Reviews by OtisTDog

With Inform's core code having grown so much that only the smallest scenarios produced by it will still fit within Z-machine, one might wonder whether that venerable format is destined for the dustbin of history. Sure, there are still people actively using Inform 6 with the PunyInform library to make Z-code games for retrocomputing platforms, but that's a niche within a niche. With this work, author Daniel Stelzer proves that the Z-machine is still a vital platform when used with the relatively new but sophisticated Dialog language.

Miss Gosling's Last Case plays very well. Puzzles are meticulously designed and well-suited to appeal to those who would be attracted to the murder mystery genre -- requiring an active imagination that takes careful notice both of what is said and what can be imagined about the scenario being depicted.

Only basic verbs and simple commands are in use, a constraint imposed by the separation of story protagonist from primary actor. By ensuring that there is an in-game reason for preferring simplicity, the player is subconsciously prompted to throw out any ideas for actions that cross a certain low threshold of complexity. It gives something of the feel of a limited parser game without actually being one.

The game's text has an emphasis on providing backstory and characterization, largely eliding physical descriptions of the scene outside of a few key objects. This is done skillfully -- at first I did not notice the style, because room description text provides introductory exposition as the player gets familiar with the situation. Should the lack of detail become noticeable, that is a cue the player should simplify the approach being taken. The object implementation is spare enough that, should imagination fail, even brute force approaches are likely to pay off within a reasonable number of commands.

Quite a lot of work has been put into creating a smooth and seamless play experience. New players will benefit from many "invisible" parts of the system that are designed to support that goal. First and foremost are >FIND and >GO TO verbs that make navigation as simple as can be. Object disambiguation is handled with a numbered selection that makes it very clear how the parser is "thinking," and that in combination with very descriptive error messages will rapidly train a new player in the preferred method of interaction. More subtly, the game design itself ensures a sharp focus on specific goals at all times, even during the middle game when one has a choice of order in which to pursue subgoals. Lastly, the introductory scene offers a tutorial voice that is sure to help total newbies get started with a parser, though it is extraneous to someone familiar with the form.

My initial impulse is to give this game four stars, which translates roughly as "distinctly above average" and/or "highly recommended" in my rating scale, but there are a couple of minor shortcomings that keep it just below that threshold. One of the segments (Spoiler - click to show)(involving identifying a rosebush of blooms with a particular color) does not feel as well-implemented as the others. (Spoiler - click to show)Specifically, although a point is awarded when the correct actions have been taken, the player is not notified about which rosebush is correct and must deduce it from some diagrams. This is not difficult, but neither is it particularly interesting, and stylistically it is out of step with the rest of the work by adding even a speck of unnecessary friction. Also, the multiple locations of the tea garden just seem "deader" than other parts of the house from a writing perspective; they are restricted to repetitive descriptions of largely undifferentiated locations with few objects. Perhaps less important but worthy of adjustment is the pacing in the final scene. (Spoiler - click to show)It took several tries to work out the correct move to trigger a win, and it felt very arbitrary that it should by that move which does so. Repeated barking should be just as effective given the situation, and would be the low-friction option to conclude the game after the real puzzle has been solved. As a final nitpick, it would be nice to be able to turn off the tutorial mode at the beginning. (Note that any or all of these criticisms may have been negated in release 2, which was recently posted.)

I'm going to go ahead and round up a bit for my star rating, though I'll hold off on letting it count toward the average in the hopes of a post-comp release to sand off the handful of remaining rough edges. In the meantime, I do very much recommend this piece to anyone looking for a bit of fun, and I would even suggest it (with reference to the provided hints, if needed) as a first experience with IF for someone who likes the murder mystery genre. My hat is off to Stelzer for creating a first-class introductory work easily on a par with Infocom's best of that type. Bravo!

[Note: It turns out that much of the preceding unintentionally -- but almost exactly -- echoes an off-site review by PB Parjeter, which was written prior to this and to which I've added a link on the game's page here. I guess that's evidence that the observations are well-founded!]

