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.

The conceptual foundation of Vendetta is a frustrating mix of originality and cliche, embedded in a compelling and often richly-envisioned universe that begs for further development and exploration.

Five minutes into this piece, I was in complete agreement with Dan Shiovitz's assessment: "Stories about supercompetent badasses who have No Time For Love always make me feel a little dirty, like I'm seeing parts of somebody's psyche it is embarrassing to be looking at..." The prose style and dramatic content reminded me of that B-movie kind of adventure fiction where men are men and women are ornaments with incomprehensible emotions. It almost seemed like the style found in pre-pubescent fiction, and my estimate of the author's sophistication -- as well as my interest level -- kept dropping.

Anyone who feels the same way at that point is encouraged to continue(Spoiler - click to show), because shortly thereafter, comes a surprising plot twist. It's revealed that the narrator is an artificial being built for military purposes whose personality has been "modified" (or maybe just mangled) by the removal of key human elements like empathy and love. It's also revealed that the narrator's memory is mostly composed of the memories of another, much older person, which were artificially "written" to his brain. This revelation knocked my judgment for a loop; so many things that had seemed odd and out-of place, from the child-like interaction with Sally to the incongruous use of "young man" to describe others to the casual disregard for recent accomplishments, suddenly seemed appropriate. This sort of resonance between the large and small details is brilliant, but I'm not 100% certain it was intentional. Accepting this premise immediately raises the question of why an artificial being is walking around the world unsupervised in a world where such beings appear to be nearly unique.

The writing style is strange and uneven. Fluid and competent prose alternates with stilted, forced writing sprinkled with spelling and grammar errors. In several places, there is repetition of a word (or variations of a word) that can be jarring. In others, the exposition takes abrupt detours to work in a bit of background that probably should have appeared earlier.

As a work of interactive fiction, it has several weak spots. For the first half of the game, much of the player's time is spent waiting for multi-turn "conversations" to complete. One glance at the walkthrough should have raised red flags; there are far too many z's in it.

While on one level I thought it was interesting to be doing other things while the conversation takes place (like multi-tasking on the phone in real life), the object implementation is so shallow in some scenes that there's not really anything else to do but wait. Eventually, it crossed a line. The sensation was similar to how I once saw someone describe an RPG GM who gets too active with the party NPCs he controls: At some point, the players begin to wonder if they're just there to watch the GM entertain himself.

However, all of this changes (another significant discontinuity) when you get to the second act. Immediately, the player finds himself in the middle of a sprawling map full of interesting scenery objects. It's such a change in the nature of the play, and the depth of object implementation is so spotty, that adjusting to the transition is somewhat annoying. You find yourself trying all of the mentioned nouns, never sure which commands will result in a "no such thing" message, and which will result in two or three layers of irrelevant detail. Most of the object descriptions are done well -- more consistent implementation depth might have made for a very interesting effect(Spoiler - click to show) as you ransack the area while racing the clock. After all, when you're in the unknown, you don't know what's significant at first, and a real office would be filled with plenty of useless objects.

This part feels like a more traditional piece of IF, and it takes a while to explore. Just when my previous irritation at being inexpertly railroaded in Act I had started to fade, the sudden introduction of a CYOA format during the endgame left me shaking my head in disbelief.

The level of realism, like so much about this work, is lopsided in its application. While I was impressed with many details like the "bit player" NPCs in the hotel environs and the changing weather as you venture outside, they stand in stark contrast to the cartoon-like interaction with later hostile NPCs, who seem to be implemented as little more than combination punching bags and bowling pins.(Spoiler - click to show) As an example, I spent several turns goofing around with a locked gate, while the occupant of a nearby guardhouse patiently sat there staring into space, waiting for me to walk in and break his neck.

Vendetta was developed using ADRIFT, which my limited investigation leads me to believe is a sort of point-and-click code generator intended for non-programmers. Perhaps the author, James Hall, had no background in programming when this was written, in which case some of the problematic parser interactions that I encountered are easier to understand. Some choices in verb-to-action mappings, as well as the author's tendency to translate your apparent intent into a series of actions you did not specify, lead to a strange kind of abstraction to what you do. From time to time, it's almost like you're just offering suggestions instead of controlling the PC.

