Counterfeit Monkey

Emily Short's masterpiece is widely considered to be the Greatest Work of IF of All Time. This is reflected in its very secure #1 spot in the IFDB Top 100 list and its continual appearance among the topmost slots of every quadrennial Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time since its release (having placed 3rd in the 2015 edition and 1st in the following 2019 and 2023 editions).

It is undeniably fun to play with the semiotic manipulation technology (one of those advanced technologies that are indistinguishable from magic), and the inventive exercise of the various combinations of changes in the puzzle design makes for a "just right" feel of challenge almost universally throughout the game. The task for the player is constrained enough that finding a solution is almost inevitable, but unique enough to make each solution feel like a surprising breakthrough intuition. I once saw someone describe the essence of good puzzle design as "making the player feel smart," and it's hard to imagine a better recipe for doing so using "reasonably easy but not boring" puzzles.

In addition to sporting very enjoyable puzzles, Counterfeit Monkey's narrative earns consideration as literature by exploring questions that seem even more relevant today than they were when it was released. Its indirect commentary on the nature of language and its interaction with reality, and especially how that interaction is relevant to politics, is the work's thought-provoking philosophical core.

Short's tremendous worldbuilding skills are put to the test by this work's scope, but, as Edward Lacey's early review points out, she does a remarkable job of inventing a plausible-feeling world in which this technology exists but which is somehow not too different from our own. The pacing of the complex exposition is slow enough that significant questions will linger in the player's mind for some time, but by the end of the game those questions will have been answered.

Viewed through the lens of conventional storytelling, the resolution of the narrative comes off as strangely incomplete; the three most significant characters (Spoiler - click to show)(Andra, Alex and Brock) all seem unexpectedly subdued about the radical rearrangement of their relationships with respect to each other -- my impression on completing the game was that they are in shock at the story's conclusion, not yet ready to acknowledge the scale of the inevitable changes to their respective status quos. The outcome of the greater political situation also seems a bit too pat, in that (Spoiler - click to show)the new Atlantida seems too insubstantial to hang any hope upon; surely there were other people involved in the government with a vested interest in the way things were and who will look to "reset" the embodied spirit of the country in their own image posthaste. Still, the dramatic questions of the ostensible plot have been resolved (Spoiler - click to show)(if in a manner that looks like failure to the player), so perhaps the remaining questions are springboards for their own stories. (... and note that, for anyone brave enough to try, the game was published under a CC-BY-SA license, so the way is open.)

Short did consciously make the moral climax of the player character's story into a "no-win situation," citing it as "an illustration of one of the core problems of democratic society," and (per the same source) was clearly aware that she was leaving the items outlined in the previous paragraph unresolved. As such, we can be fairly certain that Counterfeit Monkey is telling exactly the story that she wanted to tell, in exactly the way that she wanted to tell it.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about why this work left me a little disappointed. At first I thought that it was just the familiar result of exploring a work that is surrounded by hype and finding that it didn't live up to my expectations, but I later realized that that's not the case here. It actually exceeded my expectations as a game -- it is such a high level of craft that it pegs the needle of my ability to discern things to appreciate; doubtless there is much genius embedded in this work's coding and storytelling technique that escapes my notice entirely by virtue of being off the scale. What I can see is that this work perfects many of the signature elements of Short's style (e.g. conversations, creating a "living" setting, thematic puzzle design) and is truly a masterwork in terms of game design.

What disappoints me is the story side, and the reason is that I was convinced for structural reasons that a different story was being told.

(Spoiler - click to show)
The story that is actually being told is about the intersecting character arcs of Andra and Alex. The situation is such that each perceives a zero-sum game, but in actuality there is a wider range of possible outcomes including negative-sum (as is actually observed in the ending) and possibly positive-sum (as is hinted but not realizable). Each character acts in accordance with his or her own values and priorities, and certain choices -- including the functional climax choice of whom to release from storage -- are between mutually exclusive options that can satisfy only one of the two.

