Reviews by Spike

Strap on your meta-goggles, indeed! In Re: Dragon you play as long-suffering IFFComp organizer George MacBraeburn. A lawyer representing a group of dragon oracles is threatening IFFComp and its parent organization, the Interactive Fiction Technological Freedom Foundation, with a lawsuit. The offense: "the outrageous and vile misrepresentation" of the dragon oracles' professional activities in a game from last year's IFFComp, The Dragon Will Tell You Your Future Now.

The thing is that there really was a game entered in last year's IFComp called The Dragon Will Tell You Your Future Now. I didn't play it, but apparently it was a bit of a joke game: You can't progress very far in the game at all - and you certainly can't have the dragon tell you your future - because you can't get through the dragon's office doors. No wonder the American Association of Professional Draconian Oracles is upset!

As can probably be told from this setup, Re: Dragon is a comedy that repeatedly makes reference to the IF community. It is, in many places, hilarious.

The gameplay is mediated through George MacBraeburn's email account. It's well-done technically, using Inform and Vorple. I'm quite impressed with one feature in particular, the fact that (Spoiler - click to show)you can actually play The Dragon Will Tell You Your Future Now within Re: Dragon itself!

While it's fun to catch the references to IF and the IF community, Re: Dragon sets its parody sights on other targets, too: gossip magazines, lawyers, weather forecasts, even those forms they make you fill out at the doctor's office.

Some of the funniest parts of the game are incidental to the plot. Make sure you read MacBraeburn's "junk" and "sent" folders. The email to Lorentz Umbert is a masterpiece.

Overall, a little comedic gem that's worth your time, even if you haven't been in the IF community long enough to catch all the references.

When I started up Railways of Love I was taken aback by the game's old-school graphics. Then, on my first playthrough, it didn't feel very interactive to me. There were only a few times I was provided a choice that would affect the story of protagonists Abel and Juna on their train ride, and most of the actions I could select were actions like "The attendant comes by" or "The light blinks" - actions that Able and Juna couldn't take for themselves. The primary exception was that each time I was given a choice one of the options was for Abel or Juna to confess their love. However, when I tried to select that option, Abel or Juna always found an excuse not to confess their love, and the game forced me to select another option. So it wasn't clear to me who I, the player, was supposed to be. The author of their story, I suppose, but an author with some rather severe restrictions on the story I was writing. I wasn't that impressed at first.

But then at the end of the story the game encourages you to play again and try to change Abel's and Juna's fates. The game was so short I thought I would try it. And here's where Railways of Love really starts getting interesting. You can replay the story multiple times, with each playthrough revealing more of Abel's and Juna's backgrounds and often giving you a different ending.

And these endings are not the kinds of endings you come to expect from a work with the word "love" in the title - if, like me, you're an American. This is not a game with a Hollywood-style "true love conquers all" sensibility. Railways of Love is more mature than that, displaying an understanding of what it means for two people to commit themselves to each other long-term and all of the costs to careers and other relationships that go along with that.

I found it beautiful and poignant.

So, my recommendation is: Don't stop with the first playthrough of Railways of Love. Don't even stop until you've seen all the endings.

Tethered starts with an adrenaline-pumping premise: You, Charles, are climbing a snowy mountain. You are roped to your partner Judith, when she slips and falls into a crevasse. What do you do? Well, there's really only one thing you can do. Then the game proper truly starts.

Most of Tethered takes place in a cave on a mountainside. This is a classic IF setting and so can often feel stale, but the premise of Tethered makes it come across as natural and fresh - more of a nod to IF's roots in Colossal Cave than something derivative.

Gameplay-wise, there are a couple of clever puzzles involving a rope that can be stretched between multiple rooms. One of these puzzles has an alternate solution that I found by looking at the walkthrough after I finished the game; this alternate solution may remind some players of a prominent puzzle in a prominent game from last year's IFComp. Also, I love the game's solution to the problem of navigating a cave in the dark: It's completely intuitive yet fairly original from an IF standpoint.

Like several other games from this year's IFComp, as you play Tethered further you realize that there is more going on here than appears at first. The ending is poignant and moving - and it adds a powerful twist on the game's name: "Tethered."

Make sure you check out the game's response to XYZZY.

Finally, a word about the language: Tethered is the first game in the author's new IF-writing language Dialog. It looks impressive to me so far. In particular, the rope-between-multiple-rooms feature is apparently a difficult one to implement in most traditional parser languages. The fact that it works smoothly in Tethered indicates something about the complexity of Dialog.

Overall, I found Tethered to be yet another of the many strong dramas in this year's IFComp.

Playing Cannery Vale is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the box top, where each new piece you place makes you realize that the picture in your head is wrong - and so you must rethink how you view the entire game.

You start out playing as a man who drowns, and then the game yanks you back: No, you're not drowning. You're an author reading through a draft of his novel, and he's only gotten up to the point where the man is drowning. These two scenes encapsulate the gameplay: You toggle back and forth between playing as the author and as the main character in the author's novel. As the author, you keep rewriting what you've written so far. You also explore the hotel (TheLovecraftInn) where you're staying and interact with the somewhat odd but eager-to-please innkeeper. As the main character in the novel, you effectively live out the author's latest draft, but your actions also create new storylines for the author to try. It's a very clever game mechanic, although I confess it took me a little while - probably longer than it should have - to realize exactly what was going on.

