Dangerous Curves

Dangerous Curves lingered on my to-play list for a very long time. I had picked it up and tried it a few times, and never made it very far, mostly because -- despite being hooked by the opening scene -- I just couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing as the player. If playing interactive fiction is like waking up inside a story then this game, from the start of its highly-styled opening scene, always felt like waking up inside a movie... as an actor who had never received a copy of the script.

This initial disorientation is not helped by the high degree of detail in the presented setting, which has been executed in a simulationist style that was already giving way to more narrative-oriented approaches at the time of this game's release in 2000. That setting is the city of Los Angeles in the late 1940s. It is a character in its own right in this work, and it keeps its own schedule regardless of what one chooses to have the PC do. (The style is remniscent of Infocom's Deadline, but this game never depends on being in one place at one particular time.) The city has daily rhythms, in which stores and offices open and close according to posted hours, and there are even events dependent upon a weekly schedule as the game plays out over the course of several days. It's very easy to wander through this vast clockwork toy universe for scores or even hundreds of moves without hitting on anything that seems relevant.

There are solid arguments to be made that such a detailed reflection of the physical world is not worth it -- that it's at best pursuit of a false goal because the author can never get close enough to reality, or that the payoff in terms of player experience is too low given the cost in time and effort -- but there's something remarkably immersive about interactions like buying things and receiving change as a collection of individual bills and coins, or giving directions while driving around and seeing the protagonist respond with appropriate traffic maneuvers. Regrettably, these subsystems are occasionally glitchy (e.g. printing incorrect coin counts, or incorrect facings for the vehicle), but I very much admire author Irene Callaci's vision in this respect and also the enormous amount of work put into realizing it as code.

NPCs are also advanced compared to those typical for the era, being responsive to various situations and exhibiting noticeable personalities, though by modern standards they are somewhat flat. The ASK/TELL conversation model is something of an inhibition here, especially in the scene in which (Spoiler - click to show)the protagonist must wring some information from the stripper, who is an unwitting accomplice. The two verbs do different things, and because exactly what the PC says is never shown, it's not always clear what the NPCs are responding to in their replies. In addition, there is a special >ACCUSE verb that produces unique results but is easy to forget about; that command seems common to murder mysteries but to me seemed out of place here.

Conversation only gets one so far, and the main action tends toward standard old school adventurer fare, i.e. going everywhere the PC can reach, searching areas for items or information, or obtaining objects that will get past specific obstacles or prompt NPCs to say more. From time to time a multi-step puzzle rears its head, and some of these are more than a little finicky. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)I only stumbled onto the solution path for searching the Jaguar when trying to retrieve the car from the garage; the verb >HIDE won't accept the prepositions IN or INSIDE.

The sandbox-like format seems to be intended to allow multiple trajectories through the possibility space of the model world, but in practice a given playthrough is likely to take one approximating the specific track that is promoted by the in-game hint system. The way that this system operates, the player is guided forward one step at a time, with no new hint provided until that step is completed. Players are likely to consult the hint system often, because the protagonist does not share his knowledge of the game world with the player, making it necessary to explore the entire city in order to learn what's in it. Indeed, the hint system is critical to making early progress, because the first thing that looks to be worth following up (checking up on your client's alibi) seems to yield absolutely nothing in the way of further leads. Note that strictly following the hint system will not yield the full score -- yes, the game has a score, though it's so unobtrusive about it that one might not realize this is the case.

An interesting aspect of this work is that it runs right up against the 512K limit of the Z-machine version 8, which is the largest format supported by that virtual machine. Writing a game of this scale is a daunting endeavor, but my intuition is that the game might never have been finished had this limit not been reached. There are so many nuances and detail touches with a low likelihood of ever being encountered, so many places where intricate object texture is rendered, that it seems like Callaci would have been happy to make this game much larger than its current size. Certain aspects suggest a desire to expand the possibility space to allow more alternate solutions, such as (Spoiler - click to show)an abandoned drugstore which I can imagine being a place to find something to make the policeman on duty at the station drowsy. Others, such as the post office location, seem to be pure scenery. I was surprised to discover that the PC can obtain a gun which, despite gunplay being a staple of noir fiction, (Spoiler - click to show) seems to have no utility to the plot, and no purpose other than to get the protagonist arrested when held openly in various situations.

Perhaps the deepest criticism is that the various plot elements don't quite seem to hang together correctly. Although the basic outline is sound and believable, the set of supporting facts don't quite add up. For example, that (Spoiler - click to show)the mayor seems to have deposited the money obtained from his shady real estate deal without the land actually having been sold, or that (Spoiler - click to show)Lucky Larry seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time in jail instead of prison and was somehow unable to post bail on his own despite owning the strip club, or that (Spoiler - click to show)the sequence of interactions between the actual killer, the stripper, the victim and the car doesn't make much sense when thought through in detail.

Despite these imperfections, I found Dangerous Curves to be enjoyable. The writing was convincing, and the game never stopped being interesting once I had become oriented to the main plot. I remind readers that a three star rating counts as "good" in my book, and means that the game is worth playing. Players are advised to go to visit the move theater in-game whenever they're out of ideas, as advised in the response to >HELP; it's probably possible to complete the game without doing this, but trying to find the clues needed to reach the end will be like looking for needles in a haystack. Authors interested in mechanical realism are particularly encouraged to check out this work -- it's an extraordinary example of the style, and you can make your own judgment about which elements work and which don't.