Reviews by OtisTDog

Anyone interested in the history of interactive fiction will sooner or later come across references to this relatively famous piece from the "dark ages" of the genre, i.e. the period after the collapse of the commercial market and before the "renaissance" triggered by Graham Nelson's release of Inform 6 and the publication of the Inform Designer's Manual, 4th edition. In this period, the most prominent tools available to would-be authors were TADS 2, a C-like language of considerable power, and AGT, a less flexible and capable system designed to be easier to use for non-programmers.

Critically, the author of AGT sponsored contests (with at least the first prize paying money) for the best game written in the system, which surely served to spur the completion of many works and began the tradition later continued by the annual IFComp. Shades of Gray is among the works submitted to these AGT contests, and it won in the year that it was submitted. It was constructed by a group of seven disparate authors, one of whom was Judith Pintar, author of the well-regarded CosmoServe. Notably, the seven contributors cooperated exclusively through contact via the CompuServe platform, to which they all subscribed.

Based on the final result, it's not clear that there was much in the way of overarching design concept. As others have noted, the game's separately-developed segments vary in quality, but overall they are well-implemented by the standards of the time, and I must say that this was the highest level of command parsing quality that I have ever encountered in an AGT game. (AGT parsing is quite limited compared to TADS or Inform, based on word-for-word pattern matching instead of attempts to identify parts of speech. This creates a much higher burden on the author to ensure smooth interaction, and it also reduces the transferability of learning about what counts as proper interaction. For example, when trying to use a shovel -- of which there are a surprising number in this game -- the player will find that the correct syntax changes across different segments, reflecting each contributing author's own preferences.) In general, the quality of the interaction seems to go up as one progresses through the game, with its disjointed (and somewhat irritating) opening giving way to large portions of relatively smooth sailing.

What the work lacks is any sense of true coherence. While individual aspects can be picked out as high points for quality of implementation (e.g. the (Spoiler - click to show)tarot reading scene that is the structural backbone of the first half of the middle game) or writing (e.g. the various interactions with (Spoiler - click to show)spirits from voodoo mythology that are the backbone of the second half), the narrative is something of a mess -- layers of unmotivated and unedifying twists abruptly transform the story from gothic horror to lazy psychological drama to magical realism to Civil War survival story to medieval adventure tale to cheap political thriller. It's a ride that keeps the player guessing, which keeps up interest, but looking back from the end of it the question becomes: Why?

The title suggests that the theme is intended to be the difficulty of achieving strong moral clarity in the messy real world, but the gameplay does little to support this. The most direct treatment is in the climax scene, in which the protagonist must choose between (Spoiler - click to show)delivering some incriminating documents to either those incriminated by them and (Spoiler - click to show) delivering those documents to members of a law enforcement agency. This is... insufficient. As a clever person to whom I described the plot quipped: "Nothing says 'shades of gray' like a binary choice!" To the extent that this choice presents any kind of quandary to the player requiring thoughtful reflection, the game subsequently undermines itself by assigning one more point to (Spoiler - click to show)turning the evidence over to the CIA assassins threatened by it than (Spoiler - click to show)handing it over to the FBI, whose interest in it may be more about inter-bureaucratic infighting than bringing the conspirators to justice, which implicitly makes the former the "right" choice after all. (To be fair, the denouement section that describes the long-term effects of various events does not seem to put its thumb on the scales this way, and the various interludes of history supernaturally revealed to the protagonist present multiple perspectives... but in the long run that just makes the score's coded commentary less excusable.)

Other aspects of the game relate only weakly to the supposed theme. Robin Hood is a good guy fighting against abuse of power! No wait, he's a forest-dwelling thief and thug who must be punished for breaking the law! (I didn't bother to use spoiler tags for those because the two segments involved seem ultimately irrelevant to the main plot.) The protagonist shouldn't feel bad about (Spoiler - click to show)his father's death; he was just a kid, and it was an accident! (That's ultimately irrelevant, too.) It's probably OK that the protagonist (Spoiler - click to show)has a dalliance with a voodoo love goddess; it was a rare honor, and she'll (Spoiler - click to show)grant protection to him and his (alleged) true love forever after. I get the distinct impression that there were some last-minute adjustments made after the title was selected, in an attempt to better justify it.

