Reviews by OtisTDog
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Fun and engaging short puzzler suitable for children and adults, April 4, 2024Mother Loose is one of those games that was developed as a labor of love and then subsequently released to the world. Its public debut was via IF Comp 1998, only the fourth such competition at the time, where it placed 6th of 27 in IF Comp 1998. This first effort by author Irene Callaci is now largely forgotten -- its more subtle charms lost in the glare of the multiple novae (Anchorhead, Spider and Web and Photopia) that dominated the public's attention in that year.
Ms. Callaci seems to have been something of a natural in producing interactive fiction. For a first effort, especially one that the author claims was produced while learning not just Inform 6 but object-oriented programming in general, Mother Loose is a remarkably high-quality result. It has a rich level of object implementation that encourages exploration and delivers plenty of vividly descriptive prose but which nonetheless does an excellent job of focusing the player's attention on those few things that are important. It makes use of a compass display in the status bar and has a built-in menu supplying author credits, an introduction to playing IF and in-game hints. There were essentially no bugs at the coding level, and I don't recall any misspellings or typos in the text.
This work includes several NPCs reflecting various levels of programming effort. Taken together, they are practically a guided tour of the major implementation styles, ranging from the practically inert and lifeless (a lamb) to the mute and command-ignoring flavor element (a kitten) to the comic relief chatterbox (a wolf) to the well-crafted exposition vending machine (an egg) to something occasionally engaging in life-like social interactions (a little girl). Ms. Callaci's successful efforts here were recognized; this work was nominated for both Best Individual NPC and Best NPCs in the 1998 XYZZY Awards.
Puzzle implementation is by contrast much sparer. There are only handful of obstacles in the game's dozen or so rooms. However, these have multiple solutions, and the greater difficulty in solving them comes from minor guess-the-verb issues rather than from deducing what must be done. (Of particular note here is one solution to a puzzle involving the well: (Spoiler - click to show)If you try to communicate with the stuck cat, be aware that it does not understand generic commands; one can only speak to it like a real cat. Commands that specifically work include (Spoiler - click to show)>SAY HERE KITTY or >CAT, COME OUT.)
The game's greatest innovation is the way that it gently mocks standard IF tropes by categorizing all significant PC actions as either naughty or nice. It's quite funny how certain actions yield both points and disapproving remarks. In addition to the running commentary provided by the narrator, the player's choices become significant at the end of the game. It's clear that the author intended the game to be enjoyable either way, and it definitely adds some richness to the limited scenario -- I couldn't resist replaying it to try out both paths.
A minor but still interesting novelty was the way that certain NPCs seem to "take over" some of the parser's responses when they are around. Where a command like >ASCEND TREE will normally result in a message about an unrecognized verb, when the wolf is present, the game instead responds "'Huh?' The wolf raises an eyebrow." This type of interaction does not seem to have much function and may be only a side-effect of the implementation of one particular puzzle, but it has a subtle though definite effect, reorienting the player's attention to the NPCs' presence in response to fruitless experimentation.
If there is a notable weakness to this game, it's that it takes some poking around to figure out what kind of game this will be and what kinds of goals are suitable. If one lacks the old school sensibility of wanting to solve puzzles just because they're there, it would be easy to walk around for a while and then give up in frustration. (This is especially true in light of the inclusion of several prominent objects without much apparent function. Some of these may be simple flavor elements, but others suggest the leftovers of abandoned lines of development.)
With a little guidance, this work is a very good introduction to IF for children. Even without guidance, the built-in hints will probably be enough, if they are necessary at all. Modern kids may need to be introduced to the very idea of nursery rhymes before any of it starts to make sense, but, as others have noted, nothing about the gameplay requires any deep knowledge of them in order to make progress. The more kids introduced to interactive fiction early, the more players there will be in the future, and games like this are essential to creating a positive impression of the art form in young readers.
Promising start, not fulfilled., February 1, 2024A Flustered Duck starts out seeming promising enough: The PC, a downtrodden pig-boy working on the farm of the tyrannical Granny Grabby, has somehow scrimped and saved enough to finally buy the diamond ring that he needs to propose to the girl of his dreams -- but, he is thwarted in his designs when the farm's duck, a favorite of Granny's, ingests the ring during an unlikely accident.
It's a fanciful setup, vaguely remniscent of Lost Pig, and after 50 moves or so (enough to get out of the prologue and off the farm), I was well-primed for the series of mildly-comic obstacles that would surely stand between the protagonist and his goal. What I was not prepared for was being plunged into a nonsensical world of odd vignettes connected only by the most tenuous moon logic.
I don't really have a problem with the classic "pastiche" style of Adventure and the Infocom canon. Nor am I opposed to humor based on silliness. This world, however, just fundamentally didn't make sense, often veering past silly to a level of weirdness that was so unexpected as to be disconcerting. I and the two people with whom I was playing lost our ability to suspend disbelief within a few hundred moves, but we persevered in order to give the game a fair chance to recover.
Unfortunately, it never did. Though we did finish the game, we did so only after receiving plentiful help from the integrated hint system, which is context-sensitive and well-implemented. There was no occasion on which we regretted having consulted it. Even after having run the gauntlet of puzzles, all three of us were fairly horrified by the actual retrieval of the ring -- instead of being triumphant this moment was more than a little repugnant, as it involved (Spoiler - click to show)hacking into the duck with a knife and pulling the gore-covered ring from its torso. Although this act has no lasting physical consequences due to a magical countermeasure, I think the experience would leave the duck in a state better described as "traumatized" than as merely "flustered." After delivering the ring and mentally reviewing the activities of the PC that day, I cannot say that I was left thinking that he and his love interest would share a happy future, which rendered the end unsatisfying.
