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ISSUE #33 - June 25, 2003

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    The  |___/ociety for the |_|romotion of  |_|_|dventure  \___|ames.

                             ISSUE #33

               Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
                           June 25, 2003

               SPAG Website: http://www.sparkynet.com/spag

    SPAG #33 is copyright (c) 2003 by Paul O'Brian.
    Authors of reviews and articles retain the rights to their contributions.

    All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine
    with the traditional 'at' sign.

    ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ----------------------------------------------------

    The SPAG Interview with Mike Roberts

    REVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE -----------------------------------------------------

    ASCII and the Argonauts
    A Crimson Spring
    Escape From Pulsar 7
    Heroes
    Mountain
    Rat In Control
    Ribbons
    Words of Power

    ###### Review Package: The Frenetic Five vs. Phlegmatic Reviewer ######
    #  The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm Und Drang                              #
    #  The Frenetic Five vs. Mr. Redundancy Man                           #
    #  The Frenetic Five vs. The Seven Deadly Dwarves                     #
    #######################################################################

    ################### Review Package: The Joy of AAS ####################
    #  AAS Masters                                                        #
    #  ADVENT                                                             #
    #  Cave of Adventure                                                  #
    #  Caverns of Doom                                                    #
    #  Cloak of Ultimate Darkness                                         #
    #  Dead By Morning                                                    #
    #  Fabled Caves Of R'th-nylch                                         #
    #  Office Ahoy!                                                       #
    #  Pleasure Palace                                                    #
    #  Pride And Prejudice                                                #
    #  Sexual Conquest                                                    #
    #######################################################################

    SPECIFICS
    =========
    A Crimson Spring
    Fine Tuned
    No Time To Squeal
    Sunset Over Savannah

    EDITORIAL------------------------------------------------------------------

    I guess it's time I faced reality. I won't be entering the third episode
    of Earth And Sky into this fall's IF competition. My original plan was
    to write from December to June, beta-test from July through September,
    and have something good ready by September 30th, but I find myself
    suddenly at the 23rd of June, with only the first section done. There
    are lots of reasons for this predicament, some of which have to do with
    the motivational crisis I talked about last issue, some of which have to
    do with EAS3's expanded scope and techniques, and some of which are much
    more beyond my control. It all adds up to a big disappointment, though.

    I've always hated vaporware. For as long as I can remember, the IF
    groups have had their share of people who charge in, announce some
    humongous project, post about it for months on end, and then somehow
    disappear, never to be heard from again. Perhaps a few of them release
    part one of their planned multi-game epic, *then* disappear, sometimes
    blowing smoke about how they've abandoned their plans because the
    community is just so much more indifferent to their masterwork than it
    has any right to be. To me, this is highly annoying behavior, and I
    think that part of what defines being a class act in our field is the
    ability to unveil a fantastic piece of work without having hyped it for
    months and months. After all, one great game is worth about a million
    "I'm working on a great game" posts, trailers, announcements, and
    advertisements.

    Now I find myself joining the ranks of vaporware authors. Ugh. I
    certainly needed to let people know that EAS3 was coming, lest I be
    strung up for leaving the plot hanging indefinitely, but it leaves a bad
    taste to have written "coming in Fall 2003" when I now know that no such
    arrival is imminent. My plan all along was to enter the three episodes
    in three consecutive competitions. It's some consolation to know that
    since I won the last competition, entering this one with a sequel to
    last year's winner could be construed as somewhat obnoxious, but I'd at
    least like to have had the option of declining entry out of choice
    rather than necessity.

    All I can say is this: I am working on it. I will finish it. And in
    between now and then, I'll try to mention it as little as possible.

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR------------------------------------------------------

    From: Valentine Kopteltsev

    Dear SPAG --

    In my review package "Static Story Struggles", published in SPAG #32, I
    alleged that the game AUGUSTINE by Terrence V. Koch was based on the
    Highlander series. Naturally, I'm wrong -- I really should have had at
    least a quick look at the materials accompanying the game. My apologies
    to Mr. Koch and to everybody who has been deluded by this mistake --
    AUGUSTINE is an ORIGINAL work, and one with a GREAT plot.

    [Thanks for the correction, Valentine. --Paul]

    NEWS ----------------------------------------------------------------------

    NEW GAMES
    Freshly released games this time around include Emily Short's long-
    awaited opus City Of Secrets. Nobody's submitted a review of it to me
    yet, but I sure would like to see one. Hint, hint. But CoS isn't the
    only game in town -- there's erotica, treasure hunts, z-machine abuses,
    and a couple of games in Swedish as well. Also released recently was
    the perceptual experiment Rat In Control, reviewed by Jessica Knoch in
    this issue, and authored by none other than the subject of the SPAG
    Interview, Mike Roberts.
       * The Treasury of Zan by Richard Murchy
       * Dear Brian by "Choices IF" (erotica, for ages 18+)
       * ASCII and the Argonauts by J. Robinson Wheeler
       * Drakmagi by Johan Berntsson (this game is in Swedish)
       * Rat In Control by Mike Roberts
       * Z-Tornado by Sophie Fruehling
       * Dark Forest and Dark Forest II by Paul Allen Panks
       * City of Secrets by Emily Short
       * Vanyar by Johan Berntsson (this game is in Swedish)
       * Shapes by Radical Al

    MANY MANY MINICOMPS
    If you're a classical music fan, the Rite of Spring will probably make
    you think of Stravinsky. For IF fans, though, the Rite of Spring is
    minicomps, and this Spring we had as many as ever. Detailing the
    premise, rules, and results of each one is too much for this humble
    little news section, so I'll just give you some leads and let you have
    the fun of discovery all to yourself:
       * IF Art Show: http://members.aol.com/iffyart/
       * IF Library Comp: http://www.iflibrary.com/default.aspx?pageid=IFLibComp
       * Introcomp: http://www.mountainmemoirs.com/ifMUD/IntroComp2003.html
       * Logic puzzle comp: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/comp/logicpuz
       * Minigames: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=BAC9E74E.1A77%25ben%40hayscaplan.org
       * Spring Thing: http://www.adamcadre.ac/springcomp.html
    For the most part, all the games are available on the IF Archive under
    /games/mini-comps.

    KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE, AND YOUR NMs CLOSER
    Nick Montfort, known as nm on ifMUD, has established an indisputable
    position as one of the world's premier academic scholars of IF. Sure,
    there may not be a lot of competition for the title right now, but
    Montfort's first book, Twisty Little Passages, may change all that. The
    book is due in December of this year, but in the meantime, his webpage
    at http://nickm.com/if/ assauges our appetites with a bushel of
    articles, including treatments of Adam Cadre's Varicella
    (http://nickm.com/if/Varicella.pdf) and ifMap, a new mapping system for
    IF (http://nickm.com/if/ifMap.pdf).

    SILLY AAS
    This April, a group of IF wags took satirical aim at homebrewed
    development systems with an elaborate hoax centered on the Advanced
    Authoring System (abbreviated, naturally, to AAS), a new development
    system that purported to have been created by an isolated bunch of IF
    enthusiasts, but was in fact the brainchild of Iain Merrick and a number
    of other co-conspirators. And just to prove how far some people will go
    for a joke, AAS is an actual, working system that you can use to produce
    games... just not very good ones. Of course, that didn't stop Sam Kabo
    Ashwell from reviewing every single one of them (except his own) for
    this issue of SPAG. The AAS web site is http://aas-ta.com -- be sure to
    check out the Store, which includes marketing masterstrokes like the AAS
    thong, "made for strutting!"

    'N ZINC
    What if there was one interpreter that could play both z-code and TADS
    games? What if that interpreter included a mapping utility? Wait! What
    if it *also* included network capabilties, so that multiple players
    could see the game screen and map, and control the game session via
    voting or a "hotseat" mechanism? Now how much would you pay? Wait!
    Before you answer, check out http://www.bits.bris.ac.uk/zinc/. You might
    just be pleasantly surprised.

    PLEA FROM A RELUCTANT SURFER
    I've noticed that for the past several issues, there's been a sort of
    crest-and-trough pattern to review submissions. This issue, I'm happy to
    be riding the crest, with reviews from lots of different contributors
    and an unprecedented surge in pieces for SPAG Specifics. However, the
    higher the crest, the more I dread what comes next. I live in Colorado,
    and I'm a lot more comfortable on high ground than on rough seas -- put
    me back on dry land (and get me out of this rapidly deteriorating
    metaphor) by keeping those submissions coming! If you're looking for
    inspiration on what to review, here are ten suggestions to get you
    started.

    SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
    ========================
    1.  City Of Secrets
    2.  Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I.
    3.  Dutch Dapper IV: The Final Voyage
    4.  1893: A World's Fair Mystery
    5.  Hollywood Hijinx
    6.  IF Art Show 2003 games  (any, some, or all!)
    7.  IFLibraryComp 2003 games (any, some, or all!)
    8.  Insight
    9.  Katana
    10. Spring Thing 2003 games (any, some, or all!)

    THE SPAG INTERVIEW---------------------------------------------------------

    Simply stated, Mike Roberts is one of the architects of the IF
    Renaissance. He's participated in the newsgroups since 1993 and authored
    several stellar games, including Perdition's Flames, Ditch Day Drifter,
    Deep Space Drifter, and The Plant. But far and away his most prodigious
    accomplishment is his creation of TADS, the Text Adventure Development
    System, which has given birth to an amazing number of top-notch games,
    including Lost New York, Worlds Apart, Once And Future, the Unnkulia
    series, Losing Your Grip, and literally hundreds of others. Nowadays
    he's still active in the newsgroups and still writing games (including
    the recent Rat In Control), and beyond that he's looking to top himself
    by creating TADS 3, a next-generation rewrite of TADS, rebuilt from the
    ground up to make it an even more powerful tool for the creation of
    great IF. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for this issue.

       SPAG: First off, the usual opening question: Could you tell us a
       little about yourself? Who are you, what do you do for a living, and
       so forth?

    MR: I live in the part of the San Francisco area known as Silicon
    Valley, which was once well known as the center of a technology industry
    boom. My day job is writing software, as you might guess, although it's
    just boring system software that has nothing to do with games.

       SPAG: Tell us a little about your history with IF. How did you get
       interested in the form, and what led you to take on a project like
       the creation of TADS?

    MR: I first ran into IF back in maybe junior high, just home-brew stuff
    that someone had probably found in one of those write-your-own-adventure
    books. There was something about the idea that really intrigued me, and
    I played around on and off with building little BASIC programs that did
    the same kind of thing.

    After a few attempts, I realized that what I needed was a way to factor
    out all the difficult program code that was always nearly the same in
    every game -- things like parsing, and managing inventory, and
    maintaining the map of room connections. Ideally, you'd just have a
    bunch of data definitions giving the room layout, the names of objects,
    and so on, and one generic program to run it all. That idea worked
    pretty well, but it separated things too much. The problem was that you
    still needed special-case code once in a while, to make a room do
    something special, for example. It was too hard to tie the special code
    to the separate data definitions. What I really wanted was a way to put
    both the code and data together, but I couldn't see how to do that.

    In high school, I got interested in compilers and programming languages,
    and I wrote a couple of toy compilers for fun. Later, in college, I
    discovered object-oriented programming, and I realized it was the
    solution to my unsolved mystery of how to put the code and data together
    in an adventure game. That, plus my interest in programming languages,
    led pretty directly to TADS.

       SPAG: Your latest game, Rat in Control, is really more of a
       psychological experiment in spatial perception than a flat-out
       adventure game, though it does have some clever setting and puzzle
       elements. Did you think it was a successful experiment, and what were
       the results?

    MR: Only a couple of people ever sent me their timing numbers, so it
    didn't succeed in the sense of producing statistically significant
    quantitative data. I'm not sure numbers would have convinced anyone
    anyway, though, since the construction of the experiment was probably a
    bit hokey.

    Even so, I think it was successful just as a way to directly compare the
    subjective experiences of compass and relative direction systems. I
    actually found it surprising how usable the relative system is -- it's
    definitely more work for me than the compass system, but it's not as
    hard as I'd expected. Other people have said they found it harder than
    they'd expected.

    I also see it as a sort of informal FAQ contribution. The
    compass-vs-relative question is one of those perennial raif topics, and
    it always seems unproductive because everyone talks in the subjunctive
    about it -- "I think I'd like it more" this way or that way. The next
    time someone joins the newsgroup and points out how unrealistic compass
    directions are, and asks why no one's ever thought of using
    LEFT/RIGHT/FORWARD before, I can point them to this game and let them do
    the comparison for themselves.

       SPAG: When I played the game, it seemed to me that lots of other
       factors could have influenced those results -- not only demographic
       things like gender and age but also the fact that IF-ers are
       themselves a somewhat self-selecting group, as people who tend to
       enjoy wandering around a virtual environment. What are your thoughts
       on these sorts of factors?

    MR: That's an interesting point -- self-selection could well be
    significant, since people who don't find it easy to navigate around an
    imaginary map probably can't stand IF. If I had been able to get any
    real numbers out of the experiment, it would have been interesting to
    see how they'd change with a more extended group that included people
    who didn't play IF.

       SPAG: Playing Rat In Control reminded me how much I enjoy your game
       writing style. What, if any, are your plans for future games?

