Reviews by OtisTDog

This very short piece is labeled by the author as his first speed IF (Speed IF 17), and it may have been his first published work. Several self-deprecating remarks in-game demonstrate a lack of confidence that was probably justified at the time.

The premise (racing the clock in a building wired with bombs by terrorists, on New Year's Eve) is very ambitious for speed IF, and it sets up anticipation that would be difficult to satisfy with a full-fledged game, let alone something rattled out in a couple of hours. However, the more pressing problem is the author's flat writing, which does nothing to generate interest or involvement.

While the piece is functional as a program, the short plot is basically nonsense. The game can be "won" in a very short series of moves, and the very limited two-room, three-object, 1-NPC implementation makes it relatively easy to discover the winning path, even if nothing about it is comprehensible. One of the objects is stolen from Emily Short's Metamorphoses, something which really does not belong in a piece with this premise unless the author were taking it in a very surreal (or possibly sci-fi) direction.

I will say that, some minor errors aside, the author does appear to have a basic grasp of some of the mechanics of programming and puzzle design -- what's missing is the creative narrative to tie them together. I would not shy away from other works by this author to track his progress as his skills mature.

Another speed IF entry -- this one for PAX East 2010 -- that gains tremendously by throwing away most of the random seed ideas and developing a small set of them into a more coherent narrative.

You play a conference attendee who is struggling to get the last open seat at a one of the overcrowded panel discussions. Competing with you is an antithetical antagonist, whose interest in the panel is unclear. You start out empty-handed, armed only with your wits, determination, and a handy portfolio of famous spells from classic IF.

An engaging and witty comedy puzzler that won't take too long to solve, this piece does a good job of blending old and new in an interesting way. There are some minor-to-significant flaws, as might be expected for a first release of speed IF, but none that should inhibit your progress for very long.(Spoiler - click to show) (Except maybe one... be sure to "rezrov crowd" at some point.)

By all accounts, the IF-related portions of PAX East 2010 drew significant interest from attendees who did not know much about the field. This, in turn, sparked dreams of a resurgence of mainstream appreciation for IF. Such a hopeful mood permeates Ms. Morayati's piece, which ends on a "gooey" note of optimism on this theme. As the number of member reviews on IFDB passes the 1,000 mark, I find myself hoping right along with her.

Written as the original implementation of Inform neared maturity (this work uses version 5.5), Spiritwrak is an old-school epic of a size and complexity comparable to the larger Infocom titles.

It seems that Daniel S. Yu, the author, firmly believed in the adage that "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." This work treads a fine line between those paths, starting with a premise rooted in the climax of Infocom's Spellbreaker and playing like something that came right out of its development team. As Duncan Stevens notes in his SPAG review: "[T]he magic system is suspiciously reminiscent of the Enchanter series, and the humor captures the Zork style." However, Spiritwrak adds a heavy layer of originality to the geographical and mythological framework created by Infocom, allowing it to stand as an achievement in its own right.

Spiritwrak is extremely difficult. Even for an old-school piece, the puzzles can be brutal. Some puzzles are arguably fair but lack what would be considered the minimum reasonable hinting by modern standards. Other puzzles require feats of mind-reading of the type that would have sold a lot of Invisiclues­™ back in the day.(Spoiler - click to show) (For example, can you guess how to hide behind some curtains when the "hide" verb is not implemented and opening them results in you immediately shutting them again? Can you guess the significance of a small boat's name, or which of the many topic-poor NPCs might be able to tell you about it? Can you guess that using your triplication spell on a certain item won't actually triplicate it, but instead produce variations of it that contain plot-necessary items?) A few puzzles appear to be virtual -- they halt progress like a designed puzzle but are probably due to flaws or limitations in the coding. This last group is especially frustrating because, in a game with so little hinting, it's easy to think you are missing key items or actions when in reality you have the right idea and everything you need(Spoiler - click to show), but are not holding the right objects "directly", i.e. in the top level of your inventory.

This is the kind of game that requires you to take notes, to draw maps, to learn by dying, to spend significant time pondering dead ends and red herrings, and to continually second-guess what you thought were solutions to the puzzles you've solved. For old-school aficionados, it's heaven! For everyone else, be prepared to seek hints -- though I highly recommend you do so via rec.games.int-fiction or IFMUD, as the "hint" files you can download here contain copious spoilers that are impossible to avoid.

