Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

There's a long-standing joke about Shakespeare being overrated: "It's just a bunch of moldy old quotes and worn-out cliche." The joke, of course, is that these "old quotes" and cliches originated with Shakespeare in the first place -- it's their genius that has caused them to echo through the ages and be endlessly recycled in lesser works.

Playing Christminster today, it can indeed seem overrated. It's very hard to appreciate how amazing it was in its original context for someone who wasn't there, and because the game had such an impact on the form -- its best ideas diffusing out to redefine the ideal -- most of its achievements are easy to take for granted, if they're even noticed at all.

I had tried this game several times in the past and always put it aside after 20 minutes or so of absolutely zero progress. This time I was determined to get somewhere so eventually broke down and used hints. It felt like pulling teeth to get to the first important solution even then; there are 10 separate hints regarding the critical initial puzzle (fully 22% of all hints provided by the game). When the nature of the puzzle became clear, I found myself swearing out loud.

I went on to finish the game, sometimes running into more brick walls that exacerbated my grumpiness, but in between bouts of that I started to notice some of the work's cleverest parts. After finishing, I prepared a somewhat scathing review enumerating the game's many deficits. It wasn't until I reviewed the varied commentary on the game available from its IFDB page -- and dissected its source for fact-checking purposes -- that I started to have a change of heart. I had expected to find discussion of its flaws, but instead I encountered praise for its innovations in terms of NPC design, puzzle fairness, and story integration.

Before continuing, I am forced to acknowledge is that this is a very well-developed work by the standards of its time, and that it hails from the earliest days of the hobbyist era and therefore long predates modern conventions of player-friendliness. This work set new standards for many aspects of the ideal model of IF, and it did so using a less capable toolset than we have today. STILL... if you're trying to enjoy this game in the here and now, then you may, as I did, find parts of it to be seriously obnoxious. Very probably, you will also, as I did, find parts of it to be uniquely enjoyable and impressive.

If the game has one major problem in its design, it's the overall lack of consistency. To me, consistency is the most essential element of puzzle design and the fundamental backstop of fairness; when an author is consistent, the player can learn his or her style and adjust thinking accordingly. It may take a few cycles of misreading clues to catch on, but usually after two or three one is close enough in mindset to make good progress. If the required perspective is not a natural one, it might be necessary to consult hints or walkthroughs a few more times on the way to completion, but I personally consider a little "spoilage" to be a good tradeoff when the alternative is abandoning the work. After all, puzzles have their own aesthetics, appreciation for them is subjective, and a work of interactive fiction can be judged on other qualities such as story, writing and deftness of implementation.

Christminster lacks the necessary consistency in many places, and it was infuriating whenever one of these bare spots brought progress crashing to a halt. The thing is: Upon further study many of what I thought were gaps in the implementation turned out to be just gaps in my understanding rooted in incorrect assumptions. These assumptions were ones that I had made for what I thought were good reasons, and it may be worthwhile to share why.

The prologue puzzle, which consists of getting into the college, is a study in miniature. In a recent Rosebush article, Victor Gijsbers illustrates the way that this puzzle embodies the spirit of exclusion animating the fictional setting of Biblioll, but I hesitate to give credence to the idea that its design was consciously intended to do so.

(Spoiler - click to show)The game does not exactly play fair here. While a survey of the environs quickly gives the experienced player the idea that it might be possible to get a feather from the parrot to use in obtaining the key, and the interaction takes pains to alert the unobservant player to the existence of a suitable missile, the coding of the two NPCs offers no similar cluing. Indeed, their algorithms give every indication of being simple, typical-for-the-era automatons engaged in cyclic activity, and little else.

Although the player is obviously invited to interact with them by their very presence, the NPCs' ASK/TELL conversation capability is sparsely implemented and doesn't add much to their apparent intelligence. After a few low hit-rate "conversations" there seems to be little else to do with them. To the extent that either shows any goal-directed behavior, it's that the constable always shows up and lingers indefinitely when you are in the vicinity of the window. The source code, graciously provided by author Gareth Rees, shows that this behavior is intentional, and it yields the strong impression that the constable is keeping a special eye on the PC as a possible source of trouble.

There is some slight hinting that the constable is interested in the magic show, but his obvious puzzle-relevant behavior implies that he prioritizes his watchman duties over casual entertainment. This, in combination with the street magician's explicit request for a small item for his trick -- along with the wholly irrelevant interaction he exhibits with any of the three smallish objects obviously available during the prologue (i.e. cobblestone, telegram and map) -- all provide consistent feedback that there is no significant progress to be had from them.

The single solution is for the PC to give her handbag to the street magician, who will refuse to use it in the trick but will provide a toffee in response. The toffee can be given to the constable, and the constable told to give it to the street magician, who will proceed to go through his routine with it before the constable eats it.

