Shades of Gray
by Mark Baker, Steve Bauman, Belisana, Mike Laskey, Judith Pintar, Cindy Yans, and Hercules
Go to the game's main page
Review
This game is famous as a cooperation between 7 authors at a time when e-mail was new and difficult to use.
The real story of the game isn't even actually apparent until almost the end. The middle parts have quite a variety, from Robin Hood to an urban setting to McCarthyism to vampires.
The game took me over 1200 moves to finish. There are 1001 points you can obtain.
The AGT parser is old and bad. I'd rather even have a Scott Adams parser, because those games have a true simplicity; but in this game KNOCK DOOR and KNOCK ON DOOR give different responses, with only one working; TIE ROPE and TIE ROPE TO TREE give different responses, one working and one giving you a generic message. And so on... I only discovered later that you can type LIST EXITS, which would have been very useful.
The ending has a moral choice that many have described as seeming ambiguous, but with only one leading to a successful ending.
One of the best games available pre-Curses!