On a technical front, this piece was put together pretty well. Aside from a scoring bug (explained below), the only other one that stands out is a repeated message on picking something up (Spoiler - click to show)(the television) that doesn't make sense after the first time. The prose is very serviceable, and I can't recall any typographical errors.
Although this game didn't work for the three of us, your mileage may vary. For the edification of would-be authors and to advise potential players, following are some specific gripes that we had with the game. Many of these are generic gripes against the "very old school" style, but I will still call them out here because the introduction of this game falsely suggests the more player-friendly style of later eras.
(Spoiler - click to show)
1. Information given about the observable environment is deliberately incomplete. Objects in plain sight of the PC (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. a penny on a table) go unmentioned unless the supporter on which they sit is examined. In some cases, objects in unobstructed view must be located with specific >EXAMINE commands. In an early and egregious case, even the presence of objects comparable in size to the PC (Spoiler - click to show)(furniture objects in the living room, including the penny-concealing table) are omitted from the initial description of a room.
2. Numerous objects are hidden inside or under objects described vaguely, often things whose existence and/or reason for being in that location are unhinted. While >EXAMINE and >SEARCH are generally equivalent, in at least one case (Spoiler - click to show)(berries on some bushes), >SEARCH gives no indication of a critical object's presence while >EXAMINE does.
3. The game implements a novel mechanic in which, upon taking an object for the first time, it is automatically examined... if it has not yet been examined. This is a neat idea, but it does not work well for a particular object (Spoiler - click to show)(a surfboard), which provides more information when examined while holding it. This critical extra information is easy to miss as a result. The effect is particularly off-putting in the context of a game including many objects that serve no specific purpose.
4. The game implements a hold-all object, but the logic controlling automatic shuffling of objects into it has faults, such that sometimes the object-juggling fails, causing the intended action to fail. It's not clear whether that's due to a bug affecting the "player's holdall" type of object in Inform 7 5U92 or due to an issue with custom code. While this would normally be a minor annoyance, this bug interacts with another bug related to scoring (Spoiler - click to show)(a point awarded for putting the poodle into the correct object so that it can be smuggled past its owner), such that the correct command will result in no score increase the second time it is tried. The combination of bugs creates an unintentional (and extremely irksome) last lousy point scenario.
5. Some actions must be repeated multiple times in order to trigger progress, even though the response to earlier attempts are failure messages that logically discourage additional attempts. This is particularly problematic in the game's opening vignette, in which the PC must try to >CATCH DUCK no less than four times to cause it to fly away, which allows the PC to leave the farm. (This was, incidentally, the first circumstance prompting use of hints -- an ill omen.)
6. In one miniature scene, the PC must select one of several items being offered by an NPC (Spoiler - click to show)(the gnome wizard). In reality, only one of the items can actually be selected, though choosing an "incorrect" one results in what seems to be a YES/NO prompt to confirm the choice. There doesn't seem to be any gameplay purpose to the frustration created for the player here; the scene would work just as well if the NPC just handed over the only allowable item.
>SHOOT THE PIRATE
This is the first line of Plundered Hearts. It is not a player command, but it looks like one. I don't know of any other earlier interactive fiction that begins this way. The text that follows looks like a response from the game, which is followed by a pause captioned with "[Press RETURN or ENTER to begin.]" After that, the game proper commences. The opening paragraphs give every appearance of being an in media res beginning, but they are not -- another actual beginning, also in media res, supplants it after the game's banner is displayed.
Whence that opening interlude? It is never explained within Plundered Hearts, and the scene portrayed, which is clearly not in the same continuity as the rest of the game, is most likely quickly forgotten by the average player. The game comes full circle at the climax moment, however, at which point this very command is the winning move leading to the "best" ending.
My first thoughts were about its similarity to the start of Wishbringer, which opens with the player character's daydream about fighting a dragon. Later, I considered that it might be an extended transition from the instruction booklet's sample transcript, perhaps doubling as hyper-abbreviated tutorial for those who had skipped reading it. Still later, I speculated that it was an excerpt from an alternate version of the scene depicting the player character's first encounter with her love interest, written earlier in the game's development.
According to the game's Invisiclues, the segment's origin is more prosaic: "You are asleep, dreaming this when the pirates attack.", "It's a preview of things to come.", "It's a sample of the writing style of PLUNDERED HEARTS.", and -- perhaps most importantly -- "Romance novels always have teasers of this sort." These are four answers, suggesting four separate purposes. In some ways it seems an echo of the Dreamtime of romance novel genre conventions, deliberately and skillfully inserted straight into the player's subconscious by Briggs (who has studied both psychology and narrative). Based on the Invisiclues answers (which evidence suggests were prepared by Briggs herself), it seems like an attempt to simultaneously reassure the player while preparing them for something different. For the player already familiar with text adventures, a sketch of the protagonist's relatively strong characterization and the game's atypical subject matter. For the player well-versed in romance novels, an illustration of the alien but essential interaction with the parser.
Plundered Hearts is commonly known as Infocom's first (and last) interactive romance novel. Released as the company was leaving its best days behind, it suffered disappointing sales and was widely panned in contemporaneous reviews. Although the marketing department had hoped it would be the bridge to a new market of women players, it sold only about half as well as a typical game. Author Amy Briggs, in an interview with Jason Scott, is blunt in relating that at the time she considered the game to be a failed experiment.
... and yet, here it is in 2023, three and a half decades later, and Plundered Hearts suddenly makes a strong showing on the Interactive Fiction Top 50, placing (alongside others) at a respectable 18th place, where it outshines even Trinity, which was long considered by the community to be Infocom's apex. The game has not changed at all in those years -- so what has?
