Reviews by Jim Kaplan

Play it if: you wish to explore profound metaphysical ideas as interpreted through the fascinating medium of bovine coloration.

Don't play it if: you do not wish to achieve NIRVANA.

What an incredible and psychologically complex game!

The player starts in the first floor of a place called the Grand Tower. The objective is to reach the top of the tower. This is clearly symbolic of the cycles of reincarnation (samsara) as espoused by mainstream Hinduism - as the immortal soul (the player, who can restart the game endlessly and never find an actual solution to the game). The Hindu connection can be conclusively established by the presence of cows in the starting room (though the fact that one of the doors is called Exit might suggest an alternative interpretation along the lines of Jean-Paul Sartre's work).

There are all sorts of details to be interpretively explored here. Why the particular colors of Pink, Green, and Purple? Why is it that examining the Pink and Purple Cows yields the tautology "X Cow is an x cow", while examining the Green Cow produces the statement "You see nothing special about Green Cow"? Or why is the description of Orange Door "The Orange Door is an orange door", while the description of the Exit is "You might be able to exit this way, if, that isn't, the exit wasn't locked". Why the phrase "that isn't"? Surely a game of this caliber couldn't have meant it as a glaring typo easily fixable by even the most basic proofreading process or input of creative effort, but must have some deeper meaning.

But then, who am I to interpret such things?

Perhaps the fact that nothing but three cows and two locked doors are implemented is a sign from the Author, a sign that we must not be troubled with the things of material existence, but must rather look to a higher purpose that exists behind the veneer of a simple interactive fiction game.

Namely, that the whole thing is a brutal waste of your time, the author is likely trolling, and your only path to spiritual liberation - moksha - is to free yourself of the need to play this game at all.

Play it if: you're in the mood for some distraction and a bit of light humor that plays off some lovely caricatures of communism and capitalism.

Don't play it if: you're in the mood for intellectual challenge or satire that's actually razor-sharp instead of soft, warm, and fluffy.

The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game can only be encapsulated in the word "charming". The whole game is filled with a kind of whimsy you can find in the old Monkey Island puzzle-solving games: some light satire, a bit of caricature, and a young, plucky would-be hero.

There are really three levels to the humor here. The first is the caricatured viewpoint of the main character (appropriately named Karl). It's great fun to read the verbose and melodramatic descriptions given to vile dens of capitalism (e.g. a coffee joint) and glorious artifacts of the Revolution (e.g. your hat). The second is the ridiculously simplistic tools and methods you're expected to use to overcome capitalism - among them the Ventriloquator, a device which forces its target to spout Marxist slogans. The third level is the fact that the world actually bears out the logic of these methods. The capitalist world is just as surreal as Karl's mind, from the government bureaucrat's behavior to the bizarrely simple steps which will supposedly collapse the government and implode the economy to achieve Revolution.

The only real complaint I have about the game is its lack of ambition. For all its charm, the game feels a bit too short, and one gets the feeling that The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game could have taken its cues from the previously-mentioned LucasArts puzzle-solving games to expand the setting and the story a little.

Still, The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game (boy, am I getting tired of typing that out) is a solid game with no discernible gameplay hitches. This would make a good easy distraction and an excellent beginner's introduction to interactive fiction.

P.S. Oh, and the soundtrack on the author's website is brill. Good touch, Taylor!

Play it if: you wish for a game that explores puzzles of dialogue and discourse, or if you want to hear a powerful, emotionally resonant variation on the tale of Gilgamesh.

Don't play it if: you have trouble with puzzles that depend on intuition rather than pure logic, for it is as often as not by intuition that you progress through the story.

There are two reasons I love this story.

The first is intuition. The "puzzle" of the game, if it can be truly called a puzzle, is one of persuasion: to win the people of your tribe over to your way of thinking by directing the flow of a story. The player does this primarily by interacting with emphasized terms in the telling. Where intuition comes in is that you have no control over precisely what to do with each term; it is on the basis of each word's context in the story that you must decide how to interact.