    MR: Thanks! Actually, I'm working on a new game right now -- it's a
    full-sized sample game for TADS 3, analogous to what Ditch Day Drifter
    was for TADS 1 and 2. I've planned out the game, and I've implemented
    most of the introductory sequence. Implementation work has been
    punctuated by detours to work on TADS 3 itself, since working on the
    game keeps turning up little (and some big) areas that have needed more
    work in the system or the library. My philosophy about sample games is
    that they should be real games with published source code, so my goal is
    to write something that people will want to play even if they don't care
    about learning TADS 3.

       SPAG: About the games you've written in the past: how do you view
       them now? Any memories that stand out as particularly special about
       the writing of them?

    MR: I always have mixed feelings about my past games -- each one is such
    a learning experience, mostly in terms of learning what not to do, but
    they were all a lot of fun to work on. I feel like they're all terribly
    flawed, but I also feel like I've been getting better at it, and maybe
    I'll actually write a good one someday if I keep trying.

    The most memorable moment writing the games, I think, was when a friend
    was play-testing Deep Space Drifter. I like to do at least some
    play-testing in person, actually sitting next to someone while they play
    the game, just watching what they do and taking notes. So my friend gets
    to the Cave Maze - if you haven't played DSD, part of it is this truly
    huge maze, around 160 rooms, with the clever trick that a flood every
    six turns washes you back to the starting point unless you're on high
    ground. My friend starts mapping the maze, placing the usual one-inch
    square at the center of a piece of paper. He maps out a little and
    realizes that the map is going off the edge of the paper, so he starts
    over with a smaller scale. After a couple of iterations of this, he's
    getting kind of exasperated, so he asks if I could suggest a proper
    scale. I don't usually like to give out hints while watching a
    play-tester, but this time I couldn't help but show him, from across the
    room, the original map, which was drawn very carefully on
    half-centimeter graph paper from the very bottom to the very top. I must
    have considered play-testing a mere formality at that stage in my
    game-writing career, because his reaction should have given me a clue
    about the wisdom of keeping that maze in the game.

       SPAG: Okay, SPAG is generally focused on players rather than
       programmers of IF (though of course there's a huge overlap between
       the two), but we can't do a Mike Roberts interview without talking
       about your monumental new project: TADS 3. For those not in the know,
       can you summarize just what it is, and what makes it different from
       TADS 2, a.k.a. TADS As We Know It?

    MR: It's really a complete overhaul of the system, so it's almost easier
    to put it in terms of what hasn't changed. The flavor of the programming
    language is pretty similar, although it's a bit more java-like and a bit
    more consistent. The run-time user interface is pretty much the same;
    the one big chunk of code that's carried over from TADS 2 is the part
    that interacts with the operating system to display text on the screen
    and all that stuff, because I didn't want to have to rewrite ten
    different OS versions. That means, by the way, that the HTML display
    features are all the same as in TADS 2. The bulk of writing a game still
    involves defining objects for rooms, portable items, actors, and so
    forth.

    One obvious change from TADS 2 is that the parser is entirely
    implemented in the library now, so you can customize anything and
    everything. The design of the parser is also completely different; the
    new parser uses a declarative grammar, kind of like the formal syntax
    diagrams you sometimes see for programming languages, or the sentence
    diagramming that I remember doing in elementary school. It sounds a
    little scary at first, but once you see what's going on, it's amazingly
    easy to extend the grammar.

    The other big change is the library. At the simplest level, it provides
    a lot more in the way of pre-defined classes for the common types of
    objects that show up in nearly every game. The deeper change is that the
    execution model and world model are a lot more sophisticated, so they
    can do more for you automatically. This should all mean it's less work
    for an author to create a desired effect in a game. The trade-off is
    that there's more to learn, but my hope is that the design makes the
    learning curve gentle, so new authors can figure out how to do the basic
    things very quickly and then pick up the more complex stuff gradually.

       SPAG: Since we are focused on players, what will be the differences
       between the two development systems from a player's standpoint?

    MR: The changes probably won't jump out at you right away, because the
    interpreter look-and-feel is almost the same as in TADS 2. But players
    will probably notice a number of things just under the surface.

    One change that'll affect most games is that the default library
    messages are very "neutral" in the new library. The TADS 2 messages
    imitate the early Infocom style, which had a sarcastic parser/narrator
    "character" that occasionally referred to itself in the first person. I
    think a lot of the early authors conceived of text games as a teletype
    conversation between the player and a puppet who carried out the
    player's commands and reported back. This has changed, though; most
    authors these days want something a lot more like the modern
    third-person narrator in static fiction, where the parser/narrator is
    this submerged, unseen presence. The new library messages aim for that
    effect, which I think will let the standard messages be used without the
    risk of clashing with each game's own style.

    Another thing that players might notice is that the parser can take care
    of a lot more of the tedious details for you. It's always irritating
    when a game responds to a command with something like "you'll have to
    open the door first"; I mean, if the game knows enough to tell you to
    open the door, why doesn't it just do it for you? Anyone who's written a
    game knows the answer, which is that it's a lot easier to program the
    message than the cascading action, since there are all sorts of
    complications to worry about in the cascading action. Well, the new
    library has a whole mechanism for this sort of thing, which it calls
    "implied" actions, and it's very easy to use and control. The result
    should be that players see a lot fewer of those irritating "you'll have
    to first" messages in TADS 3 games.

    There are lots of other little details that players will encounter from
    time to time. The parser is overall a lot smarter, and it accepts a more
    flexible range of inputs. You can use possessives pretty consistently to
    indicate which object you mean, and you can refer to things by location,
    as in "look in the box on the table." There are little niceties that
    authors can enable, such as always showing a list of exits in the status
    line. Hopefully these will all add up to make the playing experience
    noticeably more convenient and pleasant.

       SPAG: Why do this project? What are its goals?

    MR: The initial goal was merely to move the parser out of the
    interpreter and into the library. The biggest weakness in TADS 2 is that
    the parser is written in C and embedded in the interpreter, so games
    can't customize it except at the specfic points where there are
    customization hooks. I probably could have just "ported" the parser's C
    code to TADS code and stopped there, and if I'd gone that route it would
    have been done three years ago. But once I started looking into it, I
    decided it would be a pain to rewrite the parser without automatic
    garbage collection in the VM, and that kind of opened the floodgates.
    Garbage collection essentially required a VM rewrite, and if I was going
    to rewrite the VM anyway then I might as well fix other things at the
    same time -- switch to Unicode, add exception handling, add a modular
    type system, add a modular UI layer, and on and on.

    Even with all of those changes, it probably would still have been a
    pretty modest rewrite if I hadn't started talking about it with more
    people. After I'd been working on the new VM a while, an informal
    discussion group had formed, so we set up a mailing list. Several very
    good computer language experts were on the list early on, and they had a
    lot of great ideas that made their way into the language. They also
    helped steer me away from some of my more foolish ideas, fortunately.
    Once the library got under way, there was a strong consensus that it
    would be a waste of time to just duplicate what was in the TADS 2
    library, so the ambitions got raised there, too. Just about everyone on
    the list has a lot of IF experience and know-how, so the library
    discussion has been very focused and productive -- not just a bunch of
    crazy blue-sky stuff that would never happen.

    That's kind of a long answer. I think the short summary is that the
    goals have turned out to be to take what we know about IF authoring in
    the existing systems, and iterate to the next level, so that the common
    problems that authors have to solve over and over are handled in the
    system.

       SPAG: Finally, what's its status? When can we expect to see it in a
       stable beta form, and more importantly, when do you think it'll be
       out of beta altogether?

    MR: I always try to avoid speculating about schedules in terms of the
    real-time calendar, since I'm impossibly bad at it. I can at least try
    to give you an idea of the tasks I see ahead, though. The main thing I'm
    doing right now is working on the new sample game, with detours for
    library work as I run into things that need fixing or elaboration. The
    latest library detour has gone on for a few weeks, but this one was
    probably uniquely large, and I think it's mostly done now. (I'm also
    fixing bugs as they're reported, but that's essentially always the case.
    My philosophy is that you have to fix known bugs before you add new
    code, throughout every stage of a project, because otherwise you're
    building on a crappy foundation.) The game itself is pretty much planned
    out, so it's just a small matter of coding.

    Once the game is finished, I plan to declare beta. "Beta" is kind of
    arbitrary for non-commercial software, but to me it means that I'll be
    mostly fixing bugs rather than making functional changes, and that
    future updates should remain backward-compatible. The next task after
    the sample game will be to write a new Author's Manual. That's a little
    more predictable in terms of schedule than writing code, I think, but I
    haven't really scoped it out yet, so I'm not sure what to expect. It
    should provide long enough for a thorough beta test, though, so once the
    manual is done, the official first release should happen.

    KEY TO SCORES AND REVIEWS--------------------------------------------------

    Consider the following review header:

    TITLE: Cutthroats
    AUTHOR: Infocom
    EMAIL: ???
    DATE: September 1984
    PARSER: Infocom Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2
    URL: Not available.

    When submitting reviews:  Try to fill in as much of this info as you can.
    Authors may not review their own games.

    REVIEWS -------------------------------------------------------------------

    From: Francesco Bova

    TITLE: ASCII and the Argonauts
    AUTHOR: J. Robinson Wheeler
    EMAIL: jrw SP@G jrwdigitalmedia.com
    DATE: 2003
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: http://raddial.com/if/games/asciargo.zip
    VERSION: Release 2

    An issue ago, I reviewed the IF-Classic game Savoir-Faire. Savoir-Faire
    is a game that illustrated some of the beautifully nostalgic flair of
    the old Infocom games while also improving greatly on Infocom's parser
    system and playability. ASCII and the Argonauts is another IF-Classic of
    sorts, but instead of having an Infocom-based backdrop as its focus,
    ASCII takes a light-hearted poke at some of the surreally awful Scott
    Adams games that featured poor punctuation, anemic descriptions, and
    less than robust NPCs. While obviously not as polished as Savoir-Faire,
    I found the tribute aspect of ASCII to be more endearing, and the
    dichotomy of a strong parser in a minimalist-type setting very
    entertaining.

    What also makes ASCII remarkable is that it was conceived of and created
    for a Speed IF competition in about 12-15 hours. Here was the premise
    for the competition (which was taken from an ifMUD conversation):

       Trivia question: Which is a famous text adventure? a) Zork, b) Dark
       Tower, c) ASCII and the Argonauts).

       Jacqueline says, "Did they make that ASCII and the Argonauts thing
       up? I've never heard of that, and it sounds scary, but I wouldn't be
       surprised if it existed."

       Gunther | Your search - "ASCII and the Argonauts" - did not match any
               | documents.

       Gunther says, "of course, now it has to be written in a speedIF. You
       have two hours. GO!"

    And with those very broad parameters, Wheeler created a bare-bones
    tribute to not only the myth of the same name but to many of the Scott
    Adams games created years ago.

    So what do I mean by bare-bones? Well, as I've already mentioned, this
    game follows a very minimalist sort of pattern. The only area where it
    doesn't diverge too greatly from a typical Inform game is with its
    parser. Unlike the typical Scott Adams game, the parser was able to
    handle any of the standard vocabulary you would expect in a typical
    Inform game. This set up an interesting dichotomy for me because even
    though the parser was sophisticated, the default responses were not.
    Wheeler essentially hacked the default response code for most verbs and
    dumbed them down (i.e. two-word responses, poor punctuation) from their
    original Inform standards, with the game's default message for just
    about any action being, "I CAN'T". That's right, "I CAN'T", replete with
    capital letters and no period. Oh the joy of writing sophisticated
    sentences such as: PUT THE ROCK IN THE URN only to have I CAN'T spitted
    back as the response.

    The minimalist style continued with the game's setting. The room
    descriptions were non-existent, and were instead summarized at the top
    of the game's split-screen simply with the room's title and a list of
    NPCs and objects that the player could interact with. Following the same
    motif, that list of players and objects was not expanded upon either.
    They were listed solely by their names regardless of what context you
    found them in. Examining objects typically provided descriptions as
    verbose as, "VERY SHINY!" to ones as barren as "NOTHING SPECIAL".
    Examining NPCs would typically have the NPC give a one-line description
    about how they'd interact with you, and talking to them had no outright
    benefit whatsoever as they repeated the same default responses whether
    you asked, told, or ordered them to do something. Still there was
    something that felt so right about the simplicity of it all.

    The game map was fairly small and, with a few notable exceptions, most
    areas could be traversed without too much death without warning. What
    impressed me about the map though, was that there were some fairly
    crafty puzzles buried in its structure. These puzzles typically revolved
    around strategic inventory management; the net effect of which was that
    if you solved certain puzzles too early, you could put the game into an
    unwinnable position. Unwinnable positions aren't new to IF and certainly
    not new to Scott Adams games, but unlike many of those games, the
    unwinnable states here were not caused as a result of poor game design
    choices. Rather, they were caused by what I feel was the author forcing
    the player to conserve his limited resources in an attempt to come up
    with a strategy that took into account the entire game as opposed to one
    individual puzzle. To win, the player has to have a comfortable feel of
    his surroundings and what the hurdles are before he proceeds. Only then
    will he be able to envision the best way to use what he has. I found
    that this process also made the game feel more like a whole gaming
    experience rather than a string of unrelated puzzles that were loosely
    tied together, and I obviously enjoyed that. A mite bit deeper than the
    games ASCII appears to be spoofing, methinks.

