Ratings and Reviews by Drew Cook

1992's "The Tempest" by David R. Grigg, which should not be mistaken for Graham Nelson's adaptation, is an unkind game that modern players will struggle to complete. However, this review, as part of my "games seeking reviews" series, is intended to celebrate and recognize previously undiscussed works. While I will be candid about the shortcomings of "The Tempest," cataloguing them is not my aim either here or generally in the series.

All reviews in my "games seeking reviews" series are inspired by Tabitha's excellent 2024 "Review-a-Thon," which I encourage all readers to investigate for more reviews of hidden IF gems.

Reviewing parser games from the interregnum between the fall of Infocom and the so-called "neo-classical" period that began with the release of Graham Nelson's "Curses" is difficult. I'd characterize many games as boutique titles, works sold by small publishers for a narrowing audience. Quality varied greatly in terms of design and presentation, but works of this period must be recognized as torch-bearers, keeping the medium alive in the face of diminishing sales. In this sense, even works that feel unsatisfying have merit.

"The Tempest" doesn't afford an experience of inhabiting Shakespeare's play. That would require a caliber of writing that would be difficult for anyone, in any medium, to achieve. Nelson's solution was to use Shakespeare's own poetry, which was probably the best approach. Players of Grigg's "The Tempest" will likely feel reminded of, rather than placed in, the play.

Mechanically, the game violates what contemporary players will expect as craft norms. There is a maze with no hints for solving. Exits are often unidentified in room descriptions and are frequently unreciprocated (entering from the east does not guarantee an eastward return). Weight limits come up more than once. There is almost always one or more unimplemented nouns in a room. Synonyms are few.

There are multiple timers, including a strictly limited light source.

I think persons interested in the history of interactive fiction might appreciate how rewarding it was to find an AGT decompiler, run it in DOSBox (Windows 11 would not execute it), and sift through the text in order to find a way through the maze. I think some of us live for this kind of thing! Doing so also gave me insight into how AGT games are organized, something I had no concept of.

I was only able to find one review of "The Tempest," and it was understandably negative. Since the reviewer likely paid money for it, he had a right to expect more than I might. There is no walkthrough for "The Tempest" at CASA, which often has materials for games not covered here at IFDB. It is obscure, unnoticed, and probably unloved.

[An aside: "The Tempest" was an entrant in the 1992 Softworks AGT competition, a contest organized over Compuserve for games written with the Aventure Game Toolkit, a shareware product for authoring parser games. It, along with other "honorable mentions," was part of a post-competition five-disk, seventeen-game collection that was sold by mail for thirty dollars. The collection included source code, which presumably provided a 1993 reviewer with solutions to some more vexing problems. For more information, the announcement for the competition's results can be read here.]

Still, I wish to praise the outlandish, outsized ambition of this work. It is not likely that audiences were clamoring for a "Tempest" game. As I have already indicated, hoping to do Shakespeare justice seems an incredibly difficult task. This is the kind of big, swing-for-the-fences project that is the opposite of safe, that loves great art, and must be, in its way, the product of fearlessness. I praise the impulse that inspired it and the conviction that it must have required. Even though the work is not successful, it indicates a certainty that IF can be art.

All this in a day when the jury was still out regarding that and many other questions! While I cannot recommend playing "The Tempest" for fun, it deserves credit for believing in (and investing in) the artistic merits of interactive fiction.

Tools used: I used AGTDec, which I retrieved from the programming/agt directory at the Interactive Fiction Archive. Since Windows 11 wouldn't run it, I relied on DOSBox. It created two very readable text dumps.

I thought I might enjoy reviewing as-yet unreviewed games. It's hard to get one's game reviewed outside of a competition or jam context, if the news page on IFDB is any indicator. If you are familiar with my writing style, then you might reasonably expect this review to mostly consist of deadpan snark, but that isn't what this series of reviews is about. Here, I'd like to draw attention to previously undiscussed IF in a welcoming way.

I discovered this game, a free demo for H. H. Richards's "Lewd Mod," via Tabitha's "Games Seeking Reviews" poll.

Let's get this out of the way first: "Naughty in the Library" has implied nudity, at least one colorful slang term for female anatomy, and a lot of sexual innuendo. If you are troubled by that sort of thing, then skip this game. This game - this demo, at least - doesn't offer much beyond that. There are no rewards for pushing through that content; that content is the game.

How is that content? For starters, the artwork is highly stylized. The woman featured, Ellie B, has white teeth, red lips, arched eyebrows... and no eyes. Some thoughtful critic might make a lot of that aesthetic choice. Does it mean something? Is it a depersonalization? The effect is striking and seems to be a consistent feature of women's faces in H. H. Richards's work, as the women on their itch.io page all lack eyes. I do not know if the overall effect is erotic, but I did find these portrayals memorable. For what it's worth, Richards's depictions of cats have no eyes, either.

So far as the dialogue that links these images of Ellie in a narrative thread: I feel the demo suffers, in that we - an undefined self-insert - already seem to know her. That being so, we never get to know her. I wasn't sure what I might and might not suggest to her, in terms of her bra, her shoes, or what have you. I felt rather disconnected from our exchange. Was the protagonist being weird or pushy? It didn't seem so in-game, as Ellie seemed very open to their suggestions, but I never really found the dialogue options very relatable.

The full game might fare better due to better contextualization. For instance, in that work, you are a content moderator for a social media site. So there is more of a "game" there, potentially, than there is here.