Although there are frequent guess-the-verb and guess-the-syntax issues (as is typical for the era and the development system), these are offset by the very good integrated hint system, to which I found myself resorting frequently when my patience wore thin. Hints are graduated, so it's not necessary to completely spoil the puzzles in order to get help, but I recommend that the modern player make liberal use of them -- for the most part, the obstacles that I used them to bypass were not the type likely to be considered as rewarding to overcome unaided. I also strongly recommend that any player reaching the voodoo-themed jungle section reach for David Welbourn's excellent map of the area (available in the download links) -- this whole zone is a nasty and pointless old-school maze, and the game doesn't even have the good graces to provide sufficient objects to use as markers. On top of that, two rooms that are different enough from the others to not seem to need markers both have identical descriptions but are, in fact, different -- a design choice that comes across as pure spite. The hour that I spent trying to navigate the maze "properly" was completely wasted time. (The author of this section most definitely anticipated the difficulty being created; there are three tone-breaking "comic" cameos of other people wandering through that zone that are encountered if one spends enough time there.)

On the whole, I didn't find much to recommend about this piece. It does remain historically significant, and it clearly stands out from the pack when gauged against its contemporaries, but these qualities do more to justify its place as an exhibit in the museum of the history of interactive fiction than they do to earn it a place in the library of classic works worth playing today. One can point to it as an early example of collaboration-at-scale such as would later produce Cragne Manor or note surprising similarities between one of its segments and Adam Cadre's Shrapnel, but if one is not interested in deliberately evaluating it within its historical context, there is little reason to spend the time playing it.

The original Pascal's Wager is a "proof" that following the Christian faith is a rational thing to do. It is a fundamentally flawed and reductionist approach to a major philosophical question, which tries to make an arithmetic problem out of concepts that do not translate well into quantitative terms. Put simply, it is: "If there's any chance at all that God is real, then worshipping him is the smart thing to do, since going to heaven is infinitely rewarding."

This is not an argument that should be taken very seriously. Even granting its conceptual framework, the god in question is hypothesized to be omniscient and not particularly well-disposed toward hypocrites. It's also questionable whether "infinity" is a valid term to use in an expected reward calculation, or that the probability of a god's existence can be meaningfully established.

Pascal's Wager, the game, presents itself as an extension and criticism of Pascal's Wager, the thought experiment; specifically, it challenges Pascal's implicit assertion that the Christian God's existence (P) or non-existence (not-P) together cover the full range of relevant possibilities. This is a pretty good concept, and a pretty good hook -- the premise creates (as Emily Short's review puts it) "an invitation to explore or express one's own personal morality through the player character, by choosing and acting out an alignment." However, this work makes no attempt to grapple with the deep metaphysical questions inherent in its premise and instead seems to target the very concepts of religion and morality themselves.

Pascal's Wager treats each of its six chosen religions equally negatively in that every one of them is conveyed as shallow and simplistic farce. Want to be a good little worshipper of Hanuman, the "Hindi god of strength and fitness?" (Spoiler - click to show)Disobey your parents and hit a baseball! Join a sports team instead of doing homework! Escape from prison on a rowboat to prove you are strong! How about a worshipper of Bacchus, the "Roman god of intoxication?" (Spoiler - click to show)Pop a Valium instead of caring for your infant sibling! Smoke a joint plucked from a urinal instead of doing homework! Inject yourself with an overdose of morphine instead of bothering to escape from prison! These are laughable misrepresentations of what are (or were) serious beliefs for many people, and the treatment of other religions is no better.