    So anyways, to sum up: I guess for me the bottom line is that a lot of
    game designers today try to write more impressively than their skill
    level provides and either overplay their theme, or overwrite their
    dialogue, or whatever, and it was interesting that I felt just the
    opposite way about ASCII. As I finished playing, it occurred to me that
    despite the clunky grammar, skeletal room descriptions, and poor
    writing, there was an extremely solid structure and a very talented
    programmer behind its creation and all the wonky game design choices in
    the world weren't going to hide that fact. If you have an hour to kill
    or your brain needs a break from its daily grind, I would definitely
    give this one a shot.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: Miguel Garza

    TITLE: A Crimson Spring
    AUTHOR: Robb Sherwin
    EMAIL: beaver SP@G zombieworld.com
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: Hugo
    SUPPORTS: Hugo interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/hugo/scourgdos.hex
         (Note: this is the no-sound, no-pictures version of the game)
    VERSION: Release 1.0.04

    I enjoyed Robb Sherwin's A Crimson Spring quite a bit. It is well-paced
    and enjoyable to read and play. It sucked me in like a good book or a
    good movie, something I often find myself wishing for in a text
    adventure game but rarely find. Paradoxically, one vehicle for achieving
    this end in A Crimson Spring is what is frequently derided in
    contemporary discussions of good interactive fiction: the game is very
    much "on rails".

    For instance, about half of the game is driven by conversation that
    moves in one primary direction. Conversation progress is accomplished
    through a TALK TO system, in which the player chooses the number of the
    conversation-opener the player character (PC) wishes to use. The PC can
    keep on talking until there are no more openers left. I personally have
    no problem with this system, because the responses are intriguing and
    entertaining. They propel the story. I do not feel as if I am reading a
    dry transcription of a chain of events, but rather that I am
    participating in those events. I think this is primarily due to the
    quality and pacing of the writing.

    By "pacing of the writing", I am referring to the interplay between plot
    or exposition and player action. In some games, the player is required
    to discover what the plot is, and this as much as anything is the
    central conflict and motivating factor for the PC, at least in the
    beginning. Not so with A Crimson Spring. From the beginning, we are
    presented with a fleshed-out protagonist with a problem and a goal. This
    was a boon to me because I do not enjoy wandering around randomly
    examining things and trying to logically discern what goes with what.
    Instead, in this game the player is much more limited in terms of where
    the PC can go or what the PC can do, but it doesn't *feel* limiting,
    because at any one point in the game there are usually only a few
    choices that would make any sense for the protagonist to make.

    At points where there is really only one choice that the PC would make,
    the choice becomes automated. For example, at one point in the game the
    PC intends to visit a non-player character's (NPC's) home. At that
    point, the player doesn't need to manually move the protagonist to the
    NPC's house by typing in directional commands -- once the player moves
    the protagonist out of his house, the game takes the protagonist to the
    other person's house.

    This is where the quality of the writing comes in: at junctures where
    events occur outside the player's jurisdiction. Without good writing at
    those junctures, the player gets bored. The player won't be interested
    in the PC or his damn problems. Fortunately, Robb Sherwin is a good
    writer, and I found myself intrigued rather than bored by his
    descriptions of events occurring outside my control.

    Despite the fact that the story moves primarily in one direction, the
    game feels like it is in the player's control. There is more than one
    ending to the game, and much of the conversation is supplemental, rather
    than essential, to the story itself, so there is room for
    experimentation. The author does a good job of treading the line between
    dictating the story and letting the player find it.

    That said, there are a few minor qualms that I have about the game.
    There are some continuity problems, such as that, after a certain point,
    a certain minor NPC will say the same thing to you each time you meet
    him, or that an NPC inexplicably knows how to contact you even though
    only one other character in the game besides yourself knows where you
    are, and those two NPCs probably have not spoken to each other. This
    problem shades over into a realism problem. The game is set in a gritty
    superhero world (I can hear people grumbling, wondering why I am
    concerned with realism). I gladly accept the poetic conceit of
    superheroes existing in a modern-day world, but when a major villain and
    the superheroes get together to duke it out and there are no bystanders,
    no police, and no discernable threat made by the villain to the populace
    at large, I find it difficult to swallow. Nonetheless, the
    aforementioned battle is an exciting and well-written part of the game.

    I cannot stress enough that the storyline and the writing in this game
    are both very good. There is a sense of drama evoked by the events in
    the game that I find lacking in many games which are more open-ended in
    terms of what the player can do and in what order. The "on rails"
    quality of A Crimson Spring works because it is not difficult to move
    forward in the plot, on the one hand, and the plot itself is
    well-written and intriguing, on the other. The puzzles are not difficult
    at all, and primarily consist of getting information (by talking to
    people) so that the PC will know what to do next. I enjoy the easy
    puzzles because it returns the player's attention to the story at hand.

    As I said earlier, the game pulled me in. It has a well-paced and
    interesting story, and that is its shining glory.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: T. Henrik Anttonen

    TITLE: Escape from Pulsar 7
    AUTHOR: Brian Howarth & Wherner Barnes
    EMAIL: ???
    DATE: 1983
    PARSER: DOS
    SUPPORTS: DOS
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/pc/pulsar7.zip

    The reason I wanted to review this old game was that I have a very
    special attachment to it since it was the very first text adventure I've
    ever played. The story to that is actually quite sad. I got a package
    about five years ago that contained some game collection titled 'Big
    100' that actually contained 100 games in five floppy disks. Well, we
    can all imagine the quality of these wonderful gaming experiences, but
    there was this game titled Pulsar 7. All of the other games were graphic
    games except this one and when I started the game, I was hooked. I
    thought it was a revolutionary idea! No graphics, just text! Brilliant,
    why hadn't anyone else thought of this before!? That was the thing I
    wondered for about two years without even noticing that the game was
    released in 1983.

    Well, enough of my sad story about my first contact with text
    adventures. I was supposed to review the game, not myself...

    In Infocom masterpieces collection, G. Kevin Wilson wrote that the
    reason text adventures still keep a good amount of players and
    programmers, is because of the stories. Well, this game proves that you
    can write a text adventure without much story to back it up. Of course,
    the game is not very good. In the game, you are the only survivor of the
    galactic freighter Pulsar 7. Apparently, a group of monsters have
    boarded the ship and eaten everyone else. Now you have to save the
    character from the ship full of aliens who have an urge to tear you to
    pieces. Now, this must've been a really original idea in 1983 with only
    about couple of million other games using a similar concept.

    As far as actual gameplay, it's at about the same level as the creative
    force behind the story. The screen tells you where you are without any
    description. Then follows a list of the items you can see. About half of
    these are totally useless and you can't even examine them since the
    parser is at a complete loss if you try to examine those. For example,
    in the very beginning of the game I can see a warning sign. I wanted to
    see if the warning sign contained any text, but I couldn't do that since
    the parser does not understand what 'warning' means.

    After the list of items follows a list of exits. There is a significant
    problem there. In the very beginning of the game, the game says that
    'Exit: SOUTH WEST'. I spent the better part of my childhood trying to
    get to southwest. What I failed to realise was that you can go south OR
    west, not southwest. This was of course my fault as well, but a bit
    clearer way of presenting things would not hurt.

    The parser's level is about the same in all situations. There seems to
    be only one way of presenting the game with ideas, and unfortunately
    that way has nothing to do with English grammar. At the time it was
    really hard for me since I am from Finland and English is not my primary
    language, so the parser's total failure to understand words like 'to',
    'the', or 'a' brought me great difficulties. These days I don't have
    that problem, but sometimes still it gives me difficulties to make
    sentences that the program would understand. For example, commands like
    'use key door' are hard for me when 'to' would come naturally. Then
    again, commands like 'unlock door' or 'use key' are out of the question
    since the parser fails to understand those too. In the latter case you
    would get a message like this:

       It is no use trying to use
       KEY

    Well, as I found out, the parser doesn't understand even 'use key door',
    because that would result a message like this:

       It is no use trying to use
       KEY DOOR

    So 'use key door' doesn't work either, but it's a good example of the
    language you have to use in the game. The parser seems to have a
    language of its own and some of the basic commands we're accustomed to
    using in interactive fiction are completely useless as the parser does
    not understand them. That makes the gameplay really hard, especially to
    someone like me who have only just found the joy of playing text
    adventures and who is totally helpless in all of them. For example, the
    parser does not understand the 'look' command. In some games, the 'look'
    command would work the same way as the 'examine' command except that
    it's a lot shorter to write. In this game, you have to write the
    'examine' command over and over again. If the 'look' command would have
    different function than the 'examine' command, I would understand that,
    but it's really hard to understand why there is no 'look' command at
    all.

    The danger of the game is to fall asleep. If you do, a MUTANT CREATURE
    rips your head off and the game makes it clear that 'I have landed
    myself right in to MANURE this time!!'. Maybe it is the best to let the
    game stay in there and try to forget it as soon as possible.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: Francesco Bova

    TITLE: Heroes
    AUTHOR: Sean Barrett
    EMAIL: buzzard SP@G nothings.org
    DATE: Oct 1st 2001
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-Machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2001/inform/heroes/heroes.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    At first glance, Heroes appears to be another typical D&D-influenced IF
    game, with perhaps a few novel ideas scattered throughout. For starters,
    you begin your quest by choosing between five different D&D staples as
    the player character. You can choose among the following: a dragon, an
    enchanter, an adventurer, a thief, and a member of the royal family. You
    then work your way through some puzzles in an attempt to acquire the
    fabled Dragon Gem and upon your quest's completion, you replay the same
    scenario but this time with one of the other characters. You then repeat
    this process until you've won with each character. So, Heroes is typical
    standard fantasy to be sure, with the interesting twist of multiple and
    diverse playing experiences. However, what you'll soon realize after
    completing each player-character's perspective is that there is a
    macro-story present here that encompasses all five characters and some
    subtleties in each of their stories. For those not paying careful
    attention to the storyline, the game's final epilogue (which is
    triggered once all 5 player character perspectives are completed) will
    come as a shock and be next to unexplainable. Come to think of it, you
    might still feel that way even if you followed closely. Still, the
    macro-story that has to be inferred is an interesting and novel concept,
    and for the most part, a success.

    The subtleties in each of the stories about the true nature of the
    game's chief antagonist are, for the most part, beautifully woven
    together if a bit obscure. The big picture in Heroes is a complex one
    and probably won't be easily inferred by many except the most
    perceptive. The weaving of the story is not direct or blatant. Instead,
    interesting facts and tidbits are sprinkled throughout each character's
    prologue and epilogue; the interactions they have with other NPCs; and
    the various scenery, room, and object descriptions that change with each
    new player viewpoint.

    The landscape, although fairly small, is beautifully rendered,
    specifically because each of the characters' games takes place in the
    exact same setting (i.e., same locations, same items to be found, etc.)
    but with each character's personality coming through in the scenery
    descriptions of their relevant story. For an example, try viewing the
    garden in the town's square as each character for some unique
    perspectives. Each individual game will also bring different objects and
    structures to the forefront of each player's perception. For example,
    there is a crate leaning up against a building near the entrance to the
    city, but it is only visible in the scene's description by the thief
    (which is understandable as he'd be used to lurking in the shadows), and
    the adventurer (which is also understandable as he's a roughshod
    mercenary-type who would notice it). The same crate is not in the
    dragon's description of the same room (because it is understandably
    insignificant to him) nor the enchanter's (as he views things on a
    metaphysical and magical level) nor the royalty character's (as the
    crate is also insignificant to him, albeit for significantly different
    reasons than the dragon). Although not in the room's description
    however, the enchanter and royalty character can still interact with the
    crate and I thought was interesting. Essentially the crate was still in
    scope, and if you remembered that it was there from a previous
    character's experience you could still attempt to manipulate it. It was
    a nice way to maintain mimesis because obviously a crate or any other
    object shouldn't just disappear when it's not essential to a specific
    player's storyline.

    In terms of each character, I found the writing style fairly distinct.
    The enchanter, for example, notices the magical chemistry and ley lines
    present in his surroundings, while the dragon perceives things in a way
    completely foreign to the other characters. However, there was a big
    difference between characters in terms of how relevant their individual
    stories were to the story as a whole and their relative levels of
    playability. The following is a critique of each character and their
    respective degrees of influence on the story and levels of playability:

    DRAGON
    The dragon is a lot of fun to play with because the geography
    descriptions change dramatically with his viewpoint. He's got very
    straightforward goals, with some interesting puzzles. Storywise, he
    fleshes out the relevance of the Dragon Gem, but doesn't do much to add
    to the mystery of the chief antagonist's motivations.

    ENCHANTER
    The enchanter is a great character and has a great story all around. I
    found I didn't learn much about the overall story in this section, but I
    did learn a great deal about the world the game takes place in, and
    about the magic that forms such and integral part of it. The puzzles are
    wonderful and most are solved with Enchanter-style spells, some of which
    you start with and some of which you acquire throughout the game. The
    end game of this story is the strongest of the five (there's a great
    sequence of puzzles to conclude this section) and provides some insight
    into the chief antagonist's motivation. This section is, all around, a
    logical and entertaining section.

