Reviews by Spike

Awake is a little hard to review because it is (as the author says up front) part one of an unfinished story. I enjoyed the bit of story that I did read, though.

Part of the gameplay is the slow reveal of what's going on, so in terms of the plot I'll just say a little: It involves a high-tech research project. There might be something sinister going on, and there may be more to the PC's involvement with this than is obvious at first.

It's an interesting setup. My one critique is that it seems like my choices didn't affect the story much. As far as I could tell, all the choices loop back eventually to the main part of the narrative without changing it. However, it is probably difficult (perhaps impossible) to write a completely distinct part two that tries to pick up multiple storylines. In that sense I can understand the choice to have all the different decisions basically end up in the same place for part one.

I do hope the author finishes the story; it sounds promising so far.

This is not your usual text-based role-playing game. In fact, I'm convinced that it's intended to be a sardonic commentary on role-playing games - and particularly of the noble, heroic figure that seems to be the classic RPG player character.

To start with, the game calls itself "A Final Grind." Grinding is one of the un-fun things you nevertheless sometimes have to do in an RPG. It's not why you play RPGs. Then, the game bills itself as being about "frustration, regret, and slaying goblins."

There's also the fact that (as you gradually come to realize), while the PC does have a quest, he really has entered this particular dungeon not in order to complete the quest but to die. His self-loathing and exhaustion increase with every level (never his strength, the only other stat). He's tired of fighting, and he repeatedly dissuades a younger character he encounters from ever becoming a hero. In fact, the PC says something like real heroes are those who settle down and raise families. The PC says that the only skill he's ever learned from his misspent youth is murdering monsters, so he's not capable of doing anything else. Also, at the very end, (Spoiler - click to show)after you kill the goblin king and save the Duke's son, the PC's emotional reaction is primarily to lament the death of the majestic being he's just killed. He also deeply regrets that he had come into these mines to die and hadn't even managed to get himself killed.

A Final Grind goes one step further, though, in that it very much recreates the feeling of grinding through a dungeon. For one, you quickly realize that the optimal action in each encounter is to (Spoiler - click to show)parry, as opposed to attacking or using magic. In most RPGs, you nearly always want to go on offense, not defense. Every time you attempt to carry out this action, though, the game requires you to solve a math problem. And these math problems are all over the place, from kindergarten-level arithmetic to calculus to questions that require lightning-fast calculation tricks (you're supposed to answer the math questions within ten seconds) - and even to a question whose answer is a fraction that the game doesn't appear to recognize. Not only that, the questions repeat multiple times, so after you've solved a semi-interesting one you find yourself having to type in the same answer again and again. I'm a mathematician, and even I don't have the patience for this.

(Editorial: Do not write games that pull the player out of the main flow of the story in order to solve what are effectively a collection of math homework problems that have nothing to do with the plot. It's not very educational, since we tend to retain knowledge only when it is integrated into some overarching framework. It also reinforces the stereotype of math as something boring that's completely disconnected from real life. That said, this feature does work in A Final Grind, since it very much creates that feeling of grinding. End editorial.)

As if this wasn't enough, A Final Grind also features far more than its share of random encounters, particularly on the second level. There were multiple times where I fought a group of monsters, then immediately had to fight another group of monsters, then immediately had to fight a third group of monsters. Then I got to move one step further down the corridor and do it all over again. (And again, every one of these encounters requires you to solve multiple math problems if you're playing optimally.) By the time you get close to the end, every step feels like a major slog.

The game also features some unpleasant bugs. However, they're kind of in keeping with what the game is doing - especially a bug at the very end.

I think I'm actually impressed with A Final Grind. Getting through it did feel like a grind. I think that's exactly the experience the game is going for. However, I'm not sure I want to have that experience again.

In Pegasus you play as a secret agent. The game starts off dramatically, and after that it mostly consists of a series of flashbacks that explain how you ended up in the situation that opens the game. At the very end there's an important choice to be made.

The writing is strong, and the pacing mostly keeps the game moving quickly. I found myself invested in what happens with the PC and his partner Sarah, and I wanted to see how things ended. There are puzzles, but this is a story-focused game, with lots of conversation.

The game also explores Sarah's background and how she ended up as an agent for the Pegasus organization.

I had some trouble with some of the puzzles (especially the first two). The puzzles themselves weren't hard, but I thought they could have been better clued - in the sense that I tried some things that were similar to the correct solutions, but the game's response didn't indicate to me that I was close. There were also more spelling and punctuation errors than I expected given the quality of the writing. I think having a few more testers on the game would have helped with both of these issues.

