Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

In its first moves, First Things First comes off as a kind of reverse "my apartment" game -- the protagonist has accidentally locked himself out of his house, and the spare key that he had hidden for just such an emergency isn't there. The modest beginning belies the scale of this work; structurally, it is something of a hybrid between Curses (Spoiler - click to show)(i.e. a quest in pursuit of a small and mundane goal that expands in scope and significance) and A Mind Forever Voyaging (Spoiler - click to show)(in which the action takes place across five time periods for the same location, each separated by a decade).

Per author J. Robinson Wheeler's description, this work, which was ambitious for its era, took about five years to develop. It was begun in 1996 and not released until 2001, then later improved in a 2006 re-release. As far as I can tell, the 2006 v3 re-release is the same as the original except for bug fixes.

As is to be expected in a game this old, gameplay is on the crueler side of the Zarfian scale, without apology. At first I thought it was truly "cruel," but the only verified dead-ends I encountered were of class "nasty," downgraded to at worst "tough" given the ability to >UNDO multiple times in a row. Certain occasions that I thought were dead-ends were not; many critical puzzles have multiple solutions, so it would have been possible to make progress despite appearances. Save games are a good idea due to the game's length if nothing else; although I did use them (or just plain >RESTART) to backtrack several times, I usually did so looking forward to the experience of trying something different.

There are also some significant flaws in terms of bugs and/or puzzle implementation. At least one bug allows a puzzle to be bypassed (Spoiler - click to show)(getting past a hostile dog by putting the things it's guarding onto something else without first picking them up), though there are multiple solutions for that trivial obstacle so gameplay is not really affected. Some of the information and feedback is inconsistent in a way that could be very frustrating, including (Spoiler - click to show)the necessity of putting something into something else that seems much too big to fit as described (Spoiler - click to show)(the cannonball in the drainpipe), the behavior of an oddly anthropomorphized squirrel (Spoiler - click to show)(it shows a very un-lifelike response to a book that is not typical of the game's style), inconsistency in awarding score on a puzzle that requires multiple cycles of an action so that it's not clear that progress is still being made (Spoiler - click to show)(while applying multiple doses of plant fertilizer), descriptions of thrown items that imply a very low likelihood of success for the action that turns out to be the required solution (Spoiler - click to show)(when throwing things at the small window), and a "secret" (i.e. unmarked) conversation keyword prompt at a critical point (Spoiler - click to show)(when confronted by the security guard and asked for a name) in which it is reasonable for the player to expect >SAY to work. These are the most significant of the issues that I encountered, but there are also numerous small errors of the type that are unlikely to be encountered and do not affect significantly gameplay if they are. (Spoiler - click to show)Examples: a disambiguation issue between a key and its copy, the functional presence of environmental features such as the sky in the basement of the office building in the farthest future time zone, incorrect scope resolution for the switch to a secret door such that it can be accessed from the wrong side, buggy implementation of "faceless" doors in the future office, etc.

Beyond definite flaws there are some questionable design choices, such as the fact that the map changes in small but annoying ways as the protagonist explores (Spoiler - click to show)multiple time zones -- many's the time that I entered a string of movement commands to get someplace only to find that it failed halfway. Additionally, there are several red herrings, which are fine as part of an old-school style but which irk a bit in a game with an inventory limit and doubly irk when they seem like they might work to address some of the problems encountered by the PC. Worst of all is something that strikes me as a straight-up dirty trick: (Spoiler - click to show)a locked door that has no key and can simply be unlocked by hand, but which is not described as having any kind of latch mechanism. (That's a terribly mean joke on the player at best, in the vein of +=3, but I have to admit that I laughed when I stumbled across the solution accidentally. Seriously, though -- don't do this.)

NPCs are present and fairly advanced for the era; they definitely present personalities, and two of them are major characters in the story. The ASK/TELL conversation implementation is limited by modern standards, with much of the effort of topic development having been put into certain key conversations that are required. One of the NPCs is designed to serve as the built-in hint system, though I didn't realize this when playing due to my limited interaction with him. Decompilation reveals pieces of an unfinished hint system using a >THINK or >HINT command or similar. This would have been a welcome feature, but the vast possibility space created by the premise seems like it would require a large effort to cover all of the possible variations -- possibly this is why it was abandoned.

