Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

In 1993, everyone knew that "text adventures" were a dead genre, but, as has been lovingly documented by Jimmy Maher and others, a few people here and there labored in obscurity to keep the nascent art form of interactive fiction alive. Art LaFrana was one of these, someone who eschewed the semi-commercial offerings of the time such as TADS and crafted his own custom system for MS-DOS.

The Abbey, LaFrana's second work (which is not to be confused with the 2008 title of the same name by Steve Blanding), received more attention than might be expected for a shareware entry with an extremely primitive parser. A review in SPAG Magazine by Cedric Knight suggests that it was considered worth paying for even 8 years after its release. I don't think I would have agreed at the time, but in an era when so few new games that even looked like a text adventure were being produced, it may have seemed a more attractive option than it does today.

To say that the game has a parser is being somewhat generous; my own interaction suggests that it is a simple keyword-matching system that doesn't really try to parse the player's command in any meaningful way. For example, a command such as >PUSH WAGON EAST will be interpreted the same as >PUSH WAGON or even just >PUSH. This doesn't matter as much as it might because the ratio of interactable objects to rooms is alarmingly low by modern standards, and the majority of the player experience is simple room navigation.

Other reviewers stress the text's ability to evoke an atmosphere, and I have to admit that I also found this to be the case -- but I don't understand it. It's really quite puzzling; the text is "evocative" in a paradoxical way in that on first reading it seems flat and uninspired but after extended exposure a fairly vivid mental picture of the environs emerges in one's mind. I'm not sure how much I can credit the author for this; in some ways it almost seems akin to the phenomenon of hallucinations experienced during sensory deprivation. (Is this the part that I've never understood about the appeal of Scott Adams games?)

Although the game is listed under the "Historical" genre, it certainly doesn't seem to be a very accurate portrayal of its ostensible period. (For example, the language of NPCs and signage can be anachronistically modern.) That's not to mention that Atlantis seems to have been a real place in the game universe.

It does seem more intent on historical accuracy with respect to architecture and living conditions. A large number of basically empty rooms are used to describe the sights and smells of the abbey complex, and I assume that this aspect is modeled after some real historical place -- there just doesn't seem to be any other motivation to include non-functional locations such as a pigsty. I have no special historical expertise by which to judge its correctness here, but it does feel believable.

The puzzles were to me the bad kind of old school, being based largely on intuition (which might not match the author's) and/or requiring a long series of essentially unmotivated steps without intermediate feedback. The largest part of player effort by far will be spent on creating a map, which is an essential step because room descriptions sometimes omit exit listings. Since I was trying to play this on a schedule (for the People's Champion Tournament) and wasn't finding anything to savor, I resorted to a walkthrough after a few hours, and I don't regret doing so.

I was ready to like this one, but in the end I found it to be a poor substitute for a proper parser, player-friendly puzzle design and minimally-interesting story. I'm tempted to go with one star, but, as mentioned, in the end it did end up engaging my imagination, and that part was enjoyable. I can't say I'd recommend it other than as example for someone studying the earliest examples of the form. Its most lasting impact might, ironically, have come from Knight's review: Inform 6's Standard Library 6/11, released afterward, implements many of the variations of the verb "pry" that he complained were missing in this game.

In my limited experience, works by Ryan Veeder never fail to delight on some level; if nothing else his signature wit is always good for a chuckle and tends to cast a rosy glow around the memory of playing. Winter Storm Draco is no different from any other Veeder work in this respect, and it easily clears the hurdle of "good" in my evaluation.

It's not "great," though. It feels like a piece primarily created as an opportunity for experimentation. The emphasis here is on challenging standard player expectations for interface elements, especially the "opening crawl" of the timed introductory text and status line modification during the unanticipated and delightful (Spoiler - click to show)"swordfight" scene taking place in (Spoiler - click to show)a cemetery. The latter was the apex of the experience, especially coupled with the highly-abbreviated commands and very short responses that lent a videogame-like feel to the action by greatly accelerating its pace.

For an opening act, the PC becomes lost in the woods during heavy snowfall and must use boy scout/junior MacGyver skills to figure out the way home. The interaction is a little fiddly and specific here (as I recall specifically around (Spoiler - click to show)pouring liquids), which is in unwelcome contrast with the solid puzzle design.

Mystical elements begin to intrude on the scenario, which shifts the tone ever more in the direction of survival horror as the PC continues to make progress. At the climax, the PC encounters (Spoiler - click to show)a personification of the storm which may or may not be (Spoiler - click to show)a Mayan god in the vanguard of a 2012 end-of-the-calendar apocalypse. I was thrown out of the story at this point, mostly wondering how much of it was supposed to be real and how much the hallucination of a PC freezing to death. Although that kind of ambiguity can serve a story well, there didn't seem to be much in the way of revelation on the PC's part to lend any drama to the scene, and at the end I was left shrugging my shoulders.

Perhaps there's more to the climax than I experienced, but the entertainment-oriented style of Veeder's prose doesn't invite a very deep analysis, and the work's brevity contributes to its lightweight feel. This game is still definitely worth a playthrough, and I don't hesitate to recommend it as an enjoyable short play experience to the average player or a study in technique for the would-be author of action sequences.