The ludicrous and over-the-top portrayal of these faiths may be intended to be humor. It does not strike me as funny. It seems mean-spirited ("mean" in the senses of both "cruel" and "petty") and anti-human. Perhaps the worst part is that its mockery is so lazy -- I learned more about several of the religions portrayed in a half-hour's reading on Wikipedia than the author seems to have ever researched in the course of writing this piece. (For example, in some traditions the infant Hanuman mistook the sun for a fruit and tried to eat it -- a metaphor that seems apt to mention in this context.)

Emily Short's very evenhanded review suggests that this game has only minor flaws. In my opinion, it has major flaws. It verges right on the cusp of 1-star territory for me, but I am forced to recognize that programming it was not a trivial effort, and -- again -- as a concept, the premise is solid. To the extent that I would recommend this game, it would be as a warning to would-be authors about the amount of work required to even begin to fulfill the expectations set by such an ambitious premise, and the disastrous outcome certain to result from massively underestimating the scale of one's chosen subject.

OK, so you're a police officer. A cross-dressing police officer who likes the styles of the 60s. (And a werewolf, but that's not important.) And you have a sidekick: the creepy, giggling pyromaniac Donald McRonald, who is technically not a trademark violation. And you have a gun, which: "Sometimes you shoot folks with it, other times you just point it at folks." And a boa -- the constrictor sort, but that's really more of a deadly prank played by your fellow police officers than anything you can use.

And you are investigating a disturbance at the cemetery. A cemetery where the locals buried all the members of an "evil circus" that once terrorized the town, an incursion handily repelled by the trigger-happy constabulary to which you belong. And there are jelly doughnuts.

So... this is the kind of situation that, as a player, one has to embrace wholeheartedly in order to get any enjoyment out of the game. If the wacky, goofy, random and bizarre doesn't amuse you, then you may find yourself blinking in incomprehension at this enthusiastically off-beat work by J. J. Guest, noted author of To Hell in a Hamper. Personally, I found it to be about 90% amusing. There were some wrong notes that didn't jibe with my own sense of humor, but it was generally an entertaining and engaging short play experience. (Note that I played the expanded Inform 7 version, not the original ADRIFT version.)

However, I got really, really stuck. A lot. So much was going on in terms of joke delivery that it was almost hard to pay attention to what serves as the plot on a mechanical basis. Implementation is very spare with respect to NPC interactions, many of which are required to advance the game. With so many generic negative responses to various attempts, the modern player is quickly trained to stop trying -- it takes a concerted old-school style brute force approach to discover certain possibilities(Spoiler - click to show). I'm thinking specifically here of the gorilla, which must be threatened for no good reason to obtain the cigar, and the fact that escaping the first encounter with the main villain can only happen at a certain point. This results in guess-the-verb situations that are always offputting in such an otherwise polished work, and the very constrained implementation of interactions leaves little to do by way of experimentation when one doesn't have a clear idea of what to do next. (Although there is a hint system, it's very vague and, as MathBrush notes, occasionally non-functional.)

The thing that impressed me the most about this game was the soundtrack. Guest assembled an interesting ambient score from various bits of free-to-use music and sound effects, and the game cycles through them over time. (It's actually one giant 17 1/2 minute track; the length keeps the repetition below the threshold of obvious notice.) The soundtrack plays extremely smoothly, and unlike many attempts at background music which I've encountered, this one does not begin to grate in short order. In fact, rather than searching for a way to turn it off, I found myself turning it back on whenever it was automatically stopped by an >UNDO command.

This work gets high marks as a concept, but the execution falls a little short of what it needs in order to be truly recommendable to the general public or the novice. For those who like "weird" humor, there is plenty to like about it as is, and for those who don't, well... Guest provides occasional laughworthy quips that don't rely on weirdness at all. (Example: "For the record: Alligator breath smells like people who wondered what alligator breath smells like.") I'm putting it in the "good, not great" category, which means I think it's worth taking the time to play and study, and I would gladly revisit an updated version.