Despite the above, there's a certain base cheeriness and sincerity to this game that makes it practically irresistible, plus a puzzle design sensibility that's often quite clever once past the prologue. I was well-motivated to overlook the various issues listed above. Although the game starts out with a goofy and trivial tone, it steadily -- almost imperceptibly -- becomes more serious as you progress. As tone and style shift, it begins to offer more philosophical beats. On top of that, the game keeps redefining the player experience as you progress in interesting ways, going from wacky "my apartment" antics to (Spoiler - click to show)intrepid time explorer adventure to potential romantic comedy to 80s corporate villainy, and then on to a dramatic climax that was definitely not what I was expecting. (Spoiler - click to show)The story's climax, which though memorable is one that offers little in terms of interactivity, reveals to the player that the player character is not the main character of this story.

There are other surprises, too -- places where the game lingers on states of affairs that would probably be culled in something other than a first work. The average author would be expected to trim this type of thing, because it's pure "waste" in terms of play time and programming effort... except it's not. Wynter's review notes an extended sequence in which the protagonist struggles to overcome an obstacle that seems like a legitimate avenue to reach a long-standing goal. It's not possible for the PC to succeed in this vignette, but while you're in it the game provides all of the signals that you're on the right track. Should you happen to encounter that scenario, once you've solved the puzzle you'll be left with a sense of wonder at the way that Wheeler went the extra mile to implement this sequence, part of an apparent commitment to supporting a broad range of potential trajectories through the game's possibility space in a manner that makes any one of them feel natural.

Really, "surprise" is the watchword of this work, and one of its best features. First Things First kept surprising me on the upside as I played it. It felt like the game covered a succession of stories -- almost like the old school "pastiche" approach to puzzle design was instead applied to the narrative. Since the frequent surprises were an essential part of the experience, I think the first time through it is likely to be the best time, and I strongly recommend approaching it with as little knowledge of the plot and puzzles as possible. Despite the possibility of getting stuck, I would also recommend avoiding hints from outside sources -- try the built-in ones by talking to (Spoiler - click to show)the proprietor of the sandwich shop instead, and don't forget to save the game every so often.

After finishing the game, my first thought was that -- over two decades since its original release -- it really cries out for a remake, or at least an update to clean up lingering bugs and sand off the remaining rough edges. Quite intriguingly, author J. Robinson Wheeler recently posted a screenshot suggesting the partial development of a sequel titled No Time to Lose. The serial number shown suggests that it was being developed in 2005, prior to the current release of First Things First, and it would be very interesting to see what Wheeler had in mind about the protagonist's future.

Time travel stories are something of a cottage industry in IF, but this is one of the best ones that I've played. If you enjoy that type of story and are prepared to approach this work with an old school mentality, you'll almost certainly enjoy First Things First. If those conditions don't apply, your mileage may vary, but I'd still encourage any would-be author to check this one out for its unique features -- it's definitely something different in terms of crafting style.

I have known about this game for a very long time, but I had always put off playing it because I understood it to be fairly difficult in terms of puzzles, and this impression was reinforced by a few sporadic attempts to get the ball rolling. That was something of a misunderstanding -- there's really only one puzzle, and though it is tricky it's not difficult in the sense of being hard to intuit what must be done; you have a definite objective from the start, and the scope of action is readily discerned.

All Things Devours is structurally composed of just that single puzzle; the provided story is the absolute minimum required to sketch out a motivation. I say that with admiration for the author's fine judgment of what that minimum was, because the game does a great job of providing just enough motivation to keep going even as the perceived scale of the puzzle's central problem keeps expanding in the face of early experimentation.

This game earns a lot of respect from me on a technical basis, especially for the elegant implementation of the core puzzle mechanic. (Side note: thank you to author half sick of shadows for releasing the source code!) However, the constraints of the puzzle feel somewhat artificial, and I'm not sure that I can put the label "fun" on a game that required putting together a spreadsheet to solve, even though I certainly did get satisfaction from the process.

One thing not mentioned in other reviews is the non-standard handling of the passage of time in this game. The author basically hotwired the Inform 6 Standard Library to be able to track time in five-second increments. As I recall, there are a few actions that require more than this span of time to accomplish; it would have been interesting to see this subsystem expanded to require variable lengths of time for different kinds of standard action, but that would have complicated both coding and gameplay in ways that would probably not be desirable. Although the overall impact is minor, one thing that is not minor is the effect on the player: Several reviewers note the way that the game instills a sense of urgency, and the extremely granular handling of the in-game clock does much to create and reinforce this feeling.

