>What first gave you the idea for your entry?

I first wrote an earlier version of Undo for a friend's birthday -- it's based on an inside joke between the two of us.

For the record, the joke goes: "A frog walks up to a hole. 'My, what a big hole,' he says. A small duck walks up to the hole. 'What large hole?' says the duck. 'What small duck?' says the frog."

Not much of a joke, it's true -- more of a joke about jokes, like the Dadaist riddle (one of my favorites): "What's the difference between a duck? One leg is both the same!" Anyway, after discarding a much better idea for the I-F contest as taking way too much time, I thought of a bunch of things I could throw into Undo to turn it, sort of, into a playable game, though there's still only really one puzzle.

The only purpose of Undo, really, aside from being vaguely weird and entertaining, is to challenge some of the I-F conventions -- like having everything be a puzzle (most of the rooms are mere clues at best, and at worst just diversions), having a score (the "score" of 86 you're shooting for is another negation joke -- as in, "eighty-six that"), winning at the end, and so on. It's sort of an "anti-game" in that sense.

>Are you working on any other IF, if so, what?

"Lost New York" is about a month away from beta-testing, three months away from release. It's a medium to long game (a good bit longer and more complex than MacWesleyan) set in historical New York -- if you liked "Time and Again" you should like it.

I also have ideas for three other specific games (including the one I didn't get around to writing for this year's competition) that I'd like to do, but I need to finish Lost NY first before I can start on another one.

>Are you planning to enter again next year?

I'd like to, if the timing's right.

 NAME: Cutthroats                                PARSER: Infocom Standard
 AUTHOR: Infocom                                 PLOT: Two Seperate Paths
 EMAIL: ???                                      ATMOSPHERE: Well Done
 AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2                            WRITING: Good
 PUZZLES: Good                                   SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports
 CHARACTERS: Not Bad                             DIFFICULTY: Medium

When submitting reviews: Try to fill in as much of this info as you can. Also, scores are still desired along with the reviews, so send those along. The scores will be used in the ratings section. Authors may not rate or review their own games.

SPAG accepts reviews of any length, letters to the editor, the occasional interesting article on text adventures (no reprints please), and even just ratings for your favorite game, if you don't have the time to do a full review. Please though, at least send me info for each game you have rated equivalent to the review header for Cutthroats, above. All accepted materials will be headed by the submitter's name and e-mail address, unless you request that they be withheld, or do not supply them, in which case the header will read as "Anonymous."

From: "Palmer Davis" 

  NAME: All Quiet on the Library Front   PARSER: Inform v1502
  AUTHOR: Michael Phillips               SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports
  EMAIL: ???                             AVAILABILITY: GMD
  ATMOSPHERE: Just a little thin         WRITING: Expository
  CHARACTERS: Cardboard                  PLOT: Linear
  PUZZLES: Quite simple                  DIFFICULTY: Easy

I must confess that I was somewhat put off by the fact that the game is set on a college campus; the college game is second only to the Colossal Cave-style undirected dungeon crawl/scavenger hunt for being drastically overdone. It worked in _Lurking_Horror_, and it's working now in _Christminster_, whose setting is different enough not to be stale, but every other such game since (not to mention the innumerable campuses that have been set up on MUDs worldwide) has felt like walking into someone else's inside joke. That includes a number of rather popular games that have fallen flat for me, and I'm probably stepping on a number of toes here; I tried not to let my feelings for the genre color my judgement.

This entry doesn't just happen to take place on campus, however; the entire plot is centered around writing a research paper, and therein lies the problem. Most IF transports the player to a fantastic place or situation that's genuinely interesting, sometimes more so than what's going on outside the screen. That's not the case here -- being stuck in the library working on an undergraduate research paper is something that one plays IF to *escape*, not encounter, and the game never really transcends the ultimately pedestrian nature of its central task.

It is possible to create good interactive fiction based entirely on everyday experiences if the writing stands out enough to carry the game on atmosphere (see _A_Change_in_the_Weather_, below). It is also possible to make a good game out of a fundamentally unpleasant situation (_Theatre_, for example, or _Bureaucracy_) if the game provides gripping drama or offers a fresh perspective on the events in question. _Library_ does neither, offering a fairly routine scenario executed in expository but uninspiring prose.

Oddly, the stairwell leading to the upper floor, an area in which none of the plot takes place, is one of the game's bright spots as far as writing goes -- the descriptions there are nearly as long as in busier areas, which gives the author enough space to breathe life into details like the paintings. Had the rest of the map been executed with that much care, the game would have worked much better. It's not necessarily that more words are needed elsewhere (see _Enchanter_, for example), it's that more thought is needed to make the descriptions come to life.

Overall, the game is solidly crafted, but feels like it's just going through the motions. This isn't a *bad* game by any means, but somehow lacks that certain spark that makes well-written IF such a joy. Cleaned up and commented, the source to this would probably make pretty good example code for new authors; it's solidly crafted, including a basic help system that gives a hint for the next puzzle.

(After writing most of this review, I learned that the entry was the author's first attempt at writing IF. It's obvious that the author *has* in fact mastered the motions that need to be gone through to create IF, and is just starting to catch on to a writing style; I look forward to seeing full-length works from him in the future.)

BOTTOM LINE: An accurate simulation of a tedious chore.

From: "Magnus Olsson" 

  Name: A Change in the Weather		  Parser: Inform
  Author: Andrew Plotkin		  Plot: Non-linear
  Email: erkyrath+@cmu.edu		  Atmosphere: Excellent
  Availability: F, GMD			  Writing: Excellent
  Puzzles: Time-critical		  Supports: Infocom ports
  Characters: One, simple but memorable   Difficulty: Above average

Although unpleasant, such a mundane situation may not seem like the stuff from which a tale of wonder and adventure is built. That, however, is just what Andrew Plotkin has succeeded in creating. With very small means he manages to increase tension until your attempts to save the bridge turn into a nightmarish struggle against time. The writing is excellent, as are the atmosphere and the changes in mood. As if to demonstrate further how far you can get with deceptively simple means, the one NPC of this game - an endearing little fox - doesn't do very much, but is nevertheless very effective (of course, animal NPC's are simpler than humans since they don't speak).

Despite its small size, "A Change in the Weather" is not an easy game. The author himself classifies this game as "cruel", and that is no great exaggeration. The puzzles aren't very diffciult in isolation, but they are very time-critical and you have to perform actions in a carefully timed order to win. You should be prepared to save and restore a lot, even to replay from the beginning, since the tiniest mistake will put the game in an unsolvable state.

This kind of game behaviour has been condemned in the debate on rec.arts.int-fiction, the main argument being that all the restoring and replaying ruins the enjoyment of the game and disrupts the story. Also, of course, it lowers realism if, for example, you have to die five times beofre finding the right way to disarm a bomb; in real life you have to get it right the first time.

In this particular case, however, having to save and restore frequently didn't detract anything from my enjoyment of the game; in fact, somehow knowing that the smallest mistake may mean disaster actually enhanced the sense of drama and urgency. It may of course have helped that you can't die in this game (the worst thing that can happen is that you have to wade across the stream to get home). The size of the game certainly played an important part - having to restart from the beginning is less cumbersome in a tiny game like this than in a larger game.

To summarize, this is an excellent little game: well written, with a simple goal that isn't that easy to attain, an interesting sequence of logical puzzles and an excellent atmosphere; all of which makes this perhaps the most memorable of all the competition entries.

From: "Palmer Davis" 

  NAME: A Change in the Weather       PARSER: Inform v1405
  AUTHOR: Andrew Plotkin              SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports
  EMAIL: erkyrath+@cmu.edu            AVAILABILITY: GMD

  ATMOSPHERE: Outstanding
  WRITING: Generally well written, though eye slides past in spots
  CHARACTERS: Memorable
  PLOT: Mutual exclusion between branches
  PUZZLES: Nicely done, but with dead ends and save/restore puzzles
  DIFFICULTY: Moderately challenging

The atmosphere, scenery, and overall sense of immersion in this entry were far and away the best in either division, approaching that of Infocom's better efforts in spots. In one or two spots, the writing is dense enough that the casual reader's eye slides right past (lists of exits, mostly), but otherwise the writing is among the best in this year's field.

If there's a weakness here, it's the rather languid pace that the game gets off to at first. That's an unavoidable consequence of the tranquil, contemplative mood that the author creates in the first section, but it makes it difficult to warm up to the game at first. The plot really needs a kick in the tail that it doesn't get until after nightfall; an opening with enough action to make wandering off alone seem a welcome respite (playing volleyball until you get sick of it, perhaps?) might correct this. (The virtues of establishing emotional context through player interaction rather than imposing it by fiat have been discussed at length elsewhere.) Of course, the game flirts perilously with the two hour limit as it is; leaving out such an opening is understandable given the nature of the competition. Furthermore, the contrast between the slow pace of the first section and the frantic pace of the dream sequence works quite well, and is perhaps the sole example of such a mood shift in the contest.

The save/restore nature of the section after nightfall is also likely to put off many players, as is the game's ability to be closed off after the player attempts actions that are otherwise perfectly reasonable. While any race against time necessarily runs the risk of degenerating into save/restore, a bit more time between the appearance of the light source and the expiration of the player's time might have been nice; as it was, I didn't get past that part before time ran out. Likewise, a second (possibly more difficult) option for getting into the cave after the destruction of the needed object would also have helped. Still, the game was quite satisfying, especially in contrast to the rest of the division.

BOTTOM LINE: Yes. Like that. My choice for the division winner.

From: "Magnus Olsson" 

  Name: Detective - an Interactive MiSTing / MST3K1
  Author: C.E. Forman
  Email: ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu	  Parser : Hacked Inform
  Plot: See review			  Atmosphere: Demented
  Availability: F, GMD			  Writing: Excellent
  Puzzles: What puzzles?		  Supports: Infocom Ports
  Characters: See review		  Difficulty: Self-solving

Similar to the TV show, this game consists of the characters of "Mystery Science Theater" playing - and commenting on - an existing game: "Detective" by Matt Barringer. "Detective", reviewed in SPAG 4, is an amazingly bad game; basically, Barringer has committed every possible mistake in writing it, even forgetting to put in any puzzles.

The core of "MST3K1" is a faithful re-implementation in Inform of "Detective", complete down to the last bug. As the player walks through the game (and, believe me, walking through "Detective" is all there is to winning it), he or she is treated to the commentary of the MST characters. And this commentary is simply hilarious; together with the unconscious comedy of the original "Detective", the result must be the funniest IF ever written. I'm exaggerating only slightly when writing that "MST3K1" had me rolling on the floor with laughter.

Rating "MST3K1" according to the usual SPAG rules is of course impossible, since the only game aspects are those of "Detective", which is a very very bad game. Suffice it to say that the "MST" part of the writing is excellent, though the satire is perhaps a bit heavy-handed in places - I sincerely hope that Matt Barringer has a sense of humour!

Finally, let me just step onto the soapbox for a minute to express some concern. The immediate reaction to this program on Usenet was something along the lines of "Great idea! There are lots of bad games out there; let's MiST them as well!" I sincerely hope that these people think not only once, but twice and thrice before starting to write their own MiSTings. If nothing else, there's the simple rule of all comedy: a good joke is extremely funny the first time it's told. The second time, it's already old. The third time, it's routine. The tenth time, people hate it. Let's not beat this excellent idea to death by repeating it ad nauseam.

Also, and far more seriously, the line between poking gentle fun at something and cruelly mocking it is a fine one indeed. The present author has managed to stay on the right side, but it takes considerable skill to do so. We've all written things we're less than proud of; even the good Homer nods. Indiscriminate derision of these games - perhaps youthful first tries - could have disastrous consequences for the small, fragile IF community.

Of course, these words of warning should not reflect at all on the present MiSTing; in fact, I think it's brilliant. Let's just not pervert such a good idea.

From: "Graeme Cree" <72630.304@compuserve.com>

  NAME:  DETECTIVE:  An Interactive MiSTing
                                         GAMEPLAY:  Inform Parser
  AUTHOR:  C. E. Forman                  PLOT:  Trivial
  EMAIL:  ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu   ATMOSPHERE:  Demented
  AVAILABILITY:  GMD incoming            WRITING:  Pathetic
  PUZZLES:  None                         SUPPORTS:  All Inform Ports
  CHARACTERS:  Cardboard                 DIFFICULTY:  None at all

A little background is in order to understand this game. SPAG #4 featured a review of an AGT game called Detective, which stated that the author had made every possible mistake, and that the game should be avoided. In SPAG #5 I wrote a second review in which I stated that the game, though awful, was in fact loaded with unintentional laughs and bizarre incongruities that were sure to entertain the player, and that the game would make an excellent episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

For those who don't know, MST3K is a cable television show (soon to be a major motion picture) on Comedy Central, that involves a man shot into space by two mad scientists and forced to watch bad movies so that his reactions can be monitored. Throughout the movie we can see the silhouettes of Mike and his robot companions (whose outer casings are made out of things like a gumball machine, a bowling pin, and a lacrosse helmet) at the lower right-hand corner of the screen, and hear them deliver a barrage of sarcastic remarks, pop-culture references, and suggested dialogue. For example in Godzilla vs. Megalon, a close-up of Godzilla waving his arms and bellowing drew the response "I am Kirok!!", a reference to a classic bit of Shatner overacting in Star Trek's The Paradise Syndrome episode. In Marooned, when three astronauts, stranded in space are arguing over who will leave the ship (there was only enough oxygen to sustain two until the rescue ship arrived) one of the robots observed "they could toss a coin, but it would never come down."

The show is in its 7th season, and each episode is two hours long. Their bread-and-butter is schlocky sci-fi movies, but they have hit almost every genre, including the occasional biker movie. Before and after the show, as well as during intermissions, they do short amusing skits, often based on scenes from the movie.

Chris Forman has taken this format and adapted it into a text game, almost seamlessly. The original Detective game has been transferred verbatim to Inform, even retaining the AGT default responses, and snappy responses from Mike and the robots have been inserted everywhere; into room descriptions, item descriptions, response descriptions, et cetera. Repetition is avoided, enhancing believability. The first time you enter a room you get one set of responses. The second time you will get either a different set, or none at all. The jokes are generally top quality, turning an already (unintentionally) amusing game into a laugh riot. The level of imitation is flawless; if you have seen the show, you can almost hear the dialogue coming out of the actors' mouths.

A typical MST3K episode features a short skit and an invention exchange with the mad scientists before the movie actually begins. Mr. Forman has represented this by including a special introductory text file that highlights the robots attempting to write their own text games, and Dr. Forrester's "fictionary", a device that inputs the vocabulary of a text game directly into the player's mind, with hilarious results.

The only thing that could put anyone off about this game might be found in Stefan Jokisch's original SPAG review: "we should not forget that Matt [the original author of Detective] wrote this game with good intentions and he offered it for free, so who are we to mock at his efforts?" Matt Barringer's game is "mocked" here, but previous MST3K episodes have had movies featuring the likes of Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman, Linda Evans, Peter Graves, James Earl Jones, and Bela Lugosi, putting Mr. Barringer in very august company indeed.

This may not be my all-time favourite text adventure, but it is one of the few that I would recommend to absolutely everyone.

From: "Palmer Davis" 

  NAME: _Detective_ MST3Kization            PARSER: Inform (imitating AGT)
  AUTHOR: C. E. Forman (and Matt Barringer) SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports
  EMAIL: ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu       AVAILABILITY: GMD

  ATMOSPHERE: Precisely on target
  WRITING: ROTFL!
  CHARACTERS: Non-interactive
  PLOT: Laughable, but that's the point
  PUZZLES: Nonexistent, except for occasional sudden death
  DIFFICULTY: Also nonexistent

Trying to evaluate this entry relative to the others in the division was difficult. However creative the writing may be, the fact remains that this is not an original work of IF, which was the whole point of the contest. On the other hand, this entry also essentially defines an entirely new genre: the interactive work of criticism. Is it a work of IF that happens to be critical or a work of criticism that happens to be interactive? And how much credit is due the author for pioneering something as yet untried, especially given the much lower level of technical difficulty in producing it? In any case, comparing this to the other entries is like comparing apples and oranges.

In the end, I wound up deciding to place this at the enjoyability threshold, and score it behind any more technically difficult works that succeeded at being entertaining, but ahead of any that didn't. Had I been scoring for awards other than first, this would have wound up taking second in its division, and certainly deserves an honorable mention for its writing, but future works of this kind will have to be crafted with great care to avoid becoming stale.

BOTTOM LINE: This is the entry most likely to continue to be downloaded and played after the end of the contest; it's likely to become a (cult) classic simply by being the preferred way to experience the wonderful awfulness of _Detective_. I can't wait to see the crew take on _Space_Aliens_Laughed_at_my_Cardigan_!

From: "Palmer Davis" 

  NAME: The Magic Toyshop                PARSER: Inform v1502
  AUTHOR: Gareth Rees                    SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports
  EMAIL: gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk              AVAILABILITY: GMD

  ATMOSPHERE: Nonexistent (be sure to wear a pressure suit!)
  WRITING: Minimalist to the point of information underload
  CHARACTERS: Unresponsive
  PLOT: What plot?  (Sequential pairs of puzzles.)
  PUZZLES: "Guess the verb", "What am I thinking?", and the like
  DIFFICULTY: Frustrating

There is a brief blurb in the teaser about wandering into a Victorian toy shop with a rocking horse in the window, in search of a birthday present for your niece, but rocking horse, window, and the charm of a Victorian toy shop are all entirely absent from the game itself. The player is dumped into an apparently empty room with a chest and a young woman, both of which frustrate most attempts at interaction. This can be unintentionally funny in spots:

> CATHARINE, OPEN THE CHEST
Catharine has better things to do.

Catharine opens the chest and roots around inside it. "I wonder if your niece would like something like this?" she says....
[Your score just went up by 1 point.]

In the example above, Catharine *still* would have opened the chest, even had the player said nothing, or waited, or looked around, or done *anything*; all interaction with her (except for her function as a primitive hint system) is initiated by her, and you are awarded points for doing absolutely nothing! In fact, both Catharine and verbs pertaining to her are incompletely implemented:

> SAY "GO WEST" TO THE ROBOT MOUSE
(to Catharine)

Catharine has better things to do.

Top quality interactive fiction requires both good writing and good programming. _Detective_ MST3K had wonderful writing, but the technical content wasn't there. _Toyshop_ presumably (I ran out of time playing "guess the verb" and therefore didn't encounter most of it) contains some clever programming, but the writing isn't there. Literally. The game's sole location doesn't even have a description, just a rhetorical question asking what might be contained therein. Object descriptions omit useful details like shapes and features, and the parser doesn't know about most of what detail there is.

The limited vocabulary set combined with the sketchy descriptions of what is going on reduce _Toyshop_ to one of the most frustrating games of "guess the verb" that I've had the misfortune to encounter in years. This may sound nitpicky, but is there is an important distinction between

> EMPTY THE BOX
The box is empty already.

and

> EMPTY THE BOX
You can't see anything inside the box!

The second is a clue that some sense other than vision must be used to determine if there's anything in the box; the first is an unequivocal statement that there isn't anything in there. Since the game uses the first wording rather than the second, I wasted my entire two hour review period searching in vain for an alternative solution to the robot mouse assembly puzzle that wasn't there. (The sole hint that the game provided wasn't any help either, and no walkthrough was included.) I played an endless series of stalemates at tic-tac-toe in the hope that Catharine would give me a tube of glue after losing, I mistook the "carpet" for a glue strip to be peeled off, and I tried to break into the chest or search elsewhere all with no success (there being no elsewhere!). There may also be a cultural issue at work here -- in the United States, tubes of glue are not normally provided inside model kits. Airfix may in fact do this in the UK, but it was only through process of elimination that I finally tried searching, examining, looking into, reaching inside, throwing, dumping, tearing, destroying, opening the other end (to peer through), and jumping up and down on top of the box (all in vain) before finally guessing that "shake" was the magic word. By that time, the review period had expired, so I am basing my review on what I encountered up to that point.

_Toyshop_ gave me of the most unpleasant experiences that I have ever had from a work of IF. You are dumped into a bare room and told to fiddle with a group of vague objects that are handed to you, for no clear reason, and must contend with a rather limited set of ways to manipulate them and eventually guess which of several possible solutions has been implemented. From what I've read on r.g.i-f since completing my evalutation, I'm not alone in getting stuck; this is probably *not* a two hour game. Especially given how nice Gareth's other work has been, _Toyshop_ is a most unpleasant surprise.

BOTTOM LINE: This game is evil, and must be destroyed. Gareth Rees is also evil, but must *not* be destroyed -- at least not until he has a chance to finish the next _Christminster_....

From: "Magnus Olsson" 

  Name: The Mind Electric		  Parser: Inform
  Author: Jason Dyer			  Plot: Linear
  Email: jdyer@indirect.com		  Atmosphere: Quite good
  Availability: F, GMD			  Writing: Quite good
  Puzzles: Logical but difficult	  Supports: Infocom ports
  Characters: Simple                      Difficulty: Quite difficult

Like dream scenes, a story set in virtual reality demands a lot of the author. Somewhat paradoxically, the very fact that anything is possible in your world makes it very important that you make it believable to the reader. Bearing this in mind, I think that the author has done quite well; he's managed to create a small world with its own laws and a pervasive atmosphere. Where he fails is perhaps in making it quite credible; I couldn't quite suspend my disbelief at some points. This shouldn't be taken as a very serious criticism, though; my doubts never quite broke the spell; true to the game's sub-title "An Interactive Vision", the author does have visions and he does manage to get them through.

The writing is quite good, with one exception: the final denoument just doesn't feel right. I can appreciate the point the author is making, and why he's making it; still, I felt that the last page of text detracts from the quality of the game. Perhaps this is because he, having a lot to explain (including hitherto unprovided background) in just a page of text, falls into the classic trap of letting a character hold a short speech that neatly explains everything; whatever the reasons, the present ending is not very effective and dramatically unsatisfying. Perhaps some of the information the speech provides could be moved back into the story proper; this would also add some foreshadowing of the ending.

What I found disappointing about this game was the puzzles. It's not that they are bad - they certainly aren't, and a few of them are quite clever, but rather that I constantly felt that I had too little information to solve them. The solutions are certainly logical, but there weren't enough clues to find them, and I found the game's world too strange for previous experience to guide me. Fortunately, the game has a comprehensive hint system - a bit too comprehensive, perhaps, since it's not context sensitive and it's easy to read too far - without which I'm afraid I wouldn't have made much progress at all. Of course, what's cryptic to one player may be obvious to another (and I freely admit to not being very good at solving adventure puzzles), but I have the feeling that the author should have provided more clues to allow the player to deduce the internal logic of the puzzles. Alternatively, the puzzles could have been made a bit more intuitive; as it is, the they were simply too difficult for me to enjoy them.

Finally, a very minor thing: the game uses Inform's "box" command to present a number of rather obscure quotes; this is a nice feature of Inform, but a feature that shouldn't be overused. I feel that "The Mind Electric" does overuse it a bit, considering the very small size of the game.

"The Mind Electric" is a very interesting game, and in many ways a very good one. With some rewriting (especially of the ending), and perhaps with more intuitive puzzles, it would be even better; as it is, it is still one of the best games of the competition.

From: "Palmer Davis" 

  NAME: The Mind Electric                PARSER: Inform v1502
  AUTHOR: Jason Dyer                     SUPPORTS: Infocom Ports
  EMAIL: ???                             AVAILABILITY: GMD

  ATMOSPHERE: Incomprehensible
  WRITING: Surreal
  CHARACTERS: Limited
  PLOT: Linear, branching in two in several spots.
  PUZZLES: Quite a bit of "What am I thinking?"
  DIFFICULTY: Easy enough once you figure out what is going on

The environment is highly stylized and rather surreal, like many cyberpunk depictions of the "Net"/"Matrix"/"Cyberspace"/VR/whatever. Too stylized and surreal, in fact -- the game doesn't always provide enough context to figure out what is going on without resorting to the help system, making much of the game an exercise in trying to guess what the author is thinking. I *still* don't understand why the answer to one puzzle that I stumbled across by brute force worked! You don't even get a large part of the background to the situation until you reach the very end.

The endgame was perhaps this entry's strongest feature; a nice (and finally understandable!) little puzzle led to a denouement with a neat philosophical twist that left a much nicer impression than the previous two hours of head-scratching otherwise would have. Sadly, the issues raised in the teaser and ending have no impact on the rest of the game and aren't otherwise expanded upon.

A nice plus, particularly for a reviewer anxious to explore as widely as possible within the two hour time limit, was the rather extensive help system, like that in _Zork_Zero_. It isn't context-dependent, and the player can completely spoil the game by referring to it, but it's quite complete, and, for that matter, the best in the competition. Unfortunately, it is needed to explain what's going on in places where the game is undecipherable.

BOTTOM LINE: Huh?

From: "Magnus Olsson" 

  Name: A Night At The Museum Forever	  Parser: TADS
  Author: Chris Angelini		  Plot: Linear, rather clever
  Email: cangelini@uoguelph.ca		  Atmosphere: Weak
  Availability: F, GMD			  Writing: Adequate
  Puzzles: Simple, not too original	  Supports: TADS ports
  Characters: None			  Difficulty: Quite simple

Resolving the paradox and retrieveing the ring isn't that difficult; in fact, the game is quite small and easy, just as the competition entries should be. Both in style and execution it's quite similar to an early Infocom game (a treasure hunt through a deserted house containing some interesting gadgets as well as more commonplace objects, all conveniently placed where you can find them). The writing is not quite up to Infocom's standards, but quite adequate; the puzzles may not be very original but are clever and logical; the plot is simple but quite clever and the time travel is handled nicely.

My only big complaint about the game is its almost total lack of atmosphere. After all, you're exploring a mysterious, deserted museum where many explorers/looters before you have vanished in a temporal paradox, you're travelling thousands of years back and forward in time, and yet the author conveys almost no sense of wonder. It's almost as if the hero would say "OK, so I've resolved a temporal paradox and retrieved a priceless ring before lunch today. Maybe I should take the dog for a walk this afternoon?"

In some circumstances, leaving the museum leads to sudden death. This may be motivated by the plot, and anyway you can undo. What's worse, however, is that leaving the museum under certain other circumstances will cause the game to think you want to quit, and you're just taken out of the program without even the chance to undo. This is really a Bad Thing since it's easy to take a wrong turn in the corridors - it happened several times to me.

Despite these complaints, the game is quite clever and enjoyable. It nicely meets the One Rule of the contest: to be solvable in two hours, which is more than one can say for most of the more sophisticated entries.

From: "Magnus Olsson" 

  Name: The One That Got Away		  Parser: TADS
  Author: anonymous			  Plot: Linear, simple
  Email: 				  Atmosphere: Superb
  Availability: F, GMD			  Writing: Outstanding
  Puzzles: Rather simple		  Supports: TADS ports
  Characters: Very good			  Difficulty: Below average

This game tells the story of your encounter with the Old One. The emphasis is on the word "tells", since this game is more a piece of interactive literature than a traditional game. There certainly are puzzles, but the important thing is the story, not the puzzle solving.

As a reading experience, "The One That Got Away" is very enjoyable indeed. The writing is perhaps the best I've ever seen in an adventure game; not as poetic or beautiful as in "The Sound Of One Hand Clapping", but perfect for telling this kind of story. There's rather a lot of it, too: the introduction alone takes up more than two screen pages. The author manages to create just the right setting and atmosphere for his (her?) story, and the only real NPC, old Bob in the bait shop, is nicely characterized and has a lot to tell if you ask him.

This emphasis on writing doesn't mean that the gameplay aspects are neglected. On the contrary, the game flows nicely and the author seems to have thought of almost everything, providing appropriate - and often very funny - responses to most of the weird things an adventurer might try doing. The puzzle involving the actual fishing is perhaps a bit awkward, but implementing fishing at the level of detail it's done in this game is not a simple feat. To help you get an idea of what you're supposed to do there's a very humorous and detailed transcript of another fishing adventure available online. If you get totally stuck, the author has included a walkthrough in the distribution - not that it should be needed, since the game is quite simple.

So far for the good sides of this game, and they are good indeed. What's not so good is what happens once you're ready for some action. After the monumental introduction and a lot of build-up during your conversations with Bob and your attempts to get the right bait, you're ready for a monumental struggle, but instead you're presented with quite an anticlimax. After finishing the game, one can't help but to get a feeling of "Was this all?"

Still, despite the anticlimax, its literary quality makes this game a truly memorable one, one worth playing and replaying several times, just as one returns to a favourite novel.

From: "Magnus Olsson" 

  Name: Toonesia			  	Parser: TADS
  Author: C. J. T. Spaulding (pseudonym)  	Plot: Linear
  Email: an355952@anon.penet.fi		  	Atmosphere: Excellent
  Availability: F, GMD			  	Writing: Very Good
  Puzzles: Original and rewarding	  	Supports: TADS ports
  Characters: Good, but a bit non-interactive
  Difficulty: Rather simple

Does this sound familiar? It should, since this game is a loving re-creation of the world of classic cartoons (with the names slightly changed, probably for copyright reasons). During your adventures in Toonesia (don't worry, you do escape your doorless prison) you'll meet not only Bud Bunny but Dizzy Duck and other characters, and you'll end up in a number of typical cartoon situations, hauntingly familiar yet with certain new angles, situations posing problems that can only be solved by thinking in the slightly twisted way of a 'toon.

This game may not be very profound, but it's clearly one of the most entertaining adventure games I've ever played. It's not very large and not very difficult (and comes with extensive online hints if you're stuck), the puzzles are all very much in character and have logical and satisfying solutions (possibly with one exception: the helmet problem seems a bit contrived), the ending is very appropriate, and above all it's funny.

My only complaint is that the game seems to have been rushed out in a hurry (it was even released a week before the competition deadline), giving it a slightly unpolished feeling in places. The NPCs could be a bit more interactive, and there are a few inconsistencies (such as the Tazmanian (sic) Devil escaping through a tunnel that ends inside a locked cage - yet when you follow him, he's gone!). I found one quite serious bug: for some reason, the room description of the mesa reverses east and west, which made me quite frustrated when trying to escape, until I literally stumbled onto the solution by trial-and-error.

These are relatively minor things, however. I hope that the author will step forward after the competition to accept our congratulations; with products of this quality, there's really no reason to be anonymous.

From: "Magnus Olsson" 

  Name: Undo				Parser: TADS (hacked)
  Author: null dogmas			Plot: What plot?
  Email: ???				Atmosphere: Weird
  Availability: F, GMD			Writing: Adequate
  Puzzles: Very strange			Supports: TADS ports
  Characters: Props			Difficulty: Almost unplayable

The author of this game has obviously tried very hard to come up with something original, and he or she has certainly succeeded, in the sense that this game is totally unlike any other piece of IF I've ever seen. In fact, I'm not even sure of what "Undo" really is - a game, an experiment in TADS programming, a parody of IF, a meta-game? Perhaps it's a little of each. Sometimes when playing it, I had the feeling of being the victim of a strange practical joke. In any case, the meta-game aspects are pretty obvious. This is a game about a game that has crashed just when you were about to win; only a few steps to your east, a "You have won" sign beckons enticingly. However, the way is blocked by a large hole that's just appeared in the ground, and as you explore this little world (just five rooms), you'll find that things have suddenly started to behave very strangely indeed.

True to his (or her, but for simplicitly I'll be politically uncorrect and use the masculine pronoun) pseudonym, the author has apparently tried to turn all the conventions of IF upside down. Doing this involves some wordplay, some self reference, and a lot of hacking of the TADS library.

The results are of dubious quality. In turning everything upside down, the author seems to have totally dispensed with internal logic and consistency. The world consists of a number of locations and objects, only very weakly connected and all behaving in very odd ways. There is basically no way of deducing how things will work, which means that the only way of solving the game - at least the only way I found - is pure trial and error. Paradoxically, the fact that there are very few actions to try makes this process of trial and error more, rather than less, frustrating; trying to do a lot of things with no apparent effect and no sensible messages can be very irritating indeed.

I played this game some time and got steadily more and more frustrated, getting nowhere, making some quite surprising discoveries about innoculous-looking objects, all of which turned out to be absolutely useless, and without getting a single point for my troubles. In desperation, I posted a plea for help on Usenet, and was kindly nudged in the correct direction; yet even with that help, some further trial and error was needed before I stumbled on a sequence of actions that actually won the game - but still without giving me any points.

It seems as if there's only one real puzzle in the game. In retrospect, its solution has a certain weird logic to it, but you must probably have as twisted a mind as the author to be able to solve it by reasoning - sheer luck or trial and error seem far more likely methods. The solution only involves one room and two objects; all the rest has apprently been put in either just because they're neat ideas or as red herrings.

The score (or rather, absense of score) seems to be a pure red herring; the game keeps telling you that you have zero points out of 86, but no action (not even winning the game) seems to increase it. All this is further aggravated by the fact that there seem to be a few genuine bugs in the program (for example, try taking the zero while carrying things, then putting it back in the swamp, or referring to it as "0" while carrying it) - but, of course, in this game you can never be sure whether the "bugs" are intentional or not.

The author should certainly be credited for his creativity. Many of the items in the game are very neat ideas, when seen in isolation; perhaps they should be viewed as jokes. The recursive description of the writing in the self-referential room is clearly a logical joke (logic's equivalent of a word game?). There are also some quite conventional (I'm shocked!) verbal jokes: the bogus error messages in the dark room are very funny, while other jokes fall flat on the ground.

However, when all these elements are just thrown together and presented as a game without any further explanation, the result is more frustrating than amusing. If there had been some hidden internal logic to be discovered it would have posed an intellectual challenge; but personally I don't find trying to solve puzzles that aren't there very challenging, especially when the only way forward seems to be trial and error; it just makes me feel like the author is pulling my leg.

Had this been made into a "real" game (where there actually is a point to it all) it could have been a great success. As it is, perhaps the most appropriate characterization would be to call it an anti-game. To the prepared and not-too-weak-of-heart player I suppose it can be quite a kick, but unleashing it on the unsuspecting contest judges without a warning is cruel.

		[This space intentionally left blank.]

Toonesia is not a visionary game. Let me start by saying that. The author has no artistic pretensions coming into this game. Considering the subject matter, that's probably just as well. :)

TECHNICAL ASPECTS: Jacob did a pretty good job with his parser, and the appearance of his game. He's a bit short on synonyms in certain areas, like trying to put on the carrot cologne, but he has some code that holds up well under fire.

PLOT: While not exactly original, Toonesia is a work of inspired borrowing from various cartoons. My problem with the plot is its strict linearity. It borrows from the obstructionist school of game writing. I would suggest to Jacob that he needs to loosen up his plots more, and allow the player more room to breathe. This may not really be a valid complaint, as the competition had tight time constraints, but it is one I will bring up just in general. A good plot tree, to me, looks something like this:

				1
			      / | \
			    2   3   4
			  / | X | X | \
			5   6   7   8   9
			  \ |    \  |   |
			    A       B   C
			    |	      \ |
			  END1	      END2

ATMOSPHERE: I can't complain too much about this. Jacob did an admirable job portraying the world of cartoons. I even felt like saying, "Shhhh! Be Vewy, Vewy Qwiet." at one point. Concrete suggestions: More mobile NPCs, a few more scenery objects (most of the rooms were too empty.), and a few more hints of the wackiness that makes cartoon so near and dear to so many of us. Essentially a very good job in this area, though.

WRITING: I'd like to point out one room description, and a quick player action.

Inside the Mine

You are inside a vast cave that vanishes into darkess on all sides, except for the entrance to the west. The lush carpet of wealth contained herein is enough to make even you, Elmo Fuld, millionaire, gasp. A narrow beam of sharp desert light flows in from outside and reflects off a ruck of rubies, from where it bounces off into brood of beryl, heads for a heap of heliotrope, crashes into a clot of carnelian, hurries to a hunk of hyacinth, bashes into a battillion of bloodstone, careens into a cohort of carbuncle, makes for a murmuration of moonstone, and, completely zonked, catches some z's in a crowded zareba of cubic zirconium.

>get jewels

As you reach down to pick up a gem off the huge pile, you recall something your accountant said to you yesterday: "Mr. Fuld, right now, you're in the nine-nine-point-nine-percent tax bracket. If your value increases by more than a thousand dollars before the end of the fiscal year, you'll be in the one hundred percent bracket, and you'll have to give everything you own to the government." Since any one gem in this mine would be worth several thousand at least, you realize that your tax bracket prevents you from taking anything out of here (except that [CENSORED by GKW]).

Oooh, that rascally bracket!

Solid, humorous writing. Nothing too pretentious, nothing too terribly obnoxious (although the gem listing comes close), and it's good for a chuckle or two. I like this sort of writing quite well. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful, or as symbolic as The Mind Electric's writing. I'm perfectly okay with this. If I had any suggestions about Jacob's writing, I would just mention that his writing style is particularly suited to brevity and straightforwardness. Again, I *like* that, but I'm not sure if he's completely comfortable with that style. I have a tendency to be long-winded and flowery, so it's a relief for me to see short, concise descriptions.

PUZZLES: Toonesia's puzzles are okay. I was too busy being entertained by the fun writing to worry about them too much. I did need the hints to figure out where the gun was hidden though, more out of impatience than any real difficulty in the game.

CHARACTERS: Somehow, although these characters are described as doing more, they are less interesting than the fox in A Change in the Weather. It's probably that I expect a lot if you let a character talk. Taz was just right, but Bud and Dizzy fell flat-footed. (That's a joke, son.) I wanted to talk to them about what they were doing, about their careers. I wanted to see Dizzy occasionally reenter the mine to grab some more gems (possibly throwing you out if you try to enter with a "Mine mine mine! They're all mine!" Hell, I even wanted to marry the disguised rabbit at the end just to see if I could do it, since it says that you want to in the game. To Jacob, I would suggest expanded topics of conversation for his NPCs in the future, along with a more aggressive, less passive role in the game's action.

Uncle Zebulon's Will is a complacently tradition, highly effective narrative. It combines the quirky unreality of Trinity with the gizmo-filled atmosphere of Spellbreaker or Starcross. Of course, I don't say this merely to lavish praise upon Magnus, but also to point out certain key elements that make the game _work_. First and foremost is that the game elements are well balanced in comparison to one another. Other entries had excellent stories, a good level of difficulty, interesting puzzles, but none of them combined all these things as well as Zebulon did.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS: Magnus Olsson did an excellent job with his parser. I found a few small problems though. Notably, the lack of the nouns: idol, and fountain in certain spots. There was also difficulty with the wood shavings puzzle that smacked of guess the verb ever so slightly. The final complaint I have has to do with the use of the pronoun 'it'. If you were to type 'search chair', you find a wand, however, immediately typing 'get it' returns "You can't have the armchair." Magnus needed to setit(wand) [For you TADS users out there.] Still, these are very minor complaints, all things considered.

PLOT: Zebulon shines here. You are drawn into the story quickly, with a small opening area, and an NPC early on. The notes and letters from Zeb are excellent expository, brief and to the point, while remaining in character. Uncle Zebulon's personality comes across through these writings, and we get an idea of just why he's our favorite uncle. You come for a small remembrance of your uncle, but leave with a world of adventure ahead of you.

This is an often-used device in fantasy fiction. Beginning with small expectations, you build up the importance of a minor task until it has become a monumental undertaking of heroic proportions. Think of Bilbo Baggins and the riddle match with Gollum. He walks away from it with a handy little invisibility ring, or so we think. Turns out to be much more important than that, and the adventures of his descendants suddenly take on mythic proportions.

This technique is a good one because it doesn't create any overblown expectations in the player. He gets more than he asked for, in fact.

ATMOSPHERE: Just a brief room description:

Study

You're in what uncle Zebulon used to call his study, but which also doubled as his bedroom. You remember this room as being full of books: not only the bookshelves, but the desk was overflowing with books and pieces of paper, and there were always stacks of books on the floor as well.

Now, the bookshelves gape empty; the narrow, rickety bed is gone, as are the soft carpets. Only your uncle's desk remains, along with the smell of old books and stale tobacco smoke. The only door leads north, back into the hall.

On the desk you see a book and a crystal ball.

To me, when I read this, I was outraged, as though my uncle really had died, and my relatives had gone scrounging through his house like a pack of wild vultures. You are given memory ties with your uncle in the first paragraph, and then the current status of the room. This is a common pattern in uncle Zeb's house, and I got angrier and angrier as I went along. I tend to heavily 'get into character' when I'm playing text adventures, and this was no exception. Magnus uses this juxtaposition of past and present to create a feeling of continuity, and make the world more real.

WRITING: The writing, I have little to say about that has not already been said. Magnus claims that the writing is rather plain. Perhaps it is. But consider for a moment how well this works. I find that the writing style, involving ordinary descriptions, run-of-the-mill adjectives and so forth, provides a perfect foil to the fantastic world in which the game is set. In fact, the writing is just down-to-earth enough to keep me believing in the magical world of the irrepressible Zebulon. If I was a visitor to Zeb's world from Earth, surely everything would seem strange and marvellous to me. Adjectives like eldritch and mystical would abound. But the I in the game has lived in this world all my life. Why should things appear unusual to that me until I get to the alternate world? When I get there, the writing compensates and becomes more stylish. I call this not plain writing, but staying in character.

PUZZLES: The puzzles were all logical enough and simple enough that I beat the game without hints, and still had a great time doing it. What greater praise could there be? The crystal ball was a big help on certain puzzles. Without it, I wouldn't have searched the shavings, and probably wouldn't have realized that the tomato was important. With it, these puzzles dropped back to a reasonable level of difficulty.

CHARACTERS: The demon and uncle Zeb were the only two NPCs in the game. The demon was standard, boring, and mostly there as a puzzle. He might have reacted to more things being done to/shown to/asked of him, but that's the biggest criticism Zebulon will get from me.

To offset the rather standard, rather underdeveloped demon, we have uncle Zeb. He appears nowhere in the game, but his presence pervades the entire game. In a zen sort of way, the game and Zeb are one. We are given all sorts of hints and tidbits about him, rather like the journal entries used so cleverly in _Theatre_. In this way, Zeb takes on a life of his own, albeit a fairly eccentric, cynical life. Still, I wouldn't mind having an uncle like him, and again, wishing he were a real relative is high praise indeed.

1.) Also, I am interested in finding someone to take over the vote counting next year. It's a lot of work, so be prepared to put at least a few hours into it. Email me if interested in either doing it, or automating the process for me.

2.) If you are interested in becoming an official betatester for next year's competition, please email me and let me know. You will not be eligible to vote, but you will get to play the games much earlier than anyone else. Please be sure that you will have some free time in which to do this. It will involve spending several hours on each entry, but you will only be betatesting each game once, as long as I get enough volunteers for this job.

3.) If you have prizes you wish to donate for next year's competition, get in touch with me and let me know.

4.) For those of you interested in entering next year, here are my prelimary first draft rules. Again, short and sweet and to the point, but expanded somewhat to cover some contingencies that occured this year.

The MAIN Rule: The text adventure you enter must be winnable in under two hours. Judges will be asked to rate it after playing for that long.

The MINOR Rules:

A) The text adventure you enter must be completely original, and your own work. You may not re-use an older game you have written by porting it to TADS or Inform. [Basically, this would disallow MiSTings, which are more controversy than they're worth.] All entries will be uploaded to ftp.gmd.de within a 48 hour period. Entries uploaded before or after that will be disqualified. All entries will be anonymous this time, more to follow on this later. Possibly will entail use of the anon service.

B) You must keep the text adventure to yourself until the Upload Window. Do not show it to anyone else who might be voting in the competition until that time. You may opt, however, to have it betatested by the contest's official betatesters, and only them. They will be under strict orders not to spend more than X hours betatesting each game, but there will be 2-4 'drafts', and your game will be tested by different betatesters each draft.

Possible Deadlines:

1st Beta: April X, 96.
2nd Beta: April X, 96.
3rd Beta: May X, 96.
Final Draft: End of May, 96.
Voting: End of Sept, 96.

Alternately, we can have the games due after summer break, etc. Please send me your thoughts on this.