I can point to Aaron Reed's 2021 analysis of the game as a possible contributor, but I note that Jimmy Maher's broadly similar treatment from 2015 produced no comparable shift in public opinion. Is it just that there's something in the air this year about nautical themes?
Let's look a little more deeply.
Plundered Hearts is remarkably different from most earlier Infocom games. Another review describes it as "story-forward," a useful term to differentiate it from both "puzzleless" and "puzzle" games. There are puzzles here, but they are lightweight by Infocom standards. Every puzzle is eminently fair. Solutions are rooted in the reality of the story world and standard genre tropes -- there is no "moon logic" here, nor anything that comes off more as riddle than as cause-and-effect. In short, these puzzles are not designed to stump; they are designed to engage. Although it is possible to get into an unwinnable state, it is not very likely if even the slightest prudence is exercised. The style of play is very close to the modern norm in which it is simply not possible to become stuck.
Almost shockingly in the context of an Infocom game, several of the significant puzzles have multiple solutions, and by this I mean genuinely viable and effective alternate options for surpassing obstacles. In some previous Infocom games there are false solutions which allow limited progress but will ultimately require restoring or restarting to win (or at least to achieve the maximum score) -- in effect, what looks like an alternate solution turns out to be only a promising-looking dead end, because the story structure takes the form of a maze with only one correct path. Here there is much less of a maze, and the available choices send the player character on separate but equal paths through the story space, enabling different players, using different methods, to finish the story in their own style.
The most direct consequence of this player-friendly design is a total play time on the order of 2 to 4 hours. This is extremely short by Infocom standards, and it seems that many players and reviewers mistook kindness for weakness -- complaints that the game provided too little entertainment for the money were prominent. But in an interview from the Winter 1987 issue of Infocom's marketing publication "The Status Line" (cited by Aaron Reed), Briggs is clear that she designed "a game that [she] wanted to play" -- the kind of experience that Infocom's marketing had been promising to the world on every box with the claim that their games were "like waking up inside a story." Jimmy Maher sums up her success in this endeavor well: "Plundered Hearts might just be the best expression — ever — of the Infocom *ideal* of interactive fiction... There’s a plot thrust — a narrative urgency — that’s largely missing elsewhere in the Infocom canon, coupled with many more of the sorts of things the uninitiated might actually think of when they hear the term 'interactive fiction.'... Amy Briggs took interactive fiction as Infocom preferred to describe it and made her best good-faith effort to live up to that ideal."
There are four "winning" endings to the game. Each of them yields the full total of 25 possible points, but three of the endings inform the player that "There are other, perhaps more satisfying, conclusions." I can't help but draw the parallel to Inform 7's "end the story" vs. "end the story finally" statements; what is standard convention now was something unheard of in 1987. This was an arrow in the sand, pointing the way to a broader definition of interactive fiction. Even Steve Meretzsky's boundary-breaking A Mind Forever Voyaging doesn't escape the straitjacket of convention calling for an endgame puzzle with a single solution, but Plundered Hearts takes a big step into new territory by granting all four endings equal scores, regardless of the outcome of the climax scene.
The game would fit very well in this year's IFComp if it weren't somewhat underimplemented by modern standards. I hasten to point out that the "under" part of that statement is rooted in a perspective influenced by 35 years of evolution of the form (and its supporting technology) since the game's publication, and that the reduced level of implementation is almost certainly entirely a consequence of 1980s technical limitations. The game file is 126K, which is at the absolute limit of size for Infocom's Z3 games. In the same interview with Jason Scott, Briggs describes the need to edit the original version of the game down to a size that would fit on the microcomputers of the era and says that it took months to accomplish. Despite the implication of drastic editing, production notes show that at its most expansive the compiled game was only about 2.5K larger than its final size. Briggs may be referring to cuts to the design on paper, ideas that never made it to code in the first place.
The decision to stick with Z3 (which in particular seemed intended to preserve access to the Commodore 64 market) meant that Briggs had very definite constraints on the realization of her vision. Perhaps the central challenge in designing this work was that by its nature it calls for extensive characterization and character interaction. According to Briggs, Meretzky warned her not to try this story as her first attempt -- while she does not say what specific challenges were anticipated, the most obvious stem from the difficulties inherent in developing characters. Undeterred, she plowed ahead, placing herself into a position where necessity became the mother of invention (mayhap following a brief dalliance with desperation).
Briggs partially solved the problem through the use of cliche. I do not say this as criticism, because I do not think that significant characterization for so many different characters is achievable within the limits of Z3 except through heavy use of cliche. (If you want a character to be different, you have to illustrate the difference, and that takes text.)
The plot is similarly a collection of standard tropes and beats, but I note that the use of cliche does not preclude effective entertainment. Many of the same elements are present in that other famous pirate adventure game of the era: The Secret of Monkey Island. (In a twist of fate that sounds too good to be true, it turns out that Amy Briggs used to babysit Ron Gilbert, the lead designer of Monkey Island, when she was a young lady. See the video interview of Gilbert cited on Briggs' Wikipedia page.)
Conversation was exceptionally dangerous territory; it was always weak in Infocom games due to the ASK/TELL model. The Achilles heel of ASK/TELL is that the frequency distribution of possible topics has a long tail. An NPC with just a few significant responses seems less like a person and more like the virtual automaton that it is. It takes scores of responses to make a suitably "lifelike" NPC (even assuming that responses to a given topic do not vary), and while some players will delight in an NPC that has a wide range of responses, most players will give up quickly after drawing a few generic replies in a row.
Although later non-commercial works such as Galatea, Anchorhead or Lost Pig show that ASK/TELL can work reasonably well, they also show that it requires large amounts of text to be dedicated to conversation. (Compare Lost Pig's single NPC and 279K file size.) The standard dodge was (and often still is) to create an in-game reason that serves as an excuse for an NPC's poor conversation skills -- and indeed this method is used for the characters of Cookie (who is nearly deaf) and the "butler" (who exhibits a stock combination of quiet menace and bland formality).