    ADVENTURER
    The adventurer is a fairly dull character and story in my opinion. He
    didn't really bring much to the table story-wise and his claiming of the
    gem is pretty straightforward and mundane. Not much is added to the
    story as a whole either during his prologue or epilogue and the puzzles
    here are solved more often through brute force and trial and error
    rather than by elegant puzzle design. There is some bonus information
    generated by one NPC that fills in some missing gaps in the story, but
    approaching him with the relevant conversation topic is neither
    intuitive nor reasonable, in my opinion. A bit of a filler chapter,
    overall.

    THIEF
    The thief is an interesting character whose relevance to the story as a
    whole is significant. The gamplay aspect however suffers a bit from some
    guess-the-syntax and some actions that require more guesswork than is
    strictly necessary. The thief has an interesting cache of thieving
    tools, but not all of them have to be used to complete the section. This
    fact saw me spend a bit too much time wondering what they should be used
    for. Otherwise, I sped through this section rather quickly except for
    one bottleneck that was caused by having no real indicator of how to
    proceed. An interesting story, and the epilogue in particular was quite
    relevant.

    ROYALTY
    The royalty character is another integral character, story-wise, to the
    entire plot. However, the gameplay aspect suffers more with this
    character than with any other. For starters, there are some serious
    problems in this section with guess-the-syntax. For example, ordering
    NPCs in a certain way yielded a desired result but ordering the same NPC
    in another way albeit with the same intent, yielded nothing of interest.
    I struggled with this section for quite a while, convinced that I was on
    the wrong path while really, I had the right idea but was getting bogged
    down in the grammar. Also, receiving the default responses "There is no
    reply" and "I know not of which you speak", while ordering around and
    questioning various NPCs got to be a bit frustrating. I'm the king
    dammit! You'd better reply.

    Other bits of annoyance came from the king/queen's substantial
    entourage. This section of the game spits out randomly created gossiping
    noble NPCs that crop up in whatever location you happen to be in. They
    were amusing at first, but eventually became tiresome as their constant
    babbling actually got in the way of my reading the text. The author
    thankfully parsed some applicable royalty-type verbs to get rid of the
    bothersome NPCs such as dismiss, arrest, and execute (execute in
    particular was quite unintentionally funny, as the executed corpse
    remained in the room of its execution), but as soon as you got rid of
    one NPC, another one unfortunately took its place, so the glee was short
    lived.

    Also, because you're a royal, you don't do anything for yourself. This
    includes various sundry tasks such as picking up objects, turning dials,
    or pulling levers. You unfortunately have to order other people to do
    it. This convention maintained mimesis perhaps, but boy was it tedious
    to have to ask an NPC to pick something up, and then ask him to give it
    to you. A more fluid method, I would think, would have been to just type
    in the command and have the closest NPC do whatever it is you asked.

    One final piece that had me guessing for a while came while trying to
    acquire one of the game's central objects (an object, in fact, that is
    featured prominently in each storyline). The problem arose when I tried
    to acquire the aforementioned object in a fashion similar to one of the
    other characters. For the most part, the game created good reasoning as
    to why each character had to interact differently with this object to
    acquire it. Incidentally, this aspect of the game was one of my
    favorites, because essentially each character had to interact with the
    object on a different level which typically related well to their
    substantially different backgrounds. With the king however, these same
    rules didn't apply. Following the exact same steps as a previous
    character I was sure I would eventually acquire the object the same way,
    but the process yielded no results and even worse, no rationale as to
    why my efforts weren't successful.

    So, overall, this section was a bit of a drag to slog through although
    the prologue and epilogue, as well as some smaller bits within this
    section, were very important to the story as a whole and integral to
    having a shot at understanding what the final prologue meant.

    All in all, I loved this game. I'm a little biased, I suppose, because I
    love the fantasy genre to begin with, but even the most contemporary IF
    player will find something to enjoy here. After having completed Heroes,
    it occurred to me that the writing and subtle hints reminded me a lot of
    another fantasy series penned by one of today's great static fiction
    writers, Robert Jordan. His Wheel of Time series (at least the early
    novels) were brilliant because they incorporated subtle hints amongst
    the different books that, when combined, could be used to infer the
    solution to some of the many mysteries present in the series. Heroes,
    again, follows a similar style although obviously, on a much smaller
    level. If you don't think you've figured out what's going on after one
    playthrough, I would encourage you to play it again. Following that,
    visit the author's website at
    http://nothings.org/games/if/heroes/story.html and read his take on all
    the innuendo and intrigue. (Warning: major spoiler at this link.)

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: R. N. Dominick

    TITLE: Mountain
    AUTHOR: Benjamin Penney
    EMAIL: revolutionary_dust SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: February 2003
    PARSER: Platypus standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Mountain.zip
         http://users.tpg.com.au/penney/z
    VERSION: 6

    Mountain is a game that, like several recent games, plays at being much
    older than it is. An accompanying "cover scan" indicates a price point
    of $1.99 and is of a size that suggests ziploc bags and 5.25"
    diskettes. The in-game help suggests that the game will be arbitrary and
    guess-the-verbish. I was willing to play along; I even set up Frotz to
    mimic the display of the Apple][ I originally played IF on back in the
    day.

    Unfortunately, shortly after starting to play, I started to actually
    think about what was going on.

    The text is sparse, and almost immediately jokey -- the PCs name is Gary
    Hikerson, he's accompanied by his "lesser, uglier and much shorter
    companion Biggs".

    Here's the first room description:

       Foot of Burly Mountain
       You are standing amidst the snow covered trees of Burly Forest,
       looking upward to the mountain you're delaying climbing.

    None of them get much longer than that. Some room descriptions describe
    actions you take, which are repeated when you "look" again. Much of the
    writing in the game is muddled, especially with regard to punctuation.
    An example:

       >kick biggs
       "Oww!", cries Biggs, "Sir, that hurts. Above the waist, please!".

    Implementation is sparse, perhaps intentionally so. True to the promise
    in the help text, the game is very arbitrary. Items are hidden in
    nonsensical places. Things only happen when obscure criteria are met.
    You can't command Biggs to do anything in the usual Infocom fashion; in
    one location where you have to ask him to do something, you do so with
    the command "talk to biggs". There's an item that needs to be "use"d.
    Points are given out for seemingly random things. You can never tell
    what items mentioned in text will be implemented and which ones won't;
    sometimes this is very frustrating, especially when Biggs suffers an
    injury you can't even refer to. There's a total of 32 points you can
    score, but you can't possibly score them all in the same game session.

    As I noticed these things, I kept thinking "Well, that's excusable,
    because this is a parody of That Sort of Game". As the list grew,
    though, I began to wonder: wouldn't this be better if the game laughed
    at these flaws along with me, instead of just actually containing them
    and expecting the humor to come from that? I disliked games like this
    back in the day, so why should it be inherently funny to play one now?

    I grew tired of the arbitrary nature of the game after finishing it a
    few times in different ways, so I took TXD to it to see what I'd missed.
    (Please excuse me if you think this is wrong; I had only the best of
    intentions.) Doing so revealed a few interesting things, best of all a
    (truly) humorous set of alternate versions of game events apparently
    tied to the Tandy bit. Unfortunately, setting the Tandy bit in three
    different interpreters had no effect, leaving me unable to accompany the
    cranky bear to the Tandy store.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: Jessica Knoch

    TITLE: Rat in Control
    AUTHOR: Mike Roberts
    EMAIL: mjr_ SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: 10-Apr-2003
    PARSER: TADS3
    SUPPORTS: TADS3 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/spatial.t3
    VERSION: 1.0

    The first thing to note about "Rat in Control" is that it isn't a
    regular game, at least not as we tend to think of them. Mike Roberts
    wrote it to gather some statistics on how quickly IF players process
    spatial directions when using compass words (north, south, etc.) as
    opposed to relative directions (ahead, backward, left, right). This is
    an experiment designed to test some theories proposed in a thread on the
    rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup -- see:

    http://www.google.com/groups?th=f07753ec2f847121

    for the thread. The "game" consists of finding your way through a simple
    maze, using either set of directions (although you can switch at any
    time). The game then reports to you your time, to the nearest
    millisecond, so that you too can contribute to the statistics-gathering.

    This might sound a bit boring and dry. It would have been, too, if the
    author hadn't made the game much more compelling by giving it a
    fleshed-out setting, a real character, and even a storyline. You play
    Fred, a lab rat, who has finally had enough of captivity and is ready to
    escape. Besides conjuring images of Pinky and the Brain, this gives you
    a valid reason for exploring the "maze" (really the arrangement of
    furniture in the lab where your cage is) and also for needing to do it
    quickly (before the humans come back).

    Rat in Control accomplishes its purpose well. You are given one of the
    direction sets -- compass or relative -- at the start of the game,
    chosen at random so that the author can get an even sampling of players
    using each set on their first play-through. The first stage of the game
    allows you to explore the room, using your set of directions, and gives
    you a chance to acquaint yourself not only with the layout of the
    obstacles, but also with the (potentially unfamiliar) direction
    commands. After that is complete, the time trials begin. There are three
    timed sequences, each between a different pair of locations in the room.
    The game thoughtfully sets the timed sections apart by prompting you to
    push the space bar when you are ready to begin. In each, you are to
    traverse part of the maze using the set of directions chosen by the
    game. The idea is that everyone who plays the game will send their
    results to the author, who can then compile them and maybe come up with
    some useful, or at least interesting, information.

    I was a bit disappointed that my random pick was "compass" directions,
    instead of the relative directions. I'd been hoping I would get to try
    the less conventional commands on my first time through. But playing
    through with compass commands was in itself enlightening. First of all,
    I didn't make any kind of map of the lab. Some parts of it made sense,
    but there were a few parts which wouldn't fit in my head coherently. For
    instance, when I arrived in a previously-visited location via a new
    route, I had serious trouble taking that new path into account on my
    mental map. From this I must conclude that it was a map very well suited
    to its purpose -- straightforward enough to not require a map, but
    complicated enough to require actual spatial cognition (which was, after
    all, the point of the discussion).

    Secondly, the experience revealed that I type the wrong letter for
    compass directions pretty frequently. For instance, I interchange "e"
    and "w" a large percentage of the time. I knew I did that sometimes, to
    see "east" and think west, or to think west and type "e." I also type
    "u" for north and vice versa. And in the timed race through the maze, my
    tendency to type the wrong letter was much more pronounced than usual.

    I also discovered that the first key I hit when under pressure in an
    Interactive Fiction game is "n." I looked closely at the "n" key on my
    keyboard -- the letter is practically worn away from the key! I've been
    playing too much IF.

    Here's the big surprise: Even with switching "e" and "w," even typing
    "n" at random times and "u" instead of "n" at other times, my time on
    the timed sequences was *better* when using compass directions than when
    I used the relative directions. I finished using relative directions in
    fewer moves, and longer times, without even taking into account the fact
    that I should have been more familiar with the layout (it sure didn't
    feel like the same layout!).

    Although the object of the game is to test how quickly the brain
    processes relative vs. fixed (compass) directions, I think there's a lot
    to be said for familiarity with typing the commands. Using f, b, r, and
    lf (forward, backward, right, and left) is not only unfamiliar, it's
    *so* strange as to be a major hindrance. In addition to thinking of
    which way I wanted to go, I had to think about what letter (or letters)
    to type in order to move that way. With compass directions, I only have
    to worry about the former. But having "f" for forward and "lf" for left
    guaranteed I would type the wrong thing a lot. (Although, I didn't
    actually type the wrong thing very often -- except for continuing to
    type "rt" and getting an error. Instead, I froze up while my brain tried
    to remember what to type.)

    Another note: using relative directions makes it impossible to scan
    through a transcript and get any sense of the layout of the place.

    In any case, this is a fascinating attempt at a community-wide thought
    experiment. But it's also a short, fun laboratory break-out by a group
    of intelligent rats with names like Fred and Mr. Tails, and you get to
    play the one rat who makes it all possible. Somehow, this manages to be
    funny at times, convey a true sense of urgency, and a satisfying sense
    of accomplishment upon reaching the end. Download it, play it, e-mail
    the author with your times, and be a part of the experiment.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: Francesco Bova

    TITLE: Ribbons
    AUTHOR: J.D. Berry
    E-MAIL: berryx SP@G earthlink.net
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/ribbons.z5
    VERSION: Release 2

    Many a newbie author enters the annual interactive fiction competition
    with dreams of taking first place amidst a plethora of accolades and
    positive reviews. The reality is that most first-time efforts, with some
    notable exceptions, tend to lack something, be it cohesive game design,
    passable prose, or consistent game continuity. This doesn't come as a
    result of a lack of trying, mind you, but instead is a symptom of the
    fact the most newbie authors haven't had a chance to perfect and hone
    their programming and writing skills. The net result is that when it
    comes time for the piece to be reviewed, newbie authors often have their
    lofty expectations shattered. Some authors can accept both praise and
    harsh criticism in stride, while others find the whole process quite
    difficult, and shrink away from the community with badly damaged egos.
    This is unfortunate when it happens, as the first releases from most
    authors, again with some notable exceptions, aren't usually exceptional.
    In fact history shows that the trick to being a successful IF author is
    to stick with it, learn from your mistakes, and try again, as future
    efforts almost always invariably improve in quality. Here are a few
    concrete examples of how a sustained effort has lead to better results
    in the past:

       ·	Laura Knauth: placed 15th in her first IF Comp, 7th in her second,
       and took 1st in her third with Winter Wonderland.