Mother Loose is one of those games that was developed as a labor of love and then subsequently released to the world. Its public debut was via IF Comp 1998, only the fourth such competition at the time, where it placed 6th of 27. This first effort by author Irene Callaci is now largely forgotten -- its more subtle charms lost in the glare of the multiple novae (Anchorhead, Spider and Web and Photopia) that dominated the public's attention in that year.

Ms. Callaci seems to have been something of a natural in producing interactive fiction. For a first effort, especially one that the author claims was produced while learning not just Inform 6 but object-oriented programming in general, Mother Loose is a remarkably high-quality result. It has a rich level of object implementation that encourages exploration and delivers plenty of vividly descriptive prose but which nonetheless does an excellent job of focusing the player's attention on those few things that are important. It makes use of a compass display in the status bar and has a built-in menu supplying author credits, an introduction to playing IF and in-game hints. There were essentially no bugs at the coding level, and I don't recall any misspellings or typos in the text.

This work includes several NPCs reflecting various levels of programming effort. Taken together, they are practically a guided tour of the major implementation styles, ranging from the practically inert and lifeless (a lamb) to the mute and command-ignoring flavor element (a kitten) to the comic relief chatterbox (a wolf) to the well-crafted exposition vending machine (an egg) to something occasionally engaging in life-like social interactions (a little girl). Ms. Callaci's successful efforts here were recognized; this work was nominated for both Best Individual NPC and Best NPCs in the 1998 XYZZY Awards.

Puzzle implementation is by contrast much sparer. There are only handful of obstacles in the game's dozen or so rooms. However, these have multiple solutions, and the greater difficulty in solving them comes from minor guess-the-verb issues rather than from deducing what must be done. (Of particular note here is one solution to a puzzle involving the well: (Spoiler - click to show)If you try to communicate with the stuck cat, be aware that it does not understand generic commands; one can only speak to it like a real cat. Commands that specifically work include (Spoiler - click to show)>SAY HERE KITTY or >CAT, COME OUT.)

The game's greatest innovation is the way that it gently mocks standard IF tropes by categorizing all significant PC actions as either naughty or nice. It's quite funny how certain actions yield both points and disapproving remarks. In addition to the running commentary provided by the narrator, the player's choices become significant at the end of the game. It's clear that the author intended the game to be enjoyable either way, and it definitely adds some richness to the limited scenario -- I couldn't resist replaying it to try out both paths.

A minor but still interesting novelty was the way that certain NPCs seem to "take over" some of the parser's responses when they are around. Where a command like >ASCEND TREE will normally result in a message about an unrecognized verb, when the wolf is present, the game instead responds "'Huh?' The wolf raises an eyebrow." This type of interaction does not seem to have much function and may be only a side-effect of the implementation of one particular puzzle, but it has a subtle though definite effect, reorienting the player's attention to the NPCs' presence in response to fruitless experimentation.

If there is a notable weakness to this game, it's that it takes some poking around to figure out what kind of game this will be and what kinds of goals are suitable. If one lacks the old school sensibility of wanting to solve puzzles just because they're there, it would be easy to walk around for a while and then give up in frustration. (This is especially true in light of the inclusion of several prominent objects without much apparent function. Some of these may be simple flavor elements, but others suggest the leftovers of abandoned lines of development.)

With a little guidance, this work is a very good introduction to IF for children. Even without guidance, the built-in hints will probably be enough, if they are necessary at all. Modern kids may need to be introduced to the very idea of nursery rhymes before any of it starts to make sense, but, as others have noted, nothing about the gameplay requires any deep knowledge of them in order to make progress. The more kids introduced to interactive fiction early, the more players there will be in the future, and games like this are essential to creating a positive impression of the art form in young readers.