This is another game that I would most likely have skipped if it weren't for the Free IF Playoffs. The moment I see "dating sim" in the description of a game, my interest drops to zero. Still, the intriguing provenance of this game, which was apparently produced by an outsider who has never participated in the online community, was enough to warrant at least loading it up.

With a blithe disregard for the tags on IFDB or other reviews (which I like to read after I've tried a work), I did so. My minimal interest was not increased by the Harry Potter-like feel of the opening chapter. A short time later, the game seemed like it was going to be over before it had even begun. Interest took an uptick when it became clear that what seemed like an end was actually just the beginning.

Here's where we get to the spoilery part, and like other reviewers, I recommend that you play the game before proceeding.

This is a time-loop game, and in terms of story structure it is well done. I agree with Passerine that author E. Jade Lomax has an excellent sense of how to anticipate changes to the player's viewpoint over time in a way that works well, though I felt that it failed to adequately convey how the protagonist must have felt after enough loops to span a normal human lifetime and more. After a period of exploration, one necessarily begins to treat each iteration as a chance to conduct one or two key experiments in how to affect the timeline. (Spoiler - click to show)As a memorable in-game description of science puts it, the player begins the process of "grinding the particles of the world down to answers and making new questions with them." The way that the description of events changes with the growing understanding of the total situation is remarkably smoothly implemented.

It does seem as though the opportunities for significant change are few and far between, but this is something of a necessity in a time loop of such scale. This is Groundhog Day writ large -- a Groundhog Decade or more. The time loop trope seems inherently more powerful in interactive fiction, where the player must guide the protagonist's discoveries and planning instead of being a mere observer, and Lomax explores many interesting ethical questions along the way. To achieve the implicit objective, the PC must become an interloper who lies, steals, commits acts of destruction that likely result in the death of innocents (and certainly result in large-scale destruction of property), and more. (At least, it seemed like that was the case; perhaps there are options to avoid such questionable trade-offs.) Are the "failed" timelines inherently unreal? Do your harmful actions somehow not count in them? Do the ends truly justify the means when trying to "win" the game?

In addition to the big questions, there are smaller ones. For example, a key NPC will more likely than not (Spoiler - click to show)go on a magic-induced rampage at a pivotal event early on, killing several people and possibly the PC. At a "later" point in the game, the player is presented with a choice that effectively asks whether or not to forgive her for something that she hasn't done in this cycle. Are you judging her for who she is in the here-and-now, or what you know she could be under the wrong circumstances? This question isn't new to time travel tropes, but it felt new here, stressing the way that both the player's and protagonist's perspectives shift due to the "outsider" viewpoint being experienced.

The "key scenes only" approach sometimes feels limiting. I would have loved a more fine-grained treatment of the plot -- one that starts to answer the in-game question (Spoiler - click to show)"How much are you changing things, by breathing and walking and sometimes being a little late for breakfast in unrepeatable patterns? How much is just the universe's randomness?" -- but I recognize that the complexity being managed is already quite large. The choice interface seems like an appropriate decision -- it's hard to imagine the same game with a parser. (Hadean Lands is the closest thing to it, but it has no need to implement NPCs.) To be sure, I'm probably underestimating the total complexity -- my own play took several hours but was far from a completist run, since I opted out of every romance thread. (A special hat tip to the author here: I truly appreciated that "none of the above" was an option for the romance subplots.) Since the PC can develop close but non-romantic relationships with various NPCs, it's clear that that the alleged dating sim aspect is driven by the author's diligence in exploring the potential of what RadioactiveCrow's review calls the "human connections" of the situation space.

This game is very good, but I'm going with 3 stars instead of 4 because there are a few places where it slipped a gear (i.e. seemed to be responding to things that had not happened or had happened differently, due to errors in state-tracking). The writing is a bit flat, as well, with a workman-like functional quality that doesn't always do justice to the scenes being portrayed. Relatively small improvements in either of those aspects would have gotten it over the edge. I definitely recommend this game both as an enjoyable play experience and as a rewarding subject of study in the craft of interactive fiction.

[Full Disclosure: I know the author of this work personally, and I served as a beta tester for this game.]