Another interesting sidebar is the code which handles duplicates of objects. These are not true duplicates in terms of dynamically created and destroyed memory allocations, but the subsystem is a remarkably clean way to handle the complexity introduced by allowing objects to be taken back in time. If you're interested in creating a strict time travel game with model of the process that presumes a single, unified and unalterable timeline, then you should definitely study how author Toby Ord handled the associated problems.

The game has been criticized for the fact that the story told by a successful playthrough depends on a superhuman level of foresight on the part of the player character, who finds that her original plan to sabotage her research won't work and must devise an alternate plan in a matter of minutes. I'm not sure how much that matters, since the real motivation for playing the game is the "because it's there" factor of it being a well-designed pure logic puzzle. I skipped the hard mode because it looked like the same type of exercise, only more so -- a little more story might have motivated me to try it.

If you like time travel stories, then this game will stand out as being one of the better "hard SF" implementations of the concept. I definitely recommend it for sci-fi fans and those who enjoy well-implemented puzzles that are well-grounded in the story. The technique used to implement the core restriction is also worth studying; it's a practically fool-proof method of handling paradox detection.

This game has possibly the most misleading title that I've ever encountered in a work of interactive fiction. Although the name suggests wordplay, there is nothing of the kind to be found within.

That's what it's not. What it is is harder to define. There are elements of mystery, heist, treasure hunt and survival horror, and in some places it seems to be looking longingly toward AIF. The game portion has a split focus between making it to the end alive and collecting valuable items along the way, and the story lies somewhere between political thriller and methodical heist. Gameplay is very constrained by the intended scene structure (i.e. "on rails"), which lends a choice-like feel to the work.

Most people discussing this game mention the interesting player character. She is a kind of alien, essentially humanoid but with such vast differences in culture that it can be hard to fully adopt her perspective. The PC is indeed the standout feature of this work, presenting an alien psychology that colors the whole playing experience.

The overall writing style tends toward the leaden and repetitive. In part this seems to be the consequence of a particular system of producing responses tailored to the current state of the PC's knowledge. The system is a solid concept from a technical sense, but it very much needed to be refined in its execution -- at many places it seemed to be malfunctioning in small ways. This game was written in Inform 6, and producing such a system under that language was a larger technical challenge than it would be today. Unfortunately, the author Richard Otter's reach seems to have substantially exceeded his grasp in this respect -- perhaps a collaboration with a more experienced programmer would have been desirable.

The game bills itself as science fiction, but it's a strange kind of science fiction that is difficult to go along with if one prefers the harder type. Some of the imaginary technology is nonsensical (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. a propulsion system based on biological cells), as are some of the engineering choices (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. an "airlock" that opens directly to space). These sorts of things were already straining my suspension of disbelief, and it was finally broken after the first glitchy encounter with an NPC.

This is a very distinctive work, however, and a standout effort at inventing aliens that are more than just "people with funny masks," and these features make it worth exploring if one is prepared to look past the flaws. A thorough debugging and second pass at the prose would do much to improve my estimation of this work, but as it is I can't give it more than two stars, meaning "there's something there, but it needs improvement".

The first time that I tried Six was many years ago, and, as I recall, at the time I kind of blinked at it a few times in bemusement, then put it aside. You're a little girl playing hide-and-go-seek? Seriously?

Even from my relatively brief encounter it was clear that the game was well-built and written in a manner that would be accessible to a young audience, so I would usually list Six when asked for recommendations for kids. As a result, Six is directly responsible for cementing a young lady of my acquaintance's interest in IF by virtue of being the first game that she finished without help (even though it took a while). (Spoiler - click to show)(She cited the puzzle where you have to use leaves to slow down the fastest kid as the one she was proudest of figuring out.) The game went up a bit in my estimation, but I still didn't know much about it myself.

I recently replayed it for the People's Champion Tournament, and this time I finished it, including the "new game plus" mode. With all the evidence in, my answer to my past self is: Yes! Seriously!

