Ratings and Reviews by Victor Gijsbers

Rendition is nominally a portrait of Abdul, failed suicide terrorist taken captive by a Western army. However, it is impossible to actually get to know Abdul as a person, since the two of you don't speak the same language and the only way of interacting with him is through violence. This, of course, is exactly what the work is all about.

Although it is hard not to sympathise with the political message behind Rendition, the work suffers somewhat from being too obvious. After the first few moves, the player will have formed a pretty clear idea of what the piece is about and what limits to her own actions are, and there is little left to actually shock the player or make her think about political issues.

I think the piece will be more powerful if it is incorporated into a larger work that poses as a game. It could be the epilogue to a thrilling, puzzle-based chase after Abdul which allows us to understand why both Abdul and the protagonist think their causes are good and righteous; then, the sheer pointlessness of the interrogation and the impossibility of communication might have more shock value. My advice to the author is to think about extending Rendition along those lines.

Suveh Nux is not an ambitious game. Backstory and characterisation are minimal; it is quite short; and all of it takes place in a single, almost bare, room. In this room, the player has to solve a number of puzzles, all of which are based on a linguistic magic system. Figuring out this system is not too hard, though what you can do with it is sometimes less obvious. (I used the hints at one point, though I suppose I might have managed without if I had spent more time on the problem.)

Suveh Nux has a lot going for it. The implementation is impeccable and very polished, making the game a joy to play. The central puzzle is enjoyable, and the progressively harder tasks you are supposed to get done with the magic system are well thought-out. Therefore, I can readily recommend this game.

On the negative side, I can only say that the central puzzle is too easy: I would really have liked to see some more complex grammatical puzzles. Maybe an idea for an extended version?

This gives the game 4 out of 5 stars on an "unambitious IF" scale, which I translate to 3 out of 5 on the scale of all interactive fiction.

Some people here give Zork four or even five stars. These must be people who have played Zork many, many years ago, when players' expectations were lower than they are today--because, to be honest, playing Zork today is not a four or five star experience.

The depth of implementation of this game is just horrific: it doesn't know half of the nouns it uses in the room description, and 80% of the objects it does know have no description. Sometimes, it doesn't even seem to know the objects it has allowed me to discover by taking special actions. In the beginning of the game, you can find a grating beneath a pile of leaves; but when you try to examine it, the game tells you that it knows of no 'gratin'. (Maybe that was I was asking you about a fence-like metal structure, not a French culinary invention, in the first place?) Also, you can find a trap door beneath a rug, but when you try to open it, the game tells you that you see no trap door here. Look, you just described it to me! (You can open the trap door by first removing the rug; but the appropriate error message would be something like "the rug is still on it".)

The prose is nothing to write home about either. You are walking around through rooms with names like "north-south passage", and descriptions which are hardly more interesting. There are MANY rooms, but I would rather have had a couple of interesting ones than dozens that are strung together in some non-obvious way.

If there is a story in this game, I have no found it. You start outside a white house, but are given no clue as to who you are or what you are doing here. You appear to get points for collecting treasure, but even so it would have been good to know why I am collecting treasure and what lured me to the white house in the first place.

But if there is no story, there IS an irritating carry limit; there is random death whenever you walk into a dark place; and there is a maze of the most tiresome kind. (At least you get to know where the "twisty little passages" come from.)

Is that were the pain ends? Not at all--so much is irritating about this game that you could go on for quite some time. What about the fact that you cannot abbreviate "examine" to "x"? Or the fact that the descriptions in this game seem to have been written with the express intention no to help the player? If you try to open the door to the white house, you get the message "This door cannot be opened." Well-why on earth not? Has it been boarded? Glued to the frame? Tell me more! If you try to hit the door, you will find that the game asks you to specify something to hit the door with. Supplying the commonsensical answer that you wish to hit it with yourself results in the game telling you that suicide is not the answer. Apparently, then, the player character is made of glass.

But this is my favourite proof that Infocom didn't do any serious beta testing:

> enter river
You hit your head against the river as you attempt this feat.

I started up Zork about 5 or 6 times, but I've never managed to play it for longer than 15 minutes; it is just too irritating. This game must have aged very badly, given that people thought it was good when it came out. I cannot recommend it to anyone who is not filled with nostalgia at the very mention of the word "Infocom".

Zork gets 2 stars for basic technical competence.

It is a good thing that Robert E. Howard is not around to see what happened to his barbarian, Conan. Though his original stories are by no means great literature, neither are they the violent, mindless trash that later generations have associated with Conan the Barbarian.

Conan Kill Everything takes that later tradition to its logical extreme. Conan has found the evil wizard, and in order to exact his revenge, he kills everything. Absolutely everything.

In order to kill everything, Conan must solve a couple of very standard puzzles. There are some humorous elements, including the speeches of the wizard and the final move which you need to make to win the game; but in the end, the game is totally forgettable. The jokes are not brilliant; the puzzles are not themselves interesting; and it parodies something that is already so far beyond the limits of good taste and serious intention that it does not allow for parody.

Since you can play the entire game in 15 minutes, you still might want to give it a try.

You wake up in bed, ready to go to work. Yes, just an another day in the life... but this very short game has an interesting twist at the end. Replaying is a must.

I recommend this piece, mainly because it's going to take less than 9 minutes and 5 second of your time to enjoy it. I give it only 3 stars out of 5: even a funny joke just doesn't ascend to the same heights as a great story.

I have seen people complain that yeti robot zombies cannot exist, because a robot cannot be a zombie. These people were surely joking, since nobody could have missed the over-the-top action movie and shooter game cliche's that pervade Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies. This is a game that does not take itself seriously. The highly secret base of the evil boss turns out to be a huge skycraper in the middle of a big city, adorned with inverted neon crosses and a statue of a yeti robot zombie.

Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies is a 'win on the first attempt' game: you are asked not to save/restore, but to try to finish the game on the first attempt. Since (a) the game is quite short, and (b) the game is not too difficult, this doesn't pose any real problems, and it adds an interesting sense of danger. But save and restore are not disabled, so if you are a real wimp, you can use them.

So what do you do, as player? Well, you walk along the linear path set out for you, getting rid of zombies and cultists as well as you can, and finally reach the end. You will probably be tempted to restart at that point and try to find better solutions, because the game is both funny and short.

This is not a 'good' game. There is no storyline to speak of; there is no depth; no character interaction; nothing that makes it stand out. Attack of the Yeti Robot Zombies is an enjoyable snack, and the 'win on the first attempt' clause is a great idea for a game like this. Play it for the quick fun it will give you.

The Reliques of Tolti-Aph has been given very negative reviews. Reviewers almost invariably tell us that it is a game with unfair puzzles, too much random death and even--gasp--a huge maze; and therefore, frustrating and not fun. Although I would hesitate to call The Reliques of Tolti-Aph a good game, I believe it is charming and fun, but to enjoy it, you need to be in the right mindset.

What mindset is that? The same mindset which you need to appreciate the first edition Dungeon & Dragons scenario's. These scenario's are often insanely difficult and grossly unfair, so your character is almost certain to die. But, hey, rolling up a new character is a matter of 60 seconds, and with your new-found knowledge that behind the second door on the left is a monster that deals 8d10 damage as soon as you enter its domain, you might actually have a chance of finding the fabled gem! And who knows, perhaps you'll manage find out what that magical staff does without losing more than 4 ability points?

This game is unfair. You will die random deaths. So sit back and relax: rolling a new character (so to speak) is not just allowed, it is expected. Enjoy the ride! You will not survive your first play-through of The Reliques of Tolti-Aph. You will not survive the second or the third or even the tenth. But getting further each time is fun; the puzzles actually have solutions (and you can always peek behind the GMs screen, that is, consult a walkthrough); the locations are well-thought out and well-described; and the maze is very cool indeed.

The only places where I feel the GM (that is, Graham Nelson) went beyond the bounds of fair play is with the stone you absentmindedly picked up and the two spells you learn from the gods. Those should have been described in a more explicit manner. The GM shouldn't write on my character sheet when I'm not looking!

If you are interested in designing Interactive Fiction, Lock & Key is a game you should play: the role of the player character in this game is so different from that in every other piece that it is well worth exploring. Unfortunately, this exploration is made less fun because the central puzzle is frustratingly obscure and you can only interact wiht it through a tiresome interface.

In Lock & Key, you play a dungeon designer. You will be spending most of your time placing traps in a 16-room dungeon. Once you are satisfied with your efforts, the dungeon will be built and you can sit back and watch while Boldo the Hero attempts to escape from his cell. If he does--well, you'd better try again.

This idea is original and fun. Instead of being a static environment for you to explore, the game world becomes yours to design and someone else's to explore. Watching Boldo walk through the traps you have laid out in advance is a real treat, especially with all the humorous commentary that the different characters give.

Of course, it becomes less fun when you are reading the same description for the tenth time--and you will read them more than that, because solving the puzzle of optimal dungeon design is a frustratingly slow process based entirely on trial & error and the discover of often very non-obvious chains of causation. Bring whatever mental powers you have to the task: solving the puzzle will still be 80% brute force and luck, as traps that seemed to do nothing turn out to be essential to the final result.

If there were an easy mechanism to tweak one setting of your dungeon and replay the corresponding part of Boldo's journey, this would be a forgivable problem; but since every redesign is followed by at least fifteen intervening turns of background story, this is not the case. This makes solving the puzzle a slow and boring process, and though there is nothing wrong with some brute-forcing as such, slow and boring brute-forcing is not to be recommended.

Should you play this game? Certainly. The writing and the innovative design make it well worth your time. But unless you are a hardcore puzzle addict, you might want to save yourself some frustration and grab a solution once you've seen your first ten designs come to nought.

This game is exactly one puzzle--but what a puzzle. If you like your puzzles logical, requiring in principle no more than strict deduction from a complex set of premisses, then you will love this game. Once you've found out how the game world works, there is nothing arbitrary anymore; there are no intuitive leaps, no bizarre associations; you just need to think carefully. The effect is a little like a chess puzzle, where'll you try out some moves, notice what goes wrong, think deep and hard, and finally arrive at the solution.

I highly recommend it.

Although my roleplaying sensibilities do not in general lead me to dungeon crawl games like Dungeons & Dragons, I nevertheless have an admiration for the third edition of that game. It sets out to deliver a strategical and tactical gaming experience, and it succeeds. Creating the most combat-effective character is a hugely complicated, very intricate and fun puzzle. Fighting difficult battles is equally enjoyable, and you will often need guts, quick thinking and a prepared strategy to win.

A Little Like Rogue, on the other hand, is a dungeon crawl with no tactical depth at all. You walk around, encounter random monsters and kill them - or are killed by them. You find weapons and armour, but your inventory will always contain one that is simply the best. The most difficult decision is when to drink your healing potions.

A dungeon crawl without tactical depth is boring. Mercifully, A Little Like Rogue is quite short. I do hope the author will give us a more interesting experience next time. (A few words of advice for all authors interested in making a dungeon crawl. You need moments where the player must weigh options that give different benefits. It is uninteresting to choose between a weak dagger and a strong axe. It is interesting to choose between a weak dagger and a strong axe that is so heavy that you can't retreat as long as you carry it around.)