Reviews by OtisTDog

After reading the fake newspaper provided as a virtual feelie for The Weapon, I was already hooked by the work's fictional universe and eager to see what the story would be. A few turns of experimentation showed that the protagonist had an interestingly different internal monologue, while the fairly convincing NPC who is your main antagonist provided some clues to the situation at hand. Sean Barrett's expert writing subtly (and, if need be, directly) clues you in that this will be a game of cat-and-mouse, that you will be the one providing the misdirection alluded to in the tagline.

At the point where the NPC asks you her first question, I took a cue from the protagonist's apparently close-mouthed nature and tried the command "nod". It was tremendously pleasing to see a realistic response. After the number of clunkier pieces I've reviewed lately, it was refreshing to see a work composed with such forethought and attention to detail.

I won't go into the details of the game, but this was definitely the best "hard SF" piece that I've played since Infocom's Starcross. As with Starcross, the logic of the puzzles was grounded in realism and did not require any feats of mind-reading to solve. In fact, one of the most remarkable aspects of this piece is the number of well-crafted puzzles that the author, Sean Barrett, manages to wring out of the relatively few moving parts implemented. It's like a haiku -- all the non-essentials are stripped away, and what's left really works.

The flipside of this is that the interaction lacks some of the meatiness that would be welcomed in such an intriguing game world. I found myself wishing for the ask/tell model of conversation just so I could pump Cheryl for information about the things mentioned in the feelie.(Spoiler - click to show) While the ending does not leave room for a sequel, I would have been very interested to see another story written in this setting. On the whole, however, I think Mr. Barrett's sense of balance is exactly right; more details might simply have diluted the experience and reduced the level of focus the current writing inspires. It says something about how engrossing I found The Weapon to be that I had nearly reached the end of it before I realized it was going to be a one-room game.

The Weapon took most of an evening of on-and-off play to complete; total length is probably about right for the IF Comp, though it seems this piece was not entered when it was released in 2001. While it made finalist for Best NPC and Best Puzzles in the 2001 Xyzzy Awards, it did not win in either category.

I teetered back and forth between 3 and 4 stars for this and ultimately decided on 4, on the grounds of its exceptionally thorough implementation, nearly frictionless gameplay, and memorable characterization and story. This is a great introductory piece of IF for sci-fi lovers, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who likes the genre.

The first speed IF competition emerged as a sort of spontaneous affair, it's genesis on IFMUD (preserved for all time over at IFWiki) looks a lot like a transcript from "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" Beginning with the ridiculously short development timeline of 15 minutes, it was extended in stages to two hours, at which point David Cornelson, the inventor of the concept, released Coffins. [edit: Yikes! It has been gently pointed out to me that Christopher Huang is the author of Coffins, as should have been obvious to me based on what I linked to above. That's what I get for writing while too tired.] It was the only submission.

This seminal moment might have passed unnoticed, but, about 4 weeks later, on the eve of Halloween 1998, Cornelson organized another challenge like it, and a new phenomenon in the world of IF began to take root. Dan Shiovitz participated in this event, now known as Speed IF 2, and he was one of three people other than Cornelson [edit: Again, that should read "Huang", not "Cornelson"] to submit a finished work.

This piece, with its ridiculously long title, reads like a kind of gleeful, drunken attempt to make up a ghost story on the fly while sitting at the campfire after a long day of hiking, sun, and beer. It's silly, and it's fun, and it's a good time, but it's hard to call the result a story. Nonetheless, it made me laugh, and it only takes a few minutes to play, so I'd recommend it to anyone on the grounds of its historical and comedic value.

Since I don't share Dan Shiovitz's dismay over beholders, I thought I'd give Sparrow's Song a try. Having never experienced the work of J. D. Berry before, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of this piece, which was entered into Emily Short's SmoochieComp in 2001.

Although the presence of the beholder implies the story is grounded in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, nothing else does. While it was interesting to see what Berry thinks the personality of one of these iconic monsters is, there was no compelling reason I discovered that the being in question had to be a beholder. For story purposes, it could just as easily have been a demon, or even a grizzled old veteran. It's a rare and unexpected failure of originality in this otherwise highly creative work.

The writing often has a certain poetic and lyrical quality to it that I found compelling, though on occasion the similes were a bit forced. The author has a way of adeptly conjuring huge swaths of history and exposition by sending your imagination soaring along suggested lines. The universe feels more complete by virtue of what you imagine being unchallenged by the text, which actually provides very little information about the world the protagonist inhabits.