       ·	J.D. Berry: who took 10th place in his first comp, 14th place in
       his second, Best of Show in the 2001 IF Art show for his fine work
       Ribbons, and finally, a whole host of XYZZY nominations for his
       surreal '02 Comp work, When Help Collides.

    More than ingenious ideas and perilous puzzles, the real trick, it
    appears, to becoming a good IF author is resiliency and the realization
    that all criticism no matter how harsh, should perhaps be taken with a
    grain of salt and viewed as a vehicle for improvement.

    The ideas of criticism and perception are the principle theme of
    Ribbons, an IF Art piece that looks at 4 separate pieces through the
    eyes of different judges. As a piece of IF Art, Ribbons is interesting,
    but I'll get to that later. Where Ribbons really shines, in my opinion,
    is as a commentary on art criticism (and perhaps on a micro-level, IF
    criticism) and on the way that the preconceived notions we hold often
    affect the way we evaluate games. The basic message of Ribbons is that
    we have preconceived notions of what we expect from certain artists (or
    IF authors, for that matter). What we get when the artist's identity is
    less than certain is often more representative of our true feelings in
    most cases, but even those may be skewed because of the newness of the
    artist. After all, how could a relative unknown create something
    incredible? Ribbons illustrates this dichotomy by presenting two pieces
    that are created by the same artist. One of the pieces is signed off
    using the artist's real name, and the other piece is signed off using
    the artist's pseudonym (an anagram of sorts). Interestingly, the
    critics' comments of the pseudonymed art are much harsher than the piece
    using the artist's real name.

    This point leads me to another interesting aspect of Ribbons and that is
    that each critic's comments shape the way you view the piece. For
    example, viewing a piece before reading a critic's comments will
    generate a more benign response as compared to viewing a piece after
    first reading a critic's comments, which will generate a response more
    inline with the critic's viewpoint. It was a great simulation, as our
    perception is often influenced by the opinions of those who we hold in
    great respect. This truth transfers easily to the IF Comp as well.
    Speaking from personal experience, I've often caught myself playing Comp
    games and wondering what some of the premier designers in the field
    would have thought about the game I just played. On occasion, I've even
    rated a game with a negative or positive bias as a result.

    So I think it's evident that Ribbons provides a fantastic simulation of
    the critiquing process, but how does it stack up in terms of
    playability? Well, Ribbons has a novel approach for an IF Art concept.
    Each art piece is tactile in a way, and is meant to be experienced
    through more than just sight. Certain aspects of the art pieces are
    malleable, and require interaction although often to little or no end.
    That's to say that the manipulation of an aspect of a certain piece
    doesn't necessarily have an impact on how you interact with it. It was
    neat to move stuff around, although there seemed to be no rhyme behind
    the reason. And I sort of ended off feeling not wholly satisfied, as if
    I had left some task unfinished. The interesting scoring system, which
    measures your progress based on how much you've experienced (i.e.
    looked at, touched, etc.), pushed me to keep trying new things, but when
    I exceeded the maximum scoring potential I slowed down, because I didn't
    know when I would hit the ceiling of my experience or if I had in fact
    passed it.

    I think that's one of the pleasures of experiencing art, mind you.
    There's obviously no formula to it, but having played IF for so many
    years I've gotten used to common parameters, and I found Ribbons' lack
    of direction a little frustrating. Still, the experiential aspect of
    Ribbons was interesting and I still enjoyed the different colors shown
    to me throughout the game on the artist's palette. There really are no
    puzzles to speak of in Ribbons, although there is a common theme running
    through all four of the pieces (i.e. use of colors, similar objects).
    Perhaps there is a puzzle in there somewhere about discerning the
    linkages between the four pieces. For a while, I even thought that it
    might be possible that the same artist created all four pieces, but I
    wasn't entirely certain how the game's author intended for that to
    affect me. In the end, there is perhaps not enough motivation to delve
    too deeply into these linkages, as again, you're not necessarily
    rewarded whether you find something interesting or you don't, so I just
    let it be, and looked at the pretty pictures.

    To be honest, a reviewer more knowledgeable in the area of art than I am
    may be more suited to critiquing this game as a piece of art, because
    although I enjoyed the experience, I don't know if the right side of my
    brain can drum up much more in the way of commentary. Maybe I'll just
    stick with this quote from frequent Homer Simpson antagonist, C.
    Montgomery Burns: "I don't know art but I know what I hate... and I
    don't hate this." :)

    Where I think I can comment conclusively, however, is on how well the
    critics' comments mirrored many post-Comp comments on r.g.i-f following
    the IF competition, and to be honest that's where I found the game at
    its strongest. In fact, I think Ribbons might even serve as an
    invaluable tool for any aspiring rookie Comp author. The message that
    Ribbons delivers to any rookie Comp author is this: No matter how great,
    no matter how revolutionary you think your new piece is, you will have
    to live with the reality that some people just won't get "it" and that
    often times the newness of your name may cause reviewers to be more
    critical of your piece.

    There. Now that you're aware of that fact, please don't stop writing IF.
    You'll only get better over time and we need aspiring and creative new
    talent in the community to keep it thriving. Take the criticism as an
    opportunity to grow and improve your programming and writing skills and
    keep a determined focus on creating games. Who knows? Maybe that
    persistence will help you ascend to the top of the IF world. It
    certainly worked for J. D. Berry.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: Emily Short

    TITLE: Words of Power
    AUTHOR: Stark Springs
    EMAIL: (I wasn't able to find one listed)
    DATE: 2002
    PARSER: Glulxe
    SUPPORTS: Glulxe interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF archive.
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/words.zip
    VERSION: 4

    My initial reaction to this game was, to say the least, mixed. It is a
    Glulx work, with a complicated UI, pictures, and (though I couldn't hear
    it on my computer) sound: clearly a lot of effort had gone into the
    production. On the other hand, one of the first things I encountered was
    a talking cat. My natural allergy to excessively cute cliches kicked in,
    and I set the game aside for a time. Eventually I came back to it, and
    I'm glad I did.

    Stark Springs' game is ambitiously packaged. It comes with two pdf files
    of background material, which represent reading matter you find during
    the course of the game; only a password (learned in-game) can unlock
    them. Considering that there's quite a lot of this material, I
    appreciated the chance to read that material in the pdf format rather
    than from the game screen. Having the huge amount to read early in the
    game reminded me, negatively, of a similar effect at the beginning of
    Fort Aegea, where I didn't care for it. All the same, having a pdf
    worked in Springs' favor: I knew that I could always come back and refer
    to the file later if necessary, and it was also possible to skim it
    without reading everything, so that I knew roughly what I was going to
    be in for later. The massive infodump is still not my favorite way of
    revealing backstory, but if there had to be an infodump, this is as good
    a way as any.

    Besides the pdf files, there's a complex graphical interface. Along the
    right side of the screen is the conversation menu; along the top, the
    status bar; and along the bottom, buttons representing the Words of
    Power. The text color and background are frequently changed, a la
    Photopia, to suggest changes in setting and atmosphere.

    All this UI gadgetry could have been confusing, but, on the whole, I
    didn't find it so. The conversation menu looked perhaps a bit awkward
    crammed into a narrow space where all the sentences had to wrap -- I
    think I would have designed that differently, and perhaps put the power
    buttons on the right and the conversation menu at the bottom of the
    screen -- but I found that I quickly got used to the effect. The
    conversation menu was also decorated with an illustration of whichever
    NPC you're talking to, a bit like Fallacy Of Dawn. In a game with a fair
    number of NPCs, this is quite useful, because it provides a visual hook
    in addition to the NPC's name to help the player remember who everyone
    is.

    Speaking of the conversation menu, conversation in the game uses a
    technique similar to some I've used myself: the player is allowed to
    choose a piece of dialogue from the menu, or else to change the topic of
    conversation to something else. Important bits of dialogue can be
    repeated ("Tell me again what you know about the forest..."), and the
    topics available to switch to are listed in the menu as well. I found
    this fairly effective and easy to use, except that there were a number
    of times when I would have liked to be able to talk about something that
    wasn't available: for one NPC I met repeatedly during the game, it would
    have been nice if additional conversation items had appeared over the
    course of the plot so that I could have discussed more of my discoveries
    with him. But it's always a challenge to provide what the player will
    experience as "enough" conversation in a game, and I understand the
    limitations that might have prevented Springs from adding more.

    As for the Words of Power mentioned in the title: Springs has invented a
    magic system based on combining elements to construct a complete spell.
    The elements can be verbs, nouns, or modifiers, and they are all
    represented as buttons at the bottom of the screen, so that there's no
    need to memorize the vocabulary. This gives the player a nice range of
    action, using a syntax that is not much different from the standard
    command structure used to communicate with an IF game in the first
    place. It's easy to work out new combinations to suit new occasions. As
    a concept, such magic is more sensible than the spellcasting system of
    Enchanter and its followers, and it lends itself more readily to
    exploration or invention by the player.

    There are a few flaws. I would have liked to see a more interesting
    treatment of the effects of failure when the magic was cast incorrectly
    or on the wrong thing; a few inventive messages here would both have
    helped teach the player how to use the magic correctly, and provided
    some local color. But even so, I didn't find it particularly difficult
    to learn to use the Words. In fact, I would have liked to see a larger
    selection of them -- the system has more potential than this game
    actually exercised, I think. The number of words available befits a
    relatively short game (as this is), but I would have enjoyed playing
    with the combinations even more.

    The setting is something of a mixed bag. Examining objects tended to
    reveal no more than was already in the room description. For instance:

       Stone Road
       When the path leads you out of the tree cluster, the scene in front
       of you seems unreal and it takes you a few moments to figure why. A
       large plain stretches to the west, but you can see no horizon line,
       only a hazy band, far far away, of a darker blue than the sky. The
       sun, huge and orange like a basketball hangs low in the sky. A
       neglected road, paved with round, irregular stones and overgrown with
       grass makes its way from north to south and its both ends are lost in
       the same haze that replaces the horizon line.

       The cat ambles along.

       >x road
       The road is paved with round stones and looks neglected.

    There's nothing to be seen here that we haven't seen already, and I was
    initially disappointed by the effect. As I played on, I got used to it:
    this is not a heavily puzzle-centric game, and obsessively examining
    everything is not the point. Ultimately the game succeeds in teaching
    the player what sort of interaction is required by politely discouraging
    fruitless kinds of action.

    Speaking of the descriptions, the writing is somewhat unpolished in
    spots -- the sentence that begins "A neglected road" goes on a bit too
    long, while the phrase "its both ends" seems a bit unidiomatic.

    For all that, if you look past the form of the writing to the content
    itself, that content is fairly evocative. Here is a fantasy game (sort
    of -- there's magic, and a talking cat), but it is set on a planet built
    like a science fiction planet, with a different diameter and a more
    distant sun. The effect, an impression of great age and distance, is
    both beautiful and melancholy. In fact, the whole map of the game is
    built on the same massive scale, with locations that encompass entire
    ruined cities and forests. Some elements of the story are a little too
    familiar, perhaps -- the race of forest-dwellers and the race of miners
    smacks of Tolkien, and other pieces of the backstory ring a little too
    familiar -- but not all of them. So on the whole the setting could have
    been more sharply imagined and better described, but there were enough
    intriguing elements to keep me engaged. I found that I liked it best if
    I mentally translated the descriptions into a kind of cinematic
    treatment, with many desolate landscape shots.

    The story likewise turns out to be more interesting than I originally
    anticipated; it takes several bends without ever ceasing to make perfect
    sense, and it also manages finally to fuse the story and the puzzle
    system into a bit of in-character decision-making of the kind I like
    best, where the player has the power to make a critical decision based
    on the puzzle-solving skills and plot knowledge she's picked up. It's a
    technique I associate with really great game design, and though the
    effect here isn't quite as powerful as the effect of a similar juncture
    in "Spider and Web", it's still in excellent company.

    Despite some early apprehension, I also found the game extremely
    playable. The story controls the pacing: I was never stuck at any point,
    and those few times when I found myself even slightly at a loss soon
    resolved themselves. There's enough for the player to do that the effect
    doesn't feel completely linear and closed off, too -- and this is not an
    easy balance to strike.

