Mary Kuhner Speaks:

"The Edifice" (Inform)

A rather large game (I was only able to play about half of it in the given time) involving re-creating moments of insight in the life of prehistoric humankind or proto-humankind.

I very much liked the tone of the writing, with the capitalization of key nouns suggesting a kind of personification: this isn't just my branch, it's Branch. In some of the location descriptions it's a little cold, but overall it works for the game. There is even some attempt to suggest the growing intellectual sophistication of the protagonist, though allowing the sections to be played out of order weakens this effect.

The language puzzle in part 2 is both difficult and intriguing, though I wasn't able to solve it in the time allotted: you're trying to talk with someone with whom you have no words in common, by a combination of pointing and picture-drawing to learn vocabulary. The NPC involved has quite a range of conversation, even if I was never quite sure what he was saying. The part 1 puzzle is a little less satisfying: it is easy to get into an unwinnable situation, and many alternative solutions hinted at by the environment (for example, driving Beast into the mud) are not allowed for.

The game is too large for the competition format. This might be improved by trimming the physical scope of part 1 (it is easy for the player to get lost for a long time--it would help if the Edifice were visible from a distance) and implementing multiple solutions.

Hints are provided via a within-game mechanism (etchings slowly appearing within the Edifice, which fills the role of a 2001 monolith). The player is required to go out and interact a while with the puzzle before receiving another clue. Unfortunately, the clues are not adaptive, which means that you may have to make a great many trips if you breezed through early subpuzzles but got stuck on a later one. It also proved impossible to clue the language puzzle usefully with an etching. This is a nice idea, but could use some further work.

{Note: From a different post]:

I quite like the competition as it stands. There were, I guess, more sloppy games than in previous years. But I don't feel that people are taking adequate note of the fact that (at least in my opinion) there were more *good* games than in previous years. And they were good in a wide variety of ways. The language puzzle in Edifice is an amazing tour de force.

This line last updated January 12th, 1998 AD
lpsmith @rice.edu