen. The over the top narrative voice makes fun of, say, coffee shops and people who complain about them too much. The puzzle where Comrade Rosalia wants to share Communist Manifestos with the students but needs one for everyone is funny and sad bad-logic.

The end result for me is a very spontaneous game. You're invited to try silly stuff, and in fact the two paths through the game are very funny, and the alternate solutions let you use items differently. There's a best ending ((Spoiler - click to show)don't use the pawn shop) and a not-best, and they both make sense.

I think the community needs games like this, to keep us all grounded, or to remember that you don't have to be academic to sort old ideas into new stuff, or even to enter into Interesting Arguments (all arguments between NPCs in the game are suitably ludicrous.) I mean, when I read about reworkings of an old myth or whatever, I can't really mark that as superior to something like this, which pastes silly tropes and leaves you feeling, yes, it's okay to write silly stuff and want to.

On the downside, there's some guess the verb ((Spoiler - click to show)POINT device at X) and some annoying disambiguation among devices, where you have three "(long name)" device to choose from. But the game's short enough, it's not a huge deal.

Sadly, I haven't seen the author again. I hope they come back. Even a game half as good would be very welcome. When someone writes a game like this, it's easy to feel they can just dash off another. But it's not so easy to find that big-idea sweet spot and execute it. Still, as a blueprint for writing something very funny, it's hard to beat PGRTAG.

I found myself coming back to this game more often than I thought. The author intended it as somewhat of an exercise, so I don't feel right rating it, so I'll list what it's done for me:

1. been a go-to resource for I6 stuff, complex and basic
2. presented a meta-puzzle of how to group the number of keys more mathematically. Once I (thought I) found it, though, I think that solution loses some of the whimsy that makes the game enjoyable.
3. encouraged me to poke at the parser to try and do weird stuff (including figuring how to do this in I7--where, roughly in-line with the author's comments, I think it's a bit of a bear)

It's certainly an odd one, with relatively welcoming "meta" jokes. You may be able to provoke some of them with standard verbs, but if you don't, the AMUSING section at the end reveals them, and it's fun to go back and look.

I agree with the reviews that mention the solution isn't quite a logic puzzle, and once you "get" it, it's only so replayable. But it is more replayable than I thought it would be when I first cast it aside, and I like it.

At any rate, I have nowhere else to put this, so here is my plan for the "superlogical" version. While it's potentially a technical improvement, I don't see it as actually making the game any more fun, and I don't want this to feel like banging on the door for an update. I enjoyed the logical exercise that sprang from "maybe we should count the numbers this way instead" & hope some other people will, too, once they've played the game. The game encouraged/allowed me to look at puzzles beyond the main joke/mechanic, and that's always a Good Thing.

(Spoiler - click to show)2 types of scratches: dull and sharp. In a ratio of 1:2.
3 types of roundedness, in a ratio of 1:2:2.
9 colors, in a ratio of 15:32:32 etc. (Note: this'll give roundoff errors when you count keys for the properties below, and I can't think of a way for the game to account for this without giving spoilers. But 271 is prime & that messes things up.)
7 key brands, in a ratio of 1:2:2 etc.
1 other property, in a ratio of 1:2.

So the game can count key types by division.

Another way to do this would be to call the game 69120 keys, since 69120 = 2^9 * 3^3 * 5 (allowing for several 1:2 divisions,) or you could just have one division of 16 colors at the top as follows:

1:2:...:3 and pick, from the 3, 15 specific types to eliminate, and factor this in when picking that specific color. However, the game could also warn the player off, saying "Wow! That's probably not it, there're way too many."

68992 is maybe even a better number, being 2^7 * 7^2 * 11, allowing for 2 1:2:2:2 and 1 1:2:2:2:2:2 pairing, and you can maybe have an easter egg of a specific combination with 113 extra keys. 69000 is 2^3 (1:2:2:3) * 3 * 5 * 5 * 23 (1:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2), so that has possibilities, too, and 69069 = 3*7*11*13*23 and "only" 36 extra keys.

This is the sort of game where I scream out "I want more games like this!" though I'd have absolutely no way to tell people how to go about writing them. It has the abstract puzzle-solving, but nothing too hard, and it has some puzzles you've roughly seen before, but nothing like the infamous 5- and 3- gallon jugs and needing 4 gallons, or whatever.

And some of the puzzles left me reaching for the hints even on replay a few months later, but it was more to see what happens next than to get on with it. It's a cheery and funny little farm game with a lot of harmless humor and down-to-earth writing.

Only it isn't quite. There's a bit more, and once I saw the alternate way through, yes, it's very clever, and I appreciated the twist once I saw it. The only problem is, I wasn't able to figure that out for myself.