This is one of those pieces of IF that is just about fun. (Remember fun?) If you retain even the slightest remnant of your inner child, you will enjoy this game. The objective is straightforward enough, but there are enough obstacles to keep you engaged. The musical bits and the sound-based clues were also quite neat, and pretty rare for the era in which this game was developed. The colorful, cartoon-style pictures are only presented occasionally but do much to create the right mood.

The viewpoint presented is consistently that of the early grade-school player character(s): not very deep or reflective but instead gleeful and enthusiastic. My grown-up sensibilities were hoping for a slightly deeper implementation of the story in one place: (Spoiler - click to show)The protagonists meet a "mean girl" in the park who seems like the kind of person who -- in interactive fiction, if not so often in real life -- could become a friend with the right approach. It didn't seem to me like there is a way to make that happen, and, to be fair, as a kid I probably would have been fine with that. (And, as Sam Kabo Ashwell's review for the 2011 XYZZY Awards points out, this is thematically appropriate by way of reflecting the limited social framework of a kid as young as the PC.)

What moves this game out of just "good" and into "great" territory is the conscientious attention to making a smooth gameplay experience. This is appreciated by a grown-up player but essential to a newbie. I can't think of a bug or the slightest hint of guess-the-noun. I'm sure that I must have tried a few verbs that didn't work, but if so I don't recall them -- what I do remember is recapturing, if only briefly, the sense that a park is a place big enough to explore. (Spoiler - click to show)It wasn't until my second run-through that I even discovered the area where your birthday party is being set up. My hat is off to Wade Clarke for going the extra mile here: It really sells the existence of the protagonists' life beyond the events portrayed in the game. I think maybe you can get hints there, too, if needed. There's even a delightful crayon-drawn feelie map to ensure that you're never lost, and an instructional PDF for ultra-newbies who are afraid of the command prompt and/or unfamiliar with Australian vernacular. (One item not covered: "roundabout" means the same thing as "merry-go-round.")

I very much admire any game that's capable of attracting and holding the interest of new young players -- something that is strategically vital to creating a new generation of long-term players and authors -- and that's doubly the case for a work that's still enjoyable by adults. Definitely think of this one the next time you need a game for first graders, or as a light-hearted introduction to parser games for adults.

An older game submitted to the 2003 Spring Thing, Inevitable -- which is not to be confused with a 2017 work sharing the same name -- is a bit off the beaten path for the modern player, but it is an interesting stop on a tour of IF history.

The game offers adjustable difficulty, and I played it on the "harder" mode. This mode doesn't offer particularly hard puzzles as science fiction puzzlers tend to go, so unless you prefer games with few or no puzzles, I would recommend it.

The writing of the game starts out feeling a bit ponderous, but the player soon gets used to the serious tone. The player character is a military officer and space fighter pilot, whose planet recently lost an interstellar war. He or she is tasked with escorting an ambassador of the conquerors on what seems to be nothing more than a sightseeing tour of a now-abandoned city.

The opening sequence sets an interesting mood, with the protagonist's ship being damaged and unable to take off while a heavy storm rages outside. However, the rain abruptly stops and the mood just as suddenly shifts, leaving the player with the familiar task of scouring the empty city for what's needed to repair his ship. A glance at the horizon shows another squall line on the way, but (Spoiler - click to show)this is false foreshadowing that never ends up affecting the story.

As the player goes about this task, various interesting technical touches will be noted, which provide niceties that are relatively rare for the era. (This was the era immediately preceding the introduction of Inform 7, and the coding skill needed to achieve these in Inform 6 were decidedly above average.) The game offers a >GO TO functionality that isn't well-advertised but is a welcome affordance. A particularly nice touch was the way that the PC will considerately put everything aside before following your instruction to wade into water -- and then take it all back after emerging.

The overall style leans toward hard science fiction in that it's grounded in a realism informed by the characters fictional universe. The protagonist takes the futuristic items in inventory for granted, and much of the characterization comes in the form of timeless complaints about authority and regret over a woman from the past. At certain points the realism is inconsistent in its attention to detail, however -- for example, in a scene where (Spoiler - click to show) the protagonist must free-dive to obtain a long metal bar from an underwater structure some of the difficulties which might be expected in that situation (weight, awkwardness) are ignored. Also, there doesn't seem to be any function for certain items outside of demonstrating the nicety mentioned above, though arguably this is not wasted or unfocused work so much as a touch of hyper-realism for effect of the type I pointed to in my review of Anchorhead.