When I first finished Sparrow's Song, I was a little confused. It seemed like much of what was implemented in the first half of the story had no relevance to either the central plot or the theme. For a while, I speculated that maybe this was a partially-finished work that had been adapted for entry into SmoochieComp by grafting on a storyline about love. However, on further reflection, I decided that this may not be the case(Spoiler - click to show): Each NPC you meet presents an exploration of love in some form: dead love, love of mankind, simple fidelity, pure lust, etc. Not a very deep exploration, it's true, but I'm willing to give Berry the benefit of the doubt.

One intriguing aspect of the story is the way it ends.(Spoiler - click to show) Having met your apparent soul mate, you discover that she is a different species and you are not biologically compatible. There are three possible solutions to this: either you change to her species, you change her to yours, or you meet half way. Each option is available, but the significance of the choice is not explored, though each would likely have serious consequences in the protagonist's universe.

This work leaves some key questions unresolved. As Emily Short notes, the nature of the love that forms the foundation of the story arc is strangely anvil-like, to say the least.(Spoiler - click to show) Personally, I thought it was strongly hinted that it was an unnatural, magic-induced kind of supercharm -- we know charms exist because of interaction with the nymph, that Tamta has been studying magic, at least one of Tamta's responses (I thought it was to "magic!", but I can't seem to recreate it now) has her explaining that she'd hoped to "set love in motion" using magic, and in another she admits to summoning the titular sparrow. In addition, Tamta has clearly been aware of you for some time, and it seems from the locket that your sister, a powerful magician, had a hand in your destiny here. I would imagine that much of the reader's opinion about the overall story would be shaped by the particular conversational topics they'd come across -- pretty good use of the medium, in my mind.(Spoiler - click to show) Another glaring question: What's up with the combinatorial explosion as a manipulable object? Amusing as the concept is, it doesn't fit the rest of the style and has no apparent purpose in this work. Maybe it should have been saved for another setting?

The conversation warrants a brief note. Opinions about it seem to be mixed, but I, for one, found the liberation from having to type "ask person about" in front of every topic to be quite welcome. Other than that, there is little functional difference between this model and the standard ask/tell. Although at least one reply seemed to indicate the system was designed to allow the spread of knowledge about topics between NPCs via talking to them about it, I did not spot any differences in behavior as a result.

I would definitely recommend trying this piece, though first-timers may be frustrated by the attention to detail necessary to get past the primary obstacle.(Spoiler - click to show) Hint: Mantras are for repeating.

I have not yet found any good documentation on the parameters for Dave Cornelson's 2000 DragonComp, but the gist seems to be that authors were invited to write a funny game involving dragons.

The opening of Here Be Dragons!!! started out kind of clever and amusing in a genre- and form-subverting kind of way. Unfortunately, that was the high point.

The author, Gunther Schmidl, seems to have deliberately disabled the "examine" verb and its synonyms, which takes nothing away from the brief and uninviting experience of this work. It probably saves time in navigating the sequence of empty rooms that lead you to the dragon, which is two inches long and non-threatening, but whom it is apparently your destiny to kill. You do, you win, it's over.

This appears to be one of those games deliberately written to be bad, though I don't understand why anyone would go through the trouble of programming even a short piece like this as a kind of joke. If it's a joke, don't fall for it like I did.

The premise of Speed IF Let's Make a Nightmare is:

"In three hours or less, write a work of IF about a nightmarish game show, in which the contestant is presented a small number of doors to choose from. Behind each door lies a prize, or a monster, or nothing. Bonus points for including a flying elephant or the phrase 'a random number of dollars.'"

In this entry by Jake Wildstrom, you stand on a stage, participating in an alleged game show that mostly features an ever-growing pile of empty container objects. It's nightmarish, but only at the level of the playing experience.

Schrödinger's Door is either unfinished or simply designed to be a waste of the player's time. Either way, I'd recommend skipping it.

An entry for Speed IF 12, Plaque is a relatively simple and mechanical puzzle game in which you must create an award for Chuck Schmendiman. In this interpretation, the protagonist has somehow managed to put off making the award until the actual ceremony takes place, and must slap one together with the materials at hand before it's needed by the presenter.

The components of the game are a fairly straightforward rendition of the specified seed ideas. The author, who goes by the handle Admiral Jota, dutifully uses each bonus concept with a methodical checklist approach that favors completeness over imagination.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this piece is the opening dream sequence, which uses a scaled-down effect similar to that deployed in Shrapnel, which had been released a few months earlier.

It only takes a few minutes to complete this piece, so I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether it's worth the time. You might find yourself better served by going directly to Jota's award-winning full-length piece, Lost Pig.