    The final verdict, then: this is a pretty good game in several ways. If
    it had been sharpened a little on a couple of fronts -- the magic system
    deepened, the characters given a bit more edge and complexity, the
    writing polished -- it could perhaps have been a great game. As it is,
    it falls shy of great, even occasionally slips into mediocre, but there
    is still plenty to make it worth playing. I liked the magic system quite
    a lot, and liked the way the UI helped the player with it; if there were
    to be a sequel or another game using this system, I would be interested
    in playing it. I have even forgiven the presence of the talking cat.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    #########################################################################
    ######  REVIEW PACKAGE: THE FRENETIC FIVE VS. PHLEGMATIC REVIEWER  ######
    #########################################################################

    [Note: Valentine provides scores with his reviews in the old style of
    the SPAG scoreboard. I've chosen to leave these scores in, since I think
    they provide interesting and useful information, but they shouldn't be
    construed to mean that the scoreboard has returned. It's still dead, and
    these scores won't be added to it. --Paul]

    From: Valentine Kopteltsev

    When I decided to review the Frenetic Five series, I suspected it was
    going to be another ordeal for my objectivity: parody superhero stories
    definitely are my thing, and a game whose world is inhabited by such
    personages as the Microwave-Popcorn Boy, the Incredible X-Ray Brain
    Surgeon, the Human Meteor, and the like, certainly can claim its
    rightful place in my heart. In the end, these suspicions turned out to
    be mostly correct -- but I'm getting ahead of the story, for my
    acquaintance with the first game of the series resulted in...

    -=-=-

    A Not Entirely Convincing Storm and Onset

    TITLE: The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm Und Drang
    AUTHOR: Neil deMause
    EMAIL: neil SP@G demause.net
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: TADS Slightly Hacked
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition97/tads/
               frenfive/frenfive.gam (original competition version);
         ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/frenfive.gam (version 1.1)

    The opening sentence of the game -- "It's been another long day at the
    office (they all seem to be, lately), but at last it's over" -- already
    hints at the fact that a superhero's life isn't as exciting as the
    general public usually sees it. To begin with, the superheroes aren't
    freelancers; no, they're mere employees, like so many of us, and
    defeating evil isn't their hobby but their job. It's not even a very
    well-paid job, as we can tell from their style of living -- they share
    their quarters (which are most reminiscent of a students' hostel) with
    each other, and when another supervillain has got to be overcome in some
    distant area, there's no Batmobile at their disposal, heck, not even an
    old Yugo -- they've got to use public transportation.

    Such a lowered status is partly justified by the exclusive abilities of
    our superheroes being somewhat... uhm... specific. These powers reminded
    me of the spells so widespread in text adventures since the Enchanter
    trilogy -- something like the "Ekab spell: makes a 2.4 square feet large
    piece of flaky pastry fold into a seven-sided bun". For instance, you as
    the leader of the Frenetic Five team, Improv, have the ability to "adapt
    any object into a tool of your wishes", which just means that you're
    very good at finding the most appropriate, albeit non-conventional, uses
    for various things (a handy skill for an experienced adventurer, isn't
    it -- though I hardly would call it a "superpower"). But it's not only
    inanimate items you're supposed to apply properly; during your mission,
    you also have to find an appropriate task for each member of your team
    -- the rather chaotic Pastiche, the dreamy Lexicon, the somewhat languid
    Clapper, and the omniscient Newsboy. Most puzzles in the game are about
    using your resources wisely, which makes it fit into the Text
    Adventure Tradition neatly. The author himself gives a good example of
    effective use of assets at his disposal; supported by the vivid and
    humorous writing (on the average, every third or so description made me
    chuckle silently), the characters (both the PC's teammates and the
    villains) made a serious effort, and almost managed, to stagger me, and
    immerse me completely.

    The word "almost" in the previous sentence represents, to a large
    extent, the key to my quibbles about the game -- though admittedly I'm
    getting pretty subjective here. My main grievance is the following: you
    see, F5 vs. Sturm und Drang is not only the first game of a superhero
    series, it's also a Comp game, and when playing it, I had the sneaking
    feeling that the author had had some troubles finishing it in time for
    the Comp. I'm not saying it's sloppily done, mind you. On the contrary,
    the writing and characters are great. The puzzles, while not too hard,
    are well thought-out in a fashion that allows you to use the special
    powers of each of your comrades to solve them. (I found a couple of them
    somewhat obscure, though. Also, some puzzles in the later stages of the
    game only can be solved if you previously made sure to pick up a few
    objects that have appear pretty useless at the time when they're
    available -- but since grabbing everything not fixed meets both the
    traditions of text adventuring and the aforementioned special power of
    the PC, I think it's by far not as unfair as it seems at first). There
    also were a few quite ambitiously programmed features (one of them is
    worth a short diversion -- namely, the way the default TADS reaction to
    an unknown word has been replaced by "You don't see any  here." A tip for all those who (like myself) are
    fond of cheap, rude jokes of extremely bad taste: this feature provides
    for a great response if you type that ubiquitous four-letter word in a
    dark location. Probably jokers like myself were the reason why this
    message has been replaced by "The word "" isn't important
    to your mission" in the post-Comp edition). The game's flaws were minor
    ones that spoiled the impression (inapropriate responses here and there,
    for instance) -- but still, to entirely and unconditionally win me over,
    the game either had to be more polished, or somewhat deeper. I'd like to
    point out once more -- I'm aware it's pretty subjective, and the roots
    of my criticisms lie, to a no small degree, in my initial expectations
    of the game being so high.

    SCORE:

    PLOT: The plot doesn't seem to have been first priority for the game
    author... (1.0)
    ATMOSPHERE: ...however, atmosphere does. ;) (1.5)
    WRITING: Let's put it the trivial way -- vivid and humorous (1.3)
    GAMEPLAY: Working puzzle by puzzle towards the overall goal (that's the
    long way of saying "pretty linear" ;) (1.1)
    BONUSES: Well, it's one of those "parody superhero stories" that
    "definitely are my thing";)  (1.2)
    TOTAL: 6.1
    CHARACTERS: A wide variety of memorable types (1.4)
    PUZZLES: Basically of the "find an unusual way to use something/someone"
    type; some people (not me!) might find a couple of them a bit unfair (1.1)
    DIFFICULTY: Pretty easy -- except for a few obscure points (5 out of 10)

    While F5vsSUD wasn't perfect, it worked pretty well as an appetizer for
    the next game of the series, where I found myself in...

    -=-=-

    A Kingdom of Excessiveness

    TITLE: The Frenetic Five vs. Mr. Redundancy Man
    AUTHOR: Neil deMause
    EMAIL: neil SP@G demause.net
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: TADS Slightly Hacked
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/fren5-2.zip

    My first impression of Frenetic Five II was that the world rather
    sketichly outlined in part one finally got a finished appearance. It's a
    world with a comically distorted logic; in a sense, it's a reflection of
    our reality in a funhouse mirror. For instance, one extremely witty
    manifestation of the peculiar nature of this universe is the shoe phone,
    which effectively represents a mobile phone disguised as a shoe.
    Naturally, to make (and answer) calls, our superhero has got to take it
    off (just imagine, say, Superman hopping on one leg!) At the same time,
    within these boundaries, the game world is amazingly consistent; each
    and every one of its aspects complies with the weird rules defined by
    the game author.

    One of those aspects is the puzzles. While the core approach of function
    division between your teammates from the first game still applies, the
    problems you have to solve (and the ways you've got to do that) receive
    a hint of craziness, even absurdity. It's difficult to get more specific
    and to avoid spoilers at the same time; therefore, I'll just confine
    myself to an example. If you had to win a battle in this world, your
    only option probably would be to convince the leader of the opposing
    force that martial art isn't his vocation, and that he should
    immediately turn to potato cultivation instead.

    Still, the puzzles themselves are not too arduous -- once you understand
    the logic of the game world. Personally for me, however, there was a
    catch: I was playing Frenetic Five II in a period of time when my mind
    was busy with lots of other rather boring matters of minor importance
    (like work, etc. ;) Naturally, this circumstance not only negatively
    influenced on my ability to solve logical problems, but also caused an
    overall torpor, which, in its turn, had two effects, one bad and one
    good. The bad one: I didn't enjoy the puzzles as much as I could if I
    managed to solve them myself. The good one was, I got acquainted with
    the game's splendid built-in hint system.

    Its basic principle is quite simple: once you get stuck, you just ask
    your teammates (or, to be more precise, one particular teammate) for
    help, and receive more and more directed suggestions. It works (and
    keeps track of the current situation) pretty well, but such an approach
    itself doesn't represent a big novelty in IF. What makes this hint
    system unique is the way the hints are presented to the player.

    Officially, Frenetic Five II doesn't penalize you for using in-game help
    (since it doesn't record any score). Still, a certain penalty is present
    -- don't forget, you are playing as Improv, the head of the team, and by
    using the hints you practically let others decide for you, and thus in
    effect make a cat's-paw of them. The comments your teammates make
    alongside their hints dissipate all your illusions (if you had any)
    regarding your leading role, and what the others think of it. Great job!

    (A short disclaimer -- the post-Comp release of Frenetic Five I features
    a similar hint system; I didn't mention it in the appropriate review
    because I had played the original Competition version, which provides no
    help, and only had had a cursory look at release 1.1. My impression was
    that it didn't work as well as in FF II, but I might be wrong.)

    This review wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention the writing, which
    largely determines the appearance of the game. The author outcdid
    himself in turning the prose into another prop for his work's bizarre
    atmosphere by making it excessively ornate, and squeezing as many puns
    and word plays in each sentence as only possible. One of the less
    refined samples:

       You've seen her do this trick too many times, so you're unfazed when
       her hand phases through the blade as she slams it down.

    Incredibly funny references to other superheroes (like the Stupendous
    Tweezer-Fingered Girl, The Defenestrator, etc.) not directly involved
    into the action, which already occured often enough in Frenetic Five I,
    become even more frequent. The final performance of Mr. Redundancy Man
    made the supervillains from the preceding game seem like two stutterers.
    All in all, it was exactly the writing, with its wide assortment of
    decorations, that helped me to formulate my somewhat subliminal thoughts
    on this work more clearly.

    So, if I had to summarize the essence of the game in one word, I'd
    choose "rococo". This architectural style is known for a wide use of
    fancy decorative elements, and produced quite a number of impressive,
    whimsical buildings. However, it had another side: it also represented a
    certain stagnation, even decadence in architecture, a lack of new ideas.
    In my opinion, the same is true for F5vsMRM: in a way, it is the acme of
    the genre, and gets as much as possible out of the basic ideas the
    author initially has put into the series -- but exploiting this ideas
    any further would be overdoing it: another game in this vein would be a
    step back.

    SCORE:

    PLOT: The plot still doesn't seem to have been first priority for the
    game author... (1.0)
    ATMOSPHERE: ...the atmosphere still does. (1.6)
    WRITING: (Intentionally) exaggeratedly ornate (1.6)
    GAMEPLAY: Pretty linear (that's the short way of saying "working puzzle
    by puzzle towards the overall goal" ;) (1.1)
    BONUSES: The slightly crazy, yet so consistent and "real" game
    world (1.4)
    TOTAL: 6.7
    CHARACTERS: As great as in Frenetic Five I (1.4)
    PUZZLES: Often use the logic of absurdity (1.2)
    DIFFICULTY: Still quite easy -- once you understand the game world's
    rules (6 out of 10)

    For the reasons described above, I wasn't quite sure what to expect of
    the next game of the series, where...

    -=-=-

    Things Got Deadly Serious -- as Deadly as the Dwarves

    TITLE: The Frenetic Five vs. The Seven Deadly Dwarves
    AUTHOR: Neil deMause
    EMAIL: neil SP@G demause.net
    DATE: 2002
    PARSER: TADS More Seriously Hacked
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/fren5-3.zip

       "I may make you feel but I can't make you think."
                      -- Gerald 'Little Milton' Bostock, "Thick as a Brick"

    ...And it started pretty much the same way as its predecessor, with the
    atmosphere made even more grotesque by the PC being quite drunk. The
    obligatory preface smoothly passed into a light-hearted Zork parody. It
    was done competently enough, with the puzzles cleverly set up to form a
    part of the joke; to be honest, I had some problems solving them --
    mainly because of my rushed situation I described in the previous
    review. This time, however, the built-in help, formally based on the
    same principles as in Frenetic Five II, didn't support me nearly as well
    -- for some reason, instead of working as a hint-on-demand system, it
    instead used the "it's me who decide when you need hints" approach,
    which sometimes became very frustrating. Anyway, one couldn't deny it
    was a fairly good game, but -- well, it seemed to do the very thing I
    mentioned in the previous review: it went on exploiting the same idea,
    and thus started to get somehow too predictable, maybe even repetitive.

    Then, everything changed.

    I'm intentionally going to be quite vague here, because this sudden
    shift in plot and atmosphere represented one of the main attractions of
    this game (at least, for me); heck, I'm not sure that even mentioning
    this change at all is not a spoiler already! But here you go -- what had
    begun as a comedy suddenly turned into something entirely different.
    Into a "thoughtful piece" maybe? No -- because, for one thing, it'd be a
    crime to talk about it in such cliches, and for the other, take a look
    at the epigraph. I'd say, it became a feelingful piece. An
    emotion-loaded piece. A disturb-your-freakin'-complacency-and-
    indifference piece, damn it!

    That'd be the right point to finish this review, but a single final
    observation is needed. The way Frenetic Five III ends now, it literally
    cries out for a sequel. The genre requires it, and probably many players
    will beg for it, too. However, this work is blowing up the boundaries of
    the genre, and I sincerely hope the author resists the temptation, and
    lets it be the final game of the series. Maybe I'm totally wrong -- but
    that's what it made me feel like.