Some of your actions in the inn (as the author) also parallel what happens in the novel. On example: (Spoiler - click to show)Losing my finger in the police station as the character in the novel and having my finger injured in the mousetrap as the author. This is part of what writing is all about, of course, but in Cannery Vale you experience it from both inside and outside the story.

The game is self-aware in places. At one point I thought I had found a bug: I clicked on an option, and I got a "passage not found" error. But then I went down to the lobby (as the author) and discovered that one of my dialogue options with the innkeeper was to ask about the "passage not found" error!

Near the end of the game the two storylines begin to merge, and the character in the novel gains the ability to affect the author's life directly. I'll leave it to other players to find out how, exactly.

There's a lot of provocative imagery going on here - (Spoiler - click to show)the couples who are murdered in the haunted house tour, only to reappear later unscathed but with different personalities; meeting Medusa in the apartment of the woman I hooked up with and being turned to stone; my finger healing miraculously; the Poe-themed inn being turned into a Lovecraft-themed-inn; working in a meat-canning plant that is clearly using human body parts... to name just a few things.

I had wondered if the game might reference Steinbeck's Cannery Row, but if there were any such references I didn't catch them. It does, however, allude strongly to Dante's Divine Comedy. (Spoiler - click to show)At the end, you realize that the town is actually built like the mountain of Purgatory, and so the character in the novel is working his way up and thus out of Purgatory, just like Dante does in The Divine Comedy's second book. However, unlike in Purgatorio, it's not the earthly paradise that awaits the main character at the top of the mountain. Also, depending on the author's choices, the author escapes the innkeeper-as-Satan and must climb his way out of hell, using language that sounds almost straight out of Dante: "wailing hypocrites serving as footholds, detouring through freezing waterfalls and waist-deep rushing pools past broken mansions..." Then, at the very end, the author's Beatrice helps him with the last bit of his escape from hell.

The game's blurb hints at the Dante theme - it's not obvious, but once you know it's there it's hard to miss. Also, try entering the names of various famous authors as your pseudonym. This reviewer found several that produced a quote from that author - most having to do with hell.

On a technical note, I found the visual "feel" of the game to be strong - particularly the changing colors of the sidebar image as you progress through the game. Also, the audio is excellent - both the sound effects and the background music greatly enhance the playing experience. The author clearly put a lot of work into the audio and visuals.

Cannery Vale is an impressive game with a lot going on. I have continued thinking about it, even though I played it over a month ago.

Basilica de Sangre is a medium-length puzzle-based comedy. You play as a demon trying to rescue your mother, who has been captured and held prisoner by a convent of nuns.

It reminds me a lot of the other game of Bitter Karella's that I've played, last year's Guttersnipe: St. Hesper's Asylum for the Criminally Mischievous. Both games were written with Quest. Both feature the same irreverent sense of humor that pokes fun at authority but never comes across as mean-spirited. Even the puzzle styles felt similar. I did manage to solve Basilica de Sangre without hints, though, and that wasn't the case for Guttersnipe. I think that's partly due to the design of Basilica and partly just good fortune on my part.

To continue the comparison, while I enjoyed Guttersnipe, I do think Basilica de Sangre is a better game. The puzzles are a little better-clued. Mainly, though, I think Basilica is better because of the main puzzle mechanic: Since you're a demon, you can possess any human character you meet in the game. This means that many of the puzzles entail figuring out which character has the attribute you need to achieve your current goal. It's also fun to speak to all the other characters while in the body of particular character. The responses are amusing and often give you clues about the puzzles.

I'm a fan of a simple puzzle mechanic used in multiple ways, and Basilica's primary mechanic achieves that.

My favorite line in the game occurs when you finally reunite with your mother. It weaves the mother/child relationship together with the fact that you're both demons in a manner perfectly in keeping with the game's overall tone. It made me laugh out loud.

I also enjoyed the final climactic scene. I wouldn't call it a plot twist, but it was somewhat unexpected and even kind of appropriate from an IF standpoint.

If you're a fan of Bitter Karella's other games or just enjoy irreverent, light-hearted puzzle comedies, you should play Basilica de Sangre.

Trying to escape your past, in The Forgotten Tavern you turn up at a run-down tavern, out of other options. Soon you discover that there's something unusual about this particular tavern.

The proprietors, Max and Diana, give you a hammer and apron and send you through a secret portal to fight vegetables. When you defeat these vegetables you can bring them back to serve to customers. This allows Max and Diana to attract more customers, slowly upgrading the tavern (and your weapon and armor as well).

It all effectively amounts to a light RPG experience.

I found The Forgotten Tavern to be laugh-out-loud funny - one of the funniest games in IFComp 2018, in fact. Something about the whole setup, especially fighting animated vegetables (as well as the descriptions of such) struck me as hilarious. My family did as well; we had a good laugh around the dinner table one evening discussing what it would be like to do battle with large vegetables.