Interestingly, this game claims to be released under the GNU Public License v2, which means that anyone should be able to expand and improve it. Unfortunately, however, it is not distributed with the source code (as required by GPL), and I was unable to locate the source online. If anyone else happens to come across it, please leave a comment here -- it would be interesting to explore cleaning up some bugs, making certain key descriptions of objects and action slightly clearer(Spoiler - click to show) (especially the brick puzzle in the endgame), and implementing an in-game hint system.

By all appearances, this is a below-average but sincere and functional fantasy adventure, oriented around your quest to save the princess at great peril to life and limb. However, it's difficult to say so definitively, as the version of the game here on IFDB is shareware, and it only allows you to play for 30 turns.

In the context of an abundance of free games of comparable or better quality, nothing I saw in the first 30 moves suggests that it's worth the $10 Canadian requested by the author. Also, given the age of the included contact information, it seems doubtful that it's still possible to register legally. Perhaps the author will see fit to release the full game as freeware, so that the public can appreciate his work. Until then, we can only wonder.

Here we have an unusual animal: an Inform 6 port of a BASIC port of an original in an unknown language. I can only assume that the terrible gameplay is a high-fidelity recreation of the original, minus the pain of dealing with a two-word parser.

As this piece comes with both BASIC and Inform 6 source code, it's an extremely instructive example of the advantages of using a well-established IF-oriented language instead of trying to create your own parser from scratch. This game's real value, however, is in showing new authors what NOT to do when writing interactive fiction for the first time.

For starters, I'm not sure the output of this game qualifies as prose, let alone fiction. Single-sentence room descriptions abound, many for rooms that contain nothing and serve no function. NPCs are zero-dimensional obstacles. Object descriptions omit key details about their features and function. Critical information about a locale may not even be visible from within that locale.

There's a low inventory limit, which is especially obnoxious given the need for certain items at certain points that can only be reached once. And there are some highly-questionable implementation choices, such as(Spoiler - click to show) the need to type "enter rope" to use it to traverse an obstacle. (Even for a two-word parser, why not "climb rope"?) and(Spoiler - click to show) a magic teleporter device (cleverly disguised as a non-descript box-with-a-button-on-it) that only functions in two locations, with no hinting as to which two they might be.

Since the source code was available, I used it as a "strategy guide" after reaching my frustration limit, marveling at how convoluted and arbitrary the puzzle structure was. Hoping to have the satisfaction of at least seeing the end, I instead discovered that an apparent timing bug makes it impossible to actually complete the "adventure."

AVOID. AVOID. AVOID.

Before today, I didn't really understand the point of speed IF. Making good interactive fiction is hard, making it quickly is damn near impossible. I thought the best that could be said is that it allows for experimentation, and by labeling a work as "speed IF", the player is more inclined to treat its shortcomings favorably on the assumption that they may stem from a lack of time and not a lack of care and/or capability. I didn't realize until writing this review that speed IF competitions aren't completely free-form endeavors, and that authors are supposed to craft the story around a collection of random ideas.

Approaching this piece in ignorance of its origin, I found it to have an intriguing premise with a lot of potential for exploration. You play the part of a fallen angel, freshly released from Hell to complete some (undisclosed) nefarious assignment. As the action opens, you find yourself at a sort of crossroads, dreaming of a return to Heaven.

The writing quality is somewhat less than average, comprised mostly of straightforward descriptions not in keeping with the thematic tone. Though you play a supernatural being, little is done to offer you insight into that condition. Many, many questions beg for answers: What was it like to be an angel? What inner conflict led you to side with Lucifer? What is it like to work for evil? Why do you seek redemption now? What do you make of the human world today? Thematically, there is a rich, rich vein of possibility that this work barely scratches.

From a technical standpoint, The room implementation makes little sense -- several are nothing more than superfluous clones of each other. Object implementation is weak, but this is entirely expected in a work completed in a couple of hours. Also, you earn 10 points before you do anything in this game, for reasons that are unclear.

One interesting aspect of this work is the hint system.(Spoiler - click to show) The command "help" brings responses from God, and sometimes the Devil. In a work about temptation and salvation, this device offers numerous possibilities. When people face moral dilemmas, they are often depicted as having a little angel and a little devil on their shoulders. Who does an angel get?

