OK, here are my sometimes brief and sometimes wordy thoughts on the 2003 IF comp games. I actually got to play them all this year! Yay! Of note to some (probably authors, mostly), I saved all my transcripts of all the games, and put them up at: http://bioc.rice.edu/~lpsmith/IF/transcripts/Comp03/ I made some comments in the transcripts that didn't make it to the write-ups below, most often in []'s. As an aside, can I request that we move to .log as a standard transcript three-letter ending? .scr is stolen by Windows for screensavers. Also, the Windows TADS I used (latest from tads.org) doesn't know to add .log by default to transcripts, as it would with .sav for saved games. Also, if you start a transcript, quit the game, then start a new one, this all goes into the same transcript. At any rate, here be my thoughts, given and mostly played in the random order given to me by Comp03.z5. There be spoilers here, just so you know. In general, there were several games that could have done with quite a bit more beta-testing, so if you haven't played a game, and find that it does middling in the overall ratings, I'd wait for a bug-fixed version before I'd play it. In general, I was pleased with the crop this year. A good size, and a decent amount of good stuff in it. My good attitude could have something to do with the fact that I've finally learned when to quit a game 5 moves into it if I can tell it's just going to give me grief. I dunno if anyone's going to give *me* grief about this, but there you go. And we're off! ---------- 5 : The Recruit (recruit.gam) An odd little game. Solve a few random puzzles, win. Read odd prose. 6 : Sophie's Adventure (sophie.taf) Can I say that I still don't like Adrift without being accused of being racist? I still don't like Adrift. That being said, this was a fairly competent game. It amused me in places and made me think about the puzzles a little bit in places. The writing was weak but spritely, the setting was cliche'd but enthusiastic. There were a few annoying bugs, notably not being able to choose the fighter dwarf guy, and being able to blithely walk though a huge locked gate. And the game was waaaaaay too long. I spent 30 minutes wandering around the house before finally looking at the walkthrough, only to find that you were supposed to leave the house in the first three moves. (Speaking of bugs, I'd count not listing your front door as an exit counts as a pretty big one.) Then I spent another hour noodling around the next bit, got basically stuck, took a look at the walkthrough, vaguely followed that for a bit more, and when 2 hours were up, realized I was maybe 1/5 of the way through the walkthrough. Oy. I am taking one point away from this game because it was too long. A game of this length doesn't belong in the Annual Comp. If you must comp it, send it to Adam for the Spring Thing. There, I've said my bit. 8 : Scavenger (scavenger.gam) There must be something inherent in abandoned (or semi-abandoned) research facilities that just lend themselves as IF fodder. This game makes, what, the 4th? But, you know, I don't really mind. If the notes are to be believed, this was conceived prior to Babel (but post- Planetfall) anyway. At any rate, it was a nicely realized world with some decent puzzles, a bunch of one-note characters that at least weren't distracting, multiple solutions to puzzles, a few bugs, and some nice endings. So, kudos. 8 : Cerulean Stowaway (stowaway.gam) So, at first I thought this was going to be a cliche. Then by the second paragraph of the introduction, I thought it was going to be goofy instead. Then it turned out to be both. I liked the goofiness, but the cliche was... well, cliche. The very end turned into a series of resource-management puzzles, but it didn't cue me in that it *was* a series of resource-management puzzles, so I had to go find hints first, which spoiled my enjoyment of it. I liked the variety of possible endings, and possible variations on endings. The existence of 'the warship Ghandi' made me laugh. The environment was somewhat sparsely implemented, and there were some bugs, but overall, the combination of the goofiness and the final puzzle set made me like it. 2 : No Room (noroom.z5) Dude, we already had a one-puzzle game back in, what, '98? It still doesn't work. Also, there needs to be a hint that the flashlight is examineable in some way. 7 : Temple of Kaos (templeofkaos.gam) The problem with requiring random actions is that there are so many. There are a lot of 'opposite' actions, too. The trick is, like non- Euclidean geometry, to create an alternate system of logic and adhere to it religiously. Bad Machine takes this track. Kaos does not, and suffers. Nice conceit with the rhyme, though. Sometimes annoying, but on the whole a win. NR : little girl in the big world (girlwrld.exe) Couldn't get 2 moves into the interface. No rating. 