"I don't want to play in a world where I can't kick a pirate using karate." So said Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, in a 1988 article about Plundered Hearts (MIT Technology Review, May/June 1988, p. 16). Well, Janet... it took almost 35 years, but your cri du coeur has been answered, and answered well!

A Matter of Heist Urgency is an unusual offering. Rooted in a series of silly short stories written for a grade schooler who enjoys horses and superheroes, it was developed into a short game as a fun way of introducing that grade schooler to interactive fiction. Having reached about 25,000 words in size and a level of playability that was very newbie-friendly, it was then further developed to be an entry in IF Comp 2022, doubling its word count in the process. The result is a fast-paced, smoothly-flowing, and very amusing short game that has been favorably compared to a Saturday morning kids' cartoon.

The game is "puzzleless" in the sense that there is nothing intended to impede the story's progression to its successful conclusion. By the same token, it is "merciful" on the Zarfian scale -- the player may be left with varying degrees of satisfaction at the outcome, but the player character cannot die or even really lose. That said, the game does reward engagement, and there is some light thinking to be done in order to achieve the highest rankings, which are issued at the end of the game even though there is no formal score. (To be less ambiguous, I should instead say that the game has no point rewards; it does indeed have a musical score.)

Critical reception in the context of the competition was mixed. The "marketing materials" (i.e. cover and blurb) developed for the game emphasize the word "heist" in the title, which may set genre expectations of a complex puzzling-solving exercise involving tight timing and intricate details. (This perception may also be reinforced by the blurb's claim of a "robust" hint system, though in hindsight that is clearly tongue-in-cheek.) In contrast, the cover illustration depicts cartoon horses and a pirate ship, and the blurb characterizes the game as "a delightfully short action-comedy" with "intense fights with kung-fu llamas," so arguably it delivers exactly what it says on the tin.

The humor of the piece is its strong point, but it is also perhaps idiosyncratic. Players seem to decide whether or not the game appeals to them very quickly, beginning with their perception of the pun in the title. Much of the humor depends on juxtaposition: The illustration of Anastasia as a rainbow-maned equine invites a comparison to "My Little Pony," but the way the plot plays out is closer to "The A-Team."

The game's tone is unapologetically playful, and it works best when approached in a playful mood. The setting is essentially the Land of Make Believe, which you may recall spending time in as a child. Character archetypes are deployed without any consideration for historical accuracy; instead they are chosen to evoke a specific mood and expectations in the player. This creates a fluid version of in-game reality that can subject the player to surprises(Spoiler - click to show) (a pirate with a jetpack??) but still feels consistent in the sense of keeping the scenario and the interaction fun.

Personally, I have found the game to be very enjoyable, even through many replays, because there are countless details in the implementation that reward you for poking around by responding with small jokes. I am especially impressed by one of the new scenes added post-competition (in release 5): It is a very "cinematic" flashback sequence using a method of synchronized music and text that I hadn't encountered elsewhere, though a similar technique was later employed in Little Match Girl 4. (Note that this scene is shown only if you are victorious in the first fight; if you lose, you instead get to play a very funny interlude from the protagonist's early training.)

As you have no doubt gathered by now, this is not a "serious" piece. However, its development was taken seriously by the author, first with the intention of creating a memorable and enjoyable introduction to interactive fiction, then with the intention of crafting a light-hearted and diverting short experience for judges working through a field of entries that generally strive for more literary merit.

Given my involvement, it's not appropriate to let my star rating count toward the average, but I give it high marks due to its very good implementation quality, memorable and amusing characters, and judicious use of sound. I encourage everyone looking for a half hour of pure entertainment to give this piece a try. I also highly encourage use of a sound-capable interpreter, which is essential for appreciating the scene-enhancing music and the special flashback sequence mentioned above.

This work feels much more like a "hacking game" than what would typically be called interactive fiction. The game has a graphical user interface, and the only text entry to be done by the player takes the form of multi-digit numbers. A sort of limited choice-like player input is also accepted via button-clicking to initiate or respond to messages from NPCs. The fact that all significant narrative events are depicted via text arguably places it somewhere at the outskirts of the form. It doesn't feel quite out-of-bounds to qualify as IF to me; your mileage may vary.