Given all of my interest in the premise, the actual gameplay was something of a disappointment. Both good and evil paths are available, but it's not immediately apparent how to proceed on either. It would have made sense to outline the evil path in the opening description and be much vaguer in the hints about the good path(Spoiler - click to show), provided that the player is clued into his supernatural creation power some other way. The path to salvation is ridiculously short and easy, and does not require any difficult choices.

On the whole, this piece verges dangerously close to 1-star territory, but I liked the premise so much, and it inspired so much thought about what this story could be, that I give it an extra star for potential. If someone else were to give the same premise a more extended and polished treatment, it could easily become a classic.

For reference, the seed concept of this particular competition was: "Write a game that includes decency, a Toys-R-Us Bag of Rusty Lead-Painted Metal Bits, a cursed angel, and the phrase 'thy gills are as unclean as a lobster's arse'. Bonus points for including the darkness intrinsic to the human soul, alligators and the women who love them, or professional girls gymnastics." Although many of these items are ignored, I think it's to the piece's benefit -- no need to take such a serious premise in such a silly direction.

This short piece has a rather unusual premise, in that it take place within IFMUD. IFMUD -- aside from being the place to be for authors and fans of the modern IF community -- is a MUD , a virtual environment that behaves very much like the type of virtual environment emulated by interactive fiction parsers. It's an interesting and strange experience to find yourself in a simulation of a simulation, when the "underlying" simulation uses such a similar interface to the "top" one.

The goal of the author was to recreate the experience of "attending" the 2003 XYZZY Awards, a full transcript of which is available online. In preparation, I read the entire transcript myself, for comparison purposes.

It took me much longer to read the transcript than it did to play this piece, partly because the author (David Welbourn, aka DavidW) only implemented the first couple of awards, and partly because he edited out much of the audience activity. The official presentations of the announcers are faithfully recreated, along with the notable acceptance speech by Triage.

This work is speed IF, so there are limits to what you can expect. The most richly-implemented feature of the environment appears to be the artwork surrounding the stage (murals and paintings). I don't know whether these descriptions are original creations of the author or what you would have seen had you been on IFMUD for the ceremony, but they are amusing, either way.

NPCs are barely sketches, but to implement them in more detail would require taking considerable license with the personalities of real people. The main focus is the presentation of the awards, and I congratulate Mr. Welbourn for creating a minor puzzle to advance the action -- a clever twist.

So shouts one of your mates as you dash to fulfill your role as a WWII anti-aircraft gunner in Australia's Pacific theater, and up until then, everything was running quite smoothly in this "second runner-up" of the 2008 Intro Comp. Shortly thereafter, the interaction essentially fell apart.

Although I would normally give a game with this many functional problems only one star, when considered purely as an intro (and imagining it in a much more functional state), this piece is compelling enough to earn two. After all, it did beat the honorable mentions on some sort of merit, which I have to assume was rooted in the scenario and the writing. The author makes light use of multimedia (graphics and sound) to add a touch of immersion over and above what could be achieved with text alone, and it seems that with some additional investment of time and effort, this piece could really shine.

Let me preface the remainder of my review with a chunk of the transcript from my playthrough:

(Spoiler - click to show)
The gun emplacement
Crew members scramble to their stations around the tall anti-aircraft
gun mounted here; the drone of the approaching single-engine
Japanese “Val” dive bombers sharpens to a distinctive strum.

Your heart pounds as the routine of countless drills races through your
mind: get a shell from Smith, set the fuse on it to the appropriate time
for the height of the aircraft then pass it to Jenkins for loading.

You wait nervously for Smith as he disappears into the armoury to fetch
a shell.

> look at bomber
You can’t see any such thing as “bomber”.

> look at plane
You can’t see any such thing as “plane”.

> look at sky
You can’t see any such thing as “sky”.

> look up
You see the Japanese “Val” bombers approaching Darwin Harbour from
the northeast at between fifteen and twenty thousand feet. Depending
on air pressure, humidity and wind speed, experience tells you that you
will need a fuse setting somewhere between four and five seconds.
ERROR: In function “eachturn_gun_emplacement”, reference to
undefined container “FIRST”.

Smith returns from the armoury with another shell and stands beside
you.

Smith ducks back into the armoury.

> x shell
You can’t see any such thing as “shell”.

> ask jenkins about shell
Gunner Jenkins doesn’t have anything to say about the brass
anti-aircraft shell.
ERROR: In function “eachturn_gun_emplacement”, reference to
undefined container “FIRST”.

Smith returns from the armoury with another shell and stands beside
you.