2 : Hercules First Labor (herc1.html) --> open door It's beyond my power to do that. It is beyond my power to play this game, too. OK, I suppose I should say why I'm rating this game low and skipping 'little girl'. This game gave me nothing to work with. Zilch. OK, it's an homage to Scott Adams. I've never played any Scott Adams. There was a game a few comps back that was also Adams-esque, but I liked that one. This, again, gives me nothing to work with except "Hotel Room: I'm in a hotel room" Oh, joy. 1 : The Fat Lardo And The Rubber Ducky (lardo.z5) Woo, abuse. 1 : Rape, Pillage, Galore! (pig-rpg.exe) A small point, weakly stated. [At this rate, I shall finish rating the games in 2 days.] 2: Adoo's Stinky Story (adoo.z5) Would it be gauche to use the title of this in the review? Huh? Huh? Sigh, I guess so. Actually, the problem I had with the game is that it was too mundane. Too much random junk implemented in the name of realism. I mean, really--five different chair objects? In two different rooms? The banality of it all overwhelmed me, and I quit early. Sorry. 3 : CaffeiNation (caffeination.z5) I suppose I might possibly come back to this one, but I quit early. And I'll enumerate the reasons why: "an odyssey in search of chemical enthusiasm": First off, it's not capitalized. Secondly, the grammar is wrong--it should be an odyssey *about* searching for coffee, not the odyssey itself that's searching for coffee. This tells me that either the author does not have a good grasp of English grammar, which is a very bad sign in a text adventure game, or that there were no good beta testers, which is an even worse sign. "Release 0" The author did not pay attention when compiling the final version for the comp. Can be excusable, but it's another straw for the camel. "Your "work" was finished more than half and hour ago and all possible personal stuff has been completed." [followed by:] "The screen shows a spreadsheet half-filled" If I finished everything an hour ago, why is there still a half-filled spreadsheet on my screen? Another sign that neither the author nor potential beta testers (and God help us if there were no beta testers) spent any time thinking about the text as if flowed past the screen. And along those lines: "The screen shows a spreadsheet half-filled [...] The computer is currently switched off." And now we get to a *glaring* inconsistency in the same paragraph of text! Oy. These problems/warning signs, combined with the sheer banality of the task, made me say, "You know? There are better ways to spend my time. Like writing up a review of the opening scene so that others don't repeat these mistakes." 10 : Slouching Towards Bedlam (slouch.z5) And we have the winner. This is why the comp was invented. Rich imaginative world; rich story with meaningful choices. No bugs to be seen, best 'in media res' beginning I've seen in an IF game yet, lots of fun mechanical bits to fiddle with. Just very well done. Good to have you back, Dan. 6 : The Adventures of the President of the United States (apus.acd) Dear Mikko. This zany game was a fun 10 minutes, even though I had to use the walkthrough. Some day, Mikko will write a game where I actually don't need help to get through it. 6 : Sardoria (sardoria.acd) Puzzle, puzzle, puzzle, puzzle, end. Several very much guess-the-verb, and a few opaque, but a nice walkthrough command to ease the pain. Competent, but nothing special. 4 : Domicile (domicile.z5) There were some nice things about this game. A unique magic system, and a somehow compelling premise, even though it was hackneyed as all get- out. But there were a variety of bugs (some documented by the 'bugs' command!), very sparse implementation of objects mentioned in the room description, and an inventory limit. The last made me quit. I'll play this when the bugs are fixed, because it looks promising, but it's not ready for general release as it is. I would beta-test this game if asked directly, but not when asked as a judge for the comp. Oh, and what happened to the picture it said to look at? Bad form again. This game makes me sad, because it could be so much better with not a lot of work. So quitting early is really the best I can do for it, before the player-author contract gets burnt in effigy. 3 : Amnesia (amnesia.gam) Not a good premise, many spelling errors, stream-of-conciousness writing that only the author can follow. 7 : Shadows On The Mirror (shadows.t3) This is a fascinating world and vignette, but it's way too short. Way too short. Or maybe the problem is that too much of the conversation is hidden? It didn't seem like it, from the 'topics' hints. Still, vast amounts of imagination, and I must donate sufficient props. 7 : The Atomic Heart (atomicheart.z5) Not bad! Buggy as heck, but not bad. Once I got into it, I enjoyed figuring out the puzzles, with the caveat that the interface could have been *much* smoother, starting with the simple expedient of making 'attach' a synonym for 'connect'. Oy. And making it so that you didn't have to always connect things in a certain way. I think my transcript is filled about half-full of failed commands, which is way too many. Heck, the *walkthrough* is filled with failed commands. This should have raised red flags in the author's mind. It says something for the game, though, that I still liked it despite the painful interface. 8 : Baluthar (baluthar.z5) There were some oddnesses with this game, but on the whole, it worked. Oddly creepy, with some very disturbing images, and it was interesting to play an old, bitter man. The ending was fitting for the setting, too. The ghoul puzzle was too much for me (I had to get the answer from the hints), but the other puzzles I either figured out on my own or was able to get on the right track from early hints. So that was nice. I'm not exactly sure what it was trying to say, theologically. It seems clear (to me) that Yachvee is Yahweh (particularly given the opening quote), and the game seems to be about the fact that a self-constructed god of Revenge doesn't work. But doesn't work either, or doesn't work and we should return to Yachvee? We aren't told. Effective at what it conveys, though. 2 : Bio (bio-v1.gam) Bugs, nothing implemented that's in the room description, some things implemented that *aren't* in the room description that are nonetheless crucial. Like, say, exits. Or calling a dresser a 'dresser' in the room description, but requiring you to type 'armoire' in the walkthrough. Constant your/you're mix-ups. Clearly, nobody has beta- tested this thing. 6 : Internal Documents (internal.z5) Heh, cute. Some of the puzzles were a bit odd, but on the whole, it was charming. Actually, some of the puzzles were completely and totally opaque, but made a certain amount of sense in retrospect. Which is better than not making any sense whatsoever. The hints were better than average, which helped, and the game was put together carefully. I suppose that's the trick that made me like it despite its numerous obvious 'newbie' mistakes. There were numerous useless locations, but they all had a nice touch, like the author had thought about them individually. The puzzles required you to read the author's mind, but it was an interesting mind to read, once you had the cliff notes. 5 : Delvyn (delvyn.gam) This had a vaguely amusing premise, and seemed somewhat competent, but there were a fair number of smallish errors and lots of its/it's confusion. The tone was odd, but at least consistent. And then I got stuck trying to get into the pit, and gave up, so there you go. 6 : Sweet Dreams (sweetdreams.exe) Rule #1 of being an author of IF: Never, never, never write "No walkthrough is included, since it really shouldn't be necessary." People will find a way to get stuck. Heck, people got stuck in Photopia. That being said, I have no earthly idea why Papillon thought it necessary to include that statement in this game, since the puzzles are really quite involved. Either he forgot he coded puzzles, or forgot to install the mind-reading plug-in. Parts of this game need work besides the hints--the pathfinding algorithm, for example, needs at least enough work so you don't get stuck all the time in dead-ends like the end of the hall or behind the piano. I also managed to find the secret hide-out accidentally by selecting 'cancel' early on from the menu, and having the game think I meant 'wake up', which resulted in the rather surreal experience of waking up into the same universe I had fallen asleep from. Some sort of scripting function would have been nice, too, but I'm a sucker for scripts (logs of the dialogue, at least; all messages, at best. This would have allowed me to note where I 'woke up' erroneously, for example.) The premise was as daft as any anime; not that I've seen any anime, but this seemed par for the course. Still, it embraced it whole-heartedly, which was nice. If I hadn't gotten stuck by the ogre, I would have enjoyed finishing this game. As it is, I plan to finish later, but the score was docked since I couldn't. 9 : Gourmet (gourmet.z5) OK, despite a few bugs, and despite the fact that the premise intimidated me, I laughed a lot. It's all the attention to detail that really made this game, and made it funny. 9 : Risorgimento Represso (risorg.z8) Yay! A game that gives Bedlam a run for its money. Lots of amusing things to do and try, many of which solve puzzles along the way. Got stuck a few times, but the hints were generally good, and the puzzles fun to solve. One key to this game was how smoothly it played. Once you had the general idea of something, the game took over and didn't make you play out all the fiddly bits. This was most clearly seen in going through doors (which open and unlock automatically if you're holding the right key), but the philosophy was seen throughout. There were other bits of niceness, particularly in item placement. In the opening bit, you could only find a certain number of items to carry--well under your inventory limit. To progress to the next stage, you had to find a key, beyond whose door were a large number of items, which would put you over the limit. So, with the same action that revealed the key, a satchel was also found. Nicely done. I also liked the NPCs. Nintendo was particularly fun, and the others weren't bad. The default responses made a certain amount of sense, and a whole bunch of responses were coded in, which was nice. One *very* nice touch was when Nintendo identified items in your inventory, they stayed identified in the list. The author writes that he would like encouragement to write the sequel: consider yourself encouraged. You have a fine sense of when to help the player and when to stand back a bit, and your world was well-realized and interesting to explore. 2 : Curse of Manorland (curse.agx) So, despite the fairly hackneyed premise, I was willing to give this game a shot. Then: > open door You don't see any door here. > open window You can't open the window. > help The door is not the only way out - THINK! [Your score just went down] > tie sheets to mirror Don't know how to tie here... > tie Don't know how to tie here... OK, so the game is both idiotic and rude. Not to mention paying little attention to things like proper capitalization or punctuation. That's enough for me. 3 : Episode in the Life of an Artist (artist.gam) If there was something to this game, I missed it. Just someone's boring life. A few could-be-amusing-if-I-knew-he-was-kidding moments, like the opening ramble. Seemed competent enough--the boring things were easy to do. 6 : The Erudition Chamber (erudite.gam) This game had an interesting premise, but at the end, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was holding it back from being a truly engaging game. Perhaps I feel this way because I fundamentally disagree with the premise, at least when it comes to IF. It's not the approach to finding a solution that distinguishes people from each other, it's how they choose among solutions they know will work. When I play IF with multiple solutions, I often enjoy finding the differences between them, then making a choice based on a knowledge of the outcome. But finding one solution and then using it isn't a choice at all, it's what you stumbled on first. To make this work, you either need to make it interesting enough to make people want to re-play it, or force people to re-play it somehow. This didn't grab my attention enough to make me want to replay. Here, I'm going to devolve into a discussion on Bedlam. See, in that game, you figured out what was going on and had to make choices about what you wanted to happen. There were two phases to the game-- discovery, then decision. First, you discovered what was going on, then how to do something about it, then you decided between your options. OK, three phases. I thought at the time the meta-commands-as-real gimmick was, well, gimmicky, but it lent an air of credence to what 'The Erudition Chamber' is trying to do here much more ham-fistedly. Or let's talk about 'Metamorphoses'. That game made the choices you made matter to *you*, not to the game per se. Or, rather, there were attempts made to make your choices matter to the game which I felt failed, and attempts made to make your choices matter to you-the-player which I felt succeeded admirably (I'm thinking particularly here of a puzzle where you had to sacrifice a personal item to solve a puzzle). That game also had multiple endings, but their power came from having multiple endings to choose between as fitting denouments for the protagonist. All this to say that personality analysis is not a simple task, and the IF shorthand for it (solve puzzle X through method Y or method Z) is not a very good mechanism for it. Something could be done with it, but as presented here, it's quite abstract, and not very meaningful. Not that the game wasn't competent. It's just that for all that it was about 'fundamental personality', it didn't seem very personable. 6 : A Paper Moon (papermoon.z5) OK, I admit: I expected better things of this game from the title. It's a great title, and a mediocre game. A fair number of the puzzles were unmotivated, though most at least made sense in retrospect. I was able to get a decent amount forward with the hints, but still needed the walkthrough to help me finish 'em. The matches seemed oddly uniquely susceptible to soaking--nothing else in my inventory ever got wet ever, it seemed. This is a time-consuming thing to code, but if that's the puzzle you're going for, that's what you need to make it seem real--to uphold mimesis, as it were. That's actually probably a key factor in mimesis--being consistent. OK, it's acceptable that in most IF, wading across a river doesn't get your posessions wet. But if you code up a puzzle where wading across a river gets *one* of your posessions wet, suddenly you're created a monster. The player will try to hide that item in other items, hold it above their head, put it in their hat, etc., and meanwhile wonder why their cup of coffee (which you left in the diner in your own playtest) didn't spill. It's a lot of work, and is why people like Emily Short go to great lengths to code up entire systems that can handle all objects in their games according to some underlying principle, since as soon as you get divisible liquids, people will be dividing and mixing stuff you never considered. But, as far as paper moon is concerned: decent game, with a premise I didn't particularly find myself enamored of, a somewhat consistent (if hackneyed) world, and a mixed bag of puzzles.