The structure of the work makes me believe that Short was trying to create a genuine tragedy, i.e. a story in which the "right" choices from the perspectives of the characters in the story results in a "wrong" outcome from the perspective of the audience. The key evidence here is that the player must make the climax choice without being able to anticipate the resulting consequences. I scratched my head for a long time about this design element, because as a player of even the most interactive of fiction I feel more like a member of the audience than a genuine actor in the story -- an almost inescapable side-effect of the fact the available actions are always constrained by the finite nature of the embodying program. The design around the story climax did not seem consistent with Short's normal style, but it makes sense as a deliberate choice if the intent was to simulate being the character in a tragedy, i.e. not knowing what the audience knows.

In fact, the "audience" does know the most important and impactful fact affecting the personal drama between Andra and Alex, which is that there is a time limit of unknown length after which their temporary fusion will become permanent. It is clear that neither Andra nor Alex want this outcome, but the game makes it easy to forget this and to ignore that ticking clock in favor of having fun in the moment. (Who doesn't delight in discovering the untalented naval polecat?) Upon reaching the ending, I, too, was in shock alongside the main characters. Like many, I tried different ways to reach the winning state that I assumed must exist, only to later discover that it simply is not provided.

This story doesn't feel like a tragedy to me, it feels only like a bummer ending to an otherwise extremely fun game. (Tellingly, most of Counterfeit Monkey's effusive reviews tend to ignore the endings entirely.) I credit an excellent essay by Drew Cook for elucidating various aspects of tragedies that are essential but which are not provided here. The key quote from the essay sums it up: "Through tragedy, capricious disaster becomes comprehensible and–rather optimistically–a step on a path toward social harmony and cohesion." Among the available endings for Counterfeit Monkey, I felt only the capricious disaster; there seems to be nothing to learn.

Maybe that's not actually true. Maybe the deep message is that we are supposed to keenly observe how the limited perspectives of Andra and Alex make them focus on their short-term conflicts about items of lesser importance to their what-should-be-evitable mutual detriment. The fact that Short ultimately let the structural requirements of a tragic story outweigh the structural requirements of a fun game shows what her priorities were as the author, and this aspect of the work as a whole is good evidence that she was trying to craft something more than "just a game," i.e. entertainment alone.

Until near the end, the story that I felt sure was being told was one about a society whose authority figures have grown unresponsive to its citizenry, and which is on the verge of rediscovering what "democracy" really means. A society in which the power to manipulate symbols is equivalent to the ability to manipulate reality itself. A society whose increasingly authoritarian government knows that its ability to define the symbols is the basis of its control over the populace. Given the background of discontent and the "showdown" scene between a crowd of protesters and a policeman -- a scene so perfectly placed as the climax of an Act II, the resolution of which raises the dramatic tension of the societal conflict that has constantly threatened to break into the foreground -- given that setup, I fully expected the actual climax of the story to be one in which the masses descend on the Bureau's headquarters, interrupting the protagonists' escape plot but allowing the player to use the knowledge gained earlier to tip the balance one way or the other... perhaps at the willfully-paid cost of giving up the chance to reverse the corporal fusion.

As it is, the showdown scene is not foreshadowing, it's just a wonderful study in miniature of the highest potential of IF: a point at which everything that the player has experienced so far begins to resonate with a thrilling emotional and cognitive power so rarely reached in the form. (I personally haven't been so enthralled since "The Puzzle" of Spider and Web.)


Is this Short's best work? As a game, yes, undoubtedly. Counterfeit Monkey is a brilliant resolution of the archetypal conflict between narrative and crossword through skillful synthesis into something more than the sum of its parts -- with a clever meta-wordplay twist, to boot.

As art, though, I'm not so sure, and since it's not just a game, I can't rate it on that basis alone -- I have to take into account the story side at least as much.

My playing group spent a good month talking about this work, debating about the core message(s) it presents. One member was almost 100% on the author's wavelength and laid out an analysis that turned out to be very well supported by Short's own self-commentary when we got to the point of doing research instead of just comparing perceptions. Thus, it seems likely that the narrative part is a complete artistic success for a substantial portion of the audience.