> take shell
You take the brass anti-aircraft shell.

> x shell
The shell is about one foot long and made from brass. Around the nose
cone of the shell is a series of rings that form a complex powder fuse.

> x fuse
The fuse is composed of a series of three rings, each filled with
gunpowder and separated by felt. The lugs on the fuse setting tool are
designed to engage with small holes in the top ring in order to rotate it
to the required time. Markings around the fuse ring indicate the time in
tenths of a second, starting at 20 and finishing at 100. The fuse on this
shell is currently set to the disarmed position.

> arm shell
You can’t use the word “arm” in that context.

> arm fuse
You can’t use the word “arm” in that context.

> set fuse
To set the fuse you need to specify a length of time to set it to. For
example, to set the fuse to three and a half seconds, simply type “set
the fuse to 35”.

> set fuse to 45
You will need the setting tool to set the fuse on the shell.

Shockwaves and dissonance as a bomb explodes nearby.

> i
You are carrying a cricket ball, a steel helmet (being worn), a brass
anti-aircraft shell and your dog tags (being worn).

> x tool
You can’t see any such thing as “tool”.

> x setting tool
You can’t see any such thing as “setting tool”.

> l
The gun emplacement
The floor of the gun emplacement is a circular concrete pad almost ten
metres in diameter. Sandbag revetments, back filled with earth on the
outside, form the perimeter of the pit. The 3.7 inch Vickers anti-aircraft
gun stands bolted to the concrete, its barrel protruding through
fragments of camouflage netting suspended high above your head. The
only exit from the emplacement is a gap in the revetments to the
northwest, while a small room set into the south wall serves as an
armoury.

Gunner Jenkins is standing on the gun by the breach.

Sergeant Thompson is standing on the gun.

Smith is standing beside you holding an anti-aircraft shell.

> ask jenkins about tool
Gunner Jenkins doesn’t have anything to say about the setting tool.

> ask thompson about tool
Sergeant Thompson doesn’t have anything to say about the setting tool.

> ask smith about tool
Gunner Smith doesn’t have anything to say about the setting tool.

Another bomb falls too close for comfort just beyond the camp
perimeter.

> find tool
You can’t use the word “find” in that context.

> search for tool
You can’t see any such thing as “for”.

> look for tool
The sentence you typed was incomplete.

> s
You try to push your way past Smith who drops the shell he is carrying
and grabs you, pinning your arms to your side. “What are you doing,
Davis?” he yells in your ear, confusion and concern in his voice.
Fumbling desperately he relieves you of the fuse setting tool and
recovers the shell from the ground as another bomb explodes nearby...


*Sigh*. There's a spoiler of some sort in the above, all right, but not the type you might think.

The spoiler is definitely not the quality of the writing or the intended structure of the interaction, both of which seem to be significantly above average. Is it something wrong in the Gargoyle layer? Some issue with the JACL 2.5.2 interpreter it uses (which has been updated since the last integration with Gargoyle in August 2009)? Basic problems with the code for The Bloody Guns or with the JACL system itself?

I can't tell. I'd like to know. Because if it's something easily fixable, then it's a true shame that it stood between me and the intended experience.

It seems quite clear that the author, Stuart Allen (who invented the JACL system and is apparently the only one who ever uses it), has something valuable to offer to the world of IF, even if it is not the wonder of a new IF programming language. [edit: I've since come across at least one other game, Prison Break, which uses JACL. Also, the author assures me that the functional problems I encountered were likely due to interpreter incompatibility, making my comments in this and the following paragraph unwarranted.]

My gentle suggestion to Mr. Allen is that he come in from the cold and give another development system (e.g. Inform 7) a try. It has to be less work to build whatever custom extensions you want in Inform than it is to create and document a new language from scratch all by yourself. Releasing the source for a successful work in Inform (along with a JACL version) might even stimulate more interest in your brainchild.

If this piece is fleshed out into a full-length entry, I would definitely give it another go.

This is not quite a game, but it's definitely something more than a simple example of the Inform 6 conversation system it's intended to demonstrate (which seems to have been updated since the release of this work).

The intended demonstration is of a flexible conversation system that controls standard ask/tell behavior through a keyboard-driven interactive menu. Selecting from the menu generates the equivalent command, which is entered for you at the main prompt. It's an interesting approach, that allows for a pretty direct comparison between two classic methods of NPC interaction, and it gave me more appreciation for the narrative flow that a well-done menu system offers when compared to ask/tell.