But... so what? Even if this interaction is discovered (most likely through brute force interaction), there is nothing in the prior behavior of the constable to suggest that he will simply forget all about his duties and remain transfixed while the PC goes about a bit of ballistic vandalism. The constable's part of the dialogue exhibits the same sort of detached chipperness that he has in all interactions with the protagonist, and there's nothing to signal any particular level of fascination on his part.

I'm not sure that this solution would ever have occurred to me, though I suppose I might have eventually discovered -- purely accidentally -- that a period exists in which the PC can act in the critical site unobserved. Perhaps this is a cultural difference; perhaps it would simply be unthinkable in Britain for a police officer to leave a peformance abruptly in order to prioritize doing his job. However, I agree with Gijsbers that this feels like an intentional (if not conscious) design element, which strikes me as an attempt to turn away the casual player.

Even worse, having secured the feather, the don -- who sleeps like the dead up to this point -- almost immediately wakes up after the PC takes his key. It's necessary to wait through another cycle of the street magician's patter to get to where he is asking for an object, then grab the key and pass it to the magician. The magician will cooperate in hiding it, and the don will wildly accuse you of having stolen it, resulting in the don's arrest and the removal of both the don and the constable from the scene.

This is a functionally separate obstacle, and coming back-to-back with the distraction puzzle it effectively negates any sense of victory that the player might have had in gaining the key. It almost feels like truculence on the game's part. Opening puzzles set a game's tone and style, and shape player expectations. In this case, my own expectations were shaped to expect maximum pointless friction, making finishing the game into an unappealing prospect.

I have thoroughly spoiled that puzzle because it is, it turns out, considerably out-of-character with respect to the majority of the other puzzles found in the game. (Spoiler - click to show)(... Though on reflection, there does seem to be a divide in the fairness level between puzzles that involve the environment and puzzles that involve NPCs; the latter frequently provide feedback to the player that seems misleading in nature. Perhaps that says something about the author's view of human nature?) Although there are a handful of what I would label last lousy points to be had, these are described by the author as optional, and the ending is in no way affected by missing them beyond showing a lower final score. (Note that although I am a completionist at heart, I would not recommend trying to suss out these last points at the game's command prompt. They are by far the least fair puzzles in the game, and they collectively would suggest a certain thread of perverse cruelty running through the design if they had any impact on the best ending.)

Once past the wicket gate, the game's greatest weakness is its firm commitment to offering only the mathematically minimum possible hinting. I observe that this approach seems to be typical of British games, but, in general, coupled with that style is the notion that the player should never be in a position to say that the necessary information was not presented. The high art of the mode is presenting the needed information in a manner so subtle that someone not paying close attention can easily miss it. Fair is fair, and in several cases I was simply outfoxed. However, in a couple of situations I think Rees provides too few hints to be fair for plot-critical challenges. These are:

1. The bible -- (Spoiler - click to show) Here I'm talking about both the illuminated copy found in the Chapel and the standard King James version that can be found in the Library. Obtaining the latter is one of the unfair last lousy point puzzles: The player is expected to look up 'God' in the card index to find it, and this is the only way to obtain the item. (This is an index of surnames, mind you, and variants that one might expect based on actual names for the deity are not found.) Comparison of a critical passage of the KJV to the illuminated copy's version will give the linguistically-oriented player an indirect clue about a key alchemical ingredient. Lacking the ability to read Latin -- something that presents no real obstacle in the era of online translators but required an increasingly-rare classical education at the time of the game's release -- the player must get along with some knowledge of root words to compare the English version and notice the extra phrase in the illuminated version. As a last-ditch option, one can theoretically just notice the word 'myrrheum' and assume it means myrrh, but the first time this is encountered the player is unlikely to know that myrrh can be found in the game and is probably unmotivated to try deciphering each incomprehensible word individually. Later, at the point at which the player is most likely to want to revisit the passage in-game, it's gated by a second aggravating puzzle involving the beekeeper's veil. (The problem here stems from the treatment of hat and veil as a single object in the description text, i.e. responding identically to both >X HAT and >X VEIL. Per modern conventions, this generally means that the object in question is atomic and indivisible, but I don't know how consistently that was the case in the mid-1990s. Without assuming malice, I'll just note that it's very much a "gotcha" for the player of today.)