There are also some out-and-out problems with the code or writing, such as:

* an important (if optional) item is placed in scope(Spoiler - click to show) (the cell phone when you kill the first guard), but you are not notified and could easily miss it if you don't "look" again,

* the response to one critical command makes it appear as though the verb is not recognized, when in fact it simply requires an indirect object(Spoiler - click to show) ("reflect laser" vs. "reflect laser at x"),

* some descriptions are misleading, in a way that is out of character with the rest of the work.(Spoiler - click to show) (e.g. "In the corner of the room is the reception desk, which has nothing of interest on it other than a few pieces of office stationery." -- which gave me the impression they were blank pages, though I admit that's subjective.)

If the entire work was written as well as its current best parts, Vendetta would definitely rate three stars. With better consistency and some additional conceptual and thematic development, it could have hit four. I'm left with mixed feelings about this piece, as well as curiosity about what Mr. Hall has been up to for the last 5 years -- it seems like he has not released anything since Vendetta placed 14th out of 26 in the 2005 IF Comp. If Mr. Hall has continued to practice and develop his writing skills, I would expect his next work to realize much more of its potential than Vendetta does.

As you can tell from the length of my review, this piece managed to get under my skin. I want to give it a higher rating than I can objectively justify. For a pure player, there are enough negatives to warrant avoiding it. For new authors, there are valuable lessons to be seen in studying what's done right and what's done wrong. My suggestion: Decide which camp you're in, and choose accordingly.

Since I don't share Dan Shiovitz's dismay over beholders, I thought I'd give Sparrow's Song a try. Having never experienced the work of J. D. Berry before, I was pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of this piece, which was entered into Emily Short's SmoochieComp in 2001.

Although the presence of the beholder implies the story is grounded in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, nothing else does. While it was interesting to see what Berry thinks the personality of one of these iconic monsters is, there was no compelling reason I discovered that the being in question had to be a beholder. For story purposes, it could just as easily have been a demon, or even a grizzled old veteran. It's a rare and unexpected failure of originality in this otherwise highly creative work.

The writing often has a certain poetic and lyrical quality to it that I found compelling, though on occasion the similes were a bit forced. The author has a way of adeptly conjuring huge swaths of history and exposition by sending your imagination soaring along suggested lines. The universe feels more complete by virtue of what you imagine being unchallenged by the text, which actually provides very little information about the world the protagonist inhabits.

When I first finished Sparrow's Song, I was a little confused. It seemed like much of what was implemented in the first half of the story had no relevance to either the central plot or the theme. For a while, I speculated that maybe this was a partially-finished work that had been adapted for entry into SmoochieComp by grafting on a storyline about love. However, on further reflection, I decided that this may not be the case(Spoiler - click to show): Each NPC you meet presents an exploration of love in some form: dead love, love of mankind, simple fidelity, pure lust, etc. Not a very deep exploration, it's true, but I'm willing to give Berry the benefit of the doubt.

One intriguing aspect of the story is the way it ends.(Spoiler - click to show) Having met your apparent soul mate, you discover that she is a different species and you are not biologically compatible. There are three possible solutions to this: either you change to her species, you change her to yours, or you meet half way. Each option is available, but the significance of the choice is not explored, though each would likely have serious consequences in the protagonist's universe.

This work leaves some key questions unresolved. As Emily Short notes, the nature of the love that forms the foundation of the story arc is strangely anvil-like, to say the least.(Spoiler - click to show) Personally, I thought it was strongly hinted that it was an unnatural, magic-induced kind of supercharm -- we know charms exist because of interaction with the nymph, that Tamta has been studying magic, at least one of Tamta's responses (I thought it was to "magic!", but I can't seem to recreate it now) has her explaining that she'd hoped to "set love in motion" using magic, and in another she admits to summoning the titular sparrow. In addition, Tamta has clearly been aware of you for some time, and it seems from the locket that your sister, a powerful magician, had a hand in your destiny here. I would imagine that much of the reader's opinion about the overall story would be shaped by the particular conversational topics they'd come across -- pretty good use of the medium, in my mind.(Spoiler - click to show) Another glaring question: What's up with the combinatorial explosion as a manipulable object? Amusing as the concept is, it doesn't fit the rest of the style and has no apparent purpose in this work. Maybe it should have been saved for another setting?