This means that, to perhaps the greatest degree possible in IF, this is a game about language, a game which emphasizes reading comprehension over puzzle-solving. Not only is this fairly unusual for the genre, it is excellently done - the player can deduce important lessons even from minor details in the telling.

The second is the story itself. The storyteller narrates the first half of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written epic in recorded history and a myth which still resonates with and influences modern literature. The choice of story is perfectly suited to this work, for the Epic is primarily about fear - in particular, fear of death, and fear of the unknown - and the search for immortality, whether through glory or through the love and friendship of others. These are powerful themes that the framing narrative explores, taking place on the eve of tribal war.

Whom the Telling Changed is itself an allegory of the Gilgamesh story, and in adding another fundamental theme - the power of legend and narrative - Aaron A. Reed succeeds in crafting a myth of his own. This is fantasy from an older and darker time, from a world where life was brief and difficult. For many people in those times, the only spiritual and moral comfort to be offered came from the telling and understanding of old stories - as Reed understood when he tapped into that primordial image of a troubled tribe gathered in darkness around a warm campfire.

There are but a few other notes I have on this work. There are one or two glitches to be ironed out - I only ran into one of them, though, which given the game's NPC interactions is a pleasant surprise. Also, while in general I'm no fan of sequels, there is another chapter to the Gilgamesh myth...perhaps there is another story be told.

Play it if: you thought Asylum was the bottom of the barrel, and you want to prove yourself wrong.

Don't play it if: you were hoping for more of the hysterical mis-coding that characterized Asylum, for while this game is undoubtedly fatally flawed, it has even less of the unintentional entertainment value.

Set in a mysterious toyroom, Paranoia is in fact both vastly easier and vastly shorter than the author's earlier work, Asylum. There is a little less in the way of (unintentionally?) hilarious coding errors,(Spoiler - click to show) (though this could be thought of as a one-move game - try going east!) there's still some clunky writing here. The parser won't recognize any substitutes for "jack-in-the-box", for instance, and a certain object(Spoiler - click to show) apparently hidden inside the jack-in-the-box that seems to be vital to completing the game(Spoiler - click to show), barring your one-move victory option, is not implemented!

Play it if: you have fairly low standards for joke IF.

Don't play it if: you prefer a bit more elegance in your parodies.

In brief, Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die is a punchline game, where the whole point of the thing is just one big joke. This doesn't have to make it bad, but while games such as Adam Cadre's 9:05 and even Ian Haberkorn's Conan Kill Everything accomplish this with some degree of elegance, Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die has basically no replay value - because its joke is one-note. A funnier and thus more effective game might have resulted if the objective had been to avoid picking up the phone booth at all costs, in spite of various incentives to do so.

There's not much to say about a game that has so little to recommend it and so little to damn it. It's too insubstantial to even be considered a waste of time, but that's not really a good reason to play it, is it?

Play it if: you have a thing for IF that treats itself as a linear story rather than a game, for this is by its very conception one of the least interactive entries into the genre; and if you're big on "emotional" stories in your IF.

Don't play it if: if the line between drama and melodrama is just too fine for you, because Photopia is chock-full of whimsy, abrupt tone shifts, and strongly communicated emotion.

There's very little one can meaningfully say about Photopia that hasn't already been said. This has to be one of the least interactive works of IF in existence - the format is actually used more as a way to give cinematic effects to literature. Most of the time you're doing the equivalent of tapping the SPACE key and moving things along.

What takes the place of interactivity is the weight of narrative: the emphasis is firmly on the "fiction" aspect here, presenting a number of interrelated scenarios revolving around a single subject.

While the concept is interestingly done - and as has been said before, has some historically groundbreaking traits - Photopia leaves me a little cold because the writing, the aspect of this work that's supposed to take up the slack from the interactivity, feels decidedly average.