In the context of ZIL and Z3, where every byte matters, devoting substantial text to responses that have a low probability of being discovered by any single player is simply a bad bet when weighed against the other needs of the game. It is unsuprising that Plundered Heart's ASK/TELL conversation doesn't fare any better than the Infocom average, but Briggs makes use of a new invention for the most critical interaction with NPCs: the YES/NO conversation model, in which the PC must respond to yes/no questions from the NPC. Only an embryonic version of the technique is on display -- fewer than a score of these interactions occur -- but they demonstrate a way to add characterization to both PC and NPC in a very economical manner from the perspective of the programmer. Although similar code can be found in other Infocom games, the technique is generally used to conduct humorous and/or snide metaconversational exchanges between the parser/narrator and the human player; the exception is A Mind Forever Voyaging, where in a minority of instances the technique is deployed to interact with other characters. Plundered Hearts seems to be the first to use YES/NO responses primarily to drive player character actions. (Andrew Plotkin would later use the YES/NO conversation model to great effect in Spider and Web.)
Another innovation worth noting in passing is the game's implementation of clothing -- and layered clothing at that. Though the layering has little functional significance, it seems that the clothing system was a substantial development effort with its own module of about a thousand lines of code (around 5% of the total source by line count). Changing clothes is more than mere disguise, it is a social act within the game, and NPCs frequently react to the PC's outfit -- providing a way of squeezing a little more characterization out of the limited interaction that was possible.
In a further departure from contemporary Infocom norms, hallmarks of the house style of humor are conspicously absent. As pointed out by Jimmy Maher: "There aren’t 69,105 of anything here, no 'hello, sailor' jokes, no plethora of names that start with Zorkian syllables like 'Frob,' no response to 'xyzzy'..." The only whiff of that vein of humor to be found is in the player character's family name of Dimsford, and it is soon forgotten if it is even noticed in the first place. (Exhaustive interaction with the environment will yield a smattering of other jokes in the Infocom style, such as the motto on the Jamison family ring and the name of the piece being played by the band in the ballroom, but these are exceptions that are easy to miss.) The game's playability today is much improved by this choice.
It is very interesting to wonder about what the game would have looked like had Briggs been given the freedom of the Z4 format with its expanded capacity. There are hints due to the release of the Infocom hard drive, such as: the name for a fifth ending called "Femme Fatale," which an associated comment describes as "You desert -- Lafond dead"; a spyglass with a special interaction from the crow's nest of the ship; the possibility of the protagonist injuring her ankle and approaching the mansion along the road north of it; a number of interactions involving Lafond's hat; snipped objects such as a bent key, a candle, and hoops for your frock; and suggestions of a somewhat more lurid style in certain places.
We know that Briggs wanted to do more. In the Jason Scott interview, Briggs recounts her reaction to seeing "Pirates of the Caribbean" for the first time: "*That's* what I was trying to do. That *movie* is what I was trying to get my game to play like -- that whole experience." She wasn't the only one who wanted more action, in a separate anecdote she recounts: "I remember one reviewer just lit into the game because she was trying to karate chop and to do tough guy stuff, and the game wouldn't let her." It simply wasn't possible to do much more than she managed with the materials at hand in 1987.
In the end, the collapse of Infocom and the shift to graphical games was a turning in the tide of history, and Briggs' arrow in the sand was washed away... but not before it was noticed, not before it turned eyes to the horizon and kindled dreams of what distant shores might lie beyond it. Now, in a time when those shores have been charted, pirate-themed interactive fiction continues to be produced in a steady stream -- but has any of it managed to do better than this pioneering first?
As game, passable. As technical demo, wow!, January 14, 2024From time to time, Andrew Plotkin has written works that are more about demonstrating what is possible from a technology standpoint than they are about delivering great stories. Lists and Lists is one of this type, and it certainly makes a deep impression when one finds oneself interacting with a Scheme interpreter instead of a normal command prompt.
The provided plot is the flimsiest excuse for presenting a test of programming skill in a language that few people are likely to be familiar with. The difficulty curve of the challenges is not linear, and it increases sharply toward the end of the series.
I don't normally recommend IF that is purely about the logic puzzles, but this piece is such a unique achievement that I think it's a must-see for anyone interested in IF as a whole. Arguably, at its core it is not so much IF as it is INF (Interactive Non-Fiction). Equally arguably, it is a stand-out example of puzzle design featuring a consistent, discoverable logical framework with very fair hinting and considerable challenge -- though I think any such argument would be disingenuous because none of Plotkin's genuine games are so derivative of the work of others. In any case, it is worth reviewing as a notable experiment, and as a bonus you'll learn something about an historically-significant programming language!
(Note: My scoring rubric implies that this work should earn a five-star score on the basis of its introduction an entirely new technique. However, although it was enjoyable and remarkable, I can't honestly say that it feels like a proper game to me, nor do I think it was truly intended to be thought of as one.)
How far can you get with a dozen rubber bands?, January 14, 2024There is something deeply endearing about the Frenetic Five franchise to me. If there was anyone out there long-awaiting another episode of this series, I was that one.
What do I love about the series? It's not just that it hits the superhero satire sweet spot better than anything since the Tick animated series, but that it does it in such a clever way. Author Neil deMause's sense of humor is both shallow and deep, running from playful one-liners such as
> QUIT
You can’t actually quit, since as an independent contractor you’re not technically employed.
> QUIT
Oh, *that* kind of quit.