Story-wise, I think fleshing out a few more things would improve the game, such as more on the background of the PC's partner Sarah. (This is mostly just hinted at, albeit intriguingly.) Also, there were two choices near the end, (Spoiler - click to show)how you respond to the phone call in the office building as well as the major choice at the very end, where the working out of the consequences of these choices could have taken the story in even more interesting directions.

Notwithstanding these criticisms, I enjoyed playing Pegasus. It's a short, tight, well-written thriller.

Last year Mathbrush donated "A short (~30 minute) game based on the author's work" to the IFComp prize pool. I was hoping to get this prize, but it was chosen by the authors of the game that came in one place higher than mine. :) (Instead, I ended up choosing custom artwork, which is excellent and that I love. I've had it framed, and it is now hanging prominently on my office wall.)

Still, I have to thank Thomas Mack, Nick Mathewson, and Cidney Hamilton for choosing Mathbrush's prize. If they hadn't, then none of us would have this fun, bite-sized puzzler to enjoy.

Picking up at the end of the events of The Owl Consults, high school student Justine Thyme is caught in an abandoned amusement park witnessing a battle between several superheros and supervillains when Rex Dashing's nuclear-powered airship explodes. The cataclysm triggers her latent powers, and she inadvertently freezes the entire amusement park area in time.

The gameplay consists of using the frozen superheros' and supervillains' powers to solve a series of puzzles. It's a fun concept that's akin to having a set of magical powers. (Also, watch for a guest appearance by one of the characters from The Owl Consults.)

Mathbrush knows how to write games that head off player frustration, and this is in evidence once again with Madame Time. There aren't too many puzzles in this game (it's rather short), but there's plenty of cluing. There's also a wonderful hint system in the form of the FORESIGHT and AFTERSIGHT commands - a system that actually makes sense within the context of the story and so doesn't break your feeling of immersion in the game.

The understated and somewhat sly sense of humor present in Absence of Law shows up here as well. I got a big chuckle out of what amounts to a "For your amusement" option after completing the game.

I'm also impressed that Mathbrush managed to get this much game into 12K words in Inform.

My one critique is that the game feels a bit short. On the other hand, it's supposed to be short: That was, after all, the promise in the statement of the prize Mathbrush was offering. Still, I would love to see the story and gameplay in Madame Time extended; it would make it even more fun.

Overall, a fun, short puzzle game that you should play.

Writers are Not Strangers is a story about Alix (a writer), Alix's dying mother, Alix's aunt, and a meteorite that's threatening Earth.

But the plot seems to me to be less important than the overall theme; namely, how readers can affect writers' lives. As the player you rate stories that Alix has written, and Alix responds emotionally to them. Then at other times you select actions for Alix. So you switch back and forth between playing as one of Alix's readers and playing as Alix herself.

In addition, Alix responds to the ratings you give her when you're playing as a reader. For example, the first story of Alix's that I read I had trouble following, so I gave it a very low rating. Then I watched Alix go through a difficult visit to the hospital to see her dying mother. Afterwards, she checks her ratings and is quite upset by the low score. I felt like I had just punched her in the gut after she'd already been through this emotionally-wrenching experience. But at the same time I was Alix, as I had directed several of her actions while she was in the hospital. So in a sense I had gut-punched myself with the low rating.

This continues throughout the game, as you keep rating Alix's stories and watching her respond to them. In addition, her later stories are actually affected by your ratings. I found myself trying hard to be honest and give her writings the scores I thought they deserved, but I definitely felt the temptation to give her high ratings just to make her feel better. I think this is a tension many players will find themselves in.

I found it all quite moving. Alix is a stranger at the beginning, but you come to know her better as you play through the work: both through her writings (when you're the reader) and through her life (when you're Alix herself). So, by the end, Alix the writer is definitely not a stranger.

In real life, though, we don't get to play as our favorite writers. We are only the reader, not Alix. And how much can you truly get to know someone through their writing? Some writers you probably can come to know - at least somewhat - through their writing. More often, though, I suspect that when we think we're coming to know someone through their writing what we're experiencing is actually an illusion of familiarity. If this is the case, then most of the time writers do remain strangers; the claim in the work's title is not actually true. But what is definitely true, and Writers are Not Strangers succeeds in dramatizing this, is that writers are real people, with real feelings.