Don't get me wrong: Cadre's writing is fairly decent, and he can evoke images quite well in his description of things. (Spoiler - click to show)The way the car crash is described from the driver's point of view has details that give the experience a bit of visceral punch. The description of the crystalline maze was also evocative. The problem is that the subject of the narrative (Spoiler - click to show)(Alley) seems to have very little in the way of a genuine arc (Spoiler - click to show)besides just growing up, which reduces the subject's depth and makes the story as a whole feel less fulfilling. (Spoiler - click to show)Of course these things happen, and it's tremendously sad when they do, but it is the work of the storyteller to find solace in lending meaning to these kinds of tragedies. That Alley's death is the kind of awful twist that could happen to any of us is true enough, but as far as meaning goes it's rather mundane. There are also several passages where the writing is at risk of becoming overwrought (Spoiler - click to show)with the passage where Jon asks Alley out feeling overwritten, and the treatment of her curiosity and intelligence making her feel a bit like a Mary Sue character. In particular, the fact that the game wanted me to believe Alley's monologue on Freudian psychology to be a sign of genuine intellectual curiosity - when Freud's model was largely shelved a while before this game was written - really stuck out as an example of Alley being written simply as "smart". The view of the subject is also rather one-sided (Spoiler - click to show)Alley is given little in the way of flaws and as a result does come across as "too perfect".

I can understand why this story made certain readers cry, and I'm not calling them idiots for responding that way. It's just that for me personally, this story won't really stick with me on an emotional level due to the above issues. Ultimately, Photopia is better served by being upheld as an innovation on the IF concept than as a profoundly-written story - but it's still worth your time to play through it, as it offers insight into how IF tools can be used to lend cinematic effect to literature and to tinker with narrative structure.

Play it if: you loved everything about old-school IF other than its cruel gameplay and frequently illogical puzzles; if you want to see Emily Short's talents for innovative gameplay in a more traditional framework; if you're a sucker for prose that is both elegant and vividly detailed.

Don't play it if: Come on, just play it.

In almost every sense of the term, Savoir-Faire is a masterpiece, and in my opinion the best of Emily Short's longer games.

The chief technical innovation is the magic system, which allows the protagonist to blend the properties of different objects and create interesting cause-and-effect relationships. This system is not merely for show: the puzzling possibilities of this game mechanic are explored very fully - you need to use this skill to acquire items, reach areas, observe rooms, and more. The gameplay never feels repetitive as each puzzle involves a different use of these skills, and this is one of those games where you want to take a week to give yourself time to stew over all the possibilities. Another less visible but no less wonderful detail is the fluid dynamics (allowing you to have containers with different amounts of water, to pour them on the gruond, to have the resulting puddles evaporate gradually).

If this is an impressive achievement - and make no mistake, the Lavori d'Aracne is implemented in all sorts of interesting ways - what makes it even more brilliant is the quality of writing to hold it up. Because links can only be forged between objects that are similar in meaningful ways (form, function, or appearance), it becomes necessary to examine objects closely to look for possible links. Accordingly, the aristocratic mansion setting is brought to life with amazing levels of detail; you can examine details that are minute almost to the point of absurdity, sometimes discovering some lovely anecdotes (the reason for the family's cups and plates all being metal made me laugh out loud).

These aspects by themselves would be enough to make Savoir-Faire a great game. But added to this is a back-story that becomes something of a fore-story - the tale of the protagonist's origins and the possible fate of his family. You get a glimpse into the kind of conflict fans of Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice would love, involving aristocracy, intrigue, and class identity.

If I had to sum up Savoir-Faire in one image, it would have to be a tapestry. The magic system is intricately linked to the puzzles, and the puzzles' raisons d'être are linked to both the magic system and the backstory. The result is that you have a game with a medium-sized setting (a mansion) but which feels incredibly tight. There's an almost effortless sense of completeness at work here.

