Reviews by OtisTDog

I don't like "chatting around bushes," so I'll be blunt: This game is a nonsensical mess. However, it very clearly does not take itself seriously, so there's no reason for the player to do so, either.

If you're in the mood for a quick lark that feels a bit like a cross between The Horse Whisperer and You Will Select a Decision, then you could do worse than this ridiculous little vignette. The combination of spelling errors, punctuation misfires, garbled phrasing, and rampant silliness where you might expect a plot is amusing enough to keep playing until you reach the end. (This takes about 10 minutes.)

If you're lucky, that will be "end of episode 1 / good ending". If you're not, then who cares, really? Chances are good that you had enough of a laugh to make "your heart rate ace" -- or at least enough to crack a smile.

Note: The title of this review and quoted phrases above are copied from the game, as a sample of what you'll be getting into.

I suppose that the title of this review could be considered as a spoiler, but since this fact of the game world was intentionally announced by author C. E. J. Pacian as part of teaser publicity in the days leading up to its release, I'm not worried about it.

Pacian's trademark creativity is on display in this short light puzzler that starts out with an eye toward comedy but slowly refocuses on drama over the course of its plot. Nothing is quite what it seems in this world, which the interactor sees in a form doubly-refracted through the twin prisms of the player character's hefty egotism and vast ignorance. Though these distortions, are, of course, deliberate obscuration of important information by the author, they're imposed in such a playful manner that the player welcomes the friction as a chance to linger longer in this highly entertaining universe.

Due to its limited parser format (accepting only nouns as commands, with an implicit >FLY TO verb), it's possible to play through the entire scenario without gaining much understanding of the game universe, but the real fun lies in trying to see through the veiled descriptions and decide what's really going on. It's this multi-level gameplay (and the story's inventively but delicately interacting plotlines) that makes Ancient Treasure, Secret Spider stand out as more than just good.

The original, produced in only five days, was terrific, and already the author has released post-competition versions to address a few minor issues that weren't very noticeable. (My own playthrough seemed 100% problem-free.) Even before these refinements, it was an excellent game to put in front of parser and/or puzzler newbies who are having trouble understanding how interactive fiction could be considered fun. For those who already know their way around, it makes a great bit of fun, sized somewhere between "snack" and "light meal" in scope -- perfect for a lunch break or a long commute.

Endymion is a work in the best tradition of science fiction, with a narrative concerning a not-quite-first-contact scenario and puzzles rooted in both mechanical and linguistic challenges.

Infocom's famous description of interactive fiction as something "akin to waking up inside a story" has often been repeated over the years, and some games (such as this one) invite that comparison on a literal level by having the story begin with the protagonist regaining consciousness. However, the more important aspect of the metaphor holds just as true for static fiction or film: Engaging with the media requires temporarily pushing aside one's own identity and adopting that of the protagonist. This allows one to vicariously feel what the protagonist feels, to experience the protagonist's trials and triumphs as though they were one's own.

That willing adoption of the protagonist's role is absolutely crucial in a puzzle game of any difficulty. Solving well-designed puzzles takes work, and players justifiably expect to be rewarded for that work. The best puzzles force the interactor to think in unfamiliar ways, to adopt a fundamentally different viewpoint than everyday life. This makes the breakthrough insight of a solution feel exhilirating, and confirmation of that insight by the game very satisfying.

Why am I boring you with this prosaic restatement of the obvious? Because Endymion absolutely nails that feeling in a manner that few games do. Indeed, in this carefully designed puzzle game, the protagonist's triumph in essence is the player's triumph; they are functionally one and the same.

The blank slate of the AFGNCAAP protagonist is perfect for the narrative, which very much feels like a late golden age short story from authors such as Larry Niven or Poul Anderson. The game design is remniscent of games such as Hadean Lands and Starcross, with the key to progress rooted in logic unique to the story but yielding to intuitions at least adjacent to everyday sensibilities.