A Flustered Duck starts out seeming promising enough: The PC, a downtrodden pig-boy working on the farm of the tyrannical Granny Grabby, has somehow scrimped and saved enough to finally buy the diamond ring that he needs to propose to the girl of his dreams -- but, he is thwarted in his designs when the farm's duck, a favorite of Granny's, ingests the ring during an unlikely accident.

It's a fanciful setup, vaguely remniscent of Lost Pig, and after 50 moves or so (enough to get out of the prologue and off the farm), I was well-primed for the series of mildly-comic obstacles that would surely stand between the protagonist and his goal. What I was not prepared for was being plunged into a nonsensical world of odd vignettes connected only by the most tenuous moon logic.

I don't really have a problem with the classic "pastiche" style of Adventure and the Infocom canon. Nor am I opposed to humor based on silliness. This world, however, just fundamentally didn't make sense, often veering past silly to a level of weirdness that was so unexpected as to be disconcerting. I and the two people with whom I was playing lost our ability to suspend disbelief within a few hundred moves, but we persevered in order to give the game a fair chance to recover.

Unfortunately, it never did. Though we did finish the game, we did so only after receiving plentiful help from the integrated hint system, which is context-sensitive and well-implemented. There was no occasion on which we regretted having consulted it. Even after having run the gauntlet of puzzles, all three of us were fairly horrified by the actual retrieval of the ring -- instead of being triumphant this moment was more than a little repugnant, as it involved (Spoiler - click to show)hacking into the duck with a knife and pulling the gore-covered ring from its torso. Although this act has no lasting physical consequences due to a magical countermeasure, I think the experience would leave the duck in a state better described as "traumatized" than as merely "flustered." After delivering the ring and mentally reviewing the activities of the PC that day, I cannot say that I was left thinking that he and his love interest would share a happy future, which rendered the end unsatisfying.

On a technical front, this piece was put together pretty well. Aside from a scoring bug (explained below), the only other one that stands out is a repeated message on picking something up (Spoiler - click to show)(the television) that doesn't make sense after the first time. The prose is very serviceable, and I can't recall any typographical errors.

Although this game didn't work for the three of us, your mileage may vary. For the edification of would-be authors and to advise potential players, following are some specific gripes that we had with the game. Many of these are generic gripes against the "very old school" style, but I will still call them out here because the introduction of this game falsely suggests the more player-friendly style of later eras.

(Spoiler - click to show)
1. Information given about the observable environment is deliberately incomplete. Objects in plain sight of the PC (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. a penny on a table) go unmentioned unless the supporter on which they sit is examined. In some cases, objects in unobstructed view must be located with specific >EXAMINE commands. In an early and egregious case, even the presence of objects comparable in size to the PC (Spoiler - click to show)(furniture objects in the living room, including the penny-concealing table) are omitted from the initial description of a room.

2. Numerous objects are hidden inside or under objects described vaguely, often things whose existence and/or reason for being in that location are unhinted. While >EXAMINE and >SEARCH are generally equivalent, in at least one case (Spoiler - click to show)(berries on some bushes), >SEARCH gives no indication of a critical object's presence while >EXAMINE does.

3. The game implements a novel mechanic in which, upon taking an object for the first time, it is automatically examined... if it has not yet been examined. This is a neat idea, but it does not work well for a particular object (Spoiler - click to show)(a surfboard), which provides more information when examined while holding it. This critical extra information is easy to miss as a result. The effect is particularly off-putting in the context of a game including many objects that serve no specific purpose.

4. The game implements a hold-all object, but the logic controlling automatic shuffling of objects into it has faults, such that sometimes the object-juggling fails, causing the intended action to fail. It's not clear whether that's due to a bug affecting the "player's holdall" type of object in Inform 7 5U92 or due to an issue with custom code. While this would normally be a minor annoyance, this bug interacts with another bug related to scoring (Spoiler - click to show)(a point awarded for putting the poodle into the correct object so that it can be smuggled past its owner), such that the correct command will result in no score increase the second time it is tried. The combination of bugs creates an unintentional (and extremely irksome) last lousy point scenario.