The world of the game is a strange one, a kind of alternate 1980s much like our own but in which (Spoiler - click to show)early breakthroughs in computer science had developed truly self-aware AIs. The most far-fetched component of the plot is the idea that such a program could run on a 16-bit home computer.

As other reviewers have noted, the author goes to great lengths to capture the feel of the BBS era despite having no firsthand familiarity with it, even accurately portraying the sounds of the dialup sequence for 1200/2400 baud modems. This work may have some value just as a kind of "living history" display, making it easier for those who grew up with the internet to appreciate its technological roots.

The overall plot is relatively constrained. The early parts of gameplay have a richness to the NPC userbase that rapidly falls off as the main plot gets going. Gameplay options are expanded over time as new programs become available, but their implementation is limited to the need to run them at certain times; fundamental gameplay is not altered. The pacing is rather too quick for my taste after the first act, robbing a significant twist of much of its intended impact. Based on the order in which some messages were received, I may have gone through key events in an unanticipated sequence, so again your mileage may vary.

Despite these significant flaws, I admire the work done on the interface and did find it to be an enjoyable short play experience.

Note that although this game is tagged as "queer" on IFDB, that seems to have no relation to gameplay. Although an interpersonal relationship is an important part of the plot, it is handled in an entirely abstract and non-sexual way.

Although choice-based games aren't my usual fare, this work by Victor Gijsbers was loads of fun to play. In turns humorous and serious, grandiose and self-deprecating, the writing quality has an incisive cleverness and ribald wit that strongly reminds me of Shakespeare. (Admittedly, most of my study of Shakespeare was compulsory, but to my high school English teacher's credit, he made us genuinely appreciate the good parts.)

Characters portrayed this well, in the context of a story this absorbing, make it easy to forget that you're "playing" this "game." The main character was not one with which I identified much, but it didn't matter; it gave the work the flavor of attending a play put on by actors so adept at reading the audience that they were adjusting the performance to heighten the drama and the comedy. I laughed out loud many times -- especially at the jokes portrayed via the presented options -- and lingered at several points to contemplate various items of philosophy espoused by the figures on the stage.

I don't think I agree with the style of morality advocated by the protagonist and princess, but to be sure they are hardly depicted as virtuous! I rather wonder whether the ending (Spoiler - click to show)prefigures bliss or tragedy for the main characters. Regardless, this is an extremely well-done bit of writing and a thoroughly enjoyable and recommended experience.

Parental advisory (in case you missed the author's warning): It does get NC-17-esque in its content at some points, so it's not well-suited for kids.

It has been 15 years since Textfyre released this work, the first in its intended lineup of introductory interactive fiction targeting a young adult audience. Although at the time it was shipped with a novel graphical user interface for playing it, the technology stack on which it was based has since aged into obsolescence, making it hard to experience the work as originally intended. Fortunately, the work itself is not lost, as David Cornelson, the moving force behind Textfyre, decided to release the game to the public in normal Glulx format after its day as a commercial offering was done.

It took me some time to pin down the reason why I was so disappointed by this game, which is that it systematically reneges on its implied commitment to the reader/player at every stage of the story. Let me explain: I believe that a well-written story engages in a kind of contract with the reader, i.e. "If you spend the time to experience me, I will make it worth the time that you spend." This is the basic idea behind the dramatic principle of Chekhov's Gun, i.e. that the author shouldn't place a potentially plot-significant item into the scene without making it plot-significant in some way -- by placing it within the fictional world the author cues the reader to think about it, think about its potential uses, and watch with anticipatory tension for which of those potentials will be realized. There are many methods by which a good story cues the reader to certain expectations, with the implicit promise that it will later either fulfill those expectations or deny them with deliberate artistic intent.