The conversation warrants a brief note. Opinions about it seem to be mixed, but I, for one, found the liberation from having to type "ask person about" in front of every topic to be quite welcome. Other than that, there is little functional difference between this model and the standard ask/tell. Although at least one reply seemed to indicate the system was designed to allow the spread of knowledge about topics between NPCs via talking to them about it, I did not spot any differences in behavior as a result.

I would definitely recommend trying this piece, though first-timers may be frustrated by the attention to detail necessary to get past the primary obstacle.(Spoiler - click to show) Hint: Mantras are for repeating.

I have not yet found any good documentation on the parameters for Dave Cornelson's 2000 DragonComp, but the gist seems to be that authors were invited to write a funny game involving dragons.

The opening of Here Be Dragons!!! started out kind of clever and amusing in a genre- and form-subverting kind of way. Unfortunately, that was the high point.

The author, Gunther Schmidl, seems to have deliberately disabled the "examine" verb and its synonyms, which takes nothing away from the brief and uninviting experience of this work. It probably saves time in navigating the sequence of empty rooms that lead you to the dragon, which is two inches long and non-threatening, but whom it is apparently your destiny to kill. You do, you win, it's over.

This appears to be one of those games deliberately written to be bad, though I don't understand why anyone would go through the trouble of programming even a short piece like this as a kind of joke. If it's a joke, don't fall for it like I did.

The premise of Speed IF Let's Make a Nightmare is:

"In three hours or less, write a work of IF about a nightmarish game show, in which the contestant is presented a small number of doors to choose from. Behind each door lies a prize, or a monster, or nothing. Bonus points for including a flying elephant or the phrase 'a random number of dollars.'"

In this entry by Jake Wildstrom, you stand on a stage, participating in an alleged game show that mostly features an ever-growing pile of empty container objects. It's nightmarish, but only at the level of the playing experience.

Schrödinger's Door is either unfinished or simply designed to be a waste of the player's time. Either way, I'd recommend skipping it.

An entry for Speed IF 12, Plaque is a relatively simple and mechanical puzzle game in which you must create an award for Chuck Schmendiman. In this interpretation, the protagonist has somehow managed to put off making the award until the actual ceremony takes place, and must slap one together with the materials at hand before it's needed by the presenter.

The components of the game are a fairly straightforward rendition of the specified seed ideas. The author, who goes by the handle Admiral Jota, dutifully uses each bonus concept with a methodical checklist approach that favors completeness over imagination.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this piece is the opening dream sequence, which uses a scaled-down effect similar to that deployed in Shrapnel, which had been released a few months earlier.

It only takes a few minutes to complete this piece, so I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether it's worth the time. You might find yourself better served by going directly to Jota's award-winning full-length piece, Lost Pig.

Hedge is a strange tale of one man's journey into The Hedge, fortress retreat of a shadowy "elite" that you desperately want to join... or perhaps destroy.

Billed as a "modern fantasy jaunt" by the author, I found the tone to actually be part comedy, part psychodrama. Much of the gameplay feels like a surreal blend of The Prisoner and Monty Python's Flying Circus, with just a pinch of Little, Big thrown in at the last minute.

For work of a first-time author, this piece is richly implemented. Most objects have layers of detail attached to them, and most verbs have at least a few synonyms. Parser interaction generally shows evidence of both attention to detail and proper levels of testing. I took note of many unexpected niceties in the way descriptions are rendered in response to varying world-states.

Hedge is reasonably well-written in terms of atmosphere and mood, and the status bar helps maintain a mood by displaying the protagonist's emotional state. Although there is a scoring system, score notification is disabled, and the scoring process appears only loosely correlated to the intended story. Interestingly, the "full score" command yields not individual point contributions to your total but a list of unusual "achievements" based on your actions.

The story's structure seems somewhat arbitrary, but this may be by design. Although there is little explanation of the protagonist's motives, the inclusion of multiple winning pathways allows the player to define the protagonist's motives by his actions.

The puzzle structure is frequently obnoxious, particularly in the beginning stages. Red herrings abound; there's even a fountain full of them if you don't get the point. Fortunately, the "about" command yields valuable insights into the mindset of the author, and you can summon a hint fairy at any time by using "help" or "hint."