Certain significant parts of the interaction are definitely buggy, and other parts seem as though they might be. Only one issue rises to the severity of threatening the successful conclusion of the game (Spoiler - click to show)(a metal bar can become irreversibly stuck in a wall), but this is unlikely to be encountered in practice. The others that I noted (Spoiler - click to show)(a power tool magically performing its function while turned off, an item being described as being simultaneously on something and wedged into something, disambiguation messages for a particularly tricky sequence involving a complex shape) only create unexpected disruptions to the immersion. Said immersion is artfully achieved through vivid descriptions of the alien city environment and its varied technological artifacts; many reviewers compare it to the atmosphere of Myst.

The puzzle-solving is the core of the gameplay side of this work, and it was quite enjoyable. (Spoiler - click to show)Who doesn't like slowly reactivating derelict alien machinery? The game fulfills the promise of its hook and really shines here as the player makes progress through various obstacles. Only one puzzle seemed like a real problem to me, (Spoiler - click to show)a very important one involving a stone dolmen, but on review the issue seems to largely stem from an uncharacteristic shortfall in the description of the physical scene. In a complex spatial situation like that, I personally appreciate an abundance of information to make sure that the relevant details are communicated, and that style is followed assiduously everywhere else in the game. The worst case scenario is that you'll have to consult the walkthrough to get past that puzzle, which is hardly a catastrophe.

The two-star rating that I'm giving is based on the game's weaker side, which is its story. The narrative elements are interesting enough as their own framework, but they feel essentially grafted onto the gameplay framework -- they don't naturally interact and reinforce each other to improve the experience of both, which is the holy grail of interactive fiction. In addition to some very surprising revelations that seem like they should not have been withheld at the start (Spoiler - click to show)(e.g. that the protagonist is in fact very familiar with the city, having lived there for years), I was left with significant questions about the plot, including but not limited to: (Spoiler - click to show)Why did the alien ambassador want to go there in the first place? Why did Rajan wait until the last second to intervene in the past? Why did the PC fixate on the woman with the green eyes in the past? That's not to say that the story was uninteresting -- it most certainly was not, and the flashback-oriented exposition is well-paced on a structural basis -- it's just that it seems like the story could have been quite different without affecting much of the experience of play.

The pacing near the end is irksome, slowed by some final puzzles when the narrative is trying to advance quickly. I personally found all of the available endings to be unsatisfactory from a narrative standpoint, leaving the emphasis in my memory on the setting, atmosphere and puzzles, all of which are very well executed. I did have fun with this game, and I expect that most sci-fi fans will, too, and absent the not-quite-insignificant bugs I would probably give it three stars.

In the glory days of the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup, from time to time someone (or a group of someones) would make a game as a demonstration of a rhetorical point. A famous example of this is +=3, which was written to demonstrate that an author needs to make the player aware of the relevant details of the game universe in order to be fair. As I understand it, this piece was also inspired by a discussion -- this time about possible models for the paid development of interactive fiction in the aftermath of the collapse of the commercial era. Given the scale of the effort, an echo of the Textfire collection of the previous year, it also seems to be inspired by the pure joy of practical jokery.

This is less a parody of the individual games involved than it is of our society as a whole -- specifically commercialism's influence on culture. The work posits that the manufacturer of Coca-Cola, infamous for never passing up a chance to expand the mindshare of its brand by slapping its logo on something new, has decided by spreadsheet that there's a theoretical payoff to funding new IF in order to achieve a little more brand awareness. It shows us a taste of a "what if" world in which some of the best-known works of the time were produced under a product placement model of monetary "support" for the art, a world in which presumably IF is plentiful... and it just won't shut up about the sponsor's carbonated beverage.

I suppose that whether this world is a utopia or dystopia is a matter of personal preference, but personally I'm pleased that, 25 years on, the art form has continued to grow organically in the absence of major commercial interests.

The rhetorical value of this work is lessened somewhat by the over-the-top nature of the jingoism, and as a game it suffers from a reliance on player knowledge of the games being simulated. David Welbourn's walkthrough can get you through any points where you become stuck, but there's no particular payoff to reaching the programmed end. It's still worth a quarter of an hour to be amused by the various one-liners and to consider the questions that the game implicitly prompts.