5. Some actions must be repeated multiple times in order to trigger progress, even though the response to earlier attempts are failure messages that logically discourage additional attempts. This is particularly problematic in the game's opening vignette, in which the PC must try to >CATCH DUCK no less than four times to cause it to fly away, which allows the PC to leave the farm. (This was, incidentally, the first circumstance prompting use of hints -- an ill omen.)

6. In one miniature scene, the PC must select one of several items being offered by an NPC (Spoiler - click to show)(the gnome wizard). In reality, only one of the items can actually be selected, though choosing an "incorrect" one results in what seems to be a YES/NO prompt to confirm the choice. There doesn't seem to be any gameplay purpose to the frustration created for the player here; the scene would work just as well if the NPC just handed over the only allowable item.

From time to time, Andrew Plotkin has written works that are more about demonstrating what is possible from a technology standpoint than they are about delivering great stories. Lists and Lists is one of this type, and it certainly makes a deep impression when one finds oneself interacting with a Scheme interpreter instead of a normal command prompt.

The provided plot is the flimsiest excuse for presenting a test of programming skill in a language that few people are likely to be familiar with. The difficulty curve of the challenges is not linear, and it increases sharply toward the end of the series.

I don't normally recommend IF that is purely about the logic puzzles, but this piece is such a unique achievement that I think it's a must-see for anyone interested in IF as a whole. Arguably, at its core it is not so much IF as it is INF (Interactive Non-Fiction). Equally arguably, it is a stand-out example of puzzle design featuring a consistent, discoverable logical framework with very fair hinting and considerable challenge -- though I think any such argument would be disingenuous because none of Plotkin's genuine games are so derivative of the work of others. In any case, it is worth reviewing as a notable experiment, and as a bonus you'll learn something about an historically-significant programming language!

(Note: My scoring rubric implies that this work should earn a five-star score on the basis of its introduction an entirely new technique. However, although it was enjoyable and remarkable, I can't honestly say that it feels like a proper game to me, nor do I think it was truly intended to be thought of as one.)

After finishing this game, I was surprised to learn that it placed a respectable 4th of 27 entries in the 2007 IF Comp. This is remarkable -- it clearly demonstrates how much higher the average quality of comp entries has climbed over the course of the last decade and a half.

This game is very competently programmed in Inform 6 and presented no bugs during various playthroughs. The writing is serviceable, and I noticed only a handful of typographical errors (all of which were misplaced homonyms). The story, however, is a mish-mash of unrelated elements that create essentially no synergy.

In terms of "marketing materials," the game patterns itself after the Infocom style -- and especially after Planetfall. As with that game, feelies include a military service ID card and various documents relevant to the PC's new career. The feelies also imply that this game takes place in the same universe as that commercial-era classic, with the player character being the sibling of Planetfall's recently-enlisted Ensign Seventh Class who serves aboard the S.P.S. Feinstein. The most innovative item among the feelies of Across the Stars was the sample transcript, which covers the player character's experience when first joining the crew of the ship aboard which the story begins. (This is a departure from Infocom's practice, which presented sample transcripts from stories that were similar but unrelated.) The ostensible background provided by the feelies is wholly irrelevant to actual gameplay, though, and they can be skipped without losing anything of value.

The game itself is difficult to describe, because it mixes several elements and styles without committing to any of them enough to warrant a strong categorization. The basic segments of the plot are as follows: 1) (Spoiler - click to show)sabotage your ship while avoiding the occasional search by pirates who have captured the rest of the crew, 2) (Spoiler - click to show)explore an ancient temple from an alien culture to learn about their culture and history, 3) (Spoiler - click to show)defeat some dangerous creatures and rescue an NPC, 4) (Spoiler - click to show)get to the NPC's ship and activate its emergency beacon so that you can both be rescued. One or two of these segments might have served as the whole plot of a modern comp game; here, each is treated so breezily that it feels like four half-stories and zero complete ones.

