Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smith ducks back into the armoury.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shockwaves and dissonance as a bomb explodes nearby.

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

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

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

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

Gunner Jenkins is standing on the gun by the breach.

Sergeant Thompson is standing on the gun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

> look for tool
The sentence you typed was incomplete.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm having a hard time expressing what I liked about this piece.

You direct the actions of a good-natured, young, domestic everyman, nearly fresh out of college and getting established in the world alongside the "Honey" that has become the center of his universe. Well, maybe "center of the universe" is strong, but certainly she's the bed along which his stream of consciousness runs.

Since Honey's parents (his future in-laws?) are coming to dinner, he has a minor errand to run -- pick up some photos that she wants to show them. Easy enough, right? Only this is IF, so certainly something will stand in the way.

The author stuck to genre here, in that the challenges you face are the very believable everyday challenges of existence.(Spoiler - click to show) There are plugged toilets, lost keys, escape-oriented pets, and the like. Although this sounds like it would be tremendously boring to simulate, it's not, thanks to the continuous characterization of the narrator as he grins his way through these obstacles.

As some of the other reviews I found online mention, the "puzzle" structure is fairly straightforward, with much of the delay resulting from the choice to reveal context-relevant things only as you need them. This was an interesting twist, emulating the way that so much of everyday existence lies beneath your notice, but I agree that it was a bit irksome because of the way it forced you to revisit the all of the rooms again every time you change context. On the other hand, perhaps this device was necessary to accommodate the author's method of characterization, which is grafting context-relevant information on the descriptions of everything.

The hunt for new items was certainly not too burdensome to endure, especially when you recall that you can navigate to any room by name(Spoiler - click to show), and there are only about 10 locations total. It's a technique worth looking at, and there are ways to cut down the irk level when using it.(Spoiler - click to show) (For example, when the narrator realizes his keys are missing, he recalls where he last saw them, eliminating the full apartment search for this item.)

As a first work, it is very well-done -- especially the major NPC, your adorable/terrible cat, Azrael, who is light-weight in coding but has a definite personality. The most noticeable errors I spotted were some lingering action contexts in descriptions and a few glitches in the NPC's idle behavior (doing two different, incompatible things on the same turn).

In the end, I think it was the narrator himself that I liked best about this piece. You'll notice that my description above switches back and forth between the treating the narrator as a third person and the player. This is an artifact of the author's use of the first-person in describing game actions, which creates a strange sensation of both being and not-being the narrator as you direct him through his world. On reflection, what it seems to do most is force you to consider the narrator as a separate person instead of a role you are trying to fulfill, giving it the feel of "hanging out" instead of "let's pretend".

The game experience was just long enough to feel like I'd hung out with him for a while, amiably killing time on a lazy long-weekend morning. It feels like three stars, but I give it two for the coding errors and the lack of puzzle "meat." Still, it's better than average, especially for a first-timer, and anyone considering an in-your-apartment work should review this one to see how the author manages to hold the player's interest in a potentially banal setting.

Since I hadn't heard of this piece before, it wasn't immediately apparent to me that it was released as an April Fool's joke. Although the Quake setting is portrayed in a tongue-in-cheek manner, the use of "special effects" in the opening sequence does a fairly good job of setting the right mood for anyone who remembers playing the original.

A little map-connection legerdemain ensures that any of the multiplicity of apparent options will quickly funnel you towards either a generic dead-end or to the main path of progress. You'll soon find yourself happily blasting away with a virtual shotgun, much as you would when playing the real game.

The randomized combat means there is a decent chance you will die before reaching the end, but it only took me twice to run the gauntlet and reach the ending sequence, where a mysterious figure lets you in on the joke and ends the game.

It's not much of a game, but I congratulate the author for the effort it took to put together the opening sequence, and the work as a whole is actually not too shabby for a first attempt. It's worth the time if you've ever played the first-person shooter it's based on, just for the novelty of having the experience translated to IF.

In this micro-work, you are a dinosaur of unspecified type, standing in a featureless plain you can't leave. A few turns from the start, you will be killed as a result of a massive asteroid impact nearby.

As near as I can tell after several "playthroughs", this is all that happens -- all that can happen. It would probably take about as long to recreate this game in Inform 7 as it did to write this review.

Although it might be interesting to try to depict this scene in a realistic way, this piece make no attempt to do so. Skip it.

How about: 'What was the chicken thinking as it crossed the road?'

This short piece can't seem to decide if it's an 'interpreter abuse' type of game implementing Freeway(Spoiler - click to show) -- at which it fails since you can only go one direction -- or an actual attempt at humor. It does a better job of the latter than the former, but not enough to make it actually funny, though I might qualify it as mildly amusing.

It is competently put together as a program; I encountered no bugs. Based on the 'bad' version of the ending, it seems that the author was aware of the work's artistic shortcomings, but decided to release it anyway.