Although I did find a couple of bugs(Spoiler - click to show) ("take transmitter", "x mayans"), they did not negatively affect gameplay. My two-star rating reflects disappointment that this game seems intended to frustrate traditional players in the first half, for no real reason other than the amusement of the author. This hostile edge probably contributed significantly to Hedge's middle-of-the-pack placement in the 2006 IF Comp.

Mr. Richards clearly has above-average capabilities as a writer and programmer, and I would like to see more from him in the future.

As other reviews mention, this is not really interactive fiction -- it's a recreation of an old game from the days when "computer graphics" was completely synonymous with "ASCII art."

The game does seem to be implemented well and was probably something of a pain to write. I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay, so I'd normally rate it 2 stars, but I was struck by the way this piece is framed -- it made me think about the possibilities of throwing a mini-game like this into the midst of a standard IF work. (As if writing something of substance isn't hard enough!)

The only attempt at that sort of thing that I'm aware of is Infocom's Border Zone, which was somewhat controversial due to the real-time nature of the mini-game's action. In this case, the game is turn-based, which might work with the "stop-and-think" nature of IF instead of against it.

Take One is a likable but mildly frustrating jaunt through your memories of playing "Indiana Jones" when you were younger. Ostensibly, you play the director of a movie, guiding an actress playing Indianette Jones through a scene about raiding some temple for an artifact. Submitted by Robert Street as an entry for the Finish the Game Comp held in 2005, it placed a close second.

As with Mr. Street's Turning Point, this work introduces certain interesting elements that don't end up having a recognizable impact on the story.(Spoiler - click to show) It's written in the third person, presumably in support of your observational status as director, but the gameplay works as though you yourself are Indianette -- there is no functional separation of "you" from her. The actress playing Indianette is decried as a useless airhead in the introduction, but this is not used for any story-telling effect (e.g. bawling her out when "she" makes a mistake, or ditzy commentary as "she" struggles on the set). In fact, she expresses no personality at all during gameplay, leaving me wondering why she is characterized that way.

Orientation to the game goal is well done. As the player, you immediately are told how to start the scene, and, while there are numerous hints about the outline of the puzzle you have to solve, there is enough left unspecified to make for a small challenge.

Unfortunately, what could have been a smooth gameplay experience was frustrated by programming and/or parser problems.(Spoiler - click to show) Though you are given instructions to read the journal then rub the ring, you are unable to rub the ring while wearing it. If you try, you are told "Indianette Jones can't rub the ring," which is unhelpful, to say the least. I spent several turns in an unproductive hunt for a synonym of "rub" that would apply before I figured out the glitch.

In a similar vein, it took me far too long to discover how to get the jewel from the statue.(Spoiler - click to show) Unlike Inform, the ADRIFT parser doesn't seem to provide any help if the player hits on a correct verb but incorrect syntax. Thus, the command "use whip" gives the same result as "<any nonsense> whip", which makes it seem like the verb is unrecognized. In fact, "use whip on jewel" would work. Since I am conditioned to the Inform type of parser response in this case ("What would you like to use the whip on?"), and since most authors avoid implementation of the verb "use" in favor of more specific wording, I spent several playthroughs trying things like "crack whip", "attack jewel with whip", "whip jewel", "throw whip at jewel", etc. before hitting on "get whip with jewel".

The situation isn't helped by the fact that the game lies and tells you the jewel is lying on the ground -- a serious error for a final release.

Those issues aside, it was smooth sailing and a fun scenario. The overloading of the "restart" action to begin a new "take" of the scene was a clever touch.

Mr. Street definitely has the ability to come up with good premises and puzzles. With better use of the conceptual pieces he puts into play and a less journalistic writing style, his work would probably attract more attention.

Two hours isn't much time for coming up with a good story, let alone coding it. Gilles Duchesne demonstrates with this piece created for Speed IF 16 that you can produce something likable in that timeframe... and have a great time while you're at it.

This episode has every indication that it was written hastily and with a devil-may-care attitude about literary or artistic quality. A decided lack of pretense saves the day, though, making it easy to overlook any minor faults and experience the author's glee at lashing together the seed ideas he used from the contest: Marie Antionette, antiques, cheese, monkey heads, and Brandon van Every.

It's a 15-minute experience that I didn't regret, and I look forward to trying other works in the absurdist Captain Speedo series. If the others are like this one, they are a brilliantly-conceived framework well-suited to the handful-of-random-ideas category of SpeedIF.