What elevates this game to landmark status is the fabulous translation subsystem put in place to aid the player's exploration of the central mystery, that of the alien language which is quickly encountered and must be at least partially understood to reach the end. Author Daniel Stelzer significantly advanced the state of the art in IF here, crafting something that will surely be adopted by other authors in the future: a user interface that tracks the original context of all observed instances of alien words, allows the player to assign meanings to them, and produces provisional translations of alien inscriptions based on the meanings assigned.

Science fiction stories frequently portray the use of computerized translators in first contact scenarios, and Stelzer's translation subsystem is effectively one of these devices come to life and placed within the player's hands. It's a truly fascinating experience to see one's own hesitant interpretations challenged by obviously incorrect translations when encountering new inscriptions, and to try to reconcile the new data with what came before in order to replace or refine one's assigned meanings. Though I'm not a linguist, this work gave me a taste of what being one must be like -- it wouldn't surprise me if this game went viral and swept through the linguistics departments of the world's universities.

That's not to say that one must actually be a linguist in order to appreciate this game. Stelzer has released the source code for this game, and included with it is a complete translation of the miniature alien language. My own translations were significantly off in several respects, but that didn't stop me from reaching the end. Public comments by the author suggest concern that the puzzles were too hard, and if they depended on exact translation they might be. However, given that the language serves primarily to inform the game's associated mechanical puzzles, a somewhat fuzzy comprehension works well to reinforce the feel of the setting by maintaining a veil of mystery.

The capstone of Stelzer's achievement here is that the whole game was conceived and written in around five days. It's clear that the author's inspiration springs from a genuine passion for the subject matter, and I salute Stelzer for creating an experience that embodies a living spark of that passion.

Dangerous Curves lingered on my to-play list for a very long time. I had picked it up and tried it a few times, and never made it very far, mostly because -- despite being hooked by the opening scene -- I just couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing as the player. If playing interactive fiction is like waking up inside a story then this game, from the start of its highly-styled opening scene, always felt like waking up inside a movie... as an actor who had never received a copy of the script.

This initial disorientation is not helped by the high degree of detail in the presented setting, which has been executed in a simulationist style that was already giving way to more narrative-oriented approaches at the time of this game's release in 2000. That setting is the city of Los Angeles in the late 1940s. It is a character in its own right in this work, and it keeps its own schedule regardless of what one chooses to have the PC do. (The style is remniscent of Infocom's Deadline, but this game never depends on being in one place at one particular time.) The city has daily rhythms, in which stores and offices open and close according to posted hours, and there are even events dependent upon a weekly schedule as the game plays out over the course of several days. It's very easy to wander through this vast clockwork toy universe for scores or even hundreds of moves without hitting on anything that seems relevant.

There are solid arguments to be made that such a detailed reflection of the physical world is not worth it -- that it's at best pursuit of a false goal because the author can never get close enough to reality, or that the payoff in terms of player experience is too low given the cost in time and effort -- but there's something remarkably immersive about interactions like buying things and receiving change as a collection of individual bills and coins, or giving directions while driving around and seeing the protagonist respond with appropriate traffic maneuvers. Regrettably, these subsystems are occasionally glitchy (e.g. printing incorrect coin counts, or incorrect facings for the vehicle), but I very much admire author Irene Callaci's vision in this respect and also the enormous amount of work put into realizing it as code.

NPCs are also advanced compared to those typical for the era, being responsive to various situations and exhibiting noticeable personalities, though by modern standards they are somewhat flat. The ASK/TELL conversation model is something of an inhibition here, especially in the scene in which (Spoiler - click to show)the protagonist must wring some information from the stripper, who is an unwitting accomplice. The two verbs do different things, and because exactly what the PC says is never shown, it's not always clear what the NPCs are responding to in their replies. In addition, there is a special >ACCUSE verb that produces unique results but is easy to forget about; that command seems common to murder mysteries but to me seemed out of place here.