Are you sure you want to quit?
to the refrigerator logic perfection of the fact that even though the superpowers of the main characters seem foolish, they truly *are* superpowers in the context of an interactive fiction game. (To wit: Improv is the player avatar whose "power" is to come up with improbable solutions with at-hand materials. Lexicon knows all the words in the game's dictionary, defeating guess-the-verb and guess-the-noun issues. Pastiche can violate the physical world model's containment rules at will, so no locked container is a barrier -- plot requirements of this episode notwithstanding. Newsboy's awareness is not bounded by scope; he can theoretically see anything happening in the game universe. Clapper's power bypasses visibility and concealment rules, obviating any lightweight "puzzles" that are based on objects being hidden in a room.)
This prequel is written in Inform 7, a departure from the TADS platform used for every previously-released episode. The author's notes indicate that writing it was partly an exercise in learning the new language, and the oft-noted bugginess of release 1 is undoubtedly in part a reflection of this fact. (As relevant background, a certain level of bugginess can be found in the author's TADS-based works, as well.) The presence of bugs (even the serious one noted by other reviewers) was not enough to prevent me from enjoying release 1, and in any case they are substantially addressed by release 2.
I found this episode to be as good as any installment of the series, in that the plot was just as flimsy (in a manner entirely in keeping with the superhero genre), the jokes were just as funny (in a manner entirely in keeping with the author's trademark style), and the writing was just as entertaining as ever.
For a newcomer to the series, this may not be the best first episode to play, because much of the strength of the series comes from the interaction between the PC and other members of the team. That kind of interaction in this game is almost entirely lacking -- the relationship between characters is (appropriately for an origin story) that of newly-introduced co-workers instead of familiar friends (and even roommates) as seen in episode 1. There is still enough to entertain in the way of deadpan comedy, unexpected puns and puzzle cussitude, but it just doesn't have the same feel of being a dynamic situation full of active and interesting characters.
The puzzles were more enjoyable in this episode, though I'm not sure how much of the difference is attributable to improved design vs. better alignment of my expectations. There is automatic hinting for several of them when no progress is being made, so I assume that an effort has been made to be "fair" in the strictest sense, even if necessary actions don't always make sense at first blush. Sometimes it may be necessary to stumble on a solution through experimentation, and it certainly appeared to be the case that involving NPCs was not optional in some places. As a result, there doesn't seem to be any reason to refrain from calling for help early and often.
The ending is somewhat anti-climactic, and the "post-credits" scene will make little sense unless the player is familiar with (or goes on to become familiar with) the chronological sequel: The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang.
The author's notes claim that he "will absolutely be writing more games sometime in the next two decades," and I hope that is true because I definitely look forward to whatever else he might publish. Welcome back, Mr. deMause!
Significantly less than the sum of its parts, January 12, 2024After finishing this game, I was surprised to learn that it placed a respectable 4th of 27 entries in the 2007 IF Comp. This is remarkable -- it clearly demonstrates how much higher the average quality of comp entries has climbed over the course of the last decade and a half.
This game is very competently programmed in Inform 6 and presented no bugs during various playthroughs. The writing is serviceable, and I noticed only a handful of typographical errors (all of which were misplaced homonyms). The story, however, is a mish-mash of unrelated elements that create essentially no synergy.
In terms of "marketing materials," the game patterns itself after the Infocom style -- and especially after Planetfall. As with that game, feelies include a military service ID card and various documents relevant to the PC's new career. The feelies also imply that this game takes place in the same universe as that commercial-era classic, with the player character being the sibling of Planetfall's recently-enlisted Ensign Seventh Class who serves aboard the S.P.S. Feinstein. The most innovative item among the feelies of Across the Stars was the sample transcript, which covers the player character's experience when first joining the crew of the ship aboard which the story begins. (This is a departure from Infocom's practice, which presented sample transcripts from stories that were similar but unrelated.) The ostensible background provided by the feelies is wholly irrelevant to actual gameplay, though, and they can be skipped without losing anything of value.
The game itself is difficult to describe, because it mixes several elements and styles without committing to any of them enough to warrant a strong categorization. The basic segments of the plot are as follows: 1) (Spoiler - click to show)sabotage your ship while avoiding the occasional search by pirates who have captured the rest of the crew, 2) (Spoiler - click to show)explore an ancient temple from an alien culture to learn about their culture and history, 3) (Spoiler - click to show)defeat some dangerous creatures and rescue an NPC, 4) (Spoiler - click to show)get to the NPC's ship and activate its emergency beacon so that you can both be rescued. One or two of these segments might have served as the whole plot of a modern comp game; here, each is treated so breezily that it feels like four half-stories and zero complete ones.
In terms of richness of setting, most of it is found in plot segment 2, which -- oddly -- seems almost wholly optional. In fact, the IFDB-linked walkthrough (which seems to have been for an earlier version of the game) pretty much skips this part. It appears that much of it was grafted on later, and complications to the main plot added to require engagement with these new pieces.
If this was the development strategy, then it is easiest to explain the game's shortcomings as simply the result of it not reflecting any integrated vision of a whole. However, this is a fatal flaw, because in its final form the plot basically requires the player character to (Spoiler - click to show)secure the primary magical artifact of an ancient world religion solely in order to use it as a light source!
At first I thought that this aspect of gameplay was the result of the authors allowing plenty of freedom in the path that the player takes through the game, such that being a good guy is optional. I would have respected that, but review of the source code suggests that this is part of the critical path to reaching the end. I found the overall experience to be somewhat distasteful.