The fatal flaw of the system (to my eyes) is that it seems maintain a running list of "open" topics for you long past when they are conversationally appropriate, and this contextual distance is not reflected in the way the NPC responds if you suddenly change topics. Thus, as your list of options increase, the conversation can go from seeming very natural to seeming very odd as the NPC gamely responds to any thread you choose to continue.

I'm not saying simulating more realistic responses here would be easy -- far from it. I want to be clear that this apparent oddness is a symptom of success; it's a side-effect of breaking the illusion of natural flow that the menu system so ably provides at first. That the oddness wouldn't be noticed using the ask/tell model is likewise an indicator of just how unrealistic "conversations" using it are.

Putting model details aside and considering Medusa as a brief interactive fiction experience, I can't help but think that it's above-average, and that it would make a great opening sequence for a longer work. It would also be a good start on a decent "slice of life" entry for a one-room game competition, though, in its present state, it's a far cry from more widely-known works such as Emily Short's Galatea.

Take note: The split-screen display doesn't quite work right using Gargoyle, but it worked fine with plain old Frotz.

Oh, my. When browsing at random through the IFDB, you can go way, way, way, way back through the archaeological layers of IF. This work hails from the primordial era of 1993 (quite possibly predating the release of Inform version 1!), and, boy, does it show it.

Although built using the stalwart TADS 2 platform, Shadowland I: The Tower of Iron seems positively atavistic to modern eyes. Much of this is a result of the chosen style; it plays more like one of the RPG-simulating MUDs it was contemporary with than it does a typical text adventure.

The game actually starts off fairly well. If you ask for it, you are treated to a lengthy introduction to playing IF, such as you might have found in the manual for an Infocom game. The opening description is basic but competent, and then you find yourself killed because you failed to beat a guess-the-verb challenge within 5 turns.(Spoiler - click to show) (Hint: "remove straps") Okay, then.

The title hints that this piece was intended as the opening installment of an entire series. In this exciting first chapter, you will face many terrifying challenges, such as:

* randomized combat between low-level characters (in the context of a largely unexplained magic and combat system),
* the twin demons of guess-the-verb and guess-the-noun,
* hunt-the-topic with uncommunicative NPCs,
* and unexpected starvation puzzle(Spoiler - click to show) (in a world with just one thing to eat, that you probably will use immediately upon finding it since it also the only thing heals you, apparently), and
* subtle programming errors that inhibit basic functionality!(Spoiler - click to show) (a lingering requirement for a skill roll to pick something up, even when no longer in combat?)

Playing this game was a terrible experience for the modern player. But playing this game was a wonderful experience for the old-school IF aficionado, taking you back to the days when each point(Spoiler - click to show) (out of a well-rounded 1000) was a hard-won battle pitting your wits against the author.

Seriously, I actually did enjoy this game, in that grudge match kind of way. I was determined to make it to the end, even though it wasn't entirely clear that this piece was completed enough to do so. When I thought I'd tried absolutely everything possible but still found myself stuck, I took it up a notch and decompiled the code to look for hints.

To the author's credit, he may have anticipated this possibility, and his puzzle design skills continued to challenge me even in this "god mode". By cleverly omitting the names of objects involved in actions, he made it virtually impossible to determine how the last barrier between me and success was to be surmounted, though I scanned vigilantly through the uncommented spaghetti code churned out by the decompiler.

When I finally ferreted out what the correct item/object/unique-action combination was, my hat was off to this brave pioneer, for the daring masterstroke of inexplicably requiring one particular item to be used out of context to(Spoiler - click to show) open a grate... No hints in the relevant object descriptions. No hints when an incorrect object was used with the right verb. A cunningly-placed red herring, in the form of a different object that much more plausibly could have been abused in this way. I nearly cried at the genius of it.

My greatest regret is that I didn't get to experience the related follow-up puzzle without preparation, as I had already accidentally "solved" that while tracing code for the one above. Figuring out that one cold would have required a level of transcendent insight akin to the Dalai Lama's.

Taking my tongue out of my cheek for a moment, I actually did enjoy this enough to rate it in two-star territory. It is an honest first effort that took no small amount of work to realize. Minus the bugs and with slightly fairer puzzles, I might even have gone for three stars. Mr. Claburn, if you're still out there somewhere, consider dusting off this project. Give Inform 7 a whirl. You've already got your first player lined up for Shadowland II.