Conversation only gets one so far, and the main action tends toward standard old school adventurer fare, i.e. going everywhere the PC can reach, searching areas for items or information, or obtaining objects that will get past specific obstacles or prompt NPCs to say more. From time to time a multi-step puzzle rears its head, and some of these are more than a little finicky. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)I only stumbled onto the solution path for searching the Jaguar when trying to retrieve the car from the garage; the verb >HIDE won't accept the prepositions IN or INSIDE.

The sandbox-like format seems to be intended to allow multiple trajectories through the possibility space of the model world, but in practice a given playthrough is likely to take one approximating the specific track that is promoted by the in-game hint system. The way that this system operates, the player is guided forward one step at a time, with no new hint provided until that step is completed. Players are likely to consult the hint system often, because the protagonist does not share his knowledge of the game world with the player, making it necessary to explore the entire city in order to learn what's in it. Indeed, the hint system is critical to making early progress, because the first thing that looks to be worth following up (checking up on your client's alibi) seems to yield absolutely nothing in the way of further leads. Note that strictly following the hint system will not yield the full score -- yes, the game has a score, though it's so unobtrusive about it that one might not realize this is the case.

An interesting aspect of this work is that it runs right up against the 512K limit of the Z-machine version 8, which is the largest format supported by that virtual machine. Writing a game of this scale is a daunting endeavor, but my intuition is that the game might never have been finished had this limit not been reached. There are so many nuances and detail touches with a low likelihood of ever being encountered, so many places where intricate object texture is rendered, that it seems like Callaci would have been happy to make this game much larger than its current size. Certain aspects suggest a desire to expand the possibility space to allow more alternate solutions, such as (Spoiler - click to show)an abandoned drugstore which I can imagine being a place to find something to make the policeman on duty at the station drowsy. Others, such as the post office location, seem to be pure scenery. I was surprised to discover that the PC can obtain a gun which, despite gunplay being a staple of noir fiction, (Spoiler - click to show) seems to have no utility to the plot, and no purpose other than to get the protagonist arrested when held openly in various situations.

Perhaps the deepest criticism is that the various plot elements don't quite seem to hang together correctly. Although the basic outline is sound and believable, the set of supporting facts don't quite add up. For example, that (Spoiler - click to show)the mayor seems to have deposited the money obtained from his shady real estate deal without the land actually having been sold, or that (Spoiler - click to show)Lucky Larry seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time in jail instead of prison and was somehow unable to post bail on his own despite owning the strip club, or that (Spoiler - click to show)the sequence of interactions between the actual killer, the stripper, the victim and the car doesn't make much sense when thought through in detail.

Despite these imperfections, I found Dangerous Curves to be enjoyable. The writing was convincing, and the game never stopped being interesting once I had become oriented to the main plot. I remind readers that a three star rating counts as "good" in my book, and means that the game is worth playing. Players are encouraged to go to visit the move theater in-game whenever they're out of ideas, as advised in the response to >HELP; it's probably possible to complete the game without doing this, but trying to find the clues needed to reach the end will be like looking for needles in a haystack. Authors interested in mechanical realism are particularly encouraged to check out this work -- it's an extraordinary example of the style, and you can make your own judgment about which elements work and which don't.

[Full disclosure: I know the author of this work personally, and I helped with beta testing for this game.]

I have to admit that I find the yin-yang of seriousness and silliness at the heart of Anastasia the Power Pony very endearing, and I've been a fan since the debut of the first installment, A Matter of Heist Urgency, in 2022. Sequels are dangerous territory for any series; with players seeking both familiarity and novelty at the same time, the challenge to the author's creativity rises exponentially with each installment.

In the case of Anastasia, with its implicit Land of Make Believe setting, that burden is lessened somewhat. Author FLACRabbit has cleverly reserved the right to change things up at will, following whichever flight of fancy seems the most fun at the time. As with the first episode, there is an offbeat blend of tropes, though this time the main style being presented is noir. The impact of this is limited, though -- there are still many tropes from other styles tossed in, as befits the playful tone that infuses the series.