Perhaps the shortfall that I perceive only seems important because the game part is so masterfully done that it comes off (very deceptively) as having been effortless to produce. As other reviewers note, it is an amazing gift to the public for Short to have released this work, her magnum opus, for free, and I don't want to be unappreciative here -- I had a lot of fun playing it, and you will, too. I just can't help but think that there was a missed opportunity to discuss larger aspects of society, aspects that I would have loved to see Short's particular genius explore in more detail -- indeed, aspects that were clearly part of her thought process while creating this work! -- and that doing so would have raised the artistic value of the result considerably. My gut instinct is that this could have been enduring literature of a quality comparable to Ursula K. LeGuin's best if themes about language and its impact on society had been the primary focus instead of just a prominent element. Even though Counterfeit Monkey as a game is an as-yet-incomparable synthesis of narrative and crossword puzzle, it seems to me that there are still greater heights to be reached by interactive fiction -- heights that, if they are ever attained, will be so in part because Emily Short with this work pointed the way.

My natural inclination is to go with 4 stars in acknowledgement of what Counterfeit Monkey might have been, but by the standards of my published rubric there is no doubt that, as a work which is "so incredible it effectively defines the genre or technique that it introduces or perfects," 5 stars are deserved for being the pinnacle of the wordplay puzzler. Kudos to Ms. Short, and thank you.

I love games with and about wordplay, and this has been a joy so far! I am not very far into it yet, but far enough for me to have faced a most unfortunate vehicular demise - which was also one of the absolute funniest ways I have ever died in a game of any kind. I burst out laughing, and was graciously allowed to rethink my decision. Fantastic writing, humor, and puzzles!

Astonishingly clever and laugh-out-loud funny, with vivid world building and a central mechanic that makes perfect use of the medium. I loved every second of this game.

If you have any doubt, stop reading these reviews and play the game.

There is so much to do in Counterfeit Monkey. I've played it three times and I'm still finding new stuff. Everything you do is rewarding and fun. The writing is consistent and the style is really original. The letter-remover is one of the most creative and well-implemented concepts I've ever gotten to use in a game, and the new tools that open up as you play just kept amazing me.

this was my first ever IF, and tbh nothing has matched it since. Incredibly creative, amazing gameplay, I don't know if I would've continued playing IF if this one wasn't so dang amazing!

According to the version notes, this quirk was fixed in version 10, but I played online and discovered that it was very much not fixed. I failed to solve a puzzle at the final boss and the game allowed me to undo only one turn, which wasn't enough turns to win. I finally gave up and watched an ending on YouTube. Be sure you SAVE right when you solve the portcullis puzzle!!!!! I think the correct command to restore your saved version is "restore".

That said, I loved practically everything else about this game, so I'm giving it five stars anyway. The worldbuilding and puzzles and social commentary are fascinating. I could not stop playing.

This is my favorite IF game of all time. I prefer story focused games rather than more traditional puzzle focused games, and I adore wordplay. This game combines the best of both worlds with an intriguing plot, excellent worldbuilding, and characterization that keeps you hooked. As well as this, the mechanics are intuitive and work wonderfully. Mad props to Emily

There's not much I can say about this masterpiece that hasn't already been said, but I'll give it a go anyway!

I think the most impressive feature of this game is the combination of wild, extravagant possibility with tight focus. Once you get the hang of your letter-remover, the range of possibilities seems almost paralysing in its scope: you can turn the objects around you into completely different objects with a flick of the wrist. A single item can yield all kinds of wildly different new items depending on which letter you remove, and these in their turn can do the same thing. More possibilities open up as you gain access to more word-manipulation tools - the anagram gun, in particular, is a dizzyingly powerful piece of kit that, once you get it running, makes you feel well-nigh omnipotent. All of the comments about the sheer scale of the task the author must have faced in coding all of these possibilities are, if anything, understated.

And yet at the same time it all works, because the game's scope never gets too out of control. For example, restricting the main mechanic to removing letters (and not adding them, except for one limited tool) means that any given object can only yield a limited number of new objects. Judicious use of adjectives in object names means that many cannot be manipulated at all, or only in fairly limited ways. Even the mighty anagram gun can only turn most objects into one other object, and most of those are useless if hilarious. I think this is the true achievement of this game - to create a world of apparently infinite possibility, that nevertheless limits that possibility without ever feeling restrictive. Enough range of possibility remains to allow the player freedom to try all kinds of things which don't help advance the game at all but are still possible. Here a shout-out has to go to the Britishizing Goggles, which are much appreciated if completely useless, and must have been another headache to implement. (Though they're not infallible e.g. "rigourous" is not correct British English, sad to say.)