    SCORE:

    This game moved me so much that I con't coolly dissect it into single
    categories, and rate them individually. However, if I brought myself to
    doing that, the total would be at least an 8.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    #########################################################################
    ######             REVIEW PACKAGE: THE JOY OF AAS                  ######
    #########################################################################

    [This review package is a little different from the normal SPAG fare,
    straying closer to satire than to analysis, but given its topic (see
    SILLY AAS in the news section), the approach seems only fitting. --Paul]

    From: Sam Kabo Ashwell  (for everything but
          "Dead By Morning") and Anonymous (for "Dead By Morning")

    Dear Sir / Madam,

    As a renowned stalwart of the fine art that is Literary Criticism, a
    pillar of the Text Adventure community and environs and a universally
    acclaimed arbiter of good taste, it falls to me as an inescapable
    (though oftimes insalubrious) moral imperative to scour with an
    all-encompassing eye the vast and fetid squabblings promiscuously
    spawned upon the World Wide Web like so many lascivious coypu;
    consequently, it is my lot to engage (at intervals, happily, of as
    elevated a magnitude as may be deemed prudent) in perusals of your
    organ. Upon one such occasion I had the misfortune to partake in an
    observance of such degraded condition as to appall a leprous official
    gatherer of the waste of donkeys. Upon the list in which you invoke the
    titles of those works of our elevated Art that you are most desirous to
    obtain artful reviews upon, an absence, a privation, a gaping abyss to
    scare small children leapt from the crudely fashioned HTML and tore
    jackal-clawed at the gusset of my soul. Due, doubtless (for even my
    opinion of your ability cannot afford such cretinous wrongdoing) to the
    incompetent fumblings of a concave-witted lackey, none of the games
    under order of request were members of that illustrious class of mastery
    known to the world as AAS.

    Since it seems beyond the realms of the humanly credible to imagine that
    this scandalous omission was in any way intentional, I have sought to
    apply balm to this weeping sore of aesthetic injustice by conferring
    upon you my humble thoughts upon the entirety of this portmanteau of
    prodigy. Also included is a review of my own trivial effort in the
    field, Dead by Morning, supplied by my learned colleague and
    international lady of letters Conchita T. Antyoghurt. If you wish to
    stave off the righteous indignation of the literary world, I implore
    you, lest your organ be trampled in the mud, to publish them in their
    entirety, that the world may hear of the greatness of AAS.

    Yours, &c,

    Sam Kabo Ashwell

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Sexual Conquest
    AUTHOR: Gunther Schmidl as Linc Abrahams
    EMAIL: gschmidl SP@G gmx.at
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/SexualConquest.aas
    VERSION: 1

    Postfeminist contexts are evoked with subtle brilliance reminiscent of
    the early de Beauvoir. The stark nullibeity of the protagonist's agency
    (meaningful or otherwise) connects the audience directly to the
    soul-crushing vis inertiae of an inescapably misogynist society, while
    the unrelenting, almost sexually dithyrambic counter-rhythm concealed
    beneath the prose's deceptively terse form calls to mind both the raw
    sensuality of protoculture and the sexual act itself. The nolus volens
    treatment of the game's solitary female (and she is solitary; a point
    that deserves greater consideration than I can afford it here) as an
    inanimate object speaks for itself; the repeated emphasis on the word
    'ravish' both appalls and enthralls us, bringing forth with a few
    strokes of the pen the demons that dwell within us all. Her
    disappearance after climax (both of game and protagonist) underlines her
    role in chilling unambiguity. The hollowness of the phrases employed,
    the futile lack of purpose pervading the final puzzle reflected in the
    bitter change of the initial room's description -- 'tonight WAS the night
    for hot steamy sex!' not only reveals our society for the straw dog it
    is, but draws forth the image of the night as a metaphor for the dark,
    sordid nature of life itself.

    While many have taken the name of the heroine (if she may be considered
    such) as an indicator of the game's primarily Christian subtext, I
    contend that the frail inadequacy of the game's ending is intended as a
    stern warning that while life is bleak, no hope may be sustained to
    follow it. A hellish masterpiece, guaranteed to turn the stomach and
    soul of the most heartless Lothario; not for the faint-hearted.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Pride and Prejudice
    AUTHOR: Iain Merrick as ???
    EMAIL: iain SP@G diden.net
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/PrideAndPrejudice.aas
    VERSION: 1

    A witty, piquant and not unfriendly little satire upon Austen's
    best-known work, P&P delights the heart not only with the gentle barbs
    for which it is best-known, but also for its evocative and stylish
    rendering of the setting. Tongue-in-cheek enthusiasm, drifting in a rich
    gravy of exclamation marks, emulates the best of the naive Austen
    heroines, while good-naturedly poking fun at the modern consumerisation
    of a sharp satirist into a prettily becostumed bodice-heaver.

    In a masterful stroke, the complex gender politics and fiercely
    competitive marriage market of the day are reduced to a unidimensional
    'scoring' system; the knowing nod to early text games does not pass
    unnoticed. That the percieved aim of 100 points is patently unachievable
    adds an air of pathos to the otherwise light-hearted mood. Subtle
    touches -- the whip, the fact that all men violently attack you on sight
    -- hint at deeper layers of sexual complexity; Jungian archetypes
    abound. It would be unfair, however, to deconstruct too rigorously an
    essentially comic work; we stand here in the realm of Wodehouse and
    Waugh, and should not let our footsteps be dogged by a spirit of
    gravity.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Pleasure Palace
    AUTHOR: Storme Winfield as Cindy Phillips
    EMAIL: stormew SP@G yahoo.com
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/PleasurePalace.aas
    VERSION: 1

    In this engaging, expertly crafted piece, the protagonist is compelled
    to seduce a triad of Eastern nymphs; from this elegantly simple
    framework, however, a veritable banquet of enthralling story and
    monumental emotional force arises. The smouldering coitus that forms the
    core of this tract is brought to life with almost corporeally organic
    force, and this reviewer must confess that he personally experienced
    distinct and prolonged symptoms of arousal upon the reading of the more
    delicate passages, a phenomenon that he has ascertained to be all but
    universal among readers of both sexes. The exotic surroundings,
    described in a level of detail unsurpassed in the entire field of AAS,
    contribute magnificently to that enchanting paradoxical air of
    sophisticated animal lust that so characterises faux-Oriental pieces.
    Echoes of The Arabian Nights are stifled beneath a host of references to
    the belly-dancer-populated Arabia of dodgy movies of the 1950s-70s, and
    we are never allowed to play for long without I Dream of Jeannie being
    called to mind; this basic desire to return to an age devoid of the
    disquiet of complex moral nuance adds a charming touch of innocence to
    the heart of the rampant, joyful promiscuity, much as the early misuse
    of apostrophe introduces a flicker of awkwardness that only heightens
    the piece's glamour. A sensual tour de force that is guaranteed to cross
    over far beyond its humble AIF roots.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Office Ahoy!
    AUTHOR: Storme Winfield as Ken Taylor
    EMAIL: stormew SP@G yahoo.com
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/OfficeAhoy.aas
    VERSION: 1

    For years the literary community has bewailed our lack of a single,
    definitive rites-of-passage text from a female perspective. The
    appearance of Office Ahoy! against the figurative horizon, reflected in
    a sea of praise, is likely to be seen by history as the answer to our
    prayers. A veritable feminine Catcher in the Rye has arisen, the
    seagulls of imitation crowding in its wake as it steams forth into
    oceana incognita. The discarding of the trappings of immaturity to
    revert to a state of blankness (represented here by an asexual nudity
    that reappropriates the Everyman for the voice of women) in order that
    one may advance to a higher level of existence is universally
    understood, and so devauled a currency is it that it is easy to despair
    of any fresh approach; but Taylor regales the imagination with such a
    tsunami of image and symbol (stabbed through with a staccato of
    exclamation marks) that one's breath is taken away. The timeless
    simplicity of a Chaucer or a Coleridge pervades the work; the box, the
    ship, the garb of office; all these are symbols recognised by every age.
    But it is not here wherein the mastery lies, but in the game's
    bittersweet resolution; the tragic conflict with the sailor that
    suggests we can never realise our dreams without struggling against
    them.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Fabled Caves Of R'th-nylch
    AUTHOR: Adam Biltcliffe as Pat Vickers
    EMAIL: amgb2 SP@G cam.ac.uk
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/FabledCavesOfRthnylch.aas
    VERSION: 1

    In a literary context laden down to the point of exhaustion with
    recycled pretention and complication for its own sake, R'th-nylch goes
    straight for the jugular and taps into our most primal fears: of fire,
    of poison, of beasts from the night; our own screams of agony and the
    equal horror of those of our foe. Ostensibly a cave-crawl, this game
    swiftly reveals depths of gory brutality that never strays away from its
    profound import. The aut vincere aut mori struggles between our hero and
    his enemies are presented in a fractured and paragraphless
    stream-of-consciousness format, the typed commands of the player lost in
    the massed howl of violence and exclamation marks.

    This work has set an undisputable seal in the hinterlands between genius
    and conformity, and never has convention seemed so much the poorer
    cousin.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Caverns of Doom
    AUTHOR: Iain Merrick as Roddy Ramieson
    EMAIL: iain SP@G diden.net
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/CavernsOfDoom.aas
    VERSION: 1

    Ramieson has constructed a tautly balanced allegorical humdinger of a
    game, intended not only to make us question our deepest beliefs, but to
    drive home with uncompromising force the emotional content of the
    answer. Ramieson is not above making nods to the ancients; a
    pseudo-Socratic dialectic is constructed within the conflict between
    audience and goblin, and the player takes the part of interlocuter,
    controlling the pace and rhythm both of the prose and of the game's
    events.

    The repetitive nature of the focal combat's text conjures up sinister
    overtones of Zarathustran recursion (reflected in the Judeo-Christian
    symbol of the flaming sword); condemned always to die of poison even if
    his foe is defeated, the nameless protagonist dully obeys commands he
    cannot comprehend, and is constantly returned to life as the player
    desperately restarts in a doomed attempt to achieve success. This
    metatexual manipulation is carried out with an adroit and fine touch
    belied by the apparent simplicity of the prose, creating (if you can
    find it; it took me several sleepless nights) a striking and detailed
    system of parallel between the game's plot and its levels of meaning.
    Subtle changes (the system can handle randomness to an alarming degree)
    make for a good replay value, as well. A must, if your head can take it.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Cave of Adventure
    AUTHOR: Stephen Granade as Roddy Ramieson
    EMAIL: stephen SP@G granades.com
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/CaveOfAdventure.aas
    VERSION: 1

    An audacious attempt to transpose the artistic qualities of the Cubist
    movement onto an interactive fiction canvas; while there is very little
    here for anyone not intimately familiar with the subject, for those
    willing to venture into the tortured world of Ramieson's visual
    imagination the journey is not without its rewards. The most important
    clue is the juxtaposition of angular and absolute cardinal directions
    onto a supposedly natural cave; from this humble beginning one can
    extrapolate a frenzied hive of half-logic and disturbing beauty. (I
    won't spoil it for you, though; the joy lies in the mental wrestling).

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Cloak of Ultimate Darkness
    AUTHOR: Iain Merrick as Roddy Ramieson
    EMAIL: iain SP@G diden.net
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/darkness.aas
    VERSION: 1

    This game has a vampire. Vampires are cool. 'Nuff said.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: ADVENT
    AUTHOR: Iain Merrick as Arthur Tavistock Jr.
    EMAIL: iain SP@G diden.net
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/advent.aas
    VERSION: 1

    Christian IF in the truest sense of the word has previously been
    considered to be an impossible and unrewarding task to take on; to
    express one's faith in a manner that is original, interesting and
    acceptable to Christians, while avoiding accusations of saccharine,
    simplistic proselytising from everyone else. The subject's reputation
    makes any attempt commendable for bravery, if nothing else.

    Tavistock makes an attempt that, if it fails to achieve the
    unachievable, is certainly a striking example of how to carry off such a
    failure with good grace. Adopting the classical medieval model, the
    spiritual struggle is represented in the form of physical conflict
    against Blakesque foes, laden with metaphorical content; in this
    struggle, God is never far away, aiding the protagonist in a manner that
    I (as an agnostic) found a little overdone, but which would probably not
    seem so to Tavistock's target audience. Although the game will play
    adequately in a colourless parser, the mood is superbly supplemented by
    subtle colour changes, and a great deal of the game's vibrancy is lost
    without it. A few crucial flaws -- the conversation system could have
    done with a little more betatesting -- but otherwise a solid piece.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: AAS Masters
    AUTHOR: Stephen Granade as Dr. David Banner
    EMAIL: stephen SP@G granades.com
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/aasmasters.aas
    VERSION: 1

    Reminiscent of the best of Dumas, this is a swashbuckling tale of
    concealed identity and duels to the death with erudite noblemen across
    dramatic landscapes, while the omnipresent hand of Ramieson hovers
    menacingly over all. Drama abounds as the story builds gradually to its
    climactic denouement, amid a blizzard of learned literary references
    that clearly demonstrate Banner's comprehensive intellect. It would be
    all too easy to characterise as immature the plethora of abtruse
    references intended only for members of the immediate community; but
    this would be a churlish and ill-thought-out mode of criticism. The
    work's central intention, indeed, is to represent the vital dynamic
    between work and reader, man-as-author and man-as-himself, community and
    genre.