Anyone who enjoyed the original will certainly have fun with this one, which continues its experimentation in creating compelling combat scenes. Here I must salute the author for making each fight in the series a novelty that feels very different to play. However -- as fun as the combat scenes are -- the aspect of this work that most commands my attention is the music.

FLACRabbit is a musican at heart, with a strong talent for composing. A Matter of Heist Urgency incorporates music successfully, using it to set the mood for each scene and as accent to the highlights of in-game action, and also as the backbone of a cinematic flashback sequence that was added to the post-competition version. In A Smörgåsbord of Pain, the development of craft with respect to music continues, and the author finds ways to use it that I've never seen before in interactive fiction.

There are two scenes in particular for which the musical accompaniment is worth calling out. The first is a one-versus-two fight sequence near the start of the game. (Spoiler - click to show)As the fight begins, so does a dynamic soundtrack that loops, but with variants that keep it from sounding repetitive. Surprisingly, as the fight progresses, the music changes in response to the game state, an effect that keeps the music fresh throughout and undergirds the player's mood. The second is the game's climax battle. (Spoiler - click to show)In the food fight sequence, each zone's cuisine gets a background track that's complementary to the culinary style, and there's a Muzak-style tune for the central aisle -- the first one that you hear when the fight begins -- that cracks me up. Since the most effective fighting style involves moving around a lot, this helps to keep the player grounded in the imaginary space while also amplifying the general chaos of the scene a la Looney Tunes. Both scenes are written in a fast-paced style that makes it difficult to remember that you can spend as long as you like between commands.

Outside of those scenes, music is still effectively used in the same manner as the first episode, both to set the mood for each part and to act as stings for certain beats. The quality of the music has jumped significantly, however -- while the first episode largely stuck to simple 8-bit style tunes (excepting the new scenes added for the post-comp version), the tracks composed for this episode are much more sophisticated. (Spoiler - click to show)(The introduction to the scene with the Old Camel, who is probably my favorite character, really stands out here.) The overall effect of these various approaches is to create the impression of a true soundtrack for the game, not just as companion sound but at a level of genuine integration comparable to that seen in cinema.

Not content for innovation to be limited to music alone, FLACRabbit also added an eyebrow-raising multimedia effect (Spoiler - click to show)(the animated news broadcast seen in Anastasia's apartment) that almost seems impossible. Although Erik Temple's Glimmr extension demos showed similar savvy at exploiting Glulx's graphical capabilities, the code driving this effect is an independent innovation.

Pioneering works that hit their targets get special attention in my worldview, as they tend to open up new vistas of exploration that inject new vitality into the art form. It's great to see the latent capabilities of the Glulx virtual machine pushed to their limits as this work does. My hat is off to FLACRabbit for what's been accomplished here. Keep up the amazing work!

This is more of a demo than an actual game. Literally none of the conflicts introduced in the story are resolved by the time it ends, and it ends on a cliffhanger note that strongly implies the action will continue in one or more future episodes.

The most interesting thing about it is the backpack for holding inventory, a cool graphical interface that forces the player to choose which items will be available in each part of the narrative. The backpack only holds so much (represented as a limited number of squares), and items take up squares in varying amounts and configurations. You've almost certainly seen this interface in other games before, but here the assortment of items is entertaining in itself. (Spoiler - click to show)(Should I ditch the bong to make room for the photograph of Burt Reynolds? Which is more likely to be useful in a medieval setting: a spade or a pack of cigarettes?) Although items can be rotated to allow denser packing, there is never enough room to take everything available.

The implication of that process is that the choice of available items will significantly alter the gameplay of each part, perhaps even going so far as to make a poor enough choice result in a loss. However, as far as I can tell none of the choices to be made by the player -- neither the choice of inventory items nor the standard action choices presented -- matter much at all. The plot is essentially unchanged regardless of which options are selected; only details at the margins are modified.