Given the number of other titles by this author with better ratings, I think it's safe to skip this one. As a warning to anyone else who wants to try it out: Gargoyle is not the best client, since the game expects a fixed-width font. You'll either have to download a different interpreter, get Gargoyle to use a different font, or (as I did), copy-and-paste the descriptions to a text editor to see the intended representation.

[edit: I've upped the rating to two stars because the major problem I had (text rendering in Gargoyle) was a function of my interpreter, not the work.]

You have to use the bathroom. Eventually, you do.

That's pretty much the whole story of this piece, which, although it didn't center around potty humor as I had feared, offers little in the way of interesting gameplay.

This work is probably best considered as a companion piece for Michael J. Coyne's list of "First-Timer Foibles." It handily illustrates many of them, including synonym sickness, aberrant articles, oral offenses, shocking spelling and grisly grammar, laconic locations, and action abortion.

As a program, this piece is mostly functional, but is close to broken at several points. I encountered a number of apparent bugs, one of which mercifully allowed advancement of the "plot" without what I would assume was intended to be a critical item(Spoiler - click to show), unless, of course, boiling water in a rusty pot is supposed to magically make glue.

Upon reflection, it is clear that the author was actually trying here; you can sense his struggle to learn Inform 6 in the design of the puzzles, such as they are. Presumably, the end result was the best he could do at the time. According to IFDB, it's been ten years since this piece was released, so there's a very good chance that the author's skill as a writer and programmer have substantially increased.

New voices are always welcome in IF, so, if you're still out there, Mr. Gaertner, why not give it another try?

This cooperative creation by two apparently new IF authors carries many of the hallmarks of the newcomer, but it also shows some surprising hints of both depth and capability.

As someone who never appreciated The Lurking Horror, I approached this piece with some skepticism. Horror is a difficult genre to write; it takes a very subtle skill to craft prose that will possess the reader enough to generate real discomfort. With interactive fiction, the challenge is sharply increased, as the pacing -- so important to managing the reader experience -- is subject to the flailing and detours of the player.

The authors seem to have an intuitive grasp of how to manage the pace through a series of gently-railroaded sequences. The illusion of player freedom is fairly good. It wasn't until I was finished that I realized how expertly I had been swept along. Within each sequence, the story world evolves through changes in the protagonist's mental state even if your actions fail to make the desired changes to the world's physical state. There was only one place where I stalled out for a bit.(Spoiler - click to show) It was at the ranch entrance, where, after discovering I couldn't walk to the house, I was at a loss about what to do next. It would probably be in keeping with the overall pacing to have the protagonist spontaneously notice the broken lock piece after 10 turns or so, instead of forcing multiple examinations of the gate.

The first time this game impressed me was in the opening sequence.(Spoiler - click to show) Though the introduction is somewhat confusing, and the transition to the first move felt somewhat forced, I was quite fascinated by the touch of "cinematography" (for lack of a better word) as the color scheme changed on the words "Your child is waiting." It was a very effective way, in conjunction with the change in punctuation, of emulating a cinematic match cut, and very clever use of the medium.

The writing quality is patchy. It needs some proofreading to weed out misused homonyms, run-on sentences, and the like. In addition, there are certain discrepancies in tone that disrupt the experience -- some out-of-place jokes that work against the mood-building, some points where the anger and violence of the protagonist are so over-the-top that it strains suspension of disbelief. However, the writing at its best shows flashes of real talent, as evidenced by the feeling of creepiness stealing over me in those places that seemed to have the most polish.

The overall implementation quality is quite good. The authors make excellent use of changing descriptions to keep you focused on the important part of the story. The biggest gaps I noticed are certain unimplemented details(Spoiler - click to show) (e.g. you can look at the house but not the stables from the entrance to the ranch) and the lack of hinting on the correct conversation model ("talk to", not "ask/tell").

Written for the 2009 IntroComp (where it placed first of three), it is by definition an unfinished work. As a result, I gave it an extra star for the potential that I sensed this work could have as a cleaned-up, full-length story.

The true test of an intro is whether you would be interested in continuing, and, in my case, the answer is a definite yes.

This extremely short work is an entry to "The Great IF Toaster Contest". See http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if/toaster-comp/ for details.

As the site explains:

"The rules are very simple: Make a toaster. The toaster should have a lever on it (to push down the bread) and a slide or dial to set the toastedness to. See how much of a game you can make out of it -- let your imagination run wild, as they say."

This piece seems to interpret the instructions as one might an assignment for a programming course. There is a toaster, and the author's imagination does seem to have run a little wild.

While it would get at least a passing grade in the imagined course, it is completely lacking in any of the things that would qualify it as interactive fiction. It is an interactive coding exercise, and nothing more.

It seems safe to assume that the author, Duncan Cross, was new to writing IF at the time this piece was created. I see that there are several other works by the same author available on IFDB, and I would certainly not shy away from trying out another one in the hopes that his talents have matured.