Again and again, Jack Toresal and the Secret Letter implies things about character, setting and plot that are simply not followed up or which are flatly contradicted later in the story. Some examples, but in no way an exhaustive list:

* (Spoiler - click to show)The player character styles herself as a top-notch street thief, but she never demonstrates those supposed skills. Every one of her thefts from market stalls is spotted. Is this intended as comedy, i.e. that she only imagines her capabilities? Is she just in such a rush that she's not using her usual subtlety? It's not clear. She later barely manages to pick a lock, seeming unused to the process.

* (Spoiler - click to show)Early characters made to seem important such as Teisha, the baker and the butcher, are never seen again despite substantial conversation menus that invite significant engagement with them. Additionally, at least one of these characters introduces an implicit subplot (the butcher's love interest in one of the PC's caretakers) that is never subsequently mentioned.

* (Spoiler - click to show)The player character's heritage is supposedly a secret, but a surprisingly large number of people in the town seem to know about it -- even the servants of the main antagonist.

The result is that there is no point at which the reader/player can properly "settle into" the story and become part of it, and thus it ultimately fails as both fiction and as interactive fiction.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the gameplay is rather devoid of actual play after the first chapter, which involves the player character escaping from a group of ill-intentioned mercenaries in pursuit in a crowded marketplace. Upon reaching the end and looking back, there were only three things that seemed to count as puzzles in the whole game(Spoiler - click to show): the escape from the market, refinding the secret entrance to get into the ball, and optionally escaping from your bonds in the climax scene. In a work that has about 140,000 words of source code, that's surprisingly few, and of the three, only the first feels properly designed for its target audience. (Spoiler - click to show)(The second is obvious enough to an experienced player, but I would expect some fraction of newbies to get stuck. The solution for the third just doesn't really make sense given the described physical situation. While solving it is technically optional, failing to do so results in a wholly unsatisfactory ending.) The first chapter implies that the rest of the game will be gated with similar light puzzles, but it presents the "hardest" mandatory puzzle of the entire game. Functionally, this makes it the climax of the game part -- which in the long run leaves the game feeling over before it started.

On the plus side, Michael Gentry's writing is very good. At the microscale of words, phrases and sentences, it keeps one's interest and keeps one reading. I doubt that I would have managed to finish the entire game if it weren't for the steady reward of being able to read another paragraph by that very skilled author. The IFDB entry lists both David Cornelson and Gentry (of Anchorhead fame) as authors. I can't be certain, but my impression is that Mr. Gentry was more or less writing to spec for this game, with the story and puzzle design largely originating with Mr. Cornelson.

One very interesting design element was the way that NPC conversations in Chapter 2 imply the passage of time as the player character moves west-to-east through the town for the first time. The earliest conversation with the baker has an out-of-breath tone reflecting the fact that the PC has just escaped the market, while later conversations imply that there has been time for the PC to calm down and rumors of the happenings at the market to make their way along the grapevine to the other side of town. It seems a risky device -- I'm not sure that the conversations are responsive to the actual order in which they occur, so it counts on the human player following the path of least resistance -- but the writing does a great job of guiding the player along the intended path.

On the minus side, the implementation of NPC conversations as a whole is particularly poor in this work, for the most part amounting to little more than the menuization of an ASK/TELL model over a relatively small set of standard topics. Only a handful of choices result in additional context-sensitive branches of the conversation, and this for only one or two successive replies at most. The result encourages a repetitive lawnmower approach that eats up time without offering much in return beyond extensive confirmation and reconfirmation of certain background information. One of my co-players joked that the PC seemed to be secretly conducting political polling for the fictional town's upcoming election.

About that election, which is central to the plot: It is very hard to suspend one's disbelief enough to experience any tension. The ostensible political situation is the fulcrum on which the whole plot balances, but it took me and my co-players quite a while to figure out how it made any sense at all. (Spoiler - click to show)(The PC is the daughter of a well-liked but long-gone regional leader... but so what? Are we really to believe that an unacknowledged, illegitimate daughter would be given the slightest consideration during a vote by an insular aristocracy? Or that mysterious beneficial forces would be content to let the naif whom they are backing wander through the volatile political scene without firm guidance?) Direct lampshading of the plot issues in later scenes doesn't actually resolve them, and in the end the entire plot seems to be chucked aside as irrelevant in a cliffhanger conclusion implying that much deeper political machinations are underway -- leaving the player unsure about what the point of it all was.

