Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

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.

Emily Short has pioneered a number of advances in IF, most notably the radically innovative conversation model of Galatea. Galatea was not universally loved; my sense is that many people thought of as too experimental or too "new school" (i.e. all story, no puzzles) to be generally accepted. Not one to turn down the implicit challenge, Emily set to work on Savoir Faire to demonstrate that she really did "know how to do it" in the old school style.

She succeeded dramatically, removing any doubt that she is one of the modern masters of interactive fiction, and joining the pantheon of the New Implementors. Savoir Faire is arguably her most acclaimed work: Too big for submission in the IF Comp, it swept up most major awards in the 2002 XYZZYs and was a finalist for the remainder.

Ms. Short's signature style seems to be daringly huge conception followed by lengthy and intense efforts to bring her new brainchild into being. In this case, the kernel of genius is her conception of the "Lavori d'Aracne", a type of sympathetic magic that allows users to link objects together, entangling them physically and conceptually in interesting ways. Where most authors might go on to write a perfectly delightful game full of special-purpose code to produce the "fun parts", Ms. Short seems to have labored to create an entire simulation system for it -- implementing not just the magic but its very laws.

This has two effects: First, the modeled world seems incredibly rich and deep as a result of your freedom to deploy this new power in just about any way that respects the built-in laws. It is entirely possible to forge links that are useless to the main character, but which nonetheless function in a consistent manner. Second, it sets the bar for coding very high, as the complexity of the game's system soars.

Unfortunately, Savoir Faire seems to have been a bite that was slightly too big to chew from a coding perspective -- though I played version 8, there are still (minor) bugs to be found. These are completely forgivable and do not detract from the entrancingly intricate story, but they did throw some jarring notes into an otherwise grand symphony.

Though this would normally qualify as a five star entry in my book, I'm only giving four stars because of the unfairness of one particular puzzle. Why "unfair"? Because:(Spoiler - click to show)The puzzle with the dancers and the letter was a sharp departure from the consistency of other linking puzzles. You are required to build a link between the two objects, but there is little to indicate that this should be possible according to the laws of linking as I gleaned them in a week of playing the game.

All other links seem to require at least two points of similarity from several categories: form, material composition, color, decoration, or physical relation/relative positions. This is true for both puzzle-related links and general case legal links, but no such correspondence exists for these two items. In my perception, the picture of the dancers would count as decoration on the old letter but must correspond to the physical form of the dancers themselves.

The dancing/encryption idea was very clever but this particular link seems not like the others; I am certain it is enabled by special-purpose code and would not be allowed as a general case. So, even though I knew the letter and dancers were related, even though the picture of one is on the other, so consistent was the negative reinforcement from my many failed experiments in linking that I spent a whole day without it ever occurring to me that a link of these two things might be possible. After all, some puzzle solutions do not directly involve links.

Maybe this incongruence was intentional -- many famous old school puzzles are at least as arbitrary, and there is a mocking undertone running through the game directed at old school fanatics (like me). I suspect this was just an error in continuity, though, and it had a disproportionate impact on my perception of the overall quality of the playing experience.

Then again, maybe I'm just annoyed that I didn't think of the solution on my own, since I was doing so well without hints to that point, and I may have eventually found the right command through brute force (a definite echo of the oldest of old school play). As she mentions in her own hints page, I always had the option of decrypting the letter out-of-game.

These minor flaws aside, there's no question that Savoir Faire is one of the great accomplishments of the new era, and I highly recommend this work to all players. It delivers the best of both the new school (dense story) and old school (great puzzles), and left me with a hunger for more that will no doubt be satisfied by the sequel, Damnatio Memoriae. Allow yourself one hint to avoid getting irritated like I did, and you'll probably end up giving it a five-star rating yourself.

[edit: With the passage of time, my irritation about that one puzzle has faded, and I have come to realize what a tremendous accomplishment this work embodies in its exemplary integration of a simulationist implementation with both the puzzles and the story. As such, I feel compelled to increase my rating to five stars, since it is undoubtedly the pinnacle of that class. Hats off to Ms. Short!]

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.

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.

The conceptual foundation of Vendetta is a frustrating mix of originality and cliche, embedded in a compelling and often richly-envisioned universe that begs for further development and exploration.

Five minutes into this piece, I was in complete agreement with Dan Shiovitz's assessment: "Stories about supercompetent badasses who have No Time For Love always make me feel a little dirty, like I'm seeing parts of somebody's psyche it is embarrassing to be looking at..." The prose style and dramatic content reminded me of that B-movie kind of adventure fiction where men are men and women are ornaments with incomprehensible emotions. It almost seemed like the style found in pre-pubescent fiction, and my estimate of the author's sophistication -- as well as my interest level -- kept dropping.