In terms of richness of setting, most of it is found in plot segment 2, which -- oddly -- seems almost wholly optional. In fact, the IFDB-linked walkthrough (which seems to have been for an earlier version of the game) pretty much skips this part. It appears that much of it was grafted on later, and complications to the main plot added to require engagement with these new pieces.

If this was the development strategy, then it is easiest to explain the game's shortcomings as simply the result of it not reflecting any integrated vision of a whole. However, this is a fatal flaw, because in its final form the plot basically requires the player character to (Spoiler - click to show)secure the primary magical artifact of an ancient world religion solely in order to use it as a light source!

At first I thought that this aspect of gameplay was the result of the authors allowing plenty of freedom in the path that the player takes through the game, such that being a good guy is optional. I would have respected that, but review of the source code suggests that this is part of the critical path to reaching the end. I found the overall experience to be somewhat distasteful.

The authors themselves seemed to have trouble coming to grips with the game as a whole; the subtitle of "the Ralckor Incident" seems an odd choice, as the subtitular creature really only figures prominently into plot segment 3. If tasked with naming the game, I might suggest (Spoiler - click to show)"the Taking of the Supalace" (segment 1) or (Spoiler - click to show)"Prophecy of the Protector" (segment 2) or even (Spoiler - click to show)"Escape from Brakis VI" (segment 4). The pacing and structure of the game made it seem to me as though the proposed segment 2 title would fit best, but given the resolution of that segment it would really only do so in an ironic manner.

Playing this game may still be worthwhile as an exercise for the would-be author, because on the local scale of individual rooms, objects and actions there is much to admire about this work. I would not really recommend it to players as entertainment, however. If you want action-adventure, a rich fictional history with layers of meaningful symbolism, engaging and purposeful NPCs, and epic quests to save a world, then you will likely be disappointed by this work that seems to offer all of these things but ends up delivering none.

[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. If you're the kind of person who is preoccupied by the question of how a horse can pick up a coconut, then... well, I would normally say not to play this game, but, in fact, the existing scientific sample (N=2, from ferkung's and Rovarsson's reviews) suggests that you will still enjoy this game.

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.

Another Earth, Another Sky, the second installment of the popular Earth and Sky series, is a significant step up from its predecessor in terms of technical sophistication. Object implementation is complete but not very deep, matching a relatively spare descriptive style for locations. What stands out most is the "situational implementation" -- the game's bug-free logic is prepared for a wide variety of actions that the player character (Earth) might take, or might ask the key NPC (Sky) to do.

This attention to scenario detail was atypical at the time, and the game was exceptionally well-received. Not only did it win the 2002 IF Comp, it received 2nd place in the comp's Miss Congeniality rankings and was later nominated for five XYZZY awards (winning only Best Use of Medium). This last is almost certainly due to the use of comic-book style graphical elements (title cards and onomatopoeia-based "sound effects"), an affordance of the Glulx virtual machine that was still little-used at the time.

Unlike the first installment, which sweeps the player along quite quickly, this episode has a slower and more contemplative pace. The bulk of the action occurs in three parts: (Spoiler - click to show)a short investigation at an abandoned cabin, a much longer investigation on an unusual artificial planetoid, and a brief climax and denouement. The second portion will take up the bulk of the playtime, consisting of one long puzzle about gaining access to the endgame. The scenario is designed such that you must explore the entire area to find the pieces that you need, creating a "travelogue" type of experience that encourages you experience the sights, sounds and smells of the various geographical sections. Sprinkled through this are various optional discoveries that let the thorough player unravel the mystery that serves as a plot, but a full explanation will be provided before the cliffhanger ending in any case.