This is one of the few puzzle-based games that I managed to complete entirely on my own, though some sections gave me lengthy pause for thought. It's all logical, and while "guess the verb" is effectively replaced by "guess the noun", you at least have all those possible nouns in front of you, in theory. On some occasions the gameplay slows as you read repeatedly through your entire inventory, trying to work out which word, with a letter removed, might produce something useful - and the game's adherence to the modern convention that it's possible to carry in your arms literally everything that's not nailed down means this can be a time-consuming process. More often than not, though, the relevant object is fairly easy to identify. One point to bear in mind is that everything you need to solve a puzzle is always available in locations you can travel to from that puzzle point, something that in the later stages of the game means you can discount much of your swollen inventory when trying to work out what to do.

The parser is very friendly, allowing you to take back game-losing moves. Conversations are rather mechanical, but as we all know, conversations are impossible to implement well in IF. The parser does suffer from frustrating limits in the underlying engine - e.g. it cannot handle "Put X and Y on the Z", requiring instead "Put X on the Z" followed by "Put Y on the Z", even though there are a number of times when you do have to put two things onto or into something.

Most importantly though, this game is just absurdly fun to play. The fact that something like this is free when it outclasses on every level the classic Infocom-era games - that we had to buy with actual money, from actual shops - is something to be profoundly grateful for.

I must add that it's thanks to this game that I discovered Toki Pona, which I'm going to investigate in more detail. Oh, and finally, playing this game late at night leads to very strange dreams.

[EDIT] tenpo ni la, mi sona e toki pona. jan Emili o, pona!

Really impressive display of talent and creativity. loved the multiple solutions to puzzles and kept you engaged from start to finish!

This is my favorite IF of all time.

Much of the gameplay involves converting objects from one thing to another by altering their spelling. That sounds odd outside of a text-based game, but in this setting it works brilliantly.

Structurally, the game is the type where you wander around an area collecting things and solving puzzles that may require pieces from distant parts of the game world. But with the way this game works, the key to solving puzzles requires a lot of creativity and word-play.

The game provides many hours of gameplay. It took me several days. For the most part, the puzzles were the right level of challenge to make for fun gameplay, but I did use a walkthrough a few times when I got stuck.

This game is what Infocom's "Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It" was trying to be, a clever puzzle-based game based on wordplay. The author added depth, political angst, and much more interesting characters and settings. It's an incredible achievement. (And there are different levels of difficulty! It's amazing!)

I, unfortunately, didn't enjoy playing the game even though I was impressed by its scope, depth, and technical prowess. The dark theme felt like it belonged in a separate game. But the main reason was that I was playing (over Zoom) with an eighth grade friend of mine (her first IF!) and when we came across the "double entendre" puzzle we were both extremely uncomfortable with the solution and we stopped playing altogether. (I finished it by myself months later.)

I suppose I should really be aiming that disappointment at IFDB for not having an "adult content" warning on games. It was hard to resist playing the highest rated game on IFDB that was based on wordplay. (It seemed innocent enough!)

This game is a classic. It is everything an IF game should be. Just play it and see for yourself!

First, let me begin by saying that this has to be the pinnacle of IF programming. This game is large and deep, and amazingly robust with its responses to player input. I can't even imagine how much time Emily Short put into writing and testing it. Bravo!

As far as the user experience is concerned, this is a great game. It has a well-built environment/world, with backstory for both the setting and the characters. The characters aren't particularly deep, but much more fleshed out than your typical IF game, complete with memories that pop up to reveal more about you (the player character) and the NPCs.

The map is quite large and mostly revealed from the beginning of the game (I highly recommend playing with the built-in map on), but you aren't overwhelmed with possibilities. As you complete the main tasks in an area and clear roadblocks to advance to a new area, you rarely (if ever) have to go back to get an object that you didn't know was important the first time you came across it. I loved that, it both made the puzzles easier to wrap your head around and gave me a real sense of progress as you moved around the map.

The puzzles are revolutionary, using a mechanic that I don't think had been explored before (or since?) this game. It is a nice change of pace from the more mechanical or character-stimulus puzzles of other games. The only downside was that because the puzzles were all word/letter based, it got to be a bit repetitive and a few times a little too easy as it was obvious what you needed to progress and you just had to find an object one letter off from your solution.

I enjoyed this game a lot and appreciate it even more. A must play for any IF enthusiast.