Anyone who feels the same way at that point is encouraged to continue(Spoiler - click to show), because shortly thereafter, comes a surprising plot twist. It's revealed that the narrator is an artificial being built for military purposes whose personality has been "modified" (or maybe just mangled) by the removal of key human elements like empathy and love. It's also revealed that the narrator's memory is mostly composed of the memories of another, much older person, which were artificially "written" to his brain. This revelation knocked my judgment for a loop; so many things that had seemed odd and out-of place, from the child-like interaction with Sally to the incongruous use of "young man" to describe others to the casual disregard for recent accomplishments, suddenly seemed appropriate. This sort of resonance between the large and small details is brilliant, but I'm not 100% certain it was intentional. Accepting this premise immediately raises the question of why an artificial being is walking around the world unsupervised in a world where such beings appear to be nearly unique.

The writing style is strange and uneven. Fluid and competent prose alternates with stilted, forced writing sprinkled with spelling and grammar errors. In several places, there is repetition of a word (or variations of a word) that can be jarring. In others, the exposition takes abrupt detours to work in a bit of background that probably should have appeared earlier.

As a work of interactive fiction, it has several weak spots. For the first half of the game, much of the player's time is spent waiting for multi-turn "conversations" to complete. One glance at the walkthrough should have raised red flags; there are far too many z's in it.

While on one level I thought it was interesting to be doing other things while the conversation takes place (like multi-tasking on the phone in real life), the object implementation is so shallow in some scenes that there's not really anything else to do but wait. Eventually, it crossed a line. The sensation was similar to how I once saw someone describe an RPG GM who gets too active with the party NPCs he controls: At some point, the players begin to wonder if they're just there to watch the GM entertain himself.

However, all of this changes (another significant discontinuity) when you get to the second act. Immediately, the player finds himself in the middle of a sprawling map full of interesting scenery objects. It's such a change in the nature of the play, and the depth of object implementation is so spotty, that adjusting to the transition is somewhat annoying. You find yourself trying all of the mentioned nouns, never sure which commands will result in a "no such thing" message, and which will result in two or three layers of irrelevant detail. Most of the object descriptions are done well -- more consistent implementation depth might have made for a very interesting effect(Spoiler - click to show) as you ransack the area while racing the clock. After all, when you're in the unknown, you don't know what's significant at first, and a real office would be filled with plenty of useless objects.

This part feels like a more traditional piece of IF, and it takes a while to explore. Just when my previous irritation at being inexpertly railroaded in Act I had started to fade, the sudden introduction of a CYOA format during the endgame left me shaking my head in disbelief.

The level of realism, like so much about this work, is lopsided in its application. While I was impressed with many details like the "bit player" NPCs in the hotel environs and the changing weather as you venture outside, they stand in stark contrast to the cartoon-like interaction with later hostile NPCs, who seem to be implemented as little more than combination punching bags and bowling pins.(Spoiler - click to show) As an example, I spent several turns goofing around with a locked gate, while the occupant of a nearby guardhouse patiently sat there staring into space, waiting for me to walk in and break his neck.

Vendetta was developed using ADRIFT, which my limited investigation leads me to believe is a sort of point-and-click code generator intended for non-programmers. Perhaps the author, James Hall, had no background in programming when this was written, in which case some of the problematic parser interactions that I encountered are easier to understand. Some choices in verb-to-action mappings, as well as the author's tendency to translate your apparent intent into a series of actions you did not specify, lead to a strange kind of abstraction to what you do. From time to time, it's almost like you're just offering suggestions instead of controlling the PC.

There are also some out-and-out problems with the code or writing, such as:

* an important (if optional) item is placed in scope(Spoiler - click to show) (the cell phone when you kill the first guard), but you are not notified and could easily miss it if you don't "look" again,

* the response to one critical command makes it appear as though the verb is not recognized, when in fact it simply requires an indirect object(Spoiler - click to show) ("reflect laser" vs. "reflect laser at x"),

* some descriptions are misleading, in a way that is out of character with the rest of the work.(Spoiler - click to show) (e.g. "In the corner of the room is the reception desk, which has nothing of interest on it other than a few pieces of office stationery." -- which gave me the impression they were blank pages, though I admit that's subjective.)

If the entire work was written as well as its current best parts, Vendetta would definitely rate three stars. With better consistency and some additional conceptual and thematic development, it could have hit four. I'm left with mixed feelings about this piece, as well as curiosity about what Mr. Hall has been up to for the last 5 years -- it seems like he has not released anything since Vendetta placed 14th out of 26 in the 2005 IF Comp. If Mr. Hall has continued to practice and develop his writing skills, I would expect his next work to realize much more of its potential than Vendetta does.

As you can tell from the length of my review, this piece managed to get under my skin. I want to give it a higher rating than I can objectively justify. For a pure player, there are enough negatives to warrant avoiding it. For new authors, there are valuable lessons to be seen in studying what's done right and what's done wrong. My suggestion: Decide which camp you're in, and choose accordingly.

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.