The authors themselves seemed to have trouble coming to grips with the game as a whole; the subtitle of "the Ralckor Incident" seems an odd choice, as the subtitular creature really only figures prominently into plot segment 3. If tasked with naming the game, I might suggest (Spoiler - click to show)"the Taking of the Supalace" (segment 1) or (Spoiler - click to show)"Prophecy of the Protector" (segment 2) or even (Spoiler - click to show)"Escape from Brakis VI" (segment 4). The pacing and structure of the game made it seem to me as though the proposed segment 2 title would fit best, but given the resolution of that segment it would really only do so in an ironic manner.
Playing this game may still be worthwhile as an exercise for the would-be author, because on the local scale of individual rooms, objects and actions there is much to admire about this work. I would not really recommend it to players as entertainment, however. If you want action-adventure, a rich fictional history with layers of meaningful symbolism, engaging and purposeful NPCs, and epic quests to save a world, then you will likely be disappointed by this work that seems to offer all of these things but ends up delivering none.
The only thing missing is an ad for breakfast cereal..., December 15, 2023[Full Disclosure: I know the author of this work personally, and I served as a beta tester for this game.]
"I don't want to play in a world where I can't kick a pirate using karate." So said Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, in a 1988 article about Plundered Hearts (MIT Technology Review, May/June 1988, p. 16). Well, Janet... it took almost 35 years, but your cri du coeur has been answered!
A Matter of Heist Urgency is an unusual offering. Rooted in a series of silly short stories written for a grade schooler who enjoys horses and superheroes, it was developed into a short game as a fun way of introducing that grade schooler to interactive fiction. Having reached about 25,000 words in size and a level of playability that was very newbie-friendly, it was then further developed to be an entry in IF Comp 2022, doubling its word count in the process. The result is a fast-paced, smoothly-flowing, and very amusing short game that has been favorably compared to a Saturday morning kids' cartoon.
The game is "puzzleless" in the sense that there is nothing intended to impede the story's progression to its successful conclusion. By the same token, it is "merciful" on the Zarfian scale -- the player may be left with varying degrees of satisfaction at the outcome, but the player character cannot die or even really lose. That said, the game does reward engagement, and there is some light thinking to be done in order to achieve the highest rankings, which are issued at the end of the game even though there is no formal score. (To be less ambiguous, I should instead say that the game has no point rewards; it does indeed have a musical score.)
Critical reception in the context of the competition was mixed. The "marketing materials" (i.e. cover and blurb) developed for the game emphasize the word "heist" in the title, which may set genre expectations of a complex puzzling-solving exercise involving tight timing and intricate details. (This perception may also be reinforced by the blurb's claim of a "robust" hint system, though in hindsight that is clearly tongue-in-cheek.) In contrast, the cover illustration depicts cartoon horses and a pirate ship, and the blurb characterizes the game as "a delightfully short action-comedy" with "intense fights with kung-fu llamas," so arguably it delivers exactly what it says on the tin.
The humor of the piece is its strong point, but it is also perhaps idiosyncratic. Players seem to decide whether or not the game appeals to them very quickly, beginning with their perception of the pun in the title. Much of the humor depends on juxtaposition: The illustration of Anastasia as a rainbow-maned equine invites a comparison to "My Little Pony," but the way the plot plays out is closer to "The A-Team."
The game's tone is unapologetically playful, and it works best when approached in a playful mood. The setting is essentially the Land of Make Believe, which you may recall spending time in as a child. Character archetypes are deployed without any consideration for historical accuracy; instead they are chosen to evoke a specific mood and expectations in the player. This creates a fluid version of in-game reality that can subject the player to surprises(Spoiler - click to show) (a pirate with a jetpack??) but still feels consistent in the sense of keeping the scenario and the interaction fun.
Personally, I have found the game to be very enjoyable, even through many replays, because there are countless details in the implementation that reward you for poking around by responding with small jokes. I am especially impressed by one of the new scenes added post-competition (in release 5): It is a very "cinematic" flashback sequence using a method of synchronized music and text that I hadn't encountered elsewhere, though a similar technique was later employed in Little Match Girl 4. (Note that this scene is shown only if you are victorious in the first fight; if you lose, you instead get to play a very funny interlude from the protagonist's early training.)
As you have no doubt gathered by now, this is not a "serious" piece. However, its development was taken seriously by the author, first with the intention of creating a memorable and enjoyable introduction to interactive fiction, then with the intention of crafting a light-hearted and diverting short experience for judges working through a field of entries that generally strive for more literary merit.
Given my involvement, it's not appropriate to let my star rating count toward the average, but I give it high marks due to its very good implementation quality, memorable and amusing characters, and judicious use of sound. I encourage everyone looking for a half hour of pure entertainment to give this piece a try. I also highly encourage use of a sound-capable interpreter, which is essential for appreciating the scene-enhancing music and the special flashback sequence mentioned above.
A "bridge" episode that doesn't stand on its own, October 31, 2023Another Earth, Another Sky, the second installment of the popular Earth and Sky series, is a significant step up from its predecessor in terms of technical sophistication. Object implementation is complete but not very deep, matching a relatively spare descriptive style for locations. What stands out most is the "situational implementation" -- the game's bug-free logic is prepared for a wide variety of actions that the player character (Earth) might take, or might ask the key NPC (Sky) to do.
This attention to scenario detail was atypical at the time, and the game was exceptionally well-received. Not only did it win the 2002 IF Comp, it received 2nd place in the comp's Miss Congeniality rankings and was later nominated for five XYZZY awards (winning only Best Use of Medium). This last is almost certainly due to the use of comic-book style graphical elements (title cards and onomatopoeia-based "sound effects"), an affordance of the Glulx virtual machine that was still little-used at the time.