The writing was amusing in many places, and some of the jokes got genuine laughs, but after two playthroughs I think I've seen just about all it has to offer. Recommended as a quick diversion for those who like anti-heroes and mild absurdism, with the advice that there's no point in thinking hard about which path to take since any two paths will be 95% the same.

The title of this review is a quote from the author-supplied blurb for Hobbiton Recall. It is, unfortunately, accurate.

It's not clear why the author chose to involve either The Hobbit or Total Recall in this game. Although elements from those two sources appear within, the motivation for choosing that pair specifically is in no way apparent. Neither particularly relates to the main plot of the game, which seems to revolve around toothpaste, nor do the elements selected from each interact in a meaningful or synergistic way. It seems like the pair of ostensible inspirations could just have easily been E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Minority Report, or Aquaman and Top Gun -- really any two intellectual properties with good name recognition and no obvious resonance, since the main purpose seems to be to provoke a curiosity about what the author has come up with to justify the juxtaposition.

Regrettably, most of what the author has come up with is AI-generated pixel art and jokes rooted in misogyny.

The original release included a game-breaking bug that prevented going beyond the first third or so of the game. If one finds oneself stuck (Spoiler - click to show)at a hospital with a bus ticket, that bug is the reason. This may have been corrected in a September 8 update. Since Gruescript is interpreted, its source is inspectable and can be modified, so it was possible to fix this bug and proceed before any official correction.

Since in general this game does function, I'd like to say something positive. However, I'm having trouble coming up with anything beyond the fact that the author seems to have put a large amount of work into it.

On the whole, this feels primarily like the product of the author's efforts to learn Gruescript. Clearly, quite a bit was learned. There's a noticeable progression of complexity in the coding as one moves steadily toward the end.

There are still lessons to learn regarding interaction design, e.g. being consistent in the patterns of action expected from players. I noticed, for example, that in some cases special actions are attached to the indirect object, in others the direct object. Also, in some cases the necessary item must be "held," i.e. selected, instead of just in inventory. Also, the implementation of the hedge maze was novel in my experience, but definitely unappreciated: (Spoiler - click to show)Per the code, just moving randomly is the key. There is no actual geography, one just gets shunted to the goal location about 10% of the time when moving in the single maze room.

In a couple of places it appears that the game can reach a "dead end" state in which it can no longer be finished, though I'm guessing that this is unintentional. If you are trying to reach the end of this lengthy game, I strongly suggest making use of the save game function on a regular basis.

I guess the fact that I tried my first Gruescript game and even learned a little bit about Gruescript code is also to this game's credit. Someone learning that platform might want to review the source code of this game for some example solutions to typical problems. As entertainment, however, I can't recommend it.

This game needs a lot more work before it's even worth trying, let alone entering in a competition.

The intfiction.org review by B.J. Best enumerates a number of significant issues that hamper the most basic of interactions. I ran into those and more.

Beyond the numerous technical problems, it's been a long time since I've seen a new game with such a player-unfriendly approach to design. Disassembly shows that there is a lot of intended interaction, but the game does very little to help the player discover it. The most likely outcome of an attempt to play in good faith is tremendous frustration followed by an unexpected ending, the text of which presumes events that have not yet occurred.

There are built-in hints which seem necessary to review if one wants to get complete information about the objects in the room. However, each revealed hint costs the players points. This is somewhat ameliorated by a buggy scoring system that allows infinite points -- or at least it would if there wasn't a hard turn limit. Even the hint system is effectively anti-player.

The plot, such as it is, is also a jumbled mess. (Spoiler - click to show)The protagonist must deliver a big presentation and needs sleep. His marriage is on the rocks because he's been prioritizing his work life and handled a miscarriage poorly. He is paranoid and probably an alcoholic. Oh, and someone threatened to kill him and blow up his house.

My recommendation to the author is to visit intfiction.org for help in learning the basics of Inform 7. My advice to everyone else is to avoid this game until an improved version becomes available.

[EDIT: Note that the author has been in touch with me regarding the technical issue described near the end of this review, and it is almost certainly something specific to my non-standard setup. You shouldn't expect to encounter it yourself.]

