[Bookclub] Nothing past the puzzles in John's Fire Witch

[Nick Montfort <nickmontfort@my-deja.com>]

After some hesitation (both because I don't want to be seen as simply a
fount of negativity and because I don't see that my criticism below is
extremely constructive), I'm offering my comments on John's Fire Witch
to contribute to this month's IF Bookclub discussion. I hope that I'm at
least able to share my perspective on interactive fiction a bit through
this post, and contibute something useful to the discussion in this way.

I don't experience IF in order to solve puzzles. I enjoy IF as a reading
experience in which I participate as some sort of co-writer who creates
episodes in a narrative, or at least discovers a narrative through my
efforts, which might involve solving puzzles. With that in mind, my
reaction: John's Fire Witch, which I played through, didn't really
interest me at all.

There are a lot of stock elements in this game: colored cards and the
need to sleep as in Planetfall ... very Adventure-esque cave
descriptions ... a setup similar to that in Zork, with an above-ground
house leading to a larger, secret underground area ...  the very common
combination lock ... some hint of Enchanter-like spells ... something
sceptre-like to wave (actually it's an rod, as seen in Adventure) ...
troll-like creatures to kill in combat. These cliches are, to be sure,
implemented well. John's Fire Witch demonstrated, at the time, that one
doesn't have to be Infocom in order to implement the fantasy elements of
IF that that company (along with Crowther & Woods) pioneered.

The seven deadly sins puzzle, perhaps the standout, actually seemed
arbitrarily placed in this beer-guzzler's fantasy melange. The room name
was the only thing prompting the player to ask the devil the necessary
question to begin work on this puzzle, and the assemblage of items
(every ordinary object in the game, essentially) that were supposed to
symbolize the sins was not very interesting. Did it *mean* anything that
John (and his landlord, etc.) had commited deadly sins? The puzzle might
hold up well if compared to something in a Scott Adams game, but
compared to the treatment of the seven deadly sins in art, including
popular art like the movie Seven, it pales.

Steven Granade's point about the lateral thinking required in this
puzzle is a good one. But while the seven deadly sins puzzle requires
the interactor to think outside the box, the thinking is still only for
the purpose of puzzle-solving. In Losing Your Grip, the puzzles and
situations presented do, at their best, lead the interactor to think
about how that work of interactive fiction relates to life and to human
nature. This is similarly the case with Trinity, A Mind Forever
Voyaging, Mindwheel, and many more recent IF works which readers of rgif
know quite well. John's Fire Which offers mental exercise, but it
doesn't provide any more profound readings of this sort.

The descriptive text is bland and terribly imprecise, unless it is
pointing out with amusing accuracy that the room is "about 20 feet wide
by 25 feet long." The player is told that there's something about the
archway that "you just can't put your finger on." The ice in the
jail-like room is described: "As you come closer to examine the northern
cell, you see that it is completely filled with a huge block of ice.
There seems to be something in the center of it." But when you look into
the ice: "There's nothing in the northern ice."

The game may be put together rather well for a small and "snack-sized"
puzzle-work, and perhaps it pleases some. But it simply didn't do much
for me, considering the things I find most enjoyable in IF.

-Nick M. <www.nickm.com>


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