Some of Alix's stories are mashups of famous works. Readers may have fun playing "catch the reference" on replays. I know I did: Pride and Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, Anna Karenina, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Kafka's Metamorphosis were ones I caught. In one of the stories there was also, oddly enough, a hint that you're a character in the old arcade game Centipede!

I think Writers are Not Strangers is definitely worth a play for the way it dramatizes how readers can affect writers' lives.

Playing Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night! made me feel like I'd been dropped into the middle of a text adventure version of one of those old space opera radio serials from the 1930s, like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. The game does a great job of immersing you in this setting from the very beginning, with its cover art, the opening scene featuring the titular hero trying to escape yet another deathtrap, and the game billing itself as Episode 7. There are also some classic IF references and even a Looney Tunes reference.

Gameplay is fairly linear and entails solving a sequence of challenging puzzles. There are only a few such puzzles, but they're all rather intricate and require multiple steps. It took me about two and a half hours to play through the game, which included two instances of diving into the hint system.

Said hint system is a helpful feature, too. Each of the major sections of the game has a large number of hints that you can slowly uncover until you learn what you need to do. I was able to keep uncovering hints until I had just the right nudge to send me back to the game without spoiling the puzzle.

There is some learning-by-death involved, which I'm not normally a fan of. However, the puzzle that features this most strongly - the second major puzzle in the game - is quite clever, and I really, really like it. In fact, I'd say it's my favorite individual puzzle out of all of this year's IFComp games.

The game is also cruel on the Zarfian scale, although outside of the learning-by-death puzzle I noticed this mostly with respect to some information that you need. Thus if you can acquire this information some other way you don't actually have to restore to an earlier save game.

The last major puzzle is particularly challenging. Again, though, the hint system is strong enough that I was able to uncover just what I needed to proceed while still coming away with the feeling that I had solved most of it myself.

The final scene is a pretty much perfect ending to the game.

Overall, I enjoyed Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night!. It's got a fun setting and some challenging puzzles that I enjoyed thinking through. It was also in my personal top ten for IFComp 2018. I'll definitely be tuning in next time for Episode 8!

Diddlebucker! consists of an all-night scavenger hunt around a city, set in 1987. It's intentionally reaching for a comparison with Infocom - the cover art and the era, for instance, as well as the fact that the scavenger hunt plot is somewhat reminiscent of Hollywood Hijinx. But the comparisons go deeper than that: The terse location descriptions, the level of scenery implementation, the extent of character interaction, the kind of puzzles and their degree of difficulty - they're all a good enough imitation of Infocom's style that, to me, Diddlebucker! plays more like an Infocom game than any non-Infocom game I can right now remember playing. (Thaumistry might be an exception, but of course that game was written by a former Infocom implementer.)

The 1987 nostalgia runs deep. For example, while you don't interact with them, many of the Diddlebucker! teams that you're competing against consist of real people who would have been well-known in 1987. I won't spoil the game by mentioning any of them specifically, but this child of the 1980s enjoyed that aspect of the game. (Why they are all contestants in this scavenger hunt remains unclear, but that's all part of the madcap fun. Also, younger players may not catch some of the references.)

Puzzle-wise, I found Diddlebucker! to be one of the more challenging games in IFComp 2018. It's not quite as difficult as Bullhockey! or Birmingham IV (although it's also not anywhere near as long as those two games are), but I found it harder than just about all the others. Well, the puzzles in Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night! are, strictly speaking, probably more difficult, but Diddlebucker! is so much broader in most places that the search space for potential solutions is a great deal larger. (Diddlebucker! does feature somewhat distinct stages, though, which helps you mentally narrow down the options for potential puzzle solutions.)

One thing I will recommend to potential players: Pay attention to the scenery. That includes what appear to be ephemeral random events; some of these contain clues or can even be interacted with.

Overall, while I do think a few of the puzzles could use more cluing, I found Diddlebucker! to be a solid puzzlefest that I would recommend to puzzle-game fans.

In Charming you play as an apprentice witch who has destroyed several magical items and must repair them. This requires solving a series of puzzles, often with multiple parts. Unlike, say, Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night!, though, the gameplay isn't linear. After you solve what amounts to the initial puzzle you can work on a few different tasks at once. Normally having multi-part puzzles simultaneously going on would be a lot to keep track of, but the game includes a very helpful TODO command which will tell you what tasks are available, what tasks you've completed, and what tasks remain.