The game does not stand very well on its own, since the plot continues the events of the first game and seems largely designed to supply backstory for the third episode. The climax encounter with a new NPC is disappointingly short, especially when contrasted with the earlier interaction with the PC's superhero sibling. Rather than attempt this as standalone entertainment, it is probably best enjoyed as part of the series.

One minor item of interest is that the startup menu allows the player to optionally specify details of the resolution of key events that occurred during his or her playthrough of the first episode. The answers have a small impact on the introductory text, but I did not notice any other consequence.

I downloaded An Act of Misdirection many years ago, having seen it mentioned in passing in a positive way. The only thing that I remembered about it when I loaded it up this morning was that you play the part of a stage magician, and that you had to figure out the steps of the performance.

"Well, this should be interesting," I thought after reading the run-up to the first command prompt. Imagine my delight as I found that the way had been carefully prepared for my bumbling first attempts, that hints and nudges were craftily placed within every turn of phrase of the interaction. These hints began small and subtle but escalated to large and glaring when needed to get my attention, and rapidly taught me both to follow their lead and to take advantage of the breaks in the action to "work the crowd" for a response.

I have noted in the past about certain games' ability to follow the player until the player can learn to follow them. This is accomplished so expertly here that it seems effortless. The only point where I got stalled too long was a place where a little thinking about the logic of performances of this type would have sufficed. (Spoiler - click to show)Specifically, having used a blunt instrument for its intended purpose, it makes sense that it can be disposed of thereafter. (Spoiler - click to show)A hint from your assistance about which item he expects to catch would have smoothed the way here; if there was one, I missed it. The correct move was apparent enough when I stopped to consider it... it just took me a while to do so because I was swept up in the urgency of keeping the show going. The author, Callico Harrison, should truly take a bow for this achievement; not many games manage to instill this sense of immediacy.

Having come to this game mostly "cold," I wasn't even aware that there was a horror component to it. I would imagine that this situation has been relatively rare since the game's initial release -- this IFDB page, for example, clearly labels it as such -- but knowing about it is a massive spoiler! If you have already played the game you can imagine my own shock, echoing that of the fictional audience, as the performance reaches its culmination. The first act had been an Act of Misdirection, indeed.

Moving on from there, Ms. Harrison demonstrates a surprisingly rich and deep command of language in painting the scenes of the protagonist's origin story. Many people seem to find this second section to be inferior to the first; I did not. The same craft and skill is used to keep the action moving with clues, now less blatant in their prompting of the right command. The parser is fairly free in its interpretation of your input at this point, redirecting your intent when you are "close enough" in order to keep the scene moving briskly. Call it "railroaded" if you like, but I prefer to think of it as the game urgently requesting your cooperation to play along so as not to ruin the intended pacing. I found myself eager to catch up as the game led me through a chaotic situation, glancing this way and that at glimpses of Victorian life before being tugged along to a more contemplative setting where the horror begins in earnest.

Here Ms. Harrison shows that her command of the psychology of horror is as great as that of her command of language -- indeed, I found this section to be a master class of the technique for "showing, not telling" in the context of interactive fiction. I expect to spend much time scrutinizing the writing here to better understand how she so expertly conveys key knowledge indirectly; important realizations suddenly appear in your mind at the center of a flourish of well-chosen connotations. A second bow in encore is called for here.

If there is anything to criticize about this work, it is that it is over too quickly, and that certain details of the scenario are not clear after a first playing. I am glad to see that other reviewers almost universally recommend a second playthrough, and I look forward to doing so... preferably with other players who don't know what to expect.

As a final note, I want to point out that this game was written in Inform 6, and it is a remarkable feat to achieve such a level of polish with that toolset. Very few games of the era are its equal in this respect, though nowadays Inform 7 makes it easier (if not exactly easy) to build scenarios of comparable quality.

Ms. Harrison does not seem to have ever produced another standalone work of IF (though she did contribute to Cragne Manor), but if she does she will find me among those waiting "in anticipation of something magical" to try her next work.