The tavern's continual menu changes and my character's status updates were fun. I was proud of my final title, (Spoiler - click to show)Tourism Board Chair.

The RPG aspects did come to feel a bit repetitive after a while, which eventually distracted from the comedy. But overall, I enjoyed The Forgotten Tavern.

Into the Lair is a choice-based story in which you play as a vampire. Out for revenge against another vampire, you must enter his lair and perform your choice of three tasks. These are not mutually exclusive, though: On my playthrough I completed two of those tasks and partially completed the third.

Playing this game brought back some of the same feelings I had reading the better of those old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books as a kid. Something like "You're walking down a corridor deep underground. There's a sound coming from the side tunnel to the left. Up ahead the main tunnel appears to fork. One branch features well-set stone, and the other has a dirt floor. Which do you choose?"

It's atmospheric and it pulls you in. I found myself hesitating before making each decision because the game led me to feel like my choices actually mattered.

However, I eventually discovered that this turns out not to be entirely the case. The story repeatedly lets you backtrack during your trek through the lair. I liked that from a playability standpoint, although it did take away some of my feeling of agency. (To be fair, this is also something that many of those old CYOA books allowed you to do.)

My major criticism of the game is that it felt too abrupt at the end - anticlimactic, even. But I enjoyed it overall.

Into the Lair is horror-themed, and it does feature vampires, but I wouldn't have trouble recommending it to ten-year-olds who like adventure stories. Adults can enjoy it, too, of course.

I.A.G. Alpha was my favorite game from IFComp 2018, and I played all of them. An English translation of a work originally written in Russian, I.A.G. Alpha appears to be an unfinished game about a guy working at a post-Soviet research institute. Its opening text consists of a note from the author explaining that he never finished writing the game but decided to release what he had written anyway. On the second screen there are comments like "TODO: finish the scene on the roof" and "TODO: comment out the debugger." And, sure enough, there's a DEBUGGER command in the upper right corner that lets you peek into parts of the game's source code. After a few scenes the author stops the action once again, this time to say that he thinks the introductory text is too long, to detail what his original plan for the game was, and then to explain more about why he never finished it.

You play a little further, and you eventually come to realize that the "unfinished" aspect of the game you are purportedly playing is entirely intentional - in fact, it's a setup for the real game to pull what I think is the most genius meta move I've ever seen. I really don't want to spoil it by giving it away, but it's so simple and yet so fundamental. And that's what makes it work so well.

An absolutely brilliant game.

Lux is the game that proved to me you can make a solid puzzlefest using a choice-based interface. I imagine there are other strong choice-based and puzzle-focused games out there, but Lux is the first one I have played.

In Lux you are Sandra, the only survivor of an explosion on a research station in space. The explosion has left you blind, and you must navigate through the station with help from the station's AI to reach the command centre and send a distress signal.

In terms of gameplay, you can have one item active in your inventory at any time, and if you have the correct item active for a particular puzzle you'll see additional choice options that will enable you to solve the puzzle. (Detectiveland uses a similar mechanism.) By midgame there are enough inventory items, and the number of choice subtrees is often large enough, that simply selecting every item isn't going to help much in solving a particular puzzle. So you still need to figure out the puzzles - or at least narrow down the possibilities to just a few items.

It's a large game, too. There are five distinct areas of the station, multiple puzzles in each area, and several red herrings. The author's estimate of "longer than two hours" was accurate for my playthrough.

The puzzles are challenging but always logical. Having five distinct sections and having the AI telling you what the goals are in each section are good design choices - they help prevent the player from being overwhelmed in such a large game. The game has achievements as well. I didn't earn all of them, and so I'm guessing some of the objects that I didn't find a use for are actually related to achievements.

Finally, Lux contains my favorite single moment out of all the games in IFComp this year. I won't give it away, but those who have played the game may be able to see what I'm referring to.

I tend to like puzzlers, and I enjoyed Lux.

In Terminal Interface for Models RCM301-303 you control a robot with one of your employees, Lemmy, inside. An explosion has occurred elsewhere in the facility, and Lemmy wants you to use the robot to destroy some incriminating evidence before the police show up.

This is just a bare outline of the plot. I don't want to say much else on the story other than there's more to this game than appears at first - which shouldn't surprise anyone who has played other games by Victor Gijsbers. (Check out some of his other titles to get a sense of what I mean.) Also, discovering what that more is led to one of the strongest emotional reactions I had to any game in IFComp 2018.

The writing is quite good. Lemmy's character comes out clearly from his patter. If I were more familiar with the UK's regional dialects I would probably be able to place Lemmy, but this American's ears couldn't do any better than "working-class" and "British."

Implementation is also strong. For example, to nail down the effect of controlling a robot remotely Victor had to replace many of Inform 7's standard error messages. It must have been a lot of work.

(Fun fact: This game is one of three in IFComp 2018 to feature a character who drives a Ford Fiesta.)

Overall, Terminal Interface for Models RCM301-303 is a strong, well-written, and well-implemented game that... packs a punch.