Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

Playing Zozzled was a very strange experience. Because it was an IFComp winner, my expectations of it were set relatively high. These expectations were not met. Contrary to what many people seem to have seen, my own experience of the game was that it was a rather pedestrian puzzler notably hampered by a lack of integration between its story and design.

At that time that this was written, author Steph Cherrywell had already shown that she was able to put together a very competent and engaging scenario with Chlorophyll. Zozzled starts out well enough with an inciting incident that primes the player to explore a mystery and introduces some promising-seeming NPC characters. However, placing the player in the role of Hazel ensures that the player both begins and remains fundamentally outside the presented mystery and its associated story, which exclusively concerns the introductory NPCs. The tone wobbles significantly as the action moves from introduction to mid-game; the PC will have a (Spoiler - click to show)paranormal and/or hallucinatory experience in the men's changing room that introduces a brief horror feel, but this is quickly left behind (and in all likelihood forgotten by the player) as exploration continues in a light-hearted and jokey mood.

It's certainly OK for a work of interactive fiction to feature a PC with whom the player does not fundamentally identify. Still, the player is expected to adopt the role presented, and to work in good faith toward helping the work's protagonist reach his, her or its goals. I was prepared to do this for Hazel, the game's PC, whose main motivation seems to be to as quickly as possible recover the state of inebriation with which she began the game, but Hazel's "progress" is played as neither pathos nor comedy -- indeed, other than occasional asides concerning her satisfaction at having obtained another dose, it feels more like checking the boxes of a scorecard than anything else.

Checking off each box requires solving a small set piece puzzle of a form generally familiar to experienced players. These puzzles are decently designed and implemented, and my complaint does not lie with the puzzles themselves. Neither is my complaint with the story; it's a bit melodramatic but in a manner that's stylistically consistent and engaging enough to hold the player's interest. Where this game falls short is that the puzzles do nothing to synergize with the main story, leaving the game and story feeling only incidentally and artificially connected.

What is the story? (Spoiler - click to show)[No, seriously, these are major spoilers, so turn back if you plan to play the game.] (Spoiler - click to show)A married teetotaler falls in love with a young thug in training. She has what is secretly his daughter. Fifteen years later, in a moment of celebration as the thug decides to go legit and be a family with her and their child, the teetotaler agrees to a celebratory drink of champagne but ends up poisoned because it is adulterated with denatured alcohol. The thug turns out to be the owner of the speakeasy in which the game takes place. The daughter, unaware of her paternal parentage but believing that the thug intentionally killed her mother, grows up to be the Prohibition agent raiding the speakeasy. The mother, unaware that the poisoning was accidental, remains in residence as a spirit at the hotel, attempting to get her apparently long-delayed revenge. The protagonist can collect enough "ghosts" -- really pieces of the essence of the poisoned teetotaler -- to restore rationality to the vengeful spirit during a final showdown. At that point, the PC learns enough to set everyone straight, which yields something akin to a happy ending. None of that intersects meaningfully with the PC's given motivations, which are solely to get drunk and get out.

I can imagine a version of this game that plays up the humor of an increasingly intoxicated PC -- perhaps with puzzles whose solutions change and become more difficult as the protagonist gets closer to her goals. That sounds like a lot of work. I can imagine a version of this game in which you play the Prohibition agent raiding the place, featuring heavy interaction with the key NPCs introduced and placing the PC near the center of the existing story. That, too, sounds like a lot of work. I can also imagine a version of the game with a different PC whose motivations better mesh with the story -- perhaps the protagonist would be a 1920s "ghostbuster" hired by the hotel, and the ghosts' backstory would be adjusted accordingly. That sounds about the same in terms of work but with a somewhat more serious tone. Any of them would be better integrated than this work.

There were a few aspects of the implementation that caught my attention. The use of room descriptions to portray a tight fit inside the (Spoiler - click to show)scale model of the hotel was interesting; the technique of using room text that portrays ongoing action is generally frowned upon but works well enough here. The ability to finish the story without locating all of the ghosts, though it leads to a less "happy" ending, is a good design choice for a comp game, allowing casual players to finish the game and be satisfied. At several key points in the plot, the game switches to a choice-based mode; at the beginning and end of the game this is effectively just a more elaborate version of "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE" since there are no choices of consequence, but in an early tutorial-like scene the choices presented are effectively parser commands. The intent seems to be to keep the player from becoming stuck while also ensuring that the essential command for progress is discovered, but the same could have been accomplished with appropriately heavy-handed hints in the text; the current formulation results in something lacking the better aspects of either parser or choice interfaces.