This game is historically significant and worth studying, but I can't say that either I or my co-players particularly enjoyed it. Anyone enticed by the premise of young adult interactive fiction in a fantasy setting may be better off exploring another work -- perhaps Textfyre's second release The Shadow in the Cathedral or the relatively recent The Princess of Vestria. (Yes, the latter is written in Twine, but really there is little about this work that leverages the parser.)

Chlorophyll is an almost rock-solid young adult science fiction "light puzzler" that emphasizes the relative importance of writing skill over coding skill when it comes to creating memorable and intriguing IF. Even though it generally sticks to the most basic verbs and object types, it is a thoroughly enjoyable work that adroitly blends story and puzzle in a carefully-crafted balance. The result is a rare treat to experience as a player.

This the second piece that I've played from author Steph Cherrywell, following her better-known Zozzled. To me, this work is far superior to the celebrated 2019 award-winner. What Chlorophyll has in spades that its successor lacks is a fine-tuned thematic unity, which is essential to creating a compelling and engaging play experience.

The setting is rooted in the idea that, somewhere in the universe, vegetation has developed mobility and sentience, then subsequently evolved into a humanoid form. The player character is such a humanoid, but other than the green skin and attendant consequences with respect to metabolism, she is portrayed as a pretty typical pre-teen. This is possible because the culture of the plant people, who are called Xylloids, is more or less indistinguishable from the modern Western lifestyle.

Does this sound like a failure of the imagination on the part of the author? It is not -- very clearly the sci-fi aspect is just window-dressing for the narrative half of the game, which is an adventure story caught in that awkward stage of being halfway grown into a coming-of-age story. See Emily Short's review for more on this; the more substantive craft here pretty much escaped me since I wasn't the target audience. Nonetheless, the adventure story hooked me easily and got me to engage with the game half of the story.

It's there, in the game part, that the sci-fi premise shines. Who wants light puzzles and hunger puzzles in games today? Cherrywell's inspiration to combine the two as a natural consequence of the premise is nothing short of genius in my view, showing off a Plotkin-like ability to reinvigorate old tropes. As the review by Sam Kabo Ashwell notes, this novelty does not overstay its welcome, and its retirement from the player's list of concerns is very skillfully combined with a significant story beat. (This is an example of the highest-quality craft in that it was perfectly invisible to me as a player. It's only in retrospect and after having it pointed out that I am admiring this brilliant touch.)

Cherrywell's instincts with respect to exposition and characterization are laudable, as well. As others have noted, these are delivered on a steady drip-feed that rewards the mundane exploration required to find and take the measure of the puzzles. There's not a text dump in sight, and although another reviewer found the introductory sequence to be too long, I gauge it to be just about right for a beginner player -- enough turns to experiment with basic verbs like >EXAMINE and >INVENTORY without devolving into >Z.Z.Z. I particularly liked the way that the base comes into view and then is briefly out of view again -- a tiny touch that injects an element of dynamism into a scene serving primarily to characterize the protagonist's mother. (That characterization is a building block needed to enable the incipient crisis to create any tension at all, and I am again admiring in retrospect how deftly Cherrywell juggles competing needs in this sequence.)

None of the other reviewers seem to have noted that there are two winning paths through the game: one "bad" (i.e. rule-breaking) and one "good" (i.e. rule-following). The game is scoreless and has only one significant ending, so it doesn't really matter which path one takes. (The situation is such that the required rule-breaking is justified, in any case.)

