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gostak.z5
The latest release.
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
gostak.z5
The original competition entry.
Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.

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The Gostak

by Carl Muckenhoupt profile

Wordplay
2001

About the Story

"Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.

Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes uncren them.

But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you." [--blurb from Competition Aught-One]


Game Details

Off-Site Reviews

Play This Thing!
Distim the doshes
The Gostak is not the game you want to start with if you're new to interactive fiction, because a lot of the decoding process is aided if you already know what commands are typically used in IF and what kinds of things the model is likely to include. But if you've played a few IF games and are looking to have your mind bent in a new way -- a way that would be impossible to imagine in anything but a textual gaming medium -- then you might want to give it a try. Expect to spend a lot of time on each turn making dictionary notes, even for the simplest of moves...
See the full review

SPAG
[...] there's still a whimsical feel to the responses that makes the game more than the sum of its crytographical parts. It's a tribute to the thoroughness of the implementation that the world you inhabit begins to take on some personality; obstacles and helpers don't just serve their functions, they also have connotations, associations -- this one is faintly ludicrous, that one is vaguely chummy, another one is not very bright but trusting -- that suggest that the world-creation effort did not, by any stretch, stop with the bare minimum.
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>VERBOSE -- Paul O'Brian's Interactive Fiction Page

I was shocked at how quickly and easily I found myself typing commands like "doatch at droke about calbice". However, the whole experience was completely cerebral, with little of the emotional catharsis I associate with successful storytelling. I felt this effect when I played Dan Schmidt's For a Change, but it's ten times stronger in this game, where words aren't simply rearranged but actually replaced wholesale. Consequently, while playing The Gostak was a strange and memorable experience, one which will surely elevate the game to the rarefied level of For A Change, Bad Machine, and Lighan ses Lion, I found it a somewhat strained sort of fun. Great for a puzzle-solving mood, and certainly worth trying if you're a cryptography buff, but not terribly involving as a story.
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Page Update History

v.13: 14-Aug-2020 21:44 - JTN (Current Version) - Edit Page - Normal View
Changed external review links
v.12: 07-May-2022 17:03 - Paul O'Brian
Changed external review links
v.11: 07-May-2022 16:58 - Paul O'Brian
Changed external review links
  v.10: 14-Aug-2020 21:44 - Autymn Castleton
Changed language
v.9: 26-Jul-2020 12:39 - Zape
Changed language, forgiveness, download links
v.8: 28-Jan-2020 14:23 - Dan Fabulich
Changed external review links
v.7: 03-Jun-2015 18:24 - Doug Orleans
Changed author
v.6: 03-Mar-2013 08:24 - Edward Lacey
Changed external review links
v.5: 20-Nov-2010 12:22 - salty-horse
Changed download links
v.4: 02-May-2008 14:15 - Emily Short
Changed cover art
v.3: 24-Apr-2008 16:41 - Paul O'Brian
Changed external review links
v.2: 29-Feb-2008 14:54 - David Welbourn
Changed description
v.1: 16-Oct-2007 01:50 - IFDB
Created page