This is by no means a bad game, and I don't regret playing it -- it just seems like the realization of a flawed vision that could have been something more than it is. It is a fun game to play around Halloween, and the overall difficulty is slight enough that it is suitable for those new to parser games, but I would suggest Chlorophyll as an example of Cherrywell's work that offers a more coherent design. I look forward to trying Brain Guzzlers from Beyond by the same author. [EDIT: ...which turned out to be great -- Cherrywell's best work in my experience.]

This is a throwback-style, very easy, old-school "text adventure," just as it claims to be. It is apparently a group effort, and it bears the mark of first-timers at work, earning a Coyne Quotient of 6 according to Michael Coyne's First-Timer Foibles (for items 4, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 14).

You play someone committing industrial espionage at a company that apparently uses time travel to make accurate predictions for purposes of wealth management. That's not really important, though -- your job is just to collect several items of information or artifacts containing them and get out. The stand-out feature is the collection of yesteryear's computer technology on display in the simulated office.

This game could use a lot more polish, but it's quick to play and comes off as sincere in the Charles Schulz sense. If you're a fan of Scott Adams games or magazine type-in games, then you might find the exercise of solving this to be a welcome diversion. (It took me about 30 minutes to finish with a full score.) For anyone else, you would probably be happier with a more developed "light heist" game... perhaps Inside the Facility?

This game was the insipid edutainment experience that I had feared when I was preparing to play Junior Arithmancer.

When I first loaded this up and got through the short introductory segment, I thought that I was going to be treated to an extended version of the experience provided by the core mechanic seen in the author's other notable math-themed game. I was envisioning a game of "magical" powers rooted in mathematical operations that would phrase key breakthroughs in the history of mathematics as puzzles to be overcome, with an emphasis on the expansions of conception as opposed to the mechanical operations. Having enjoyed the optional puzzles and just playing around in the number space of Arithmancer, I thought I was looking at the fun and compelling core of that game turned up to 11.

The presentation and the setting were quite similar, and the first few segments (constructing and extending the set of numbers) seemed to support the title's implication that this game would be about learning to appreciate the "cold and austere" beauty of the vast and interconnected web of concepts and reason that is mathematics. Since Arithmancer was so unexpectedly fun, I was looking forward to the experience -- I even hoped that I might learn something.

Unfortunately, the game quickly devolves into something else entirely: an old-school-style puzzler with frivolous mathematical theming that seems almost totally at odds with the implicit premise. Although *A Beauty Cold and Austere* appears to be the author's sincere love letter to the beauty of mathematics, it singularly fails to communicate that beauty. Fundamental and important conceptual breakthroughs are handled at a remove of one or more degrees, via puzzles that for the most part pointedly avoid the crux of the mathematics themselves. The entire puzzle structure is crafted in the old school style, and at times the game almost seems a parody of it.

The actual reasoning required to make progress is typical for old-school puzzlers, and the game does little to explain or reinforce mathematical concepts. I frequently found myself imagining young players of this game huddled around an Apple ][ in a 1980s school computer lab, too interested in the novelty of a "talking" computer to notice that they weren't learning anything useful about math from overcoming the game's obstacles.

To be fair, it's hardly this work's fault that it wasn't what I had hoped it to be on the basis of a misunderstanding that it was written after Arithmancer. It was, in fact, written before, and the arrow of causation points the other way; Spivey quite admirably extracted one of the best ideas from this game and crafted a much better experience from it. Perhaps I was reading too much into the title and cover for a second time with one of Spivey's works. However, I was not particularly impressed with this work even when trying to take it on its own terms. The fairness level of many puzzles is debatable, and the only unifying structure is dream logic, i.e. non-logic. The most interesting aspect was (Spoiler - click to show)the roller coaster; with its multiple possible configurations, I had to admire its implementation as either very clever in its design or of impressively large scale in execution, if not both.

I think I would recommend this game to someone who really enjoys the old school puzzle sensibility of wanting to solve a puzzle "because it's there," and I imagine that there would be some appeal to mathematicians in the fact that many props and setting elements come from the history of their field. If the idea of Zork with math-themed puzzles appeals to you, then by all means proceed directly to playing. If what you want is fun with the math itself, then you may be better served by Junior Arithmancer from the same author.

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.