The puzzles themselves require a lot of consulting the various magical books for information. You really have to pay attention, and there's a lot of extra information that you don't end up needing. But I found this to be a plus; it provides background for the world that you're in, making gameplay feel more immersive. It also makes the puzzles more interesting; you can't just go through the magical books and say "O.K., what information have I not used yet?" in order to solve the puzzles. Some of the information can also be used to perform actions that later show up in the "For Your Amusement" list, increasing the game's playability.

One thing I found particularly satisfying was (Spoiler - click to show)creating a crystal ball. Structurally, it wasn't much different from the other multi-step puzzles, but something deep in me just really appreciated the act of constructing a fabled magical item that I've seen in dozens of stories and games.

One thing a player should be aware of going into the game is that some of the magical book topics only trigger on the entire phrase, whereas some will trigger with the entire phrase or the right keyword. However, the game does includes a shortcut READ verb, so that you can, for example, READ [a topic] instead of always having to CONSULT [a particular book] ABOUT [a topic].

Overall, I think Charming lives up to its name. I found it to be a fun, light-hearted game with somewhat intricate puzzles, and I would recommend it to fans of such. It's particularly impressive that this is the author's first work of IF. I hope she continues making games!

Dead Man's Fiesta tells the story of a young man coping with the death of someone close to him. However, the game never gives the identity of the deceased or the PC's relationship to him. Nor does it focus much on the PC's grieving process - at least not directly.

Instead, the game spends most of its time on the events of the last several days of the PC's bereavement leave. He takes his inheritance money and buys a used Ford Fiesta, which turns out to be haunted by the ghosts of a former owner. The rest of the story entails the PC dealing with these ghosts and what they want while continuing to work through his grief.

The game has a strong voice. The PC very much comes across as aimless, without much direction in life, and this affects his attempts to deal with both the ghosts and the death of his loved one. Most of his sentences feature neither punctuation nor capitalization, which underscores (punctuates?) the PC's aimlessness: It's as if he can't be bothered even to complete his thoughts fully.

At this stage in my life (probably a generation older, and with many more responsibilities than the PC), I have trouble relating. Much of Dead Man's Fiesta just didn't work for me. However, I suspect I might have clicked more with the PC when I was younger, and I bet there are plenty of people who would identify with him right now. My rating is thus more about my subjective response to the game rather than my opinion about its quality as a work of art. It is, of course, hard to separate the two, though.

Several scenes in the game feature well-done illustrations that remind me of the art design in the movie Waking Life.

My ten-year-old son wanted to play through one of the IFComp games with me one night last month. I selected Instruction Set kind of on a whim, and it turned out to be the perfect choice. It's written in Scratch! My son has been learning Scratch this past year, and it was really nice for him to see something vastly more complicated than anything he's tried to do on his own. We opened up the Scratch code, too, and looked through it. My son was able to follow the basic structure of the game's code as well.

The gameplay of Instruction Set consists of a series of logic puzzles. Some of them are old classics, like the one where you have only a three-liter container and a five-liter container and you need to create four liters of water. I realize that this particular puzzle is now used as an example of an old, tired puzzle for a lot of folks in the IF community, but I missed that phase of IF where this puzzle was used frequently, and so it did not come across as stale to me.

More importantly, the puzzles get more and more complex the more you solve. So even if you don't like some of the early puzzles, I'd recommend sticking with the game. The puzzles do get better. The last puzzle you actually solve was particularly fun - one of my favorite puzzles in IFComp this year, in fact.

The story involves some researchers in a lab testing a new haptic interface on a patient, Nora Atwood, and understanding what's going on with her. But the gameplay is really about the puzzles.

Folks used to the elegance of Inform's parser will probably find the interface clunky. It is a little clunky. But I'm impressed that the author managed to create a parser-like interface in Scratch at all! To my knowledge there's no native support for such a thing in Scratch. The interface works, too, and there's a window that tells you exactly which commands are allowed on each puzzle, as well as displaying the puzzle for you graphically. (This adds interest to some of those classic puzzles, by presenting them in a form that's not pure text.) There was only one puzzle where I got seriously stuck. I was able to go to the walkthrough, though, and I realized that I had misunderstood the directions for that puzzle.

The author says that he made the game with his kids and that his twelve-year-old daughter did all the artwork. I think that's awesome.

I had fun with Instruction Set, and I'm glad I played it with my son. I'd recommend it for puzzle fans aged ten and up.