Detritus (2025), which is not to be confused with a title of the same name from 2013, is this year's IFComp entry by author Ben Jackson. His entry last year, The Den, came in 2nd overall and 1st for Miss Congeniality, and I anticipate similarly high rankings for this polished, high-quality work.

With its slick graphical interfaces, soundtrack, multimedia effects and compelling sci-fi story, playing Detritus feels like playing a commercial-quality offering from yesteryear. This is unabashedly a game, rooted in exploration of a mystery but also requiring juggling certain resource management demands. It offers both easy and normal modes; in my experience there was enough leeway on normal mode to make it worth choosing that, because the additional tension that it adds contributes much to the mood.

Though it takes some time to come into its own, the story does not disappoint. I found it to be far superior to the young adult tale told in The Den, though it does not explore the questions that it raises in any particular depth. (Spoiler - click to show)I admired the key twist, which integrated certain beats that I had taken as merely for style. I certainly didn't see it coming, but like any good twist it immediately reorganizes what came before into a new and coherent whole.

Jackson's prose does a marvelous job of painting the scene. Looking back from the vantage of a few days, I remember most of the action very much like a film. I think this could easily be adapted to a full-scale videogame -- it's its own pitch!

I encountered one technical issue that is relatively minor, and may be specific to my environment. (I'm only mentioning it because there doesn't, as of this writing, seem to have been an update posted to the IFComp website since the time that I downloaded the game.) Certain portions of the game present a nine-button, 3x3 keypad for manipulation. In my browser, for whatever reason, the last button in each row was being shown on its own row even though there was plenty of horizontal room. Since the spatial arrangement of the keys is significant to the puzzles involved, I found it easiest to copy their arrangement elsewhere for reference. In all likelihood, this issue will be fixed shortly -- perhaps even by the time that you read this review.

You won't want to miss this one.

The answer is a short but sweet wordplay puzzler from an author who is clearly familiar with many of the amateur era's most famous works.

After playing this one on my own for about ten minutes, I put it aside so that I could suggest it to my play group. We all had a lot of fun with this well-fashioned game that seems to have drawn inspiration from a whole range of titles, but most resembles Counterfeit Monkey (to which overt homage is paid) blended with the array of magical devices seen in Metamorphoses (plus perhaps bits from Junior Arithmancer's framing story, The Impossible Bottle's iconic centerpiece, and the learn-magic-to-escape-the-room structure of Suveh Nux).

The puzzles fall into two main categories: deducing the function of various magical devices and then using those devices to craft the items needed to escape the room. Both of these types were well done. I don't know how long it might have taken me to finish the game on my own, but the group was able to do it in about 45 minutes.

The game is a bit poker-faced in the beginning, though there are definitely clues to get one started. Once the function of each machine is worked out, there is plenty of fun to be had in trying out the various implemented transformations. As with Counterfeit Monkey there are many more of these than are necessary to reach the end of the game, so a good part of the fun is just playing around. The game has no score, and I don't think that there are anything like achievements set up, so this is purely for one's own amusement.

Gameplay was 100% bug-free, and none of us spotted a single typo, so this work appears to have been very well tested. There is still room for improvement in player friendliness, however, due to uncharacteristically finicky interactions in a few places. (Spoiler - click to show)(We must have typed >PUT X ON TABLE a dozen times. It would be nice for this to automatically reroute to >PUT X IN CHAMBER instead of just disallowing it.) If there is to be a post-comp version, then an achievement system might encourage a more thorough exploration of the possibility space that the author has created; my sense is that we saw only a relatively small portion of it.

This would be a great game for introducing people to parser IF if you're prepared to help them get used to the conventions of the command prompt. Players both young and old are sure to be charmed by Weldon, the world-weary talking rabbit who occasionally provides light hints to nudge you on your way.

I extend my thanks to author Lance Nathan for producing this smart little gem and sharing it with all of us mere players. I certainly hope to see more games by Mr. Nathan in the future.