Hedge is a strange tale of one man's journey into The Hedge, fortress retreat of a shadowy "elite" that you desperately want to join... or perhaps destroy.

Billed as a "modern fantasy jaunt" by the author, I found the tone to actually be part comedy, part psychodrama. Much of the gameplay feels like a surreal blend of The Prisoner and Monty Python's Flying Circus, with just a pinch of Little, Big thrown in at the last minute.

For work of a first-time author, this piece is richly implemented. Most objects have layers of detail attached to them, and most verbs have at least a few synonyms. Parser interaction generally shows evidence of both attention to detail and proper levels of testing. I took note of many unexpected niceties in the way descriptions are rendered in response to varying world-states.

Hedge is reasonably well-written in terms of atmosphere and mood, and the status bar helps maintain a mood by displaying the protagonist's emotional state. Although there is a scoring system, score notification is disabled, and the scoring process appears only loosely correlated to the intended story. Interestingly, the "full score" command yields not individual point contributions to your total but a list of unusual "achievements" based on your actions.

The story's structure seems somewhat arbitrary, but this may be by design. Although there is little explanation of the protagonist's motives, the inclusion of multiple winning pathways allows the player to define the protagonist's motives by his actions.

The puzzle structure is frequently obnoxious, particularly in the beginning stages. Red herrings abound; there's even a fountain full of them if you don't get the point. Fortunately, the "about" command yields valuable insights into the mindset of the author, and you can summon a hint fairy at any time by using "help" or "hint."

Although I did find a couple of bugs(Spoiler - click to show) ("take transmitter", "x mayans"), they did not negatively affect gameplay. My two-star rating reflects disappointment that this game seems intended to frustrate traditional players in the first half, for no real reason other than the amusement of the author. This hostile edge probably contributed significantly to Hedge's middle-of-the-pack placement in the 2006 IF Comp.

Mr. Richards clearly has above-average capabilities as a writer and programmer, and I would like to see more from him in the future.

As other reviews mention, this is not really interactive fiction -- it's a recreation of an old game from the days when "computer graphics" was completely synonymous with "ASCII art."

The game does seem to be implemented well and was probably something of a pain to write. I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay, so I'd normally rate it 2 stars, but I was struck by the way this piece is framed -- it made me think about the possibilities of throwing a mini-game like this into the midst of a standard IF work. (As if writing something of substance isn't hard enough!)

The only attempt at that sort of thing that I'm aware of is Infocom's Border Zone, which was somewhat controversial due to the real-time nature of the mini-game's action. In this case, the game is turn-based, which might work with the "stop-and-think" nature of IF instead of against it.

Barry Volain, the author of Myth makes no secret that the puzzles in this work are grounded in well-known Greek and Roman mythology. In the "readme" file accompanying the game file, he even goes so far as to recommend reading Bulfinch's Mythology (which is out of copyright and available via Project Gutenberg and at this web site) as a primer. In the era of Google and Wikipedia, such preparation is probably not necessary.

Myth is austerely minimalist. Descriptions are short for both rooms and objects. Many words mentioned in the text aren't recognized by the parser. It falls victim to a few First-Timer Foibles, including laconic locations, oral offenses (though only mildly), and close-mouthed characters. Yet somehow, this work did intrigue me, and I felt compelled to play through to the end.

I wish I could say that my patience paid off. Instead, it wore thin. After making about 100 points worth of progress, I hit something of a wall. As I could find no hints other than the walkthrough, my only choice was to read it and hope I didn't get too much given away.

Of course, I saw several things I didn't want to, including some things that I had tried to do but hadn't used the right word for. Once I realized synonym sickness was one of the first-timer foibles I was up against, I was a lot less willing to sit and puzzle things out when I was stuck. Doubly-so when I realized there were areas you could only visit once in a game with an inventory limit.