This is one of the first few IF games I've played, so that's where I'm coming from.

I enjoyed the writing and story.

Overall, the parser had all sorts of useful features that made it much less frustrating and more enjoyable than other IF that lacks those sorts of features. I rarely had difficulty figuring out how to get the character to do what I wanted, something I can't say for the few other IF games I've played.

In particular, I appreciated the great space of possibilities achievable through word-manipulation that the game actually accounts for, even if it isn't directly relevant to advancing the story.

There's 2 main reasons I didn't give this five stars:

First, I encountered a few small bugs. One that particularly annoyed me was that the "exit" command didn't work inside the University. Additionally, (Spoiler - click to show)on the ship at the end of the game, the look command made no mention of a wardrobe (or at least it wasn't highlighted in bold if you turned that feature on), but you need to open the wardrobe in order to progress. How is that supposed to be fun?. Those two are my primary reasons for docking a star because they frustrated me due to making it unnecessarily difficult to progress. Most of the other bugs I encountered were related to missing content but had no affect on the gameplay.

Second, especially as the game goes on and your inventory grows, I found some of the puzzles to be more frustrating than enjoyable. I was holding so many items because I had no idea what would be useful, but this made it harder to figure out what I was supposed to use to solve a particular challenge because it increases the pool of objects you have to pick from - complicated by the fact that each object can potentially be transformed into other objects using word manipulation.

One particular puzzle that frustrated me was the one in the middle of the roundabout where teens are chained up and there's an all purpose officer. I eventually looked up the solution after spending far longer than I'd like to admit on it. (Spoiler - click to show)I was told that I couldn't do anything that would make me suspicous. So why could I grab the gun and shoot the tree? Also, it seemed that the solution hinged on looking at the tree with your monocle. I had mine off, I think because I had to remove it to avoid detection earlier. I understand that it makes sense to always have your monocle on if possible, but, due to the large space of possible things to try in this situation, it makes it far less reasonable to expect someone to guess that they need to use their monocle on a perfectly innocuous tree. The only hint you get is that the all-purpose officer has been transforming things. You have to deduce from that that you should check for more transformed things, but that wouldn't be my first suspicion. Especially because I would expect a tree to be at that location. There's also lots of red herrings - the octopus, the statue itself, the signet - all of which are bolded objects but have nothing to do with the solution. Also, the officer's actions made me think I had to do something at a specific time or else the game would become unwinnable - like I had to do something while they were climbing or something. There's all sorts of stuff that could throw you off..

In general, I would say that, while some of these solutions may seem obvious in retrospect, you have to account for the state you are in before arriving there - you have potentially a lot of items. You have all sorts of different people and different actions to try. Sometimes you'll try an action but be given an explanation for why you can't do that, so you may develop an assumption about what you can and cannot try that leads you to never try something that was the solution all along. Puzzle games attempt to prevent this type of frustration by limiting the space of options you have to explore and/or providing small hints towards the solution. As a developer, you can't always rely on your own judgement to decide whether something will be fair or not too frustrating.

I don't know what went into the development of this game, but I suspect the puzzle frustration issues could've been revealed with a bit of testing from someone who didn't already know the solutions. As far as design, decreasing the amount of options available to you, having less unrelated objects and red herrings in the rooms involving the puzzle (because there's already enough with all the crap you have in your inventory), and providing more subtle hints would've helped keep me from getting frustrated with some of the puzzles. Overall, I felt like I spent a bit more time than I would've wanted not making any progress while trying to solve some of the puzzles.

That aside, it's still a great game and I enjoyed playing it; it just got a little too frustrating at times. I usually do well at puzzle games (they happen to be my favorite genre as far as video games go), though I'm new to IF, so I wouldn't blame the challenges I faced on my own inability. I'm fine with having difficulty with a puzzle - it's possible to have lots of difficult puzzles WITHOUT causing frustration and hurting the enjoyment of a game. I just don't think this game consistently achieves that.

All told, I would say I enjoyed about 85% of the time I spent with this game, so I definitely recommend this. Had some of the puzzles been designed more to be challenging without being frustrating, I would've probably enjoyed it a lot more.

This game is reason enough to create a national IF Laureate post. I hope Emily Short wins the lottery, or, barring that, I hope I win the lottery and can become a patron of her work. If anyone ever meets Sarah Vowell, please please have her play this game.