This is perhaps the game's ultimate triumph, for if there was anything we tended not to associate with old-school IF, it was writing this strong. Games like Zork may have had interesting settings and great humor, but they tended to be much looser, with puzzles rarely subscribing to some overarching puzzle or story. In this sense Savoir-Faire is the culmination of an entire genre of interactive fiction, recreating the wonder of exploring a mysterious setting while tying it into an intricately interwoven plot and puzzle system.

The one real flaw in the game is almost absurdly minor: there doesn't feel like much of an overall difficulty progression (Spoiler - click to show)(for instance, the solution to the rat-hole problem seems almost absurdly simple in comparison to navigating the maze, or helping Marie escape D'Envers) which is probably due to the fact that the puzzles themselves don't really have to be done in a specific order. But in a story which has an abundance of fascinating puzzles to offer already, and which is admittedly emulating the exploratory style of early IF, this isn't really something to raise much complaint about.

In sum, this is a game pretty much everyone should play. Newcomers to IF might find it a bit much to take in when you throw in the Lavori d'Aracne, but somehow I think they'll be fine with it.

A definite masterpiece.

Play it if: you've always wanted to think of interactive fiction as a true literary genre, for this is a terrifying and emotional tale worthy of its Lovecraftian origins.

Don't play it if: you have an allergy to great storytelling and demand complex puzzles instead, for this game undoubtedly focuses on narrative rather than intellectual challenge - not that this is a bad thing.

Wow. I'd heard this was good, but...wow.

Anchorhead simply blew me away, and I'll tell you why:

Because it scared me.

I've read a lot of horror fiction and played a lot of horror-themed video games, but this is the first game to truly frighten me. Gentry's writing is nothing short of astounding in this game, showing top-notch effort and a deft hand in bringing all the necessary elements of a good horror story to life: an atmospheric setting, a dark secret from the past, the confrontation of the unknown...with a dash of some Lovecraft trademarks thrown in for good measure. And finally, of course, the fact that you actually care about what's happening.

Oh yes. I cared a lot more about what was going on in Anchorhead than I did in, say, Adam Cadre's Photopia (which seems to be considered a standard tear-jerker among readers). The stroke of genius employed here is that Gentry creates a chain of cause and effect linking the mundane to the supernatural. In the beginning, the story builds the player's investment in the heroine through vivid descriptions of the unfriendly weather and the unwelcoming environment - we don't want to get into a sewer pipe, or get wet in the rain, or drink that awful cold coffee. We want to meet up with Mike, we want to make a phone call, et cetera. These basic needs form the basis of the more complex and fantastic impulses to investigate and explore, and ultimately the story's climax feels like a moment of genuine crisis, because having walked so thoroughly in the heroine's shoes, you care as much as she does about thwarting the evil that threatens Anchorhead.

It's really kind of beautiful: for the first time in my experience with IF, I found myself wanting to win out of simply wanting Michael and myself to survive our ordeal.

The game is full of excellently-written horror scenes that use IF's cinematic potentials well. (Spoiler - click to show)Particularly well-written scenes include the slaughterhouse sequence - including the possible deaths - the asylum chase, Doctor Rebis's testimony, and various possibly insanity-inducing events like reading the black tome or observing the comet. The descriptive writing is also very good, being not only thoroughly-implemented but also evocatively described.

Also of note are the numerous reading materials the player encounters in the course of the game: diaries, journals, newsletters, courthouse archives and clippings that aren't always vital to complete the game, but which cumulatively form a picture of Anchorhead's horrific past. These give the game a real sense of wonder and discovery as the player uncovers mysteries layer by layer - the kind of curiosity very few games can truly evoke.