It's really too bad, because there were quite a few puzzles in the "hard but fair" category that I ended up missing out on this way. In the interest of letting others avoid that, here are my own hints -- restricted to extreme guess-the-verb problems and things that are basically impossible to figure out without mind-reading:

#1 (Spoiler - click to show)The sapling (yes, it's important)(Spoiler - click to show) - you need to get it(Spoiler - click to show) - with something sharp(Spoiler - click to show) - it's for making a weapon(Spoiler - click to show) - a spear(Spoiler - click to show) - like the ancients made them without metal(Spoiler - click to show) - "sharpen sapling" is part of it(Spoiler - click to show) - they were also treated some way(Spoiler - click to show) - for hardening(Spoiler - click to show) - "put sapling in <fire source>"

#2 (Spoiler - click to show)The grapes (yes, they're important)(Spoiler - click to show) - you need them to make wine(Spoiler - click to show) - you'll know how to make wine when you find the right equipment(Spoiler - click to show) - it's not the oak bucket, it's something with purple stains(Spoiler - click to show) - put the grapes in it(Spoiler - click to show) - how can you squish them? can't get in with them or stand on them or crush them or press them(Spoiler - click to show) - "step on grapes" is the magic phrase here

#3 (Spoiler - click to show)fighting things(Spoiler - click to show) - at least one critical battle appears to be semi-randomized, save before fighting and try again if you die, if you don't die the same way every time, keep trying

Don't worry, there are multiple layers of spoiler tags in the above, so you will have to click multiple times to be completely spoiled.

The size of this game surprised me. There must be around 75 locations. You will want to create a map for this one, complete with notes of the objects found in each location. It's probably too big to fit it all in your head.

Some of the puzzle designs in this work are clever. While in some cases the cliff notes of mythological texts provide virtual step-by-step instructions, in others the author takes license with the mythology to make you think a little sideways. This work would have benefited tremendously from a more literary touch and more thorough programming.

It's unfortunate that the scoring is implemented in such a way that necessary and irreversible steps don't always award points. It's a bit unnerving, leaving you wondering whether you're on the right track or heading for a dead end. Although I believe you can get this game into an unwinnable state, it's generally safe to assume that anything that appears to make things happen is a step in the right direction -- there is little interactivity that isn't directly aimed at the conclusion.

Another note about scoring: The walkthrough seems to indicate that its author got less than the maximum points. I got more than him, but less than the max. Out of curiosity, I decompiled the source code to look for those last lousy points, but it seems that they should all be awarded if you win the game. It looks like some actions may award points if you use one verb but not its synonym, so I wouldn't worry about it if you finish with less than 300.

Take One is a likable but mildly frustrating jaunt through your memories of playing "Indiana Jones" when you were younger. Ostensibly, you play the director of a movie, guiding an actress playing Indianette Jones through a scene about raiding some temple for an artifact. Submitted by Robert Street as an entry for the Finish the Game Comp held in 2005, it placed a close second.

As with Mr. Street's Turning Point, this work introduces certain interesting elements that don't end up having a recognizable impact on the story.(Spoiler - click to show) It's written in the third person, presumably in support of your observational status as director, but the gameplay works as though you yourself are Indianette -- there is no functional separation of "you" from her. The actress playing Indianette is decried as a useless airhead in the introduction, but this is not used for any story-telling effect (e.g. bawling her out when "she" makes a mistake, or ditzy commentary as "she" struggles on the set). In fact, she expresses no personality at all during gameplay, leaving me wondering why she is characterized that way.

Orientation to the game goal is well done. As the player, you immediately are told how to start the scene, and, while there are numerous hints about the outline of the puzzle you have to solve, there is enough left unspecified to make for a small challenge.

Unfortunately, what could have been a smooth gameplay experience was frustrated by programming and/or parser problems.(Spoiler - click to show) Though you are given instructions to read the journal then rub the ring, you are unable to rub the ring while wearing it. If you try, you are told "Indianette Jones can't rub the ring," which is unhelpful, to say the least. I spent several turns in an unproductive hunt for a synonym of "rub" that would apply before I figured out the glitch.

In a similar vein, it took me far too long to discover how to get the jewel from the statue.(Spoiler - click to show) Unlike Inform, the ADRIFT parser doesn't seem to provide any help if the player hits on a correct verb but incorrect syntax. Thus, the command "use whip" gives the same result as "<any nonsense> whip", which makes it seem like the verb is unrecognized. In fact, "use whip on jewel" would work. Since I am conditioned to the Inform type of parser response in this case ("What would you like to use the whip on?"), and since most authors avoid implementation of the verb "use" in favor of more specific wording, I spent several playthroughs trying things like "crack whip", "attack jewel with whip", "whip jewel", "throw whip at jewel", etc. before hitting on "get whip with jewel".

The situation isn't helped by the fact that the game lies and tells you the jewel is lying on the ground -- a serious error for a final release.

Those issues aside, it was smooth sailing and a fun scenario. The overloading of the "restart" action to begin a new "take" of the scene was a clever touch.

Mr. Street definitely has the ability to come up with good premises and puzzles. With better use of the conceptual pieces he puts into play and a less journalistic writing style, his work would probably attract more attention.