Note: This review was written months in advance. A week before this review was published, another review came out saying that counterfeit monkey was overwhelming and was very negative about the author and game in general. While I was overwhelmed, I think this is an incredible game, and that the author is extremely talented.

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Counterfeit Monkey is a technical marvel of wordplay and implementation. The game is a large exploration game where you can alter almost any item by adding or removing letters, reversing letters, performing anagrams, etc.

This game has been rated highly by the majority of those who played it, and I must praise its puzzles, writing, implementation, and craftsmanship.

These very qualities led me to feel overwhelmed playing this game. I had a similar experience with Blue Lacuna. In both games, so much is implemented that I had a hard time thinking of what to do next. In both games, you have a certain sense of urgency, so you want to move forward, but both reward experimentation. So I have a feeling of being torn in two directions (much like the protagonist of this game).

I wonder if the reason I feel drawn to interactive fiction in general is its minimalist, constrained atmosphere. Games like Zork or Curses! where you are noone, and exploration is the only goal; games like Glass, where you can only steer a conversation; games like Rogue of The Multiverse that are split into several parts with clear goals. Even games like Ad Verbum, which mirror the puzzle parts of Counterfeit Monkey without the plot.

Most will not feel the same as me, but I love the minimalism and asceticism of classic games, and I don't know if I enjoy those games which have been built up into a rich, huge world.

Really enjoyable puzzle game. The characters, setting, conceit and UI are all unique. The writing is excellent: humorous and delightful. I don't want to elaborate on the many many other reviews of this great game. I just have a couple of points:

1) Most of the puzzles have multiple solutions. Normally, I wouldn't like this, as it makes puzzles feel 'sloppy', but it works really well within the word-manipulation conceit. I mean, of course when you can reify text, there are many things that can happen and many solutions to potential problems.
2) The game offers the option to play in hard mode, which eliminates some (easier) puzzle solutions and changes how you have to approach a few situations. I recommend NOT playing on hard mode. The breadth of available options are a strength of this game, and I think hard mode fails on the side of sacrificing content for challenge.
3) If you're using Gargoyle for Windows, the default font (Bitstream Charter) does not render Unicode characters correctly, which can affect a couple of scenes in the game. This almost certainly won't affect your ability to complete the game, but I recommend using Times New Roman, which has a complete Unicode implementation. And I used a window size of "cols 150" and "rows 60" which made the map very readable and provided a good space for text on my screen. YMMV.

There's really not that much I can say about this ridiculously superb game which hasn't been said already (and more eloquently) by previous reviewers.

So I will limit myself to offering a little advice to anyone who is eyeing this cryptically titled game and wondering "...shall I?"

I would implore you to:

(1) Just download it already. You're more likely to meet a sunbathing Grue than to regret playing this game.

(2) Don't be put off by the fact that the story blurb doesn't make a blind bit of sense. It's not supposed to (until you've played some of the game). Just take a leap of faith into unknown waters.

(3) Make an effort to get the latest version of this game, which may require visiting the Author's web site. The IFDB-hosted gblorb may be out-of-date, and save-game files may not be compatible between releases, so you should get the latest version before you start playing. (I got burned by this).

(4) Avoid playing it on iOS Frotz. Much as I love that app, this game will be intolerably slow, and may even be impossible to complete, due to hanging.

Much as I would love to wax lyrical about the game's mind-boggling breadth and depth, smile-inducing humour, ground-breaking game mechanics, masterful prose, or just the astonishing fact that we live in a universe where you can play this game for free, I will steadfastly resist the temptation. So that you can get on with enjoying the journey ahead.

This was an amazing game. Professional in all respects, fascinating mechanics, gentle, well-described world hiding unexpectedly sharp teeth. I wanted to fall in love with it, and I did, for what turned out to be the first half or so.

The issue, for me, is that the characters were as gently and obliquely described as the world. I could sense there was a lot more to them bubbling under the surface, but I couldn't seem to unlock much of it. So I was left with a sense that the game would really be happier if we just stayed good friends and I didn't pry too much, and this left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

I may have rushed through too quickly; I'm used to IF that takes a few hours to complete, and this probably should have been enjoyed over a week. And maybe I'm spoiled by the easy narrative rewards of less demanding pieces. And maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind to enjoy exploring all of the nuances of the system and fiddling with everything in pursuit of success.