TL;DR: A short, dramatized text chat in which the player talks to a woman named "Ellie" and asks for her to send erotic selfies to them.
+ The style of the art is distinctive. So distinctive, in fact, that it invites interpretation.
+ The interface is very polished.
+ Even if the demo lacks important context, potential buyers can get a feel for the presentation, art style, and messaging interface.

- The gameplay in this demo feels almost beside the point. Ellie seemed very happy to send pictures. It isn't clear if the full game involves challenge of any kind.
- This content is not for everyone, so potential players should pay attention to content advisories.
- The main game seems to have context and gameplay that is not contained in the demo, which makes it hard to say if the paid experience would be worthwhile.

Additional thoughts: the artwork does not aggressively reinforce unrealistic beauty standards, which I appreciate. The exchange with Ellie doesn't seem inherently exploitational, and there is no apparent power dynamic at work. While this demo is not necessarily my thing, it seems to be honest about what it is and has, I am sure, an audience.

As a bit of background: I discovered this game via Tabitha's "Games Seeking Reviews" poll. I'm grateful for this initiative!

"Kiss of Beth" is a short horror story in Twine. There are optional conversation nodes and at least one momentous choice. Navigation is easy, and the interface and prose work together effectively. The beginning is gently ominous, dramatizing a chat with an acquaintance who has come to take the protagonist's roommate, Beth, on a date. While I won't give anything away, I'll say that the pace at which details unfold is well-calibrated, and I was eager to discover the true nature of this encounter.

There is also an interesting meta-comment about "good" endings, which left me with a few satisfying thoughts to mull over afterward.

TL:DR:
A short, 15-minute twine experience with a nice bit of initially understated horror. More than worth the time.

+ The visual and auditory presentation is more interesting than it first appears, evoking specific vibes from classic adventure games.
+ A bite-sized snack; both endings can be explored in a short amount of time. It's like a good short story.
+ Satisfyingly unpleasant.

- No notes! This kind of short, focused Twine experience is my jam.

For lack of a better term, let us borrow one from renaissance studies: Ballyhoo is what I would call a "problem" game. At times it is darkly funny. Elsewhere, it is just dark. Glum, even. The protagonist doesn't want to help people, it seems, they want to be recognized for helping people. Some of its jokes don't land; not gracefully, anyway. The mid-late 1980s was a different, edgier time, and Ballyhoo is a product of it. The puzzles sometimes feel unmotivated or nonsensical. Often the idea seems simply for the player to mess around with everything until something good happens.

I'm not alone in saying and thinking such things. Reception of Ballyhoo has remained stably ambivalent these many years since its release in 1985. It's a lukewarm outlier in an incredibly hot streak, even by Infocom standards. Consider this chronological order of parser game releases:

- Wishbringer
- A Mind Forever Voyaging
- Spellbreaker
- Ballyhoo
- Trinity

One of these games is clearly not like the others, but does that make it bad? From a textual point of view, I would say that Ballyhoo is quite good, actually. Jeffrey O'Neill is a gifted prose stylist: wry, playful, unagressively self-referential. He understands the conventions of the form and engages with them in novel and interesting ways. This is a text that has literary ambitions, yet never taps your shoulder to see if you noticed them. A Mind Forever Voyaging and, to a greater extent Trinity, really can't help themselves in this regard, with their quotations and press releases. As clumsy as Ballyhoo can be, it often seems efortlessly (or at least casually) literary in a way that I appreciate. This is a text, firmly rooted in pulpy crime fiction, that never seems to need to announce itself.

The story, such as it is, involves a kidnapped girl, a greedy businessman, and angry clowns.

Despite some messiness, there are some fine technical and craft moments to be found. There is, perhaps, the most interesting framing for a time travel puzzle that I have ever seen. There is a wickedly funny puzzle-joke about public radio.

Importantly, Ballyhoo runs on a subjective clock. Time only advances in-game when certain actions or story beats have completed. Previous Infocom mystery games ran on an objective clock. With an objective clock, time advanced with each user action, and the world responded in kind. At this late date, the objective clock is largely absent from interactive fiction. The subjective clock, on the other hand, is a staple not only in IF but in many game genres. Whatever one makes of O'Neill as an author, this contribution has become so common that few ever recall that, like everything else, someone had to do it first.

Will you like playing Ballyhoo? Circus settings, especially ones with this level of prose quality, are incredibly rare in the commercial era. In that sense, it offers a lot in terms of novelty and variety. The writing, as I've already said, is very good, and stylistically unique among all other Infocom games. The puzzles are mixed, though some strong, innovative ones are to be found. Finally, the feelies are excellent, with more great writing by O'Neill and evocative illustrations that summon an ambiance of faded nostalgia.

Ballyhoo is not going to be the game that changes your mind about Infocom, but it is a must play for fans and parser history buffs. The Invisiclues are available, and, as always, I encourage their use should the puzzles lose their glamour.

A final note: Ballyhoo was also history-making in that it was the first Infocom game in which a protagonist could be a woman explicitly rather than implicitly. That is, players have often tried to see themselves in Infocom protagonists, but it was usually unclear what Infocom's intentions were with regard to protagonist identities. Sometimes, it was hard to tell whether a character was inclusive or merely vague. Ballyhoo gives the player a clear, unambiguous choice with regard to gender.

Sadly, O'Neill didn't do anything very interesting with the choice, but the moment remains one for the history books.

In any case, there are enough historically notable features to make Ballyhoo worth one's time, and, thanks to O'Neill's prose, there is a great deal more than that.