2. The student and the professor -- (Spoiler - click to show)On first encountering this NPC, you'll see the following: "'You must help me to find my parrot,' pleads Edward. 'Just tell me which way I should go.'" In obeying your directional instructions, it's implied that he is for some reason willing to submit to your authority temporarily, but he is prone to wander off immediately after going any direction that you give. Telling him to wait or stop doesn't seem to do anything. He will respond to only a few non-movement commands, and in only one case will he actually perform the action. It's made abundantly clear that he has no desire to see Bungay, even blanching should they happen to cross paths in the aftermath of the scene in Malcolm's room, and it's also made clear that Bungay keeps his door locked and wants no visitors. It really seems to require a latent desire to punish the hapless student to even conceive of the goal of forcing him to his "supervision," since it's not possible to know that the only method of entering the gardens is through Bungay's quarters. Even after having read the solution in the walkthrough, I was grinding my teeth in annoyance trying to shepherd Edward across the map and get the timing right to trigger their encounter -- a process made even more gratuitously difficult by the need to not be there when Bungay opens his door. It turns out that >EDWARD, FOLLOW ME does wonders to smooth this process -- I just didn't guess that he would be capable of responding, and I hadn't read the introductory help text that uses the >FOLLOW verb as an example. Most importantly, there does not appear to be any way to know that Bungay's door will be unlocked after inviting in the student; I double-checked, and there is not even the "negative information" cue of there being a different sound (e.g. minus the locking action) when the professor closes his door. Parked squarely on the critical path for the game, this sequence is even more off-putting than the prologue. Further, the method for gaining access to the desk drawer, an optional puzzle yielding a pair of last lousy points, requires moving the desk. Moving desks is a pretty noisy activity -- obviously not something to do when trying to be stealthy, as the PC well knows -- and doing so gives no indication that the drawer is now accessible. Only inspecting the drawer from within the gap will reveal the possibility.

Those aren't the only problematic points in the work, but they are the ones that caused me the most grief. Every snag that I encountered arose from either a complete absence of hinting (or hinting so miniscule as to blend in with other insignificant text) or implementation that provides no relevant feedback (or sometimes misleading feedback). I won't nitpick here, but my suggestion to prospective players would be to set a time limit in advance for being stuck, and to consult the hints whenever that limit is reached; this will give you a chance to experience the best parts of the game without undergoing too much frustration.

I suppose the laundry list of complaints above may seem hard to reconcile with my ostensibly positive attitude about the game. The thing is: Christminster has highs to match its lows. Rees shows in several places that he can craft subtle, inventive and unique puzzles whose solutions are pure delights to discover and for which the hinting is unquestionably fair. I'm intentionally going to say nothing about these gems, because I want you, the reader, to be able to discover and experience them without prejudice.

To explain more fully: I realize that it's tremendously unjust to criticize Rees for not solving every problem that plagued the old school style in one stroke. This game incorporates many features that may well be firsts for the form: automatic opening of doors (which required modification of the Standard Library), use of narrative time as opposed to clock time in a story spanning both day and night, reasonably intelligent "talking" NPCs with whom realistic cooperation is necessary to solve puzzles, objects used as part of the solution to multiple puzzles, alternate solutions to some key puzzles, and more. Having inspected the solid and well-organized source code, it appears that most of what I'm calling shortcomings could be addressed by either trivial or very modest effort. I'm mostly in agreement with Jim Kaplan's review, and I think he's right that with such minor adjustments in place Christminster would be very well-regarded were it to be released for the first time today.

Though this game often falls short of my idea of real fun when considered as a whole, there is much to admire in the best craft on display, and even its flaws offer pointed lessons in what to avoid (as well as opportunities to imagine alternatives). It is indisputably worth studying as part of a review of the history and evolution of the form, and any player willing to accept its contrasts with respect to modern ideas of fairness is sure to have an enjoyable experience. I'm torn between wanting to give it 3 stars for how it plays by modern standards and 4 stars for how prominently it stands out in the context of its original release. I'm going with the latter on the basis of its substantial impact on the form; if nothing else, this is a work to reckon with.

Having been recently alerted to this remake/adaptation, I moved its inspiration up on my to-play list, and as soon as I had finished that, I loaded this up to compare.

This game isn't really interactive fiction, but it's certainly IF-adjacent, and the fact that it exists at all is pretty awesome. I have nothing but admiration for the skill and determination shown in carrying this idea through from conception to a finished game. Substantial thought was invested in how to translate the original work's mood and mechanics to a different format, and it's clear that the author had a genuine love for Veeder's source material. Thank you to Lance Campbell for sharing this, and thank you Ryan Veeder for supporting the effort.

I'm not sure how well this version stands up when considered purely on its own. Some of the nuance of the original's atmospheric writing is lost in the graphical interpretation, and the not-quite-faux grittiness that makes up the emotional backbone of the original doesn't quite come through. On the other hand, there are many novel bits here that hew closely to the original's dialog and descriptive style, and there are a few touches (like the ending credits sequence) that wouldn't be possible with pure text. There's the hint of a secret side quest of some sort -- (Spoiler - click to show)I found an item that seemed like it was supposed to be part of something bigger, but if so I never found the other parts that went with it. If you know the secret, please provide some clues by comment!