Minor spoiler (general feelings on ending): (Spoiler - click to show)I found the ending to be disappointing, enough so that I assumed I'd gotten a mediocre ending until I checked the source and discovered I'd gotten the best one (and some of the reasons why the author made this choice). I wasn't entirely shocked that the ending left me with mixed feelings, since I've played a few other games by this author and have come to the conclusion that our definitions of "happy" are considerably different!

Major spoiler: (Spoiler - click to show)I wanted Alexandra to be separated and to see them interact with each other face to face after spending so much time so intimately connected and going through so much. Leaving them joined just felt incomplete.

I would definitely suggest using Gargoyle if possible, since on WinGluxe, "go to" and "find" became incredibly sluggish as the game progressed.

This may be my favorite IF game currently, the only game able to even stand up to try and compete with it being Make it Good.

The entire game is full of linguistic puzzles, and like most of Short's work, creates a brilliant sense of place without extraneous descriptive text. The setting is fantastic and unreal--something most writers would communicate through byzantine tomes you can read through ad nauseum--but Short makes it compelling and real with the perfect amount of detail.

I haven't finished it, but I've put 2 hours into it, and haven't felt lost or confused. Puzzles that could be game-breaking have multiple solutions, and discovering those extra solutions--while not seemingly necessary and not contributing to my score yet--make me feel like the king of puzzles, twirling about in front of my throne and doffing my crown to my adoring peasentry.

Speaking of being "The King of Puzzles", I demand that my knights Make it Good and Counterfeit Monkey present themselves on my tourney field tomorrow to battle. I want to see blood, you knaves!

Ahem, sorry, got carried away there. Nothing more to see here, moving on!

The setting, the technical implementation, the plot, the writing, and the actual puzzles--the way they are solved and the mechanisms involved--are fascinating and novel. This is one of the best works of IF available.

Emily Short writes masterpieces, this is undisputed. Yet the Counterfeit Monkey outdoes even Short's other games. The world was as compelling as any book I have read. Unparalleled character development, not only characters around the player, but also the character herself; The game is written from the point of view of 'Alex' narrating for the player, and as such opens many possibilities to see the player from the eyes of another. Through out game play the player finds memories to view, adding insight into the player's past. The virtual world Short built is large with items scattered across it, not all that the player uses. Counterfeit Monkey game play centers around word manipulation, changing the name of things to change what they are, creating unless possibilities. In addition to all this, the game did not feel 'static' with conversations, new characters, and new goals, around every corner.

I would caution anybody thinking of play Counterfeit Monkey that it is very hard. Do not play unless you are an advanced player.

Play it if: you want a lengthy and engrossing puzzle-solving experience and a healthy dollop of satirical humor to occupy you for a day or two.

Don't play it if: you're in the mood for something that more heavily emphasizes atmosphere or depth of characterization.

Boy, did I like Counterfeit Monkey. It had me grinning like a maniac within five minutes of starting, and that grin never let up. Even when my face got sore after the first few hours.

The most consistent tonal impression I got from Counterfeit Monkey was that of a high-quality Monkey Island game. Surreal plot devices, anachronistic histories, a coastal setting, a light-hearted story with streaks of darkness...it's all there. Oddly enough it also reminds me of The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game in its tone and charm, though I prefer Monkey for its outstanding gameplay and depth of setting. There's even a hint of Planescape: Torment lurking in there somewhere (a detailed setting where belief and opinion have physical power).

In gameplay terms, Monkey combines a feeling of casual puzzle-solving fun with a profound degree of technical effort. In that respect it feels like a sort of leveled-up crossword, which is appropriate because almost all of the puzzles here are navigated through some form of wordplay. I spent a chunk of the first half of the game a little concerned that the gameplay wouldn't significantly change. The letter-removals were great, but they also felt fairly straightforward, more so than what I think I'm used to in the early stages of a longer Emily Short game. But then the story starts to throw in some fun alternative powers, and remains fairly dynamic from there. Mixing it up with some memory exploration and the ongoing plotline, and you have a story which is fairly excellently paced.