This game made a notable splash upon its debut, taking 3rd place in IFComp 2008 and garnering high profile reviews by top author Emily Short. It's a very short, very light puzzler in form, with its most outstanding features being its writing and illustrations.

As noted by Short, the writing style is reminiscent of that of Robb Sherwin, though it seems considerably less colorful on the whole. It echoes a style that was popular in the 1990s and is aptly described by MathBrush as "grungy." The protagonists are slackers in all their glory. The game's writing is economical and engaging, adding color to the visually-established scenes and weaving thumbnail sketches of the characters' personalities with admirable aplomb.

It's the illustrations, which are of professional quality, that make this game stand out more than anything. A picture's worth a thousand words, and the in situ character portraits convey copious details of scene and characterization in milliseconds. The character portraits are the backstop of the writing, which would seem too spare to pass muster without this support, and I admire the author's expert use of text and images to complementary effect.

The afterlife sequences are also illustrated, and, in fact, are only illustrated. The pictures themselves are opaque, but the image-only presentation feels like something different -- cf. the Gent Stickman series, or "reading" a child's picture book. I think this was a first for the form, and it is probably a significant part of what fueled admiration for the work.

In her contemporary review at playthisthing.com, Emily Short states: "IF needs to explore ways to change registers in order to achieve its full potential as a medium." This work is undoubtedly an experiment in doing so, and I believe that it points in some interesting directions, but the work itself seems to lack any real staying power as its star has faded considerably over time. The likely culprit here is that substance is entirely inferior to style: profanity for profanity's sake, scatological elements intended to provoke an easy reaction from the audience, a forced inciting event featuring an utterly irrational (and thereby utterly unbelievable) bad guy, an unexpected and entirely unexplained "mystical" framing that is accepted without comment or curiosity by the PCs, and a simplistic resolution which offers a fairy tale ending that clashes deeply with the doggedly gritty setting.

I'm happy to give three stars to any game that accomplishes what it sets out to do, but in this case it's not clear what the author was trying to achieve. It wasn't exactly enjoyable and when stripped of decoration it is a substandard story, so I'm settling on two. I'd still recommend this game as an object of study, and I think there is more to be done with its highly visual style, but if you're just in it for fun you might prefer Guilded Youth by the same author.

Let's be honest: You're probably assuming that this game is a low-quality (if sincere) effort riddled with technical problems and poor writing, written in a misguided attempt to proselytize. You are so, so wrong. I know, because I know how wrong I was about it.

This game was nominated for the People's Champion Tournament, and my first suspicion was that it was a troll entry. Glancing through reviews by MathBrush and Rovarsson convinced me to give it a try with an open mind, and I was consistently pleasantly surprised.

Although the setting for this game is the biblical tale of the three wise men, this seems almost entirely incidental other than defining the goals of the PC's quest. It's a pure comedy puzzler, with a wacky/zany vibe that is totally at odds with its religious framing, and the game is technically sophisticated for its era. Written in Inform 6 and making use of the Onyx Ring library, it is loaded with detail touches -- including some that require an expert knowledge of Inform to implement -- to a degree that's almost astonishing.

I played it hesitantly at first, and I was stuck for quite a while in the main puzzle portion. The breakthrough was realizing that, against what might be natural expectations, progress depends on PC actions in the classic mode of lying, cheating and stealing your way through. The puzzle design is competent, and there is plenty of non-essential but entertaining interaction to amuse you while you work out the solutions. Core puzzles required to advance the plot are fair and frequently seem to allow multiple solutions. The two most rigid puzzles are rooted in arithmetic and grammar, and like others I thought that these clashed with the prevailing tone. However, neither was a major obstacle, and they don't stick out enough to ruin what was overall a very smooth and polished experience.

The humor is a strong point; the style is a blend of offbeat and deadpan that often prompted a chuckle from me and those with whom I played the game. The author walks a fine line here, maintaining a consistently light-hearted and irreverent stance toward the subject matter but never (as far as I saw) resorting to mockery. I found myself scratching my head at what the author was trying to accomplish, but it occurs to me that perhaps the goal was to convince religious types of the value of IF instead of the other way around.

The execution of the ASK/TELL conversation model is extensive, but much of the interaction comes in the form of semi-randomized non-answers, and only a few conversations are actually necessary. In fact, quite a bit of what's present in the game is optional; I didn't score anything close to maximum points, and it seems like that's typical. The author-provided walkthrough doesn't show how to reach a full score, either, so I wonder if anyone has ever uncovered every secret. A little digging into the game file shows that there are whole layers of elaboration that I missed entirely -- almost a secret game, which to some degree seem to hinge on finding an unusually-placed rubber duck.

This game seems to have become almost entirely forgotten in the 15 years since its release, but if you enjoy the old school style then coming across this one will feel like finding secret treasure. My initial inclination was a high three stars, but it stands out as a highly-developed example using the rare Onyx Ring library, and it's certainly the first "religious" game that I would recommend to anyone who asked, so I'm going with four. Don't be put off by the blurb; you won't regret trying this one.