The HINT (object) usage is very nice and forward-looking, and it's quite possible this game inspired me to use it in two of my own games. It's appreciated, at any rate, to keep immersion, and given how long ago this was written, the author deserves commendation.

Goose Egg Badger is a very good game that doesn't bring up philosophical discussion of What Interatcive Fiction Is, and that's just fine by me. It executes its own ideas faithfully and certainly left me smiling and wishing I could find a similar hook and share/execute it as well.

Laterna Magica got dumped on pretty harshly in the IFComp, but it's by far the best last-place game I've seen since I've paid attention (2010.) I'd go so far as to call it the best bottom-three game I've seen. This seems like faint praise, but when I paged through the comp results, I was shocked to find it dead last.

Its last place finish is probably more a result of a stronger field than anything else. Though I can see why people may've disliked it--it's about a journey to ultimate enlightenment, but with loops. A lot of them. There's one choice buried in one loop that breaks another loop, and the text is deliberately obscure, perhaps too obscure. Your choices are questions with no right answers, and while this is part of the shtick, there are almost no ways to get any right answers or clues you are on the right path. It seems philosophically correct that we don't notice that we're getting smarter, but there's no sense of progress or hinting we're doing it wrong besides "oh, this again." I got a semi-messy map out of it, and I stumbled through, but ultimately I didn't feel enlightened.

And three months later, I can't remember what I did, and I'm a bit worried about going back to find out. So I can't say this is a favorite.

Still, the game has a coherent start, a good premise, and a way through that's logical once you see it. It doesn't soar, but it works. It may give unpleasant flashbacks to those books people flog on you at the airport as "gifts," with different spiels whether you're reading a book or not (but could you please give a donation?) & some of the text rattles on. And while I love some so-bad-it's-good, and I've even had fun poking through underimplemented games and reassembling them to find out what's going on, this game feels more like it had good intentions and clear focus on its own but it never translated to the enlightenment it tries to give the player.

I generally try not to rate games I competed against in IFComp, but I feel sad this game has a flat one star. Doing math on the previous ratings, it even needed a three-star rating to bump it up. I can't quite give that in good conscience, but two stars--definitely.

A year after EctoComp 2013, I found myself coming back to this game. It's a very good example of SpeedIF. While there's a lot that isn't implemented for you to examine, it's not critical to the story. The main focus is to run away from that beast that's chasing you.

From a technical level, you're just running around nine rooms avoiding a best that will kill you. It's possible to get stuck in a few places, but the game is short enough you can just replay. You can also find sanctuary from the beast to get several endings. I managed to get these, and they were still satifying despite not the "good" one that makes everything click--on re-playing, I see that a lot of hints were there. Though I sort of forgot for a bit about (Spoiler - click to show)The Wizard's Tower, as I may've assumed it was as impassable as the guard by the bridge to the village who wants money. But that's a minor hinting issue.

Speeding through this game under the deluge of IFComp 2013 entries, I missed that (Spoiler - click to show)the beast is half as fast as you, assuming instead that (Spoiler - click to show)the author wanted you to randomly teleport in the fairy ring. So somehow I managed to "fear" the beast and ascribe it more power than it had.

That's a good accomplishment for an EctoComp game. This is a high three stars in my rating, which for a speed game is very good indeed, and while I can't knock any game that placed above it--there were a lot of good ideas--I'm still surprised it wound up in the bottom half.

This is a twine game about being tall--well, not really. It's got a clever misdirection where your mother is upset at you for buying heels. But the arguments she looks may sound familiar. They are (Spoiler - click to show)the standard arguments against homosexuality. This is a funny look at something where people can get too serious or obscure, or the implication is too clumsy, and while the story seemed to drag slightly, it worked for me. I also enjoyed the shout out to (Spoiler - click to show)Randy Newman's "Short People" at the end, which seemed to expand things beyond the game's main issue and to conformity. Yet at the same time, it recalled when I got taller than my mother and sister and I was treated differently...for a bit. And I even felt a bit apologetic.

So the trick works for me. But I wish it would not have taken so long to get there. The text-manipulation tricks that cause pauses didn't work for me--they feel more like shareware nags than real-life pauses. I think it's okay that (Spoiler - click to show)your conversation choices don't matter, you won't change your parents' mind, and they want to rant, but on the other hand, piling this on to 5-10 second waits for relatively short dialog leaves the work feeling like filler. So a new argument I hadn't seen but liked got combined with text effects I had seen but didn't like. These text effects didn't ruin the game for me, but they did leave me reaching for my handy PERL tag-stripping script, which kind of killed immersion.

I get the sense that, with Twine being relatively new, cool elegant text effects exist we haven't discovered yet will be able to give the reader (or me, at any rate) more of the effect the author intended. Unfortunately, my reaction was "not this again." But I'm glad I worked through that.