    AAS Masters is far more than this, however; it provides the literary
    context, the creative background, the collective voice which previously
    the AAS ouevre so bitterly lacked, and both justifies games previous to
    it and gives those who follow on after a vital frame of reference.
    Without playing AAS Masters, no enterprising student can truly
    understand the great body of work that is AAS.

    -=-=-

    TITLE: Dead By Morning
    AUTHOR: Sam Kabo Ashwell as ninjaschlong
    EMAIL: ska24 SP@G hermes.cam.ac.uk
    DATE: April 2003
    PARSER: AAS
    SUPPORTS: AAS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/aas/deadbym.aas
    VERSION: 1

    This game is the metaphorical jewel in the AAS canon. Scattering
    literary allusions around in a profuse and liberal fashion, one might
    wonder if some of the nuances are lost on the casual player. From the
    pathos of the opening scene -- reminiscent of some of the most elegant
    phrasings that Orwell ever constructed -- to the fractured beauty of the
    fight scenes (almost Joycean in their organic fluidity), this
    masterpiece is more erotic than Lawrence, more spine-tingling than
    Shelley, and more packed with hot babes than a pay-per-view porn
    channel.

    One might conceivably draw attention to the lavish misspellings with
    which this game is strewn, but I believe this to be a deliberate attempt
    on the part of the author to draw the player into the text more fully,
    for, in the heat of passion and adventure, such trivialities as pedantic
    attention to spelling melt away to be replaced only with a burning
    desire to progress further into the heart of the mysterious and
    bewitching world available. The indefatigable manner in which one is
    prevented from exploring adds a touch of frustration (at the kind of
    level hitherto seen only from Yeats in his quest for Maud Gonne) to what
    might otherwise be an overly simplistic allegory of one's journey
    through life. An absolute gem, and should be acclaimed as what it truly
    is: a modern classic.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     ___. .___    _    ___.     ___.
    /  _| |   \  / \  / ._|    /  _|
    \  \  | o_/ |   | | |_.    \  \
    .\  \ | |   | o | | | |    .\  \
    |___/ |_|   |_|_| \___|    |___/ PECIFICS

    SPAG Specifics is a small section of SPAG dedicated to providing in-
    depth critical analysis of IF games, spoilers most emphatically
    included.

    WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE FOLLOWING GAMES:

    A Crimson Spring
    Fine Tuned
    No Time To Squeal
    Sunset Over Savannah

    PROCEED NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE PLAYED THESE GAMES!

    THIS IS NOT A TEST! GENUINE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

    LAST CHANCE TO AVOID SPOILAGE!

    From: Miguel Garza

    TITLE: A Crimson Spring
    AUTHOR: Robb Sherwin
    EMAIL: beaver SP@G zombieworld.com
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: Hugo
    SUPPORTS: Hugo interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/hugo/scourgdos.hex
         (Note: this is the no-sound, no-pictures version of the game)
    VERSION: Release 1.0.04

    TITLE: No Time To Squeal
    AUTHOR: Robb Sherwin and Mike Sousa
    EMAIL: beaver SP@G zombieworld.com (Sherwin); mjsousa SP@G attbi.com (Sousa)
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/ntts.gam
    VERSION: 1.0

    Mothers and Whores: The Ambiguous Woman in A Crimson Spring and No Time
    To Squeal

    I have played and finished two games written by Robb Sherwin: No Time To
    Squeal (written with Mike Sousa) and A Crimson Spring. After finishing A
    Crimson Spring, I was struck by a theme that the two games shared. In
    both games, the protagonist relates to a woman in his/her life
    ambivalently, with both fear and longing, and this ambivalence is
    reflected in the protagonist's perception of the woman. The uncertainty
    of the protagonist's relationship with the woman becomes a source of
    discomfort and a motivation for the protagonist to resolve the
    ambivalence of the relationship.

    In both games, the protagonist at one point travels through a
    psyche-space, rather than an actual physical space, while on his/her
    quest for resolution of the relationship. The protagonist's ambivalent
    attitude towards the female characters in the games is reflected in the
    protagonist's perception of them in both the physical reality of the
    stories and in the protagonist's psychic reality. In No Time To Squeal,
    the protagonist's mother, normally conceived of as life-giving force, is
    portrayed in the protagonist's psychic space as a deathless and yet
    death-dealing prostitute who is indirectly responsible for putting the
    protagonist, her daughter, in a life-threatening situation. However, it
    must be noted that the prostitute/mother has not attacked her child; in
    fact, the mother herself is a victim who has been used to attack the
    child protagonist. In A Crimson Spring, one of the protagonist's best
    friends is a woman known as Succubus, which is the name given (in the
    medieval myth) to beautiful witches who come to men at night and seduce
    them, taking away the men's vitality in the process. Indeed, in A
    Crimson Spring, Succubus can read the thoughts of people who are
    sexually attracted to her. But the protagonist notes that he is not
    attracted to her and thus she has no power over him, a potentially
    antagonistic or at least ambiguous attitude on the part of the
    protagonist towards his friend. Yet it is primarily Succubus who
    supports the protagonist during the game, and she is among the
    characters whom the protagonist must confront and judge during his
    journey through his psychic space. Another female character in A Crimson
    Spring has been promiscuously and knowingly spreading a quick-acting and
    deadly STD to her many partners: much like the mother/prostitute in No
    Time To Squeal, she is a killer who cannot be killed. The protagonist is
    also asked to judge this woman in his psychic space, and so decide his
    relationship to her. The resolution of these relationships between the
    protagonist and the women in A Crimson Spring is crucial to the outcome
    of the protagonist's life. In No Time To Squeal as well, the
    relationship of the protagonist to her mother is integral to how the
    protagonist develops.

    The protagonists of these games have ambivalent feelings of both fear
    and love towards significant women in their lives, as reflected in their
    perception of women as deadly prostitutes or succubi and simultaneously
    as a source of solace and object of love. In both games, the ambivalent
    relationship between the protagonist and a woman is a source of internal
    conflict for the protagonist, and therefore a driving force in the
    protagonist's actions as he/she struggles to resolve the ambivalence. In
    No Time To Squeal, the conflict is quite explicit: the protagonist is
    trying to get out of the woman's body alive, and finishing the game
    reflects the resolution of this psychic struggle for independence and
    life. In A Crimson Spring, there are two possible resolutions of the
    conflict: the protagonist either moves further away from the female
    characters and relates to them antagonistically, or moves closer to them
    and relates to them from a more intimate and vulnerable position.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: Emily Short

    TITLE: Fine-Tuned
    AUTHOR: Dionysius Porcupine (a.k.a. Dennis Jerz)
    EMAIL: jerzdg SP@G uwec.edu
    DATE: 2001-2002
    PARSER: Inform Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/FineTune.z8
    VERSION: Release 8

    When "Fine Tuned" appeared in the IF Competition, it was widely
    considered to be the best unplayable game ever entered. The opening
    scene was full of humor and style, but once you started rolling down the
    road there were so many bugs that it was more or less impossible to
    finish -- in fact, it eventually emerged that no actual ending had been
    implemented. I thought this was quite a pity, since once a game has been
    played in the competition, even a bugfixed version has (it seems)
    relatively little chance of garnering a large audience; so when I heard
    that Dennis Jerz had released a more polished and complete form of his
    game, I promised myself that I would try to play it at some point.

    The good news is that the fixed version is (as far as I could tell,
    anyway) effectively debugged, and that there's a great deal more to the
    game than I ever saw on the first playing. The bad news is that this
    expanded game -- though it does a number of quite intriguing things --
    is still a bit shaky around the edges in terms of playability, not
    always consistent in tone, and still doesn't entirely end.

    The game is billed as a romance. In the competition version, I didn't
    get far enough ever to meet the second party of the romance, but I
    assumed that Troy Sterling was destined to meet and love Melody Sweet.
    In the expanded version it's clear that that's not the romance in
    question -- Troy seems intrigued by Melody, but she doesn't return the
    feeling, and ultimately it's hard to see Troy as capable of really
    deeply loving anything but his own self-image. Instead, in the last
    chapter of the game (at least, the last chapter currently implemented),
    there are sparks flying between Melody and Aloysius Pratt, Troy's
    self-effacing but much smarter side-kick, who just happens to have a
    pretty good singing voice. I was charmed by this twist of the plot --
    the earlier phases of the game had done a good job of preparing me for
    Troy and Melody not to wind up together -- but I felt that there was too
    little set-up for Pratt's side of it, and (even more disappointingly)
    too little pay-off. The game ends maybe four fifths of the way through
    the plot, with a "to be continued", and I've rarely been so vexed
    (though the last episode of "Twin Peaks" comes to mind). What remains of
    the plot is far too little to make a game of its own (unless Jerz
    expands considerably on what I had assumed would be perhaps one more
    action sequence and then some character interaction); without it, *this*
    game falls on its nose. We've done all the hard work, we've completed
    the puzzles, and we ought by rights to get a payoff: to gloat over the
    defeated villain, see the love plot tied off properly, and ride into the
    sunset. I don't know what Dennis currently plans to do with the game,
    but I wonder whether it's realistic to expect another game consisting
    only of the ending of this one. What I'd really prefer is a *complete*
    version of "Fine Tuned" -- you know, one with all the chapters.

    (This also makes me curious about the viability of an IF serial, to be
    released chapter by chapter. The only thing I know of that comes close
    is the "Earth and Sky" series, but its episodes more or less have their
    own complete narrative arcs. The first one may be brief, but it does at
    least address the major problem that arises and has some kind of
    resolution; "Another Earth, Another Sky" is long enough and complete
    enough to stand on its own, and this is presumably part of the reason it
    did so well in the competition. I'm not sure whether there's room in the
    IF world for a plot that unfolded in several separately-released pieces,
    no one piece a complete narrative; but if that's what Dennis intended
    with this game, I hope he still means to write the ending.)

    A smaller sin, but still one that interfered with my full enjoyment of
    the game, is the way that "Fine Tuned" becomes humorously self-aware at
    the wrong times. References to and parodies of older IF works are not
    infrequent elements of modern games, and the punning name of one of the
    objects in the professor's cabinet is a just-acceptable entry in that
    collection. (A groaningly bad pun, but are there ever any really good
    puns?) What grated on me were the moments of meta-commentary, when the
    game or its characters became aware of their IF-ness -- as when the
    professor warns Melody that she is going to have to complete a quest
    involving placating trivially interactive characters, and so on. It's
    mildly funny, but, to my mind, too jarring to be worth the humor. The
    game world, with its melodrama characters and its stylish puzzles, is
    otherwise so well-constructed that it seems a pity to break the
    illusion.

    Having said all that, I'd like to look at some of the ways that the game
    does succeed -- particularly, at how it succeeds in building up the
    setting and restrictions on player action that make it so amusing. Adam
    Cadre, in his competition review
    (http://adamcadre.ac/calendar/10147.html), commented on "Fine Tuned"'s
    success at participatory comedy -- slapstick that the player is tricked
    into performing himself -- and I more or less agree with his analysis of
    how this works. The player is encouraged to do one thing or another by
    the explicit goals of the plot; naturally, he charges ahead, and finds
    himself tripped up by some niggling aspect of the environment. This kind
    of thing occurs mostly in the Troy Sterling sections: Adam talks about
    the humor with the parking brake, but similar techniques govern Troy's
    race with the train (which leads to a breakdown of the car and an
    embarrassing trek back to the livery stable for water) or with his
    attempts to break into the professor's house undetected. The game
    doesn't force the player to screw up in any one particular way, but the
    deck is stacked against Troy, and he can't win. Even if you have the
    prescience to bring a full bucket of water with you on the drive north,
    the bucket will spill when you have to stop the car -- the embarrassing
    return to the livery stable is unavoidable either way.

    To some extent, writing IF like this is a bit like strewing a room with
    banana peels. The author doesn't necessarily know which of various
    mistakes the player will make, but if he lays enough traps, it's more or
    less inevitable that the player will trigger one of them. The other
    thing that makes this successful in "Fine Tuned" is that most of these
    mistakes, though funny, are obviously not fatal; there's no reason to
    undo them or try to work out a way to avoid them, so they don't feel
    like puzzles. They're just part of the narrative.

    Discussions of IF design often touch on intentionality -- teaching the
    player how to interact with the game world so that he can solve puzzles
    and push the plot forward while maintaining a sense that he's an active
    agent in the game. What Jerz fosters here is more or less the opposite
    -- inadvertency, perhaps? -- which I might define as a tendency for the
    player's actions to have unintended consequences that nonetheless
    advance the plot, characterization, and humor of the game. This kind of
    treatment wouldn't (I think) stand entirely on its own -- giving a
    player an environment in which to bumble around, with no idea of his
    goals or the means by which he might achieve them, is a recipe for
    disengagement and disaster. But Jerz does give the player goals and
    well-defined puzzles; he just makes the route to solution as
    entertaining as the outcome.

    Another interesting point is the way the game handles player-character
    behavior. Like "Christminster" or "Plundered Hearts," "Fine Tuned"
    refuses to let its female protagonist do anything excessively
    unