#
Game Reviews I

These reviews are in alphabetical order according to the name of the game reviewed. The index also has a few extra features. First and foremost of these is the instant gratification feature. If you see the SPAG button:

Then you can click on it to retrieve the file from ftp.ifarchive.org, or to go to that file's directory on the archive (in the case of competition games).

The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date. All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine with the traditional 'at' sign.

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

    Table of Contents
    I Didn't Know You Could Yodel
    I Must Play
    I-0: Jailbait on the Interstate
    Identity
    I'll
    In The End
    Inevitable
    Infidel
    Inform School
    Informatory
    Inheritance
    Inhumane
    Insight
    Internal Documents
    Internal Vigilance
    Intruder
    Isle Of The Cult
    It's Easter, Peeps

    I Didn't Know You Could Yodel
    From: Jason F. Finx <jff SP@G sozo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #17 -- May 10, 1999

    NAME:   I Didn't Know You Could Yodel
    AUTHOR: Michael R. Eisenman and Andrew J. Indovina
    EMAIL:  I don't know, and frankly I can't really say I care
    DATE:   Some time in 1996, apparently (the copyright message at the top of the
            game says 1997, but the copyright message it gives when you get the
            "last lousy point" says 1996, so I'm assuming the earlier one is when
            the game was first created).
    PARSER: Better than Scott Adams, but not up to TADS/Inform standard.
    SUPPORTS:  IBM PC only
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, though the surviving author seems to be planning a
                  commercial (or at least shareware) release.  Currently
                  available in the contests98 folder of the ifarchive.org IF-archive.
    URL: http://chorn.com/~scorpion/yodel.html
         ftp://if-archive/games/competition98/msdos/yodel

    "Oh, no.  It can't be."

    That was my reaction when I looked at the results from the 1998 IF
    contest and saw, near the bottom of the list, the title "I Didn't Know
    I Could Yodel".

    Why this reaction, you might ask?  Well, about six months ago I
    downloaded a game by that title from FreeGames Online
    (www.freegamesonline.com), and made the mistake of actually playing
    it.  This was before I had heard of SPAG or the IF archive, and had I
    heard of those, and known how many other, much better text adventures
    were available, I would never have slogged my way through this one.
    As it was, I probably still wouldn't have were it not for a promise of
    some spectacular ending.  I was, at least, gratified to see how close
    to the bottom of the list the game had placed (ranking even below a
    game coauthored by the infamous Rybread Celsius! ;) ), which meant
    that other people had shared my opinion of it.

    But no, I later reasoned; it couldn't possibly be the same game.
    After all, the 1998 competition rules explicitly state that no game
    could have been released prior to its entry to the contest.  Either
    this was an illegal entry, or it was a different game by the same name
    - which was, I thought, entirely possible; after all, the title came
    from a rather old joke.

    Then I looked at the file "yodeltxt.txt", and saw the phrase "type 'vanna'
    to play hangman", and knew that my worst fears were realized.

    It was the same game.

    (Before I go on, a few notes about the fact that the game had been
    released well before the contest date.  If I understand the rules
    correctly, and this does constitute a violation of them, then there
    are things which lead me to believe that the rule violation was not
    intentional.  The statement in the file yodeltxt.txt that "[a]fter the
    contest, I would like to try to release it, if that's ok with you
    guys" suggests that the author assumed that "release" means "attempt
    to sell for money".  If, as I suspect, the author did equate
    "releasing" the game with charging money for it, then his violation of
    the rules was not a knowing one.)

    [ Editor's note: According to the Contest organizer, David Dyte, the
    pre-competition release of the game was made unbeknown to the authors,
    and without their permission, and a decision was made to let it
    compete despite this. ]

    Now, why did I dislike this game so much?  Well, the main problem with
    it I can sum up in two words: bathroom humor.  (And I use the word
    "humor" loosely.)  More bathroom humor than I've seen in all the other
    text adventure games I've ever played combined.  At two different
    locations in the game, you find yourself in desperate need of - ah,
    emptying your large intestine - or dire consequences result (i.e. your
    character dies horribly).  If that were the end of it, well, that
    would be that, but unfortunately it isn't; there's also a repulsive
    bit after the second time involving... well, we'll all be better off
    if I don't go into that.

    Actually, toilet humor wasn't even all of it.  The game almost seemed
    to go out of its way to be offensive and disgusting at every
    opportunity.  There are ethnic slurs, gay jokes, and jokes involving a
    certain other bodily secretion (I can't be more specific without
    giving away one of the puzzles), and at two different points you have
    to kill an innocent character (two different characters, of course).
    I think the single section of the game that stands out as the most
    repulsive was the Jed's House sequence, but the bulk of the game
    wallows in the same filth, if to a slightly lesser degree.

    Also, the insult-the-player-character device is getting really old,
    and this game takes it to rather extreme levels (which makes the
    endgame make even less sense than it otherwise would).  And speaking
    of devices that are getting really old, and are taken to extreme
    levels in this game, some other games may include their authors as
    powerful NPCs, but... well, I can't say more without giving away part
    of the ending.  Speaking of NPCs, though (while I'm segueing anyway),
    the NPCs of this game - and there are a lot of them - are fairly
    typical for old, second-class (i.e. not by Infocom or the other
    classic companies) text adventures.  Most of them are only there as
    puzzles to be solved; you can't interact with them outside of a few
    very narrow possibilities (the NPC, DO SUCH-AND-SUCH command structure
    isn't even implemented), and they do nothing on their own; either they
    just stay in one place until you get rid of them, or they appear, do
    whatever they're supposed to do, and then vanish. The only possible
    exception is the comedian, and even he only really has a set joke he
    spouts on entering each new room, which isn't even related to the room
    itself.  Actually, there was a lot of missed potential with the
    comedian - he could have made sarcastic comments on the player's
    actions, taunted the player when something didn't work, et cetera -
    but no; for the most part he just spouts irrelevant jokes.

    Now, to the technical issues.  To be honest, I didn't remember much
    about these details, but I figured if I was going to write a review of
    this game I'd better play through it again (especially since the
    version submitted might have been a later release than the one I
    played originally), so I stiffened my lip and subjected myself once
    more to its inane repulsiveness.  As it turns out, the grammar and
    spelling are far from perfect - there are some misplaced modifiers,
    missing ending quotation marks, and words that should be capitalized
    that aren't, among other things, and quite a few misspellings (the
    most annoying of which was the constant "your" for "you're", though I
    found it odd that the authors misspelled "monstrous" two different
    ways in the same paragraph!) - but it could have been a lot worse.
    The writing is awkward, though; sometimes a simple contraction or two
    would help its flow immensely, and in a few places there are obvious
    mistakes (usually in the form of omitted words) that the authors
    failed to catch, such as "A pudgy cop steps out the vehicle".  The
    attempt at poetry in the dogs' challenges in the Lawn is particularly
    awful, but at least its awfulness is acknowledged within the game.
    (Perhaps it was meant to be _dog_gerel?  Nah, I don't think the
    authors were that subtle.)

    Most of the scenery objects are examinable, though there are some
    glaring omissions.  For example, one room contains dogs with sombreros
    and big mustaches, but the game doesn't recognize the words "sombrero"
    and "mustache", and despite the fact that the game tells you that you
    read the walls of a bathroom stall, and examining the walls tells you
    they're "written all over", typing "read walls" gives the message
    "There's nothing to read".  Many room descriptions, unfortunately,
    neglect to mention the exits (and in at least one place the exits are
    listed incorrectly!).

    The parser - a homemade one written in Modula-2 - can handle
    multiple-word commands - adjectives and prepositions are allowed - but
    I got the idea that it didn't really so much parse them as just do a
    keyword search.  If there's an NPC you're supposed to ASK about
    something, for example, if often doesn't make a difference what you're
    asking about, or even whether the NPC is the object or the object of
    the preposition!  At the West End of Lawn, for example, "TALK TO
    WAITER", "ASK WAITER", "ASK WAITER ABOUT TOMATO", and even "ASK PRUNES
    ABOUT WAITER" all elicit exactly the same response from the waiter
    (which incidentally has nothing to do with tomatoes or prunes), while
    "TALK", "ASK", or even "ASK PRUNES ABOUT TOMATO" yield a different
    response from the waiter, even though you haven't said you're talking
    to him.  Worse, if there's an NPC around but not one the game requires
    you to talk to, the ASK and TALK commands get the response "There is
    no one to talk to," regardless of the objects.  Also, such
    now-standard commands as "undo" and "oops" are missing ("wait", rather
    inexplicably, yields the response "You must supply a noun").
    Additionally, there are a few places that could use better support of
    synonyms or rewordings: you can MOVE or PUSH a certain body, but not
    TURN it OVER or ROLL it OVER (despite the fact that when you push it
    it rolls over anyway), and KNOCK ON DOOR works where KNOCK is answered
    by the response "It doesn't do any good."

    There are a number of relatively minor bugs, but I only found three
    that I would consider really disastrous.  First, even after everything
    else is done, "ENTER BOAT" makes a voice say "YOU ARE NOT READY FOR
    THE BOAT YET!", but "WEST" gets you on the boat just fine, which is
    likely to lead players who only try the former command to think
    there's something left they have to do first.  Second, when the game
    requests a one-letter response, it only accepts lower-case letters,
    and in fact entering a capital letter in the hangman game (don't ask;
    its connection to the rest of the game is tenuous) crashes the program
    with the error "function fell thru the end".  Last, if you go to the
    Indian Battle Ground after getting the collar from the dogs, your
    collar disappears and you can't get another one, which makes the game
    unsolvable unless you've already finished everything in the dogs'
    area.

    As for the puzzles, well, to be honest, most of them weren't bad, and
    some of them were quite imaginative.  There were few that seemed
    totally illogical; though I admit I was turned off enough by the
    bathroom humor that I cheated on a few puzzles by looking at the code
    to get it over with (there was no walkthrough available when I first
    played it in August), even for those few puzzles that I cheated on
    when I found the solutions I thought I could have gotten them if I
    just hadn't given up so soon.  (Granted, though, a few of the puzzles
    that I did get without cheating involved little logic and a lot of
    guessing.)  One of the two puzzles that involved killing an innocent
    person was especially clever and well-done, though I wish they had
    made it so the NPC was only incapacitated instead of killed in cold
    blood.  Another puzzle (getting past the enraged Injun Simon) had me
    stuck for a long time when I first played it, but when I did finally
    figure out the solution it seemed blatantly obvious - which I think is
    one mark of a good puzzle.

    Most of the puzzles were, however, very disconnected, and there wasn't
    any plot to speak of (despite the explanation at the end); this again
    is fairly typical of many old second-class text adventures which were
    just hodgepodges of plotless puzzles.  Also, I seldom like the idea of
    riddles in a text adventure, and this one had a lot of them.  They
    were readily solvable (well, the last one had me stumped, and even
    after I cheated by looking at the code I didn't understand it for a
    long time, but after I finally "got" it I thought I should have gotten
    it sooner), and the end of the game at least gave some justification
    for them.

    In fact, for what it's worth, the ending didn't completely fail to
    deliver on its promise.  It didn't completely succeed either: the fate
    of your character was positive, but far too much so, so much that it
    seemed unmotivated (especially given the previous constant emphasis on
    your character's stupidity and general worthlessness - what exactly
    did he do to earn such a great reward?), and frankly rather
    unspectacular by its very superlativeness.  I did, however, like the
    idea of the brief descriptions of what later happened to all the
    game's NPCs.  Unfortunately, the authors' descriptions of what
    happened to the characters were as juvenile and unfunny as the rest of
    the game, but the _idea_ of having such a "where-are-they-now" list
    was original (as far as I know) and entertaining, even if the
    implementation in this particular game left a lot to be desired.

    In fact, something similar could be said of much of the game.  The
    authors were not at a loss for good ideas.  Subpar parser,
    plotlessness, and static NPCs aside, the biggest problem this game had
    was simply its authors' fixation on bathroom humor - and that _was_ a
    big problem.  There were quite a few positive aspects of the game,
    however.  Quite a bit of imagination went into it; it's just too bad
    that so much of it was directed toward jokes involving bodily
    functions.  There was at least one very nice red herring that I was
    convinced I must have to do something about (but, as it turned out, I
    didn't).  The geography, if bizarre and illogical, was at least
    consistent (with the possible exception of wherever exactly that horde
    of desert natives was supposed to be).  The "last lousy point" is
    actually given for something that makes sense for a change (within the
    context of the game).

    In short, these authors aren't completely without potential - well,
    "this author", I should say; according to the notes in the
    yodeltxt.txt file one (Michael Eisenman) is now deceased.  The main
    thing he needs to do is get his mind out of the gutter.  Sadly, in "I
    Didn't Know You Could Yodel", the authors' minds were so deeply and
    firmly wedged in said gutter that this completely overwhelmed any
    positive things about the game.  If Mr. Indovina makes another game
    without all the toilet jokes and other objectionable attempts at
    humor, it may conceivably be worth looking at (though unless he takes
    great strides in a lot of other aspects too it still will be far from
    top-of-the-line).  But unless you have the sense of humor of a
    particularly snickery preteen, "I Didn't Know You Could Yodel" is
    decidedly not worth the download.

    My score for "I Didn't Know You Could Yodel":

    Atmosphere 0   - None to speak of except repulsive "humor"
    Gameplay   0.9 - Not bad for a homemade parser, but far from state
                     of the art.
    Writing    0.3 - The writing was pedestrian at best, and far from
                     devoid of spelling and grammar errors, but at least
                     it didn't have as many as some other games.
    Plot       0.2 - No real plot, but at least there's some attempt to
                     explain things at the end.
    Discretion 0.3 - I didn't like toilet humor when I was 10, and I don't
                     like it any better now.  I didn't give a 0 for the
                     discretionary points, though because I felt the authors
                     deserved some credit for a few unique touches like the
                     "where are they now" bit at the end.
    Characters 0.3 - Lots of NPCs, but they're all caricatures you can't
                     interact with
    Puzzles    1   - By far the best aspect of the game, but still, few really
                     interactive puzzles, and a few felt like guessing games.
                     Plus, the riddles annoyed me.

    Directory with PC executable and related files

    I Must Play
    From: Joao Mendes <joao-mendes SP@G netcabo.pt>
    Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005

    TITLE: I Must Play
    AUTHOR: Geoff Fortytwo
    EMAIL: ifcomp2004Public SP@G g42.org
    DATE: October 2004
    PARSER: TADS3
    SUPPORTS: TADS3 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2004/tads3/imustplay/IMustPlay.t3
    VERSION: 42.00.009

    A story of a little kid who sneaks into the video arcade after hours to
    play some games while the mean big boys are away. Cute but a bit
    pointless, if you ask me. Or not! The very first video machine I try. I
    find myself _inside_ a huge game of Tetris! This was a moment of
    realization for me, which is always nice.

    Unfortunately, once the novelty wears off, this becomes just another
    game with puzzles in it, although in its defense, I was able to figure
    out all but two of the puzzles on my own, and I only failed one of them
    because I have been awake for more than a few hours and am getting a bit
    tired. Of course, I think this game was meant to be very easy, and in
    that respect, it succeeds. There is one problem, though, and that is
    that the puzzles feel contrived. It doesn't feel like they're there to
    support the premise, rather, it feels that the premise was attained as a
    good means to collate all these random puzzles together.

    The writing in this game, though error-free, is rather bland. Then
    again, I suppose the author would have to be an absolute genius in order
    to manage to be powerful and evocative, given the subject matter. I
    mean, there's only so much you can say about Tetris. Also, technically,
    the game works very well. TADS3 handles itself beautifully, as expected,
    but the author isn't creditless either. Lots of attention to detail, and
    all the attempted actions seemed catered to.

    Story: 2 (basic, but well-rounded)
    Writing: 1 (error-free and gets the job done, but the subject matter
    lacks in power)
    Technical: 2 (a very competent use of the power of TADS3)
    Puzzles: 1 (easy and accessible, but rather contrived)

    Final rating: 6

    Directory with .t3 TADS3 file and walkthrough

    TADS3 source code

    I-0: Jailbait on the Interstate
    From: Christian Baker <lankro SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #20 -- March 15, 2000

    NAME: I-0: Jailbait on the interstate
    AUTHOR: Adam Cadre
    EMAIL: ac SP@G adamcadre.ac
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/I-0.z5

    When I first started up I-0, I didn't know what to think of the game. It
    starts in the front seat of your fantastic new car, which has broken
    down on the way home to celebrate Thanksgiving. The game has a gimmick,
    or rather, two gimmicks. The first one would be that you can take all
    your clothes off, and it really is fun to watch the NPCs react to
    partial or total nudity. This makes you want to classify it as a Leather
    Goddesses type game, but it isn't really. It's just about fun. I for one
    would love to see the reaction of other people if I started stripping in
    a garage.

    The second gimmick would be the fact that you can take multiple paths.
    There is more than one way to win. It is quite easy to win, but I don't
    really think the point of the game was mind-bending puzzles (Adam has
    shown his love of non-puzzle games with Photopia.) I-0 is a very good
    (and funny) game, but there are a few things lacking. The NPCs seem a
    bit stereotyped, but there is a good bit of conversation from Larry, the
    loveable truck driver. The writing is very good and always shows the
    funny side of things, as shown here:

       You'd like to be able to say you're in the middle of nowhere, but
       that would be wishful thinking. You're stranded at least fifty miles
       away from the middle of nowhere.

       The entire landscape is nothing but barren desert dotted with scrub.
       Being a desert kid, you're well aware of how much danger you're in.
       The scenery may be beautiful in its own way, but the sun is beating
       down like it's got a personal mission to melt you into goo, and
       you're well aware that out in the desert everything is either
       poisonous or covered with spikes. Not to mention what could happen to
       a pretty girl all alone on a deserted highway...

       As for this particular spot, well, a barbed-wire fence lines the
       roadside, and Interstate Zero itself stretches endlessly to the east
       and west. There's a sign here, too, and its twin is on the other side
       of the freeway directly to your north.

    I thought the inside of Taco Junta could have been used better, as it
    seemed a pretty useless location to me. The game isn't particularly big,
    or particularly difficult, but it doesn't give you any "You can't do
    that here" messages, and everything is very detailed. It lets you roam
    free, it doesn't let you sit there and have the plot stuffed down you
    throat. Adam, a darn fine piece of work.

    Inform .z5 file

    PC executable

    Inform 5.5 source code

    Plot tree

    Identity
    From: Cirk Bejnar <eluchil404 SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005

    TITLE: Identity
    AUTHOR: Dave Bernazzani
    EMAIL: daveber SP@G gis.net
    DATE: October 2004
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2004/zcode/identity/identity.z5
    VERSION: Release 6

    Identity is an amnesia game set in a generic sci-fi setting. Your patrol
    ship has crash-landed on an unknown planet and you must unravel the
    mystery of its sabotage and find a way to get home. It bills itself as
    an Interactive Short Story, but I found the story element to be rather
    slight. Though the game told me that my memory was 100% complete at the
    end I was still none too sure of my character's name and had seen
    nothing to flesh out the backstory hinted at in the opening scene.
    Instead, pride of place is given to the puzzles which are generally well
    thought out and intuitive. There was one place where, when faced with a
    similar goal as in a previous puzzle, I tried the same solution and was
    not even given a good reason as to why it didn't work. In another vein,
    I couldn't find the radio because I missed an exit and so was in no mood
    to deal with its rather involved puzzle solution.

    The coding was strong overall and I found no explicit bugs. There were a
    few moments of awkward phrasing (why is attach implemented but not as a
    synonym of connect?), but I was able to make myself understood. The
    writing is serviceable but does not really shine. The real problem here,
    though, is the world. There is nothing strange or interesting about the
    spaceship with its standard issue escape pods and a supply closet.
    Likewise the planet is normal to the point of oddity. There is a yak in
    the mountains and a simple farming village whose friendly inhabitants
    converse with you freely. It makes a reasonable frame to hang the
    puzzles on, but gripping fiction it is not.

    All that said, I enjoyed Identity more than not. I got to figure things
    out on my own thanks to the simple puzzles and the planet seemed a
    rather nice place whose inhabitants I was happy to help.

    Inform source code

    .z5 Zcode file (updated version)

    .z5 Zcode file (competition version)

    I'll
    From: Stas Starkov <stas_ SP@G mail.rb.ru>
    Review appeared in SPAG #30 -- September 20, 2002

    NAME: I'll
    AUTHOR: Sean Barrett
    EMAIL: buzzard SP@G world.std.com
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: Inform Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/ill.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    There are some IF games that can't be narrowly described without
    completely spoiling the enjoyment of somebody who hasn't played them
    yet. And "I'll" is one of those. So my review will be ultra-short.

    "I'll" is very well written from (my) literary point of view, and, while
    being experimental and a bit oddball, the game provides a good heap of
    enjoyment. It is puzzle-less (sort of). And you may finish the game
    in... well, very fast... or you will not.

    If you like literature experiments, you should try the game. Absolutely.

    Zcode .z5 file

    In The End
    [There are some spoilers in the reviews for this game. --PO]

    From: John Wood <john SP@G elvw.demon.co.uk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997

    NAME: In The End
    AUTHOR: Joe Mason
    EMAIL: joe.mason SP@G tabb.com
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/intheend
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    Well, this was a hard one to score - and it's a hard one to review
    without spoilers.  It's a mood piece, with a brooding atmosphere, which
    starts at a funeral and doesn't get much more cheerful.  The quality of
    writing is exceptional - possibly the best I've seen in IF, and
    certainly the best of this year's competition.

    In style of play, it reminds me of the earliest scenes in "So Far."
    There are no puzzles, and (somewhat to my surprise) this didn't bother
    me at all.  It is possible to play it through several times in two
    hours, doing things slightly differently each time.

    Where the game falls down is in some of the technical aspects.  The
    characters have a limited range of responses (though when they do
    respond they respond well) - "woman, hello" results in a standard
    "What are you talking about?".  The game also fails to recognise
    obvious actions - when the woman knocks on your car window, "open
    door" results in "You see no such thing" - and also fails to provide
    descriptions for much of the scenery (such as the priest conducting
    the funeral service).  Finally, the game crashed once.  All of these
    things hurt the atmosphere, and they happen far too often.  It's a
    tribute to the writing that the atmosphere is maintained to a large
    degree in spite of this.

    One experiment that should be mentioned is the complete lack of compass
    directions.  Most of the time this worked well - you drive between the
    buildings, then enter and leave them on foot.  In one location (the
    Parking Lot) I was stuck trying to move somewhere ("cross lot") for a
    while before I realised I didn't need to.

    Summing up, this is well worth playing in its current incarnation, and
    will be even more so if the author spends some more time "filling in the
    gaps".

    From: C.E. Forman <ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997

    The author calls this the first attempt at puzzle-less I-F, though
    this is debatable (and has been debated).  Does it succeed?  I'd have
    to say not quite.  But it tries very hard.

    I think what some people overlook is the fact that, as puzzle-less I-F
    is so inherently different than I-F with puzzles, two different sets
    of default messages are needed.  Why should you be told "You find
    nothing interesting" in a game when you're not even SUPPOSED to be
    searching for hidden goodies?  Another response is definitely needed
    here, as well as with other verbs.

    Further, a couple of guess-the-syntax problems crept up while I was
    playing - inside the car, "LET WOMAN IN" works, but "OPEN THE PASSENGER
    DOOR" or "ROLL DOWN THE WINDOW" fail.  Trying to figure out the proper
    syntax constitutes a puzzle, in my opinion (and a rather annoying puzzle
    at that).  This breaks both the realism and the flowing of the plot, and
    hence it doesn't quite appear puzzle-less.

    Even the final move ("KILL ME") wasn't easy to deduce.  The funeral
    was certainly depressing, and I'd had some real disappointments (with
    Annie, in the convenience store, etc.), but I certainly wasn't
    contemplating suicide, and the author didn't make me feel the need or
    desire to.  Again, I had to guess at his intentions to figure out how
    to advance the plot, which makes this seem like a puzzle.

    One thing I did like was the imaginative method of navigating from place
    to place.  A compass-less game is not a unique thing in I-F, but it's
    not easy to do, and I applaud the effort there.  All things considered,
    this was an interesting experiment, but, even ignoring the guessing
    puzzles, it was also very short, and didn't quite convince me of the
    feasibility of larger puzzle-less I-F games.  Maybe I'll give it a whirl
    myself, though.

    "A" for effort, "C+" for results.

    From: Chris Klimas <cklimas SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997

    "In The End" bills itself as 'puzzle-less IF.' It's right -- there are
    no puzzles to be found here. Puzzles traditionally have existed to
    buoy up a sometimes lacking plot in IF -- if the plot was marginal, at
    least the puzzles were interesting. Of course, if the plot is
    nonexistent, then an infinite number of insanely great puzzles won't
    help it. The problem with "In The End" is that there aren't any
    puzzles to help it out.

    It begins in a church, where you're attending a close friend's
    funeral.  Never mind that we never learn much about your friend. You
    leave, you get in your car, you meet Annie, who somehow knew your dead
    friend, you go to a bar, you go to a convenience store, you go to
    Annie's house, you go to your house.  You don't get it at all and read
    the walkthrough, find out you're supposed to kill yourself, kill
    yourself, get a quasi-profound poem, and leave dissatisfied.

    In each of the locations, there are only one or two things you can
    do. In the church, you can sit through a sermon. In the bar, you can
    get as many drinks as you feel like. After you've done that one thing,
    the location closes up to you, so you're left in your house with
    nothing to do but to kill yourself.

    The overall genre and setting of the story is a bit confusing. It
    seems fairly contemporary; there are touches of the future, like
    giving your car voice commands (never mind that the 'voice command'
    thing was covered extensively in the Inform Designer's Manual). It
    doesn't really make sense why the story is set in the vague future,
    because the story could very well take place right now with very
    little work. (my soapbox statement: if you're going to use a special
    genre, make the story integral to it, and vice versa).

    There is really only one main character aside from the player; the
    other two (the bar owner and convenience store owner) don't really
    interact with the player. Annie, the other character, doesn't seem to
    have much motivation; she bums a ride off you, but nothing happens
    after you drop her off. She seemed to be somehow involved with your
    dead friend, but whenever the player questions her, she breaks down in
    tears and refuses to answer any more questions, so she is a very
    nebulous character.

    The writing itself has a nice quality to it. It's above hack-level,
    but not up there with the likes of Hemingway and Vonnegut.

    Overall, then, I was disappointed. Following Chekov's metaphor (if you
    hang a gun on the wall in act one, make sure it gets fired by act
    three), lots of guns were on the wall, but none were fired.

    This is really because the narrative is left in the hands of the
    player. If you can make a complete story out of fragments, then you
    and "In The End" will work out nicely. However, the point of IF is not
    to hand the player a bunch of fragments to sort out, it is to place a
    complete story in the hands of the player. In reality, the only
    difference between linear fiction and interactive fiction is the
    method that a reader uses to access the narrative.  "In The End" would
    make a sorry linear story. I dare you to say the same about "AMFV" or
    "Jigsaw."

    So this review is not intended as a condemnation of puzzle-less IF. It
    is a warning to the fools who would tread lightly: writing puzzle-less
    IF is walking a tightrope without the net. IF with and without puzzles
    is equally difficult to write, but if you screw up once in puzzle-less
    IF, you've screwed up the whole thing.

    Inform File (.z5)

    Inevitable
    From: Mary Kate Alexander <mkalex1 SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #37 -- July 10, 2004

    TITLE: Inevitable
    AUTHOR: T.L. Heinrich (a.k.a. Kathleen M. Fischer)
    EMAIL: mfischer5 SP@G aol.com
    DATE: 2003
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Inevita.z5

    In Kathleen Fischer's Inevitable, you find yourself wandering through a
    deserted city, your ostensible goal to find a way to repair your plane
    and leave, though it quickly becomes apparent that the player will also
    be delving into the PC's past at the same time. The atmosphere and
    puzzles in this game are reminiscent of Myst, and the descriptions are
    vivid enough to make this work well in a text-based game.

    Inevitable has several interesting features. One is the ability to set
    the difficulty level to easier or harder than the default (an option
    only available at the start of the game). While there are no hints or
    walkthrough available, attempting a particular puzzle in the easier
    version of the game is a pretty good substitute; the difference in
    difficulty between levels is not great, but enough to help a couple of
    times when I got stuck in the harder version. The puzzles themselves are
    pretty straightforward, with minimal guess-the-verb problems.

    In addition to the score and number of moves, a number of memories is
    given at the top of the screen; at various points throughout the game,
    something that you see will remind you of the past, and the number of
    memories will increase. The command REMEMBER will retrieve these
    memories. I found this to be a relatively smooth way bring up things
    that the PC knows but the player doesn't. Another set of commands that I
    found convenient was LIST PLACES, which gives a list of locations that
    you've already visited, and GO TO [location], which lets you jump to
    places that you've already visited (the response is, "You make your way
    back to [location]"). The map in this game isn't big enough for moving
    around in the usual way to be too onerous, but I'd love to see GO TO
    implemented in larger games, where moving from one place to another can
    get to be rather tedious.

    The writing was excellent; as mentioned above, the puzzles require a
    very clear visualization of the setting, and the location and object
    descriptions were more than sufficient for this. I only caught one typo,
    in an object description. The game was well-implemented; most things I
    tried to do or look at gave an appropriate response, and the default
    messages were altered to avoid breaking the mood (e.g., when you try to
    go in a direction without an exit, "After a moment's thought, you
    realize that you can't go that way."; or when you try to do something
    that's not allowed or not possible, "You scowl at the thought," or "You
    laugh at the thought.").

    My only criticism would be that there's an interesting (though not
    strikingly original) backstory, and well-designed puzzles, but the two
    are not very integrated with each other--basically, you end up trying to
    get a series of machines working without any good reason why. Overall,
    though, I found this a thoroughly enjoyable game; on a scale of 1-10,
    I'd give it a 7.

    Zcode .z5 file, updated release

    Zcode .z5 file, Spring Thing 2003 release

    Infidel
    From: Stephen Granade <ssgranade SP@G phy.duke.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

     NAME: Infidel                                   PARSER: Excellent (Infocom)
     AUTHOR: Michael Berlyn                          PLOT: Good
     EMAIL: ???                                      ATMOSPHERE: Fair to weak.
     AVAILABILITY: LTOI 1                            WRITING: Excellent
     PUZZLES: Heiroglyphics puzzles are interesting. SUPPORTS: Infocom ports
     CHARACTERS: None                                DIFFICULTY: Medium

            On your first big archaeological dig, you manage to waste most of
    your money and alienate your workers.  To top it off, you can't find the
    pyramid you're after.  And then your crew drugs you and abandons you...
            The game's parser is up to Infocom's usual level.  Michael Berlyn's
    writing helps bring the pyramid to life, although I found some sections of
    the pyramid to be a bit weakly written.  The plot moves along fairly briskly
    at first, then widens to allow more exploration once you find the pyramid.
    There are no true NPC's in the game; how many characters are you likely to
    meet while exploring a long-dead pyramid?  My wildcard points went to the
    game's hieroglyphics.  I had a lot of fun trying to decode them, and they
    made many of the puzzles solvable on the first try.
         Infidel can be found in Activision's Lost Treasures of Infocom, a re-
    packaging of Infocom's games.  LTOI lacks much of the flair of Infocom's old
    packages, but at least the games are still available.  Infidel is of medium
    difficulty, an entertaining game but not a true classic.

    From: Derek S Felton <derek SP@G esu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

          The story is straightforward and the puzzles aren't _that_ complicated.
    I enjoyed the game's descriptions of rooms and objects because they give the
    player the feel of being inside an adventure movie.  I was disappointed with
    the other living characters, though: there aren't any!  What's a good desert
    adventure story without a few scorpions, asps, and mummies?  Nonetheless,
    INFIDEL is a good adventure for players with little or no experience with
    interactive fiction.  Get ready to map and translate hieroglyphics.

    Solution (Text)

    Inform School
    From: Adam Myrow <myrow SP@G eskimo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #24 -- March 24, 2001

    NAME: Inform School
    AUTHOR: William J. Shlaer
    EMAIL: shlaer SP@G aol.com
    DATE: December 1999
    PARSER: Inform Standard
    SUPPORTS: Infocom/Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/School.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    I originally downloaded this file because I've always wanted to learn
    Inform and start writing games eventually. I am somewhat familiar with
    mainstream programming languages like C and C++, but I figured that it
    was best to use the tools that are already designed for games. Like any
    prospective Inform programmer, I had a copy of the Designer's manual,
    the compiler, latest library, and sample source code. I had a vague
    understanding of things, but wanted to experiment further and really try
    to grasp them better. I tried a program called the Informatorium, but
    found it sorely lacking in tutorial potential. It just wasn't
    interactive enough although I got a good laugh at its IF references. So,
    while browsing the index file on GMD, I encountered the entry for
    school.z5 which proclaimed to be an Inform tutorial. "What the heck?" I
    thought. It can't hurt to try it. So I downloaded it and discovered that
    it is much more useful than Informatorium. In fact, the author wrote it
    to be an improvement on that game and expand on it and make it truly
    educational. The result is amazing for this purpose. Not only do you get
    to see source code, you get to write it! That's right, you can try out
    object creation and even create a simple game within the program and
    yes, make mistakes. It's an implementation of Inform within Inform.
    Actually, it calls itself INF, a severely truncated version of Inform,
    but it lets you do most typical activities. In fact, I suspect that most
    of the "Ruins" sample in the designer's manual could be created within
    the context of the game.

    The program starts out with a warning that it could crash an interpreter
    and may not work on all Zcode interpreters. After that dismal warning,
    you have the choice of going to the Inform lab, fully equipped, restore
    a saved game, or start from the beginning. I started from the beginning
    and got a lengthy notice about what to try if things didn't work and an
    introduction about how I decided to take summer classes in a self-taught
    Inform school. "Ok, whatever," I thought and started to explore and
    read. It didn't take me long to find a text-book that explained what was
    up and find a lab where Igor is! He sits around and comments on some of
    your errors and can be made to give you a demo of how to go about
    creating objects. From here, you're on your own. You have some
    assignments in the book that is part of the game and you can read them
    with simple commands. You can even mark which ones are done and which
    still need doing. The assignments start out very simple and get harder
    from there. The first assignment is to create a starting room and then
    you add objects to that. Next you add doors, more rooms, locked
    containers, and scored objects. You go into things that can be turned on
    and off, and finally, get to start defining rules to make something a
    poison, make it produce sound, and change default responses for taking
    and dropping. You get to also experiment with naming objects in ways
    that make it hard to interact with them. On top of all this, you can go
    to "class rooms" that have the same numbers as the assignments and they
    have fully implemented answers to each exercise. You can view their
    source code and the book that you read within the game in some cases,
    tells you exactly what to type. I haven't really followed the
    assignments in exact order. I went out of my way to use them as examples
    to create my own objects. For example, I started out with an airplane, a
    bag of peanuts, and the tray that you would put food on while in flight.
    I went from their and defined some other ideas that I wanted to try to
    implement and now have a HAM radio that if on will generate a
    description of hearing a conversation through static and if off, is
    silent. It's fun to create objects without having to compile a complete
    story file. Actually, I'm trying out ideas for my first Inform game
    which I may or may not ever write. If I should write it, the game will
    involve surviving a plane crash and having to get out of the forest. I
    was thinking of having a HAM radio that you have to repair or make an
    antenna for and use it to send out a distress signal. Like I said, I
    don't know if this will ever amount to anything, but I like
    experimenting and learning interactively at the same time.

    As for the warnings about crashing the interpreter, it isn't kidding.
    The program doesn't do real strict error checking, so if you forget
    quotes where they should be, you may find yourself looking at something
    like "fatal error: print at illegal address." This doesn't really bother
    me, as I figure it's part of the learning experience. Besides, if you
    want error checking, use the standard compiler. This gives you an idea
    of what would happen if the compiler let you get away with bad syntax.
    For example, mess up an after rule, and you might make an object
    untakeable with no response whatsoever if you try to take it.

    In short, if you want to learn Inform, but are having trouble, give this
    program a try. It isn't perfect, but it will give you a nice place to
    practice without having to constantly compile story files. You can
    create objects and change them on the fly and see how they will behave.
    It's really worth it for any potential student of Inform and could save
    a lot of aggravation when you're ready to write a real game.

    Inform file (.z5)

    Informatory
    From: Paul O'Brian <obrian SP@G colorado.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #17 -- May 10, 1999

    NAME: Informatory
    AUTHOR: William S. Shlaer
    EMAIL: shlaer SP@G aol.com
    DATE: September 1998
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/informat
    VERSION: Release 1

    Every year I've been writing reviews for the IF competition, I've seen
    several games which are their authors' first attempt at learning
    Inform.  These usually aren't the better games -- I find that most of
    the really good Inform games in the competition are not the first
    pieces of code ever hacked together by their authors. Informatory,
    however, gives a twist to this tendency -- it is the author's first
    attempt to *teach* Inform. Rather than replicating its author's
    apartment or dorm room, Informatory instead replicates a number of
    familiar scenes and objects from various canonical IF games, and
    allows its player to peek at their source code in order to give some
    insight as to how Inform could be used to create them. It does this
    through a handy device known as the "Codex Helmet" -- whenever the
    player character wears this helmet, source code for all objects
    becomes visible. Of course, a couple of elementary puzzles must be
    overcome in order to gain access to this miracle of technology, but
    hints are provided for those puzzles. Once the Helmet is acquired,
    Informatory presents a new kind of puzzle: to progress in the game,
    you must decipher the Inform source code of its objects so that you
    may use their special properties to your advantage.

    For me, this kind of puzzle worked well, because it relied on
    information I had already acquired through working on my own Inform
    creations. However, for someone who did not know Inform and wasn't
    particularly interested in investing much time to learn it, I think
    those puzzles would be a major nuisance. In fact, if you're not
    interested in learning Inform, my advice would be to give this game a
    pass. Its interests are much more in helping novices to learn Inform
    in a fairly fun and ingenious way than to provide a fun gaming
    experience for everyone. This is a perfectly acceptable goal, but it
    makes Informatory more educational software than entertainment
    software. The game invokes the genie from Andrew Plotkin's Lists and
    Lists, and the reference is quite apt -- that game also didn't much
    care about entertaining, instead giving the focus to its own
    (remarkable) z-machine implementation of Scheme. Informatory didn't
    feel quite as oppressive as Lists to me, probably because I'm already
    familiar with Inform, an advantage I sadly lacked when it came to
    Scheme. However, the two share a common theme: they are not so much
    games as teaching tools, and if you're not interested in learning, the
    tool isn't for you.

    Having thus limited its audience, Informatory does its task rather
    well, I think. The author bills it a "not-very-interactive tutorial,"
    and I think he's only half-right on both counts. Depending on how you
    define the term "interactive", I think Informatory is quite
    interactive indeed. It's probably the only game I've ever seen that
    actually assigns outside reading to its players so that they have a
    better chance at the puzzles. This obviously doesn't work in the
    competition context, but someone might find it a little useful when
    used as a tool in its own right, especially if that person is already
    in the process of learning Inform. Furthermore, Informatory's
    source-code-oriented puzzles are *much* more interactive than the
    typical tutorial style of "announce the concept, show the concept, now
    you try it." Now, this is a double-edged sword too: sometimes the lack
    of guidance can really be rather frustrating. I sometimes found myself
    wishing for the genie from Lists to keep hanging around, giving me
    clues when I needed them. Consequently, I didn't find Informatory to
    be "not-very-interactive", but I didn't really find it to be a
    "tutorial" either. Instead of teaching Inform piece-by-piece, it
    assigns reading in the Designer's Manual, and in fact those
    assignments are only reachable after solving a number of source code
    puzzles. Informatory therefore isn't much of a teacher, but it's a
    good quiz for those who are already learning.  As a competition game,
    it's no great shakes: at its best, it's about as much fun as taking a
    really interesting test. However, I can see it becoming one useful
    tool for people who are beginning to get their feet wet in the sea of
    Inform.

    Rating: 6.8

    From: David Ledgard <dledgard SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #17 -- May 10, 1999

    The first time I tried this game, I couldn't get in the White House so
    gave up. I had another look at it because I was suckered into doing
    these reviews, and am rather glad I did. The problem wasn't very
    difficult, just took a bit of time and intellectual albow
    grease. There are quite a number of humerous jokes in this game
    including the leaflet (having written a game myself I totally agree),
    and the sink and flame jokes. This game resonates with me, and I'll
    wager (a) the Author is British, and (b) has spent several years doing
    a computer course. A few minor gripes, toad should have said 'POOP!
    POOP!', and the letter Z is not recognised by "crudely" or "carved",
    ditto for the journal. I kind of figured I'd find a skeleton key in
    the skeleton, comment required for this action. I had thought of
    including inform snippets in my Spacestation game as well, but ran out
    of time. They'll probably be in the next version. The codex helmet did
    get very annoying very fast, though, it was just like looking up
    hints, only much more tedious. A FULL command, telling you where you
    scored your points, might have been good too.

    Inform file (.z5) (updated version)

    Directory with Inform .z5 file and walkthrough (competition version)

    Inheritance
    From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #20 -- March 15, 2000

    TITLE: Inheritance
    AUTHOR: Eric Toth
    E-MAIL: ericndana SP@G juno.com
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABIILTY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/inherit.gam
    VERSION: Release 1 (I think--no version number in the game)

    Eric Toth's Inheritance is a throwback of sorts: it's a house filled
    with puzzles for the sake of puzzles, puzzles for their own sake rather
    than for the purpose of a story. While there's an ostensible plot, it
    doesn't really have much to do with the action besides providing an
    excuse for the puzzles. On the other hand, several of the puzzles are
    very clever indeed, and the whole thing is solidly done.

    It seems that your rich uncle has asked you to come to his mansion to
    discuss your inheritance, so here you are-- the trick is finding your
    uncle, who doesn't seem to be around. The mansion is crammed with
    strange puzzles, though, as noted, and as you might guess, solving
    enough of them entitles you to fabulous wealth. And off you go, solving
    puzzles, and eventually you reach the end. The puzzles themselves
    vary--some are a bit obscure, but all are logical and some are rather
    ingenious; one relies on an object that the room description seems to
    dismiss as unimportant, and another suggests that there's a way to
    manipulate it that doesn't in fact work, but there are worse sins, I
    suppose. The plot itself hinges on a series of shapes you pick up here
    and there--plastic circles and squares and such--which go into an device
    with appropriately shaped slots. There are very few surprises along the
    way, really--just puzzles. They're not bad puzzles at all, really;
    several of them span multiple rooms in reasonably creative ways. But
    they're puzzles for their own sake.

    The various elements of Inheritance hang together quite well. There are
    no bugs to speak of, and the few misleading responses aren't
    game-killers. A few objects go underdescribed, and one puzzle is a bit
    contrived, but the game design, while not incredibly innovative, is
    quite adequate for the job. The writing, likewise, is unremarkable but
    competent; I didn't see any errors or awkward phrasing. (You may miss
    the final bit of text, however, because the game kicks you straight out
    to the DOS prompt when you reach it. Play Inheritance from DOS rather
    than from a window, in other words.) There are attempts at cobbling
    together a story of sorts--one significant object is described as a gift
    from your uncle that doesn't really fit, another is identified as
    incongruous in another respect--but the bits don't add up to a story.

    There's not much inherently wrong with Inheritance, really, other than
    the point when it appeared, namely late 1999--as all-puzzle,
    minimal-story games are hardly in vogue these days. The puzzles would
    have to be impressive indeed for such a game to be received well--see
    Erehwon for a puzzle-driven game whose puzzles were good enough to make
    up for the lack of plot--and while Inheritance's puzzles aren't buggy,
    they're not all that original either. The shift toward the fiction
    aspect of IF has raised the playing population's standards regarding
    what works as a game, and even the most skillfully done crossword will
    get a tepid response if the narrative doesn't justify it. Here, I'm
    afraid, the narrative doesn't do much more than provide an excuse for
    the setting.

    Nostalgic fans of IF--those who first encountered IF when story was
    subordinate to puzzles--may well enjoy Inheritance--it's a solid example
    of its type. But IF as it has come to be known rarely works this way,
    I'm afraid.

    From: Karen Tyers <karvic SP@G btinternet.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #20 -- March 15, 2000

    My attention was drawn to this little gem by a posting on the newsgroup
    I read, and it was precisely because it was deliberately being
    under-promoted that made me go online and get it. I can't remember the
    exact wording now but the responses to the posting ranged from 'if it's
    that *** bad why should I play it' to 'I played it and loved it'. Anyway
    I duly downloaded the TADS gamefile and this was the intro that greeted
    me:

       "You haven't spoken to your rich, eccentric uncle in several years,
       but when he asks you to visit his mansion to discuss your
       inheritance, you gladly agree. His private helicopter picks you up at
       his office building and flies you to his secluded mansion. The pilot
       sets down on a roof-top helicopter pad, and informs you that your
       uncle is waiting for you in the south tower, before flying off into
       the night.
       INHERITANCE by Eric Toth (ericndana SP@G juno.com)
       Developed with TADS, the Text Adventure Development System."

    So I found myself on the roof of the mansion looking at two towers, one
    of which I could enter and one I couldn't. Having got down into the
    mansion, I duly began to explore. It's not a very large game - about 27
    locations, excluding the arbitrary maze, which is not large and very
    easily mapped. Actually I am probably wrong to call it a maze, since the
    exits are clearly marked and there's no real way to get lost.

    I soon came across my uncle's laboratory (minus one uncle....), which
    contained a peculiar device which looked like one of those childrens'
    puzzles with slots of varying shapes. At last, I could use the various
    pieces of plastic I had found. There was also something that looked like
    a printer attached to it.

    This is a simple little game, and should be easily finishable in a
    couple of hours, or as the author says, over a lunchtime, unless you are
    like me of course. I got totally stuck because I couldn't get a blasted
    cat to move out of the way. However, a quick email to the author solved
    that problem, and one other concerning a photo (which was a bit oblique
    but when you knew the answer, quite logical).

    This could easily be developed into a much larger game, although I don't
    think Eric has any intention of doing anything else with it. It's a real
    shame, because it is a lovely traditional game, and if like me, you are
    not keen on the way a lot of i-f is going, you will have a lot of fun
    zooming around this one.

    There were one or two grammar errors ('a' instead of 'an' and wrongly
    used apostrophes for example), but I only found one 'proper' bug and
    that does nothing to stop you playing the game - just try typing 'sleep'
    when you're sitting in the armchair and you'll see what I mean. It would
    also have been improved by the addition of more synonyms.

    Overall this is ideal for beginners - they should only come unstuck in
    one place, where a more detailed description of a very mundane item
    could point you in the right direction, but this is really my only
    gripe. Go download it - you'll have a couple of hours fun.

    TADS .gam file

    Inhumane
    From: Christopher E. Forman <ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996

    NAME: Inhumane                     GAMEPLAY: Bare-bones Infocom
    AUTHOR: Andrew C. Plotkin          PLOT: Parody of Infocom's "Infidel"
    EMAIL: erkyrath SP@G netcom.com           ATMOSPHERE: Dememted
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive        WRITING: Passable
    PUZZLES: Get youself killed        SUPPORTS:    ZIP Interpreters
    CHARACTERS: Nope, afraid not       DIFFICULTY: Half-hour at most

    [A spoiler for the ending of Infocom's "Infidel" follows. If you haven't
    solved it, don't read on.]

            I'll start off by saying this: "Inhumane" is not meant to be taken
    seriously. It's a puzzle-less parody of Infocom's "Infidel," written by the
    author when he was 15 or so, and translated from the original AppleSoft BASIC
    version to Inform. But it's actually kind of fun, with a few small laughs,
    and it brought back some great memories of my own abysmal (though they
    seemed great at the time) early attempts at I-F. Perhaps more good-natured
    sharing of first-try games is in order. I may even translate on of my own,
    if the interest is there.
            What little plot there is begins along the same lines as "Infidel."
    You've been abandoned on an archaeological dig, and must find and explore a
    hidden pyramid. Once you get inside (and a couple of notes left behind by
    your partner tell you haw), you're confronted by a malevolent spirit who
    offers to give you the key to the treasure room in exchange for your getting
    killed by a series of traps to prove yourself a complete moron. This aspect
    of the game pokes fun at the fact that your character dies at the end of
    "Infidel" -- in "Inhumane," you have to get killed nine times to win. Some
    of the traps are rather imaginative, though it's nearly always painfully
    obvious when you're going to die.
            For the most part, though, "Inhumane" is just an excuse for a bunch
    of incomprehensible inside jokes about high-school geometry class.  Though
    you'll get a couple of laughs, it sounds a lot funnier than it actually is.
    Far more entertaining is the "History of Infocom" section of the online help,
    which describes some of the other Infocom parodies author Andrew Plotkin and
    his friend worked on at one time.

    From: Francesco Bova <fbova SP@G pangea.ca>
    Review appeared in SPAG #20 -- March 15, 2000

    Have you ever wondered how some of your favorite interactive fiction
    authors got started? I can remember playing Jigsaw for the first time
    and thinking that its author (Graham Nelson) must have been born from an
    exceptionally intelligent gene pool, gone to an ivy league school, or
    been raised by alien technology. The game was incredible and I'd always
    wondered what sort of experience had lead to producing someone with such
    good programming and writing skills.

    Well, the game Inhumane provides us with a brief snapshot of what one
    of the better known IF authors, Andrew Plotkin, was up to in his younger
    years. Inhumane (a game originally coded in basic by Plotkin when he was
    14), is a spoof of the Infocom classic Infidel. Infidel was one of the
    easier Infocom games (I think I won in it in about 2 days), and keeping
    with that tradition, Inhumane is easily winnable within an hour. No
    guess-the-verb puzzles, no scenic landscapes, no moral plays. Basically,
    it's the antithesis of everything Andrew Plotkin has made since. (see So
    Far, Spider and Web)

    The game follows the same premise as Infidel (find the buried treasure),
    but that's where most of the similarities end. Much like Infidel, Andrew
    has incorporated a few novel traps into this game. Unlike Infidel, the
    goal is not to disarm or avoid them, but rather to get killed by as many
    of them as possible. Only then can you attain the ultimate treasure
    (you'll understand this bizarre logic once you play the game). I'm not
    really giving too much away here because you should be able to win the
    game in the time that it takes you to download it.

    As a game, the traps are adequately programmed and maybe the only real
    flaw is that the objects you can examine usually don't have any
    descriptions. This seems to be a fairly small shortcoming considering
    the age of the author when he wrote it, and the fact that this game was
    coded in BASIC.

    All in all, not a bad little game. Certainly better than some other
    first attempts out there. At the very least, it's interesting from a
    historical standpoint to play the first offering from one of the premier
    talents in the interactive fiction community before he became a premier
    talent.

    Inform File (.z5)

    Insight
    From: Felix Grützmacher <felix.gruetzmacher SP@G gmx.de>
    Review appeared in SPAG #36 -- March 16, 2004

    TITLE: Insight
    AUTHOR: Jon Ingold
    EMAIL: jonnyingold SP@G netscape.net (as given by the game's help text)
    DATE: 2003
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-machine implementations
    AVAILABILITY: IF archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/insight.z5
    RELEASE: 4

    "Before I've arrived
    I can see myself coming."
    -- Robbie Williams, from his song "Feel"

    From his previous games "All Roads", "Failsafe" and "My Angel", we know
    that Jon Ingold likes to experiment with the various possibilities the
    medium of IF has to offer. "Insight" brilliantly continues in this
    tradition. He is not through with us yet, poor experimental subjects
    that we are. Interestingly, the help text states that "INSIGHT is a
    standard text-game in many ways." Well, it's non-standard in many
    others.

    "Insight" is not a puzzler in the sense that "The Mulldoon Legacy" is.
    Neither is it a static story in the guise of interactive fiction, like
    "Photopia". But it also isn't an adventure game of the old school like
    most Infocom classics. This one is different.

    The game starts off with the PC interviewing a man who is being accused
    of murdering his wife. This interview serves the purpose of equipping
    the player with certain pieces of information he needs later on when
    investigating the scene of the crime, if indeed a crime it was.

    The atmosphere balances precariously somewhere between science fiction
    and political thriller, the sci-fi feeling resulting from the fact that
    most of the action takes place on Mars. These are two genres which have
    seldom been combined in literature (Frank Herbert's Dune being an
    interesting exception), let alone in IF. To my mind, the combination was
    successful.

    There are two major puzzles in the game. The PC has a certain special
    talent, and one of the puzzles consists of finding out what it is and
    putting it to good use. The second puzzle is piecing together what
    really happened. You won't find any of the standard adventure game
    frustrations such as mazes, battery failures and inventory restrictions.

    When I was playing "Insight" for the first time, I eventually felt I had
    exhausted every possible way of gaining more information, so I decided
    to leave the scene and do something else. The game reacted by simply
    telling me my investigation was finished, and asking if I wanted to
    restart or quit. Frustrated, I gave it a break. When I came back to it a
    few days later, I played with more insight. Don't give up when you feel
    stuck, just try again.

    As to the experimental nature of this game, I cannot go into any
    substantial detail without spoiling the fun. You'll have to find it out
    for yourself. But take my word for it, it's worth every second of
    download time.

    On the technical side, I didn't find any serious flaws. Mackenzie, the
    only substantial NPC, has a vast repository of responses, and the
    program keeps track of which topics have already been talked about. He
    speaks a language foreign to the PC, thus his inability to understand
    certain complex questions appears quite realistic. This reminded me a
    lot of "Failsafe", "LASH" and "Suspended", where the parser's
    restrictions are brilliantly excused with a bad communication channel.

    On a scale from 0 to 10, I would rate "Insight" at 8. Difficulty is 3
    out of 10. Experienced IFers will probably complete this one in three
    sessions.

    Zcode .z5 file

    Internal Documents
    From: Cirk Bejnar <eluchil404 SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #35 -- December 31, 2003

    TITLE: Internal Documents
    AUTHOR: Tom Lechner
    EMAIL: lechner SP@G ispwest.com
    DATE: October 2003
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2003/zcode/internal
    VERSION: Release 1 (competition version)

    At last! A real game! This was the first title the Comp03 randomizer
    gave me that was neither terminally bugged nor in aid of a specific
    gimmick. I certainly enjoy text adventures -- that's why I judge the
    Comp, after all -- but this one was not quite perfect.

    Firstly, puzzle design. Several of the puzzles require reading the
    author's mind, but in strikingly different ways. Getting into the estate
    requires an unmotivated action. Sure I could do that, but why? The
    basement puzzle has decidedly non-standard syntax. The game accepts
    *that* phrasing? And using the computer requires that the steps be done
    in a particular order. I completed it on my own, but the game wouldn't
    advance until I had gone back and followed the walkthrough. Nothing that
    can't be cleared up in a post-comp release.

    Even then, however, this wouldn't really be a ten, for me. I'm not quite
    sure why. Maybe it has something to do with how the theme of electoral
    fraud falls flat with me. But I think the real problem is the connection
    between the story and the puzzles. Both elements are present but they
    consistently fail to connect. I wanted to learn more about the house,
    the damming of the river, how Holden got connected to Gov. Blight, but
    the game just doles out enough to keep the plot moving along. Details
    are sometimes colorful, but they never add up to a satisfying picture.

    Directory with zcode .z5 file and walkthrough

    Internal Vigilance
    From: Michael A Russo <mar2116 SP@G columbia.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #43 -- January 7, 2006

    TITLE: Internal Vigilance
    AUTHOR: Simon Christiansen
    EMAIL: simonchrist1729 SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: October 1, 2005
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-Machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF Archive
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2005/zcode/vigilance/
    vigilance.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    When writing this review, I've continually been aware that perhaps I'm taking
    the game more seriously than it wants to be.  I work at a human rights
    organization directly involved with issues - U.S. detention and interrogation
    policy, the proper role of civil liberties in wartime  - which are very close
    to those implicated by Eternal Vigilance.  As  a result, I found the premise of
    being put in an interrogator's shoes and turned loose fascinating, if
    disturbing, and was eager to explore the dynamics of security.

    That the game turned out to be more spy-thriller than political-thriller was
    thus disappointing; both main factions appear rather cartoonish, and again,
    the struggle is rarefied and divorced from social reality.  The fate of the
    poor writer is somewhat problematic, but not especially so - given my job, I
    feel like I'm rather more sympathetic to the civil liberties side of things
    than are most people, so if I thought his detention and interrogation was bad
    policy but ultimately justifiable, I suspect most players would be even less
    bothered.  Internal Vigilance employs the rhetoric of the ideological struggle
    between liberty and security, but it fails to really address the issues, and
    they act more to flavor the plot than  drive it.  This is a valid approach,
    certainly, and can make for an enjoyable game - but it wasn't what I was
    looking for.

    Of more moment is that the game ultimately feels superficial.  All through
    high school, my English teachers would repeat that most annoying of mantras:
    show, don't tell.  Internal Vigilance presents a 1984-style dystopia, but
    doesn't provide any details or specificity on what, exactly, the society does
    that's so terrible.  We're told that the Union tramples on individual freedoms,
    but the primary example is rather problematic - the writer who's been arrested
    on suspicion of being involved with terrorism in fact does have a link to a
    terrorist faction dedicated to the overthrow of the Union, after all.

    Once the plot picks up speed and the player begins investigating said faction,
    instances of government oppression are few and far between.  The interrogation
    methods employed by the player are generally unsavory, but not so terrible in
    the grand scheme of things - indeed, the game perhaps includes an implicit
    anti-torture message, as direct  beating gets you nowhere.  As a result, the
    proceedings feel bloodless;  the central dilemma which is meant to give force
    to the plot lacks tension, and the ideological struggle is an abstraction
    without weight.

    All of the above is rather personal and ideological (as opposed to the  rest of
    my reviews, the arch reader points out), which is perhaps testament to the fact
    that the game doesn't really have any major problems.  A few sloppy mistakes
    appear to have slipped through - I  noticed some capitalization errors in the
    Investigation section, and the apartment number given for the author's mother
    is inconsistent -  but overall the plot proceeds logically, the player has a
    reasonable  amount of choice of where to push the story, and the puzzles are
    clever and well-clued.  Indeed, the opening interrogation is a highlight -
    it's a conversation puzzle which involves asking probing questions and
    researching background intelligence on the subject, exactly what's  required in
    actual interrogations.  I would have liked to see more options for ideological
    debate - throwing the fact that the  anti-statist author was able to write his
    book because he was on welfare, for example - but the options that are there
    are fairly  robust.  And while the password puzzle is reasonable enough, it's
    almost unnecessary, as I came very close to guessing the phrase without  any
    clues.  The game also shows flashes of humor - the record will  show that I am
    a sucker for X ME descriptions which work in "as good  looking as ever."

    In the end, my objections to Internal Vigilance probably boil down to wanting
    something out of it that it wasn't meant to give.  As a spy  story with an
    oblique nod in the direction of current political debate, it works quite well.
    But the focus on bombing plots and digging up conspiracies causes the social
    milieu to recede, and the governmental oppression which theoretically drives
    the story isn't sharp or specific enough to be anything but background.  One
    advantage of this is that the player is relatively free to decide whether the
    Union or the terrorists have the right of it, and act accordingly.  But this
    moral weightlessness prevents the game from really engaging with the issues
    it raises.

    Zcode executable (.z5)

    Intruder
    From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #20 -- March 15, 2000

    TITLE: Intruder
    AUTHOR: Volker Lanz
    E-MAIL: volker.lanz SP@G gmx.net
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/intruder.zip
    VERSION: Release 59

    One of the most important advances in recent IF is what might be called
    player-friendliness, meaning the game's capacity to supply logical
    inferences. Michael Gentry's Anchorhead was a particularly good example
    of this: not only did the game have a large rucksack-type object (a
    trench coat, in that case) that could hold everything in the game, but
    it also handled the bulk of the item-juggling for you, so that you put
    items into and take them out of the trenchcoat automatically when you
    needed them. Likewise, you had a keyring, and when you came upon
    something you wanted to unlock, the game automatically sorted through
    the keys on the ring and checked whether any of them were the right one.
    Not many games do as much as Anchorhead to help out the player and keep
    annoyance at bay, unfortunately, and while Volker Lanz's Intruder is a
    good effort in many ways, the frustration factor is very much a problem.

    It seems you're a private eye hired to break into a house by a woman who
    wants evidence against her husband for their divorce proceeding--though
    it's more like coercion than hiring, since the woman threatens to have
    your creditors start collecting on their loans if you don't help out. At
    any rate, you do indeed break into the house, and the initial goal
    drives what you do in most significant ways for about two thirds of the
    game. At that point, you start trying to find something else, and how
    you know what you're looking for or where it would be escaped me
    completely. It's true, of course, that no IF protagonist ever really
    feels content if he or she leaves doors unlocked, but there's a
    difference between pure exploration games--fantasy, in particular, where
    it makes some sense to look under every stone--and others where you have
    a defined goal that doesn't include playing magpie. It's one thing to
    have ill-defined motivations throughout the game, but it's another to
    have very clearly defined motivations that don't in fact shape
    everything you do. (Well, they explain the importance of what you
    eventually find, but you get no hint as to why you would start looking
    for it originally.) It might have been helpful to actually throw in some
    of your mental processes: "your thoughts now turn to matter X, and you
    wonder whether it's possible to find object Y." At least, that would
    keep the plot moving.

    Complicating your task in addition is a _very_ small inventory limit, a
    finite light source (which is pretty easy to exhaust), a fairly
    restrictive time limit, and a puzzle that requires massive amounts of
    logistical planning and traipsing around. None of it is illogical per
    se, I should stress--I can't say that logic is advanced by infinitely
    large rucksacks, flashlights that last all night, and such--but
    sometimes cold logic and realism are not the friend of an IF designer.
    One particularly frustrating puzzle in Intruder necessitates either that
    you walk around turning on every light in the house or wander around in
    the dark, which is simply irritating, and while there are several clever
    puzzles (though some are old chestnuts), the annoyance aspect is
    considerable. Intruder seems to put a premium on having to do silly
    little things, like locking your car door before breaking into the
    house, and while it makes sense, these are the sort of gaps I'd rather
    just have the game fill for me. (Also, the hints only cover the first
    third of the game, which I found frustrating, since the puzzles for that
    section are pretty easy.) It's also annoyingly easy to lock yourself out
    of victory.

    Technically, likewise, Intruder is a mixed bag. One container object
    does not suggest that it is openable, another suggests that it's
    unlockable when it's not, and the syntax for another puzzle was a total
    shock to me. There are various little things that bothered me--dropping
    objects down a hole elicits a "you hear a sound as if something's
    breaking," even if you dropped a key or a bolt cutter, which aren't in
    fact likely to break. There are some typos and writing errors as well,
    but the bulk of the problems are design-related, and they diminish any
    potential for immersion considerably.

    The frustration factor is all the stronger because there's plenty to
    like about Intruder in other respects. The backstory is well done--it's
    rare that you have a PC with such a thoroughly defined set of
    motivations--and there's an actual reasonably believable plot. The
    characters--you and the woman who hires you, and to some extent her
    husband--come across very effectively; the author spends enough time
    developing each character to make them understandable and not
    caricatures. The setting itself is well described without excessive
    detail, and most of the objects and locations make sense. The tedium
    distracts from the story, unfortunately, and the logistical-planning
    aspect makes Intruder less a story than a set of tasks. In short, the
    story of Intruder has plenty of promise, but the implementation of the
    puzzles gets in the way.

    Intruder isn't a bad effort, at bottom, and it has its moments. If you
    can overlook the design flaws, it might be worth a try.

    Inform .z5 file and HTML manual

    Isle Of The Cult
    From: Eric Woods <ewoods SP@G cocenter.org>
    Review appeared in SPAG #40 -- April 12, 2005

    TITLE: Isle of the Cult
    AUTHOR: Rune Berg
    EMAIL: runeberg SP@G online.no
    DATE: Dec. 23, 2004
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/islecult.gam
    VERSION: 1

    Isle of the Cult is the first work from Rune Berg, and I didn't discover
    this until after I had completed the game. I went looking for other
    games and was disappointed to find that there were none. We don't
    usually find such good games as an initial attempt by authors. I am very
    hopeful that he will give us another game in the near future.

    You play a thief who gets boated to an island that doesn't seem to have
    been inhabited for some time. You have been sent by the Guild, though
    thanks to seawater smudging your letter, you don't really have much idea
    of what you are supposed to do. What's more, you forget all your
    supplies in the boat that departs as the game starts. Let's go
    exploring.

    The setting is very good in this game, allowing for some oddities of a
    ramshackle, fantasy, super-natural, genre game. The sense of desolation
    and ruin is done well in the village, and the jungle and beach settings
    are adequate if somewhat sparse and terse. Overall, I found the island
    and its structures and locations to be very believable. One thing I did
    notice, however, is that, even though the overbearing sense is that this
    place has been run from long ago, there is still the smell of baking
    bread in the bakery. Odd, but we allow some discrepancies for the sake
    of puzzles. And there are puzzles aplenty.

    This game is a puzzlefest from the good old fashioned days of IF. It is
    impossible to go through two locations without encountering a problem
    to overcome. Personally, I love puzzles in my IF games and the ones
    you'll encounter on the Isle are well done, sometimes clever, most
    always logically based, and satisfying when you complete them. I only
    found one that didn't seem very logical but this can be explained by the
    supernatural aspects of the game. With minimal trial and error,
    manipulation of the items in your inventory, and a little thought, an
    experienced gamer should get through everything. Though ultimately the
    game offers only one outcome, many puzzles can be tackled in various
    orders without affecting the ending. Your goal becomes apparent through
    basic exploration and puzzle solving. You'll know what to do even if
    you're not sure why you're doing it at the time. I also liked the fact
    that Berg puts in red herrings throughout the game that seem to be
    objects or locations that one would expect to find on the Isle. I think
    it detracts from a game when you know you'll have to do something with
    everything you find or get through every locked door you encounter.
    Somehow it makes a game more believable for me if some unimportant stuff
    is just lying around.

    Technically the game is extremely sound. I noticed two minor bugs but
    neither was critical to completing the game or even inconvenient for
    that matter. It should be noted that Berg doesn't allow for "brief" mode
    in this game which I would have preferred since I became quite familiar
    with the lay-out of the setting with the running around and returning to
    locations that the puzzles sometimes demanded. There is one point in the
    game, however, where the PC has to return to a distant spot on the
    island and Berg did a good job of realizing this and incorporating it
    into the text so that the player is automatically transported there and
    back without the trouble of typing commands. He also doesn't choose to
    use the search, look behind, under, etc. functions but lets you know
    this the first time you try it by telling you examine will work well
    enough. Things like that made the game play easy and smooth.

    The story itself is a bit vague. Honestly, I had to play through twice
    and do some thinking before I came up with the ultimate reason why I'm
    doing what I'm doing on the Isle, and it's still only a theory, based on
    some hints in the game. The beginning and ending text is fairly brief,
    so drawing concrete conclusions is difficult. Regardless, I found this
    game to be very enjoyable in the old school style of IF which I grew up
    playing and loving. Those who like and admire good puzzles will feel the
    same, I'm sure. Those who like more interaction with NPCs will be
    disappointed. There are no other people on the Isle, and once the
    boatman leaves you all you can interact with is a monkey and an animated
    creature. But for those of us who like to go on an adventure alone, I
    strongly recommend you take an afternoon or two and get to the Isle of
    the Cult. Hopefully Rune Berg will find another place to cart us off to
    in the future.

    From: Jimmy Maher <maher SP@G grandecom.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #40 -- April 12, 2005

    You are a new member of the local guild of thieves. To give you a chance
    to prove your worth, your guildmaster has loaded you into a boat and
    deposited you on a remote island as this game begins. Your assignment:
    to plunder everything you can get your hands on, then return to the
    jetty to meet the boat again and make your escape.

    IF old-timers will recognize this setup right away, for it comes from
    one of the beloved classics of the commercial era, Magnetic Scrolls'
    Guild of Thieves. Oddly enough, however, Rune Berg's new release Isle of
    the Cult has the exact same beginning, and is even structured in much
    the same way. Like Guild of Thieves, Isle of the Cult never pretends to
    be anything more or less than an unabashed puzzle-fest, with just enough
    of a stub of a plot to give the player a reason to solve its puzzles. I
    do not know if this is coincidence or deliberate homage. If homage it
    is, it is odd that no mention of its esteemed ancestor is made anywhere
    in the new game's text.

    Does Isle of the Cult measure up to its predecessor? The short answer is
    no, but the question is perhaps unfair. Taken on its own merits, Isle of
    the Cult is a solid and fairly satisfying piece of work, and a welcome
    debut effort from an obviously talented designer.

    A puzzle game like this must of course rise or fall on the basis of
    those puzzles, for there is very little else here. Luckily, this game
    largely succeeds. The puzzles are not particularly complex, difficult,
    or even imaginative, but they are mostly reasonable. The game is very
    solvable as long as the player reads carefully, examines everything, and
    uses the objects he finds in fairly common sense ways. Virtually
    everything revolves around the straightforward application of items from
    the gameworld. There are no elaborate logical setpieces, multi-stage
    puzzles, or research puzzles. In short, if this were a graphic adventure
    it would be Monkey Island (and not just for the similar subject matter)
    rather than Myst.

    That is not to say that Isle of the Cult is a trivially easy game. It
    started out that way for me, and I acquired the first 20 or so of 100
    points with little thought or effort. However, there is quite a large
    area to explore by modern standards, and a fair number of objects to
    juggle. By the middle of the game, I found myself wandering over a large
    map liberally sprinkled with inaccessible areas and unsolved puzzles.
    The game is fairly linear in that there are generally only a few puzzles
    that can be solved at any one time, and the combinatorial explosion
    factor is significant. And a few puzzles do require some lateral
    thinking. The fact that the rest of the game is so straightforward
    actually makes these puzzles more difficult, because the player will
    likely not be expecting such an obscure solution.

    Still, I eventually solved the entire game on my own with no recourse to
    hints. While I am an experienced IF player, I am not always the best
    puzzle solver. On the old Infocom scale, I would grade this as a
    Standard level game.

    The TADS2 development system is designed by default to create
    traditional text adventures of this kind. Perhaps for this reason, Mr.
    Berg appears to have made few or no alterations to the parser and
    standard library. Playing this game confirms my perhaps controversial
    opinion that the standard TADS2 parser is not quite as robust and
    capable as the Inform parser. A fair number of common Inform verbs are
    unimplemented here, and it quickly becomes obvious that complex concepts
    are simply not possible to communicate to the game.

    That is not to say, however, that the parser ever presents a real
    problem. I quickly adapted to using only very simplistic commands, and
    the author never left me guessing for verbs or phrasing. On a few
    occasions, I was actually surprised when my commands led to the game
    doing something far beyond what I had intended. I solved one or two
    puzzles literally accidentally due to this. Still, I would prefer this
    situation to the alternative of struggling to get my point across.

    This philosophy of ease-of-use extends to all other areas of the game.
    While the game is old-school in form, all of the annoying aspects of
    that form have been removed. There are no mazes, time limits, inventory
    limits, hunger daemons, or sudden deaths to be found here. At one point,
    there is a fairly complex puzzle that the player will likely have to
    "solve" multiple times. After the player goes through the motions once
    and receives his score reward, the game automatically repeats the
    sequence for the player each time it is necessary, thus minimizing
    tedium. Such small kindnesses are commendable.

    The game's prose is serviceable, if (like everything else) subordinate
    to the puzzles. There are rarely more than a few sentences of
    description for any given location. Even the About text is unusually
    terse. Still, the prose is grammatically correct and clear, and makes up
    for in lucidity what it lacks in personality.

    This is one of the most well-tested games I have played in years. I
    found not a single bug, typo, or inappropriate response in a fair few
    hours of gameplay.

    Isle of the Cult, in spite of its considerable size, is not an ambitious
    game. It sticks to the tried and true, and there is nothing here that an
    experienced IF player won't have seen many times before. Yet the whole
    is executed with a care and polish that eludes many more daring efforts.
    If you are in the mood for a reasonably sizable old-school puzzlefest,
    this would make an excellent choice.

    TADS2 .gam file

    It's Easter, Peeps
    From: Valentine Kopteltsev <uux SP@G mail.ru>
    Review appeared in SPAG #49 -- August 18, 2007

    TITLE: It's Easter, Peeps
    AUTHOR: Sara Brookside
    E-MAIL:  jsh11a SP@G aol.com
    DATE: May 14, 2006
    PARSER: ADRIFT / Inform 6 (Inform port by David Welbourn)
    SUPPORTS: ADRIFT / Z-Machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF-Archive
    URL: http://www.avventuretestuali.com/download/easter.zip

    (I played the Inform version of Easter, since starting Adrift games on my
    computer requires some shamanic activities).

    This review is going to be about as short as the game it is about -- you can
    easily beat Easter in no longer than fifteen minutes. As expected, this work
    features one room. It also features a bunch of puzzles, most of which are
    trivial. To solve the only one that I found *not* trivial, you need to
    contact the only NPC in the game, who then gives away the pretty obscure move
    that leads to success.

    The enclosed feelies were nice, though.

    Zip containing both Z-Code and Adrift versions of the game, along with feelies

Go to the previous page of reviews (H)

Go to the next page of reviews (J)