As a reminder, 3 stars counts as "good" in my book, and I would definitely recommend this game to anyone that enjoyed the original Mud Warriors. Both can be played in the time that would normally be spent on a single comp-sized work.

Monopoly is one of the most popular games in American history. There's something telling about modern culture's inattention to history in the fact that many years passed between when I was first introduced to the game as an enjoyable pastime and my discovery that the game's designer intended it to be an object lesson-in-action of the inherent flaws in capitalism as an econonomic system.

If one actually plays Monopoly according to the rules as written, it is inevitable that from among a group of players all starting on an objectively even playing field only one will emerge as the sum holder of all wealth in the model universe. That result is simply baked into the system -- there's no avoiding it, and that's what playing Monopoly is supposed to teach the player. It also teaches various skills related to improving the chances of being the player who comes out on top, though the nature of the game ensures that there's never any real certainty until late in the trajectory of a particular play session.

Social Democracy: An Alternate History feels very much like Monopoly, both in that it plays like a board game and that it has a lesson to teach. Here the lesson seems to be about the essential fragility of democracy-like government and the functional priority of economic concerns in determining societal stability. You play the animus of the SPD, a "moderate" and "socialist" party that, despite a plurality of popular support at the outset, seems inevitably doomed to lose as the country suffers a series of economic and political shocks.

I've only played Social Democracy a few times, on normal difficulty. As other reviewers note, the simulation feels well-grounded in historical research -- I have learned a surprising amount about the Weimar era just from following up on key people and events online, and the work presents an extensive bibliography that invites more serious study. Needless to say, this work does not present the History Channel style of faux history that usually paints Hitler's rise as the result of some mysterious magical power over the German people; instead it shows the confluence of many trends in interwar history -- including the history of the SPD itself -- and how they shape both the choices available and the consequences of each decision.

As with Monopoly, both strategic choices and lucky breaks compound over the course of time. As the political pressure builds, the player will inevitably come to the point where the party's mode of survival is threatened. The resolution of that threat can take various forms, each imposing tradeoffs that will shape the range of viable strategies available in later parts. Will you sponsor strong socialist approaches involving state control of the means of production and the pruning of private wealth? OK, but then the "conservative" elements of the "centrist" coalition will become enemies, and support from the communist party is likely to be restrained at best. Will you throw in with the right wingers in an attempt to prevent the far right from gaining a foothold? OK, but then you will soon find yourself an ineffectual puppet supporting policies that are in direct opposition to your base's desires, and they will react accordingly. Will you stick to your historically "middle ground" position and try to ride out the storm? OK, but you will in all likelihood find the storm to be stronger than you anticipated and your steersman skills to be insufficient to come through intact.

These are just a few of the trajectories supported by the game's system. The list of achievements and various clumps of related cards suggest that there are many more. I'm looking forward to trying quite a few of them, and seeing what unconventional strategies are supported by the system that author Autumn Chen has created. Mike Russo's comparison to one of Paradox Entertainment's grand strategy games is apt, and if you like that sort of thing then you won't want to miss this. For those looking for something more directly comparable, Chen has also just released a similar treatment of the Russian Revolution.

While I don't personally think this game falls under the label of "interactive fiction," it does fit under the broader umbrella I assign to the phrase "text games." It's worth emphasizing that the label is secondary to the thing itself, and that this thing, whatever you choose to call it, is well worth your time. I'm giving it a rare 5-star rating in recognition of its singular value as edutainment; it is surely the apex of that category for works found on IFDB.

Given the release date, slapdash cover image and minimal blurb, my first thought was that this game was an April Fool's joke, or possibly malware. It does not appear to be malware.

This unusual work puts the player in the position of an IT support worker in a nebulous corporate setting. The strange tone and disconnected gameplay makes it seem more like a half-written training tool instead of something intended as entertainment. Its concise but bland language, heavy on bullet points, smacks of LLM-generated text.

As far as plot goes, the action is split into four phases. In the first phase, the PC is given a stack of problem reports for which prioritization must be assigned. Once this is done, the PC must investigate a particular scenario more closely. In the third phase, correction of the problem must be accomplished. The fourth phase seems intended to be a kind of team review with a supervisor.

From what I can tell, the required interactions are highly scripted and are basically spelled out in each section. Starting in phase 3, cause and effect start to break down, because in order to advance it seems necessary to take an action not called for based on other information. Phase 4 is quite strange, seeming to indicate that the exercise went both poorly and well at the same time.

Other than idle curiosity, there doesn't seem to be much reason to interact with this work unless you want to be exposed to a smattering of terms and processes relevant to corporate IT support. Although this work meets the minimum functionality that would normally qualify it for at least two stars by my rubric, I still think most people are better off avoiding it entirely.