It's difficult to overstate how much effort it must have taken (at least form the perspective of a novice like me) to have implemented the wordplay. A lot of my enjoyment came out of trying some more obscure ideas and realizing just how thorough the research was - how delighted I was to find that the author had taken the time to implement a cad, complete with "smouldering gaze"!

Definitely worth your time. Entertaining and impressive.

I see from the release date, that this is a pretty new game. So, I'm going to assume that Emily Short might be making some changes to things soon as some new editions are released.

For right now, though, it's a little rough in spots.

The good news: I loved the story. It was one of the most imaginative plots that I can remember. And, the story is very well told. I really like the writing. There is a nice, consistent tone to the writing that solidly conveys a time and place that is only slightly removed from our real universe. Nothing over the top. And, the non-player half of the player is nicely handled. I also sort of liked the inclusion of the map. At first, I was unsure about it, but it grew on me. The text was a little hard to read, and the placement of the streets didn't exactly match up with the expected movements in every location. But, it was clear enough to give you some idea of the spatial relations. Certainly, I wouldn't want to see a map like that in every game (especially ones with more than about 20 locations), but this one worked.

The bad news: I really did not like the "Pick Your Own Adventure" sort of leading that was going on at various places. When you encounter various people, the game will prompt you with suggested topics of conversation. The reponses then prompt even more topics of conversation. At that point, you pretty much just play a scrivener and retype those questions. I didn't think that those exchanges added anything to the game. I would have preferred a page of automatic text instead of that.

I was also underwhelmed at some of the vocabulary. It seemed to me that there were lots of things that I would try to do where the game would not allow obvious actions or would not recognize obvious synonyms. The description of each area is short and doesn't give you much room to play around (even if to no particular purpose).

I'll check back on this game in a few months and try it again if a new release has come out. For now, I would give it a solid 3 stars.

Emily Short's Counterfeit Monkey is a large and ambitious contribution to several IF genres, but I think the description that best indicates the gameplay experience is "wordplay puzzle game". Short imagines a world in which names are more fundamental than physical properties, and to rename an individual object (subject to given rules) is to transform it to something else. The game's island setting of Anglophone Atlantis is a centre for development of word-altering technology, and the protagonist must make use of this technology in order to smuggle plans for a new device out from under the noses of the island's oppressive government. A tool available from the start of the game can remove any letter of the alphabet from an object's name; to give an example not from the game, a BEARD could become a BEAR and then an EAR. The game allows any appropriately-named object to be modified, often in more complicated ways than this example suggests. The range of options seemed daunting at first, but I found that puzzles were arranged to ensure that new abilities and locations become available only once I had demonstrated proficiency with the resources already available.

A puzzle game founded on such depth of simulation would be noteworthy in itself, but Short combines it with a setting and plot that are engaging in their own right and make the fantastical premise seem almost credible. Over the the course of the game, the player learns about the history of word-altering technology and its likely future development, not to mention its competing uses by criminals and the authorities. By making clear the legal and technological constraints on the transformations, Counterfeit Monkey not only explains how a world in which "animal" and "mineral" are mutable categories escapes incomprehensible chaos, but provides a natural basis for the police-state setting and industrial espionage plot.

Although this review has referred to a "protagonist", the player character Alexandra is actually a verbal and physical "synthesis" of two people, linguist Alex and spy Andra, who have decided that sharing a merged body temporarily will give them the opportunity to leave Anglophone Atlantis unrecognized. The player's input is interpreted as attempts at action from Andra, while Alex takes on the role of the narrator and parser. The contrast between the dominating, problem-focused Andra and the more cautious, locally-knowledgeable Alex provides a perfect fit for the player-parser relationship.

The game's tone is also something of a synthesis. Some excellent humour arises from the bizarre objects the player can create, while the dystopian background is treated quite seriously. The ethical implications of Alexandra's actions receive due attention, but I felt that it was here that the only perceptible tension arose between the plot and puzzles. ((Spoiler - click to show)Concerns are raised in the game about the power of word-manipulation to bring people or animals into existence, and Alexandra's equipment is initally configured to prevent this. However, the puzzles assume that the player will be happy to create "animates" routinely once this ability is acquired.) This criticism is trivial in light of the remarkable achievement that Counterfeit Monkey represents as an adventure game, a simulation, a narrative and an experiment in IF player-parser relations. I hope that any player not allergic to wordplay will download it and enjoy it as much as I did.