Unlike the first installment, which sweeps the player along quite quickly, this episode has a slower and more contemplative pace. The bulk of the action occurs in three parts: (Spoiler - click to show)a short investigation at an abandoned cabin, a much longer investigation on an unusual artificial planetoid, and a brief climax and denouement. The second portion will take up the bulk of the playtime, consisting of one long puzzle about gaining access to the endgame. The scenario is designed such that you must explore the entire area to find the pieces that you need, creating a "travelogue" type of experience that encourages you experience the sights, sounds and smells of the various geographical sections. Sprinkled through this are various optional discoveries that let the thorough player unravel the mystery that serves as a plot, but a full explanation will be provided before the cliffhanger ending in any case.
The game does not stand very well on its own, since the plot continues the events of the first game and seems largely designed to supply backstory for the third episode. The climax encounter with a new NPC is disappointingly short, especially when contrasted with the earlier interaction with the PC's superhero sibling. Rather than attempt this as standalone entertainment, it is probably best enjoyed as part of the series.
One minor item of interest is that the startup menu allows the player to optionally specify details of the resolution of key events that occurred during his or her playthrough of the first episode. The answers have a small impact on the introductory text, but I did not notice any other consequence.
If at all possible, know nothing about this game before starting, October 25, 2023I downloaded An Act of Misdirection many years ago, having seen it mentioned in passing in a positive way. The only thing that I remembered about it when I loaded it up this morning was that you play the part of a stage magician, and that you had to figure out the steps of the performance.
"Well, this should be interesting," I thought after reading the run-up to the first command prompt. Imagine my delight as I found that the way had been carefully prepared for my bumbling first attempts, that hints and nudges were craftily placed within every turn of phrase of the interaction. These hints began small and subtle but escalated to large and glaring when needed to get my attention, and rapidly taught me both to follow their lead and to take advantage of the breaks in the action to "work the crowd" for a response.
I have noted in the past about certain games' ability to follow the player until the player can learn to follow them. This is accomplished so expertly here that it seems effortless. The only point where I got stalled too long was a place where a little thinking about the logic of performances of this type would have sufficed. (Spoiler - click to show)Specifically, having used a blunt instrument for its intended purpose, it makes sense that it can be disposed of thereafter. (Spoiler - click to show)A hint from your assistance about which item he expects to catch would have smoothed the way here; if there was one, I missed it. The correct move was apparent enough when I stopped to consider it... it just took me a while to do so because I was swept up in the urgency of keeping the show going. The author, Callico Harrison, should truly take a bow for this achievement; not many games manage to instill this sense of immediacy.
Having come to this game mostly "cold," I wasn't even aware that there was a horror component to it. I would imagine that this situation has been relatively rare since the game's initial release -- this IFDB page, for example, clearly labels it as such -- but knowing about it is a massive spoiler! If you have already played the game you can imagine my own shock, echoing that of the fictional audience, as the performance reaches its culmination. The first act had been an Act of Misdirection, indeed.
Moving on from there, Ms. Harrison demonstrates a surprisingly rich and deep command of language in painting the scenes of the protagonist's origin story. Many people seem to find this second section to be inferior to the first; I did not. The same craft and skill is used to keep the action moving with clues, now less blatant in their prompting of the right command. The parser is fairly free in its interpretation of your input at this point, redirecting your intent when you are "close enough" in order to keep the scene moving briskly. Call it "railroaded" if you like, but I prefer to think of it as the game urgently requesting your cooperation to play along so as not to ruin the intended pacing. I found myself eager to catch up as the game led me through a chaotic situation, glancing this way and that at glimpses of Victorian life before being tugged along to a more contemplative setting where the horror begins in earnest.
Here Ms. Harrison shows that her command of the psychology of horror is as great as that of her command of language -- indeed, I found this section to be a master class of the technique for "showing, not telling" in the context of interactive fiction. I expect to spend much time scrutinizing the writing here to better understand how she so expertly conveys key knowledge indirectly; important realizations suddenly appear in your mind at the center of a flourish of well-chosen connotations. A second bow in encore is called for here.
If there is anything to criticize about this work, it is that it is over too quickly, and that certain details of the scenario are not clear after a first playing. I am glad to see that other reviewers almost universally recommend a second playthrough, and I look forward to doing so... preferably with other players who don't know what to expect.
As a final note, I want to point out that this game was written in Inform 6, and it is a remarkable feat to achieve such a level of polish with that toolset. Very few games of the era are its equal in this respect, though nowadays Inform 7 makes it easier (if not exactly easy) to build scenarios of comparable quality.
Ms. Harrison does not seem to have ever produced another standalone work of IF (though she did contribute to Cragne Manor), but if she does she will find me among those waiting "in anticipation of something magical" to try her next work.
Fun but sometimes frustrating, October 25, 2023Back to Life... Unfortunately is an entertaining but significantly buggy game. I played version 3, obtained from the IF Archive. (At least, I think it was version 3. The game banner claims to be version 2, but the response to the command >BUGS implies otherwise.)
As noted by another reviewer, the game's humor starts well but doesn't hold up for long; there are really only so many ways to tell the same joke. However, by the time the humor has worn off, you are likely to have achieved several "successes," so you will be well-motivated to finish the game on the basis of wanting to complete the remaining puzzles. Regrettably, you are likely to run into trouble while doing so.
Many of the issues stem from the use of ADRIFT to write the game. As I've noted elsewhere, the most frustrating thing about ADRIFT as a player is that it lacks a proper parser and does not differentiate well between errors that are caused by failure to understand the arrangement of words vs. the failure to understand the words themselves. The game's gravest errors are where it provides inaccurate feedback, giving the player the perception that certain required commands would have no effect or would be unrecognized. I got hung up for quite a while on the syntax required to mark boxes on a form; since the need to do this is immediate and obvious, it is no spoiler to relay that the correct syntax is of the form >TICK BOX 1. (Just >TICK BOX is treated as a totally unrecognized command -- a disambiguation message would have helped tremendously here.) The worst offender of this class was (Spoiler - click to show)(see numbered hint 3 below). Attempting to use any other direct object results in a message instructing the player to say which of several indirect objects is intended. Specifying the correct indirect object in the command via its typical adventurese abbreviation (i.e. color only) will not work and falsely claim that there is no effect.