This game isn't perfect. I agree with reviewer Tristano that the climax was a bit too abrupt, especially after the apparently false foreshadowing of (Spoiler - click to show)the Polithea action figure armor vest accessory and the option for a "tough" leafcut at the salon. A better action sequence for it would have been an improvement to me, but again I don't think I was the target audience. There were also some minor bugs, most notably (Spoiler - click to show)a >USE verb that is non-functional and text spacing issues of the type that Inform 7 is prone to create, and some other small issues, e.g. a lack of exit descriptions in places and a critical path puzzle solution that requires a command that smacks of the era of two-word parsers. (Spoiler - click to show)(For replacing the fuse in the underwater area, it's only necessary to (Spoiler - click to show)>UNSNAG FUSE after having brought it along in the tunnel roller.) These flaws are vastly outweighed by the overall execution. There are also a couple of bits of adult-oriented humor, but these are done well in that they are likely to go over the heads of small kids and to be only half-understood by savvier older kids. If you have concerns about these, then avoid (Spoiler - click to show)the encrypted file on the mother's computer and the engineer's calendar in the engine control room, but they are no worse than PG-13.

I recently waxed poetic about Alias, 'The Magpie' as an avatar of the subconscious Infocom ideal. This game is also an exceptionally good expression of that style, and I agree with Mathbrush that Chlorophyll would have made an excellent addition to their beginner line. Works like this are strategically important for introducing younger generations to interactive fiction, and this work is certainly going into my file of games to recommend to newcomers.

Just as a side note: I give rankings based more on a power law than a bell curve, and 4 stars means truly excellent on my scale. If you are considering playing this work and are in the mood for something in the sci-fi YA zone, I definitely recommend that you try it.

As the title promises, this game begins with the player character about to engage in a sword duel. As soon becomes clear, the word "duel" is perhaps the wrong choice, because the PC is vastly outmatched by the opponent, known as The Countess. I came close to quitting at this point, because the work presents itself as a "one move" game. However, within a handful of cycles it is revealed that the PC has certain abilities that make it possible to evade certain death.

This game serves up thin slices of rich world-building with its vivid and evocative prose. The universe vaguely resembles ours with notable exceptions. First, everyone seems to be a hermaphrodite in the vein of Ursula K. LeGuin's 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Second, magic of some sort is real, in that the protagonist is able to perform impossible feats such as (Spoiler - click to show)flying to the moon. Third, the PC has the extraordinary capacity to move about in time as well as space, which is the core mechanic by which the story progresses.

Despite a limited range of locations and significant actions, this piece presents many contemplative and memorable moments to the player, and also many interesting experiments to the would-be author. In particular, a variety of NPC conversation styles are implemented, including a unique menu-driven interface with options phrased around question words (e.g. who, what, when, etc.) and a stripped-down enter-the-topic prompt that I found to be a remarkably smooth improvement over ASK/TELL. A very large number of endings are possible, too, giving it some replay value, which is welcome in a game this short.

Regrettably, the story is at certain points needlessly transgressive, apparently for no purpose other than shock value. It's rather a shame, because it limits my ability to recommend this otherwise exceptional work. Even though it is not suitable for young adults, it's well within bounds as fare for grown-ups, so if you're comfortable with NC-17 movies, you probably won't blink at this. For a more widely recommendable work by the same author, see Toby's Nose.

I admit: Everything about this game's packaging and presentation turned me off. The cartoon scroll, the Harry Potter font, the word "Junior" in the title -- all of it screamed "edutainment for kids" to me. I saw that it had picked up a XYZZY in 2018 for Best Puzzles, but I didn't give that much credence. I figured the voting crowd had a soft spot for kids that year or something -- a lot of math people seem to like IF, after all.

I am pleased to say that I was wholly, categorically wrong about this work by Mike Spivey. While it is a game rooted in math, it's math of the most basic sort, with nothing beyond late grade school level required. The crux of the game is purely logic-based and more closely resembles assembly language programming than anything else.

One has to give credit to Spivey for his design skills here. The simple setup quickly hooked me with its engaging "commentary" from the evaluating professors, and quite a lot of effort was put into showing the ropes to the disoriented new player in a seamless manner that is embedded in the fiction. Once I began to catch on to how the game is played, I was well-hooked by the combination of new "spell" rewards and acerbic commentary on erosion of academia in the game world -- an aspect by which the art reflects life in modern times.