Let's discuss some technical details. The game is generally well-coded considering some of the more finicky mechanics Gentry chose to include. Minor flaws include some amusing syntax errors when taking inventory, trying to let go of a certain rope when in the dark, and occasional difficulties with adding keys to the keyring. But these are easily ignored in the face of the game's overwhelming quality. While not the most challenging of games, Anchorhead's puzzles are almost totally free of "guess-the-verb" games (Spoiler - click to show)(the one major exception being releasing Jeffrey - somehow the command "free boy" didn't feel intuitive to me). There's enough challenge here that a decent player need never resort to a walkthrough, but may still want to spend a few days to a week poring over the possibilities.

In a way, it was almost a relief to see a game this large and complex managing to tell its story and pose some good obstacles without having to create too much in the way of extra vocabulary. In spite of the almost sprawling nature of the setting, the economy of important objects and required actions helps maintain the player's sense of perspective, and you're never really in danger of getting lost in the town. (Being able to write a realistic yet intuitively navigable system of streets is no mean feat!)

In sum, Michael S. Gentry writes that Anchorhead "doesn't even live up to my own standards about how a REALLY good game should be designed." If so, his standards must be astronomically high, for in spite of the odd glitch, this is one of the greatest works of IF ever written - one which I would be proud to show a beginner as an example of how IF can aspire to tell stories as moving and creative as those of literature and film. As with Watchmen, Star Wars, and Final Fantasy VI in their time, this is a work which leaps beyond the misconceptions and old assumptions about its original genre and could be truly considered a self-contained work of art.

Play it if: you've got a few minutes to kill and a few brain cells to waste.

Don't play it if: you want a bit more ambition in your IF than - well, almost nothing - and if you are easily enraged by the dumbing-down of the character of Conan as portrayed in external works.

A seemingly one-note joke of a game that actually does have a few puzzles, I'm not sure whether to praise Conan Kill Everything for keeping its admittedly simple premise brief, or wonder if a longer pastiche of the (now ubiquitous) dim-witted caricature of the character is in order.

But I won't be too picky. This is a fairly funny game, and the point of the joke is made. There are even some minor puzzles and a number of nice touches like Conan's reactions to kissing or cutting things. In sum, it's an OK time-waster.

Play the game if: you're a fan of Emily Short's trademark attention to detail and creative command systems, or if you want a short, not-too-challenging puzzler which will nevertheless excite your curiosity.

Don't play the game if: you wished this was comparable in scale to Savoir-Faire, or if you're looking for a story that is emotionally gripping.

Damnatio Memoriae is a flawless game, by which I mean that it hits all the marks it's aiming for. It adapts the magic system from Savoir-Faire into a novel setting and a more constrained story, the premise here being that you have to find a way of effecting a room escape and the destruction of certain objects at the same time.

The difficulty level on this one is quite low, which is understandable given the constrained environment that allows for brute-force solutions; it is, however, tricky to get the most desirable ending on a first attempt, though not impossible. Even without prior knowledge of how linking, reverse linking and enslaving work, it shouldn't take more than a few playthroughs to get the hang of things. A minor flaw here is that the help file is perhaps a tad bit too vague for the newcomer as to the magic system: I hadn't played Savoir-Faire when I first tried this one out, and as a result my initial attempts were perhaps more clumsy than they needed to be. In the event of an updated version or future installments in the series, I'd recommend an inclusion of some basic example scenarios to get across the points - as certain help files will so often do for the basic command system.

The setting is a rather cool mix of ideas - Imperial Roman political intrigue mixed with a crime story mixed with fantasy. The environment was given sufficient detail and verisimilitude that I wouldn't be averse to a future game exploring some side of Agrippa's family history. In some ways, though, that's the great gift and curse of complete short stories: they can stir up such curiosity about the world, rather than making it feel mundane by actually showing it.

Although I can't really fault the story for anything, it gets a four-star rating from me just because, apart from being entertaining and interesting, it won't occupy much of a place in my memory next to more complex or emotionally engaging works, many of which were authored by Ms Short herself. Sometimes perfection and inspiration just aren't the same thing.

(But there are worse things than a perfect game!)