There is a built-in hint system, but it is not very extensive and does not help with guess-the-* problems. (Even here there is a significant inconsistency: While >HINT works as a command, the response to >HINTS claims there are no hints in the game.) (Spoiler - click to show)If you get really frustrated, there is a command >CLUES that will point the way to 100% spoilage. Since the game is enjoyable and worth playing, I offer the following hints:
1. Handling an intruder: (Spoiler - click to show)After exploring a bit, you will hear the sound of an intruder in your chambers. (Spoiler - click to show)You should immediately >LISTEN as soon as you are notified of this. Should you fail to do so, it will seem as though the noise was a false alarm. Go back to the Throne Room and >LISTEN to trigger the next part of the sequence. (Spoiler - click to show)An assassin! Oh, no!... but wait a minute, don't you want to die? (Spoiler - click to show)As the game hints, you don't want to die at the hands of this particular person -- once was enough.(Spoiler - click to show)You can't handle the intruder alone. He will kill you.(Spoiler - click to show)The guards can help here. (Spoiler - click to show)You have to call them -- but it only works correctly from the Laboratory. (Spoiler - click to show)If you don't do things this way, you will miss two opportunities to die.
2. Dealing with the problems of the kingdom: (Spoiler - click to show)You don't want to rule anymore. That's someone else's job. Someone specific. (Spoiler - click to show)Your High Chancellor is very... effective, shall we say, but he can't do the job alone. (Spoiler - click to show)Your layabout son is the proper ruler at this point. You will need to "encourage" him. (Spoiler - click to show)Did you know that you can >CALL GUARDS from the Throne Room? (Spoiler - click to show)They will provide you with a ring allowing telepathic communication. Pay attention to its introduction. (Spoiler - click to show)Examine it carefully before putting it on. (Spoiler - click to show)Your son isn't eager to take up his duties, but he is eager to avoid any displeasure. (Spoiler - click to show)Especially pain. (Spoiler - click to show)>SMASH RING -- but only while wearing it in the Throne Room, for inexplicable reasons. That will get his attention. (Spoiler - click to show)Then >TALK TO TOROMIN again -- but only somewhere other than the Throne Room, for inexplicable reasons.
3. An optional death: (Spoiler - click to show)If you have handled the intruder correctly, you will get two items that he was carrying. (Spoiler - click to show)One is easily applied to your goal. The other requires some work to use. (Spoiler - click to show)The leaf has an odor that reminds you of something. (Spoiler - click to show)Your lab has something that can help. (Spoiler - click to show)You want to heat it up. Which potion is best for this? (Spoiler - click to show)For inexplicable reasons, >PUT LEAF IN PURPLE won't work (and falsely claim that nothing happened), but >PUT LEAF IN POTION or >PUT LEAF IN PURPLE POTION will have a result.
4. A required death: (Spoiler - click to show)As you have discovered, your minions are quite adept at bringing you back to life. How can you stop them? (Spoiler - click to show)You need to be not just killed but obliterated. (Spoiler - click to show)Earthly methods are insufficient here; you need divine intervention. (Spoiler - click to show)Divine is not the same as infernal! (Spoiler - click to show)You probably found a scroll discussing "words of power" in the Laboratory. (Spoiler - click to show)Oh, darn -- the words are missing. But this was your scroll, supposedly, so maybe you already know them? (Spoiler - click to show)You can just say >WORDS OF POWER to use them -- in the right place. (Spoiler - click to show)The right place being someplace open to the sky. (Spoiler - click to show)No, not the balcony. (Spoiler - click to show)The Throne Room needs to be prepared before it will work. So do you. The scroll is specific about this. (Spoiler - click to show)Holy water is the tool for the job. (Spoiler - click to show)You can drink some to prepare yourself, but you need a way to get some to the Throne Room. (Spoiler - click to show)The only container that can be used for this must be ordered using the mouldy scroll (obtained via >CALL GUARDS in the Throne Room). (Spoiler - click to show)The genie in a bottle is a red herring. (Spoiler - click to show)The fiery potion won't kill you but does provide you with a container. (Spoiler - click to show)You can >FILL VIAL in the Laboratory and >SPRINKLE WATER in the Throne Room.
Although the goal is to reach a score of 10, the way to achieve this best score is, unexpectedly, to forego one of the opportunities (Spoiler - click to show)(see numbered clue 1 above). Doing so provides the PC with needed items that can't be obtained any other (legitimate) way. Sharp-eyed players will note that the score (measured in "successful suicide attempts") goes up even when the PC chooses not to die here, and that this mysterious extra death is needed to get to 10. The reason for this is not clear; it seems to be a bug.
The least bothersome issues encountered in the course of play were several misspellings that looked like the result of depending on a spellchecker instead of human proofreading. Of particular note were two phrases: "the semi-literature Toromin" (instead of "semi-literate") and "full extent of the water" (presumably instead of "of the law"?) -- the remainder were sound-alike errors that are easier to miss.
The problems were frequent and severe enough to sharply reduce my opinion of the gameplay experience, which is why I've given it two stars. However, I did like this game, and I encourage people to try it out. Its premise is solid, and the writing is above-average. It ended up being the first of a series, followed by two sequels that received respectable rankings within the competitions in which they were entered. With some corrections in place, this game would definitely warrant three stars. Until that happens, don't hesitate to use the clues above as a way of smoothing out the roughest parts.
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