The most impressive thing about the design is how smoothly the difficulty curve escalates, with appropriate variation in the challenge level as new capabilities are unlocked. This is just great game design, and it does an excellent job of leading the player ever onward to greater and greater challenges. In a concession to IF Comp's design criteria, the player is able to end the game at any time, with the most natural exit points being after having passed the exam either by majority or unanimous vote of the three-person evaluation committee. This also acts as a courtesy to the player, leaving those who aren't inherent point maximizers able to walk away with a feeling of accomplishment.

I'd recommend this game to anyone who likes a mental challenge, and I'd very much recommend this game as an introduction to IF for the type of person who enjoys the puzzles that one would find in Games magazine or the like. It makes an easy stepping stone to other games like Suveh Nux or any of the many games that adopt the Enchanter spell system.

Every so often I come across a work that plays so well that I think to myself: "This is the kind of game that Infocom secretly dreamed of producing."

To be sure, it really wasn't possible to produce a work like Alias, 'The Magpie' in Infocom's time. For starters, the game file is several times larger than would have been viable back then -- with the Glulx executable taking up just shy of 1.6MB, it wouldn't have fit on a standard 3.5-inch "floppy" for PCs, let alone on any of the various 8-bit micros in use during the mid-80s. That's not to mention that the Glulx virtual machine and Inform 7 are both light years beyond their historical counterparts (the Z-Machine and ZIL, respectively). However, I'm convinced that a text-based play experience like this one is the half-conceived ideal that lurked in the back of the mind of everyone working in the games group there, as well as the mind of every player of their products. It is, as Christopher Huang puts it: "damn-well near exactly what I come to IF hoping to find."

I'm having trouble expressing my appreciation for what author J. J. Guest has achieved with this piece in a manner that doesn't repeat observations from other reviews. Shall I extoll its high-quality writing (mentioned by 5 others), how polished and well-implemented it is as a program (4 others), its exceedingly fair puzzle design (4 others), or how just plain funny it is (4 others)? How it's like being in a Pink Panther movie (3 others) or a Wodehouse novel (3 others), or how it made me laugh out loud (3 others)? This game is truly remarkable! It's a perfect example of what parser games can be when done well: cleverly-conceived, nearly flawless in execution, engaging, entertaining, player-friendly as can be, threaded throughout with restrained but deft humor, and featuring a puzzle structure that emerges unobtrusively from the situation presented and is responsive to real-world logic. So much thought and work has gone into the kinds of small touches in writing and programming that are practically invisible unless one is watching carefully for them, but which collectively (and expertly) snare your attention and draw you in to become part of the story instead of a mere observer of it. I've heard it said that the mark of a true master is that they make what they do look easy; Guest does that here on a nearly constant basis, and this work places him firmly among the ranks of the New Implementors in my mind.

In particular, I agree with the praise from Ade McT, Sam Kabo Ashwell and others regarding the implementation of NPCs. NPCs are hard, and these are superbly done. Their actions and conversations react to the environment and situational history in myriad ways that together do a much better job than average of presenting them as other actual characters in the story, and which grant the setting a "sense of the place being alive," as Ashwell expressed.

If you know someone who doesn't "get" interactive fiction, this work would be an excellent introduction to the format, assuming that the newcomer likes witty writing and slightly absurdist situational comedy bordering on slapstick. This work is a welcome addition to my "great first game to recommend" list.

There are a few places where the implementation is not quite as polished, and even (to my surprise), a genuine bug or two. (Spoiler - click to show)(The only one that leaps to mind is an error when interacting with Leghorn; the game reported that he had left, but he still appeared in the room description after that... though it didn't seem possible to interact with him.) These are so surprising by contrast that they become the exceptions that prove the rule -- in a work as sincere as this one, such minor imperfections serve only to accentuate its excellence everywhere else.

As those who follow my reviews know, I am unusually stingy with my star ratings. It takes a *lot* to rank as a five-star game in my book -- it means that the work is the best in its category or otherwise qualifies as a landmark in the form. Despite its minor flaws, I have no reservation granting a five-star rating to Alias, 'The Magpie' which is surely destined to be considered a classic for many years to come.