Reviews by deathbytroggles

While it would be hard to argue objectively that Bureaucracy is the best Infocom title, I believe it is the funniest and ergo my favorite. Hell, even before you play the game there's several laugh-out-loud moments just perusing the feelies, my favorite being the triplicate credit card application that is different on every page.

On start-up, you're asked to fill out personal information (to identify the character you'll be playing) and you'll be ridiculed (and your information will be misrepresented anyway, bureaucracy and all that). By this point if you're not hooked you probably won't be.

What ensues is comic madness, and unless you are a very good puzzle-solver, it will lean towards madness. As your blood pressure rises while playing the game, so does the character’s. There’s a blood pressure gauge in the status bar that goes up for every mistake you make. And yes, you can have a heart attack and die if it gets too high.

I did need a few hints to win this one, but even I was amazed at my persistence with some of the puzzles. The game’s tightly developed plot and brazen humor kept me away from the hint book several times. While there are a couple of instances where the game seems unfair, with one walking dead situation, if you persist you will be duly rewarded with the genius that was Douglas Adams.

In 1999 I discovered the IF Archive and the first game I played was not Babel. It was Heist, by Andy Phillips. While I was terrible at it, I was impressed by the parser since the last new text adventure I had played was Bureaucracy. The second game I decided to try was Babel, and I was simply blown away.

The standard criticisms thrown Babel's way are fair. The game uses not one but two sci-fi clichés (amnesia and a doomed Arctic research station). Most of the story is told via flashbacks. The puzzles are mostly perfunctory. The ending is predictable. None of this mattered to me twenty years ago. And I played it again last year and it didn't really matter to me this time either.

Finley is a great writer and accomplished two things here. He was able to develop several multi-dimensional characters (via the flashbacks) and pace the reveals well enough (hence, the perfunctory puzzles) to increase their intrigue. And he also created a tense atmosphere that had me on the edge of my seat as a college freshman. While on my recent playthrough I wasn't quite so moved, I was entertained and once again impressed with the game's breadth and technical strengths.

While it's true that flashbacks are not the strongest storytelling technique, and while it's true that unlocking a bunch of doors is not the strongest use of puzzles , Finley masterfully weaves both facets of his game together, engaging the player in both goals and necessitating the player use one aspect to inform the other. Additionally, the game is so well coded that it's great as an introduction to interactive fiction.

Babel is not my favorite game ever, but probably the one for which I am most fond as it led me to this wonderful community. I even paid to register my game and get the feelies. It's too bad they appear to have been lost to the ether.

I normally am a sucker for anything involving time travel and paradoxes and I tend to prefer linear gameplay. Jon Ingold is also one of my favorite authors. So All Roads should be right up my alley. I judged the 2001 IF competition and remember giving this one a score of "6" and then being surprised it took first place and won a whole slew of XYZZY awards. I decided to play it again recently to see if time would change my mind, but I left once again feeling underwhelmed.

At first, I thought I was bothered that the shifts and paradoxes were so fast and furious that I didn't have time to get a grip on the characters or their motivations. But Shrapnel and Shade are both similar in this regard and it didn't bother me there.

But looking at Jim Kaplan's review, I think he nailed it: Ingold does not trust the player here. If you spend too much time experimenting in any particular area, the game practically force feeds you what you should type, getting you to the ending as fast as possible. I play interactive fiction because I find satisfaction in being involved in the story, even if minimally, and here I felt like a puppet on a string.

That said, it's short enough that everyone should give it a try to see if it's up their alley.

One of Infocom’s most overrated titles, The Lurking Horror is essentially the company’s only foray into the horror genre. Unfortunately, it feels more like a Lebling Zorkian dungeon crawl than an atmospheric mystery. While there are some creepy parts to this college campus caper, it is mostly a disjointed puzzlefest with a smattering of Cthulhu mythos.

Admittedly, I played both Theatre and Anchorhead first, which had the advantage of better development systems. With that in mind, I'll give the simple NPCs here a pass. But the things that annoy me the most about this game have nothing to do with technical restrictions. There's a hunger daemon, which is the slider puzzle of text adventures. There are several illogical walking dead situations. And while I can deal with inventory restrictions (oh how I miss thee, bottomless trenchcoat), even here I felt like I could reasonably carry more than the player character.

Ultimately I would have forgiven all this if I had been immersed in a scary story. But I found the writing mediocre and the ending abrupt and unsatisfying.

While a technical improvement in every area over the first game in the series, including graphics, sound, and breadth, I just couldn’t put my heart into Spellcasting 201.

You continue to play the noble Ernie, this time returning for your sophomore year at Sorcerer University. You have been accepted into the “cool” fraternity and must survive initiation week. While your frat mates spend the entire week trying to ensure your demise, there is something more sinister occurring behind the scenes of the university that has farther-reaching consequences than your self-esteem. Of course you must save the day, save your reputation, and save several girls from chastity!

It would appear that your adventure is less linear this time around, as there are many more locations to visit and few are inaccessible at any given time. But unfortunately, there are so many rigidly timed puzzles that you really have no choice as to where you’re heading. If you don’t follow the strict outline, you will end up restoring your adventure several dozen times. And that’s just by the end of the first day. This choice of design is a shame as it detracts not only from continuity, but the ubiquitous humor that Meretzky sprinkles about campus. There’s really no time to enjoy the colorful world around you as you’re always having to rush to beat the clock.

If you don’t mind that style of gameplay, then you should love this game. I felt alienated.

When Infocom disbanded, Steve Meretzky was hired by up-and-coming Legend Entertainment to continue text adventures and compete with Sierra in the adventure game industry. While Legend’s first offering wasn’t entirely polished, and did not have very good sound support, Meretzky certainly did his job to jump start the company and this series.

Legend did their best to try and appeal to all types of adventurers with their new engine. The game has dozens of still graphics, which can be turned on or off. You can also have different status screens available, such as a map, or nothing at all as if you were playing an old text adventure. That said, the graphics are grainy in this offering, and many of the status screens are either unnecessary or clunky.

But where Spellcasting shines is the wit and design of its author. Resembling one of his older offerings, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, you have the option of playing in naughty or nice mode. There is no nudity, but the sexual undertones and jokes certainly crank up under ‘naughty.’

You play Ernie Eaglebeak, an aspiring magician who has escaped your abusive home to attend Sorcerer University. And to get all the girls! The game is fairly linear, though there are many time-limited puzzles, albeit easy ones. A majority of the puzzles therein revolve around wordplay (a la Nord & Bert), a major attraction for myself.

Overall, this is an average offering from a company that wound up releasing many excellent games during the 90’s. If you are a fan of Steve Meretzky or language puzzles, or just want to see where Legend started, you’ll probably like this game.

Like Infocom's Nord & Bert, Montfort created an essentially plot free game for Americans with a love for wordplay. Also similar to its predecessor, there is a built-in hint system that will ensure you don't get stuck.

While I adore Ad Verbum, its best puzzle is easily the first one you're likely to encounter, that being the compass rose rooms. The descriptions and responses to valiant attempts to escape these rooms are some of the wittiest I've seen in interactive fiction. I was delighted when trying to leave the south room when (Spoiler - click to show)"skedaddle" worked. I also rather enjoyed the library room. Like others have mentioned, I was disappointed that several puzzles have very little to do with classic wordplay (and aren't terribly interesting), and the Latin pig understands less than he should.

A brilliant minimalist RPG that hearkens back to 80’s games made in BASIC only with the polish and creativity of today’s designers.

I have a soft spot for games that are light on exposition and throw you into a scene. The opening here has you in a dark room with the ability to build a fire, your other goals unknown. From there the most complex the game gets visually is an overworld map using ASCII characters. Despite this the story develops at a near perfect pace with ample doses of hope and horror. To say more would be pointless, other than it’s accessible to anyone and isn’t terribly difficult if you’re patient. I’ve also played it through three times because it’s that damn good (there's also more than one ending depending on your strategy).

I've only played the iOS port by Amir Rajan which I hear is a bit more polished and fleshed out.

I've always enjoyed games that take place in space, especially on failing space vessels (e.g. Mission Critical, Seedship). I fell immediately for Fail-Safe's hook, which entails playing the role of mission control talking to the lone survivor on a failing space vessel.

Ingold does an incredible job at building a tense atmosphere based entirely on conversation. His decision to disable most basic interactive fiction commands (save, restore, inventory, etc.) was perfect in keeping the player locked into the moment. It wouldn't work in a longer game, but given the brevity here it was the right move.

The only thing that pulled me out of the game a bit was that mission control had some jargon that mission control would know but were not obvious to me, making a couple of things less clear. However, the decision to have (Spoiler - click to show)an unreliable narrator is pulled off very well. It's a huge risk for sure, as it can seem like pulling the rug out, a cheap trick as it were. However, there are a few clues sprinkled in that I didn't pick up on that in hindsight I should have. All I could do was tip my cap to the author and replay.

Definitely worth a look if you're in the mood for something short and immersive.

Hollywood Hijinx is one of Infocom’s unsung gems. Your rich aunt has just passed on, and you were the favorite nephew chosen to inherit the large fortune. However, she needs to know if you are clever enough to be worthy of holding the family finances. She has given you twelve hours to explore her mansion and find the ten “treasures,” or leftover props from her husband’s popular B-movies.

The twelve-hour time limit would normally annoy me, but in my first playthrough I just relaxed, created an intricately detailed map, and explored each room leisurely. I ran out of time (and even made the game unwinnable by messing with some props), but once I learned what to do it was a blast to run through it one more time.

Hijinx captures the flavor of the times and the B-movie industry wonderfully, and is funny throughout. Normally I'm one to resort to a walkthrough pretty quickly, but for some reason I found the puzzles here fairly straightforward with only a couple of mind-benders. Regardless of whether or not you find the puzzles challenging or easy breezy, if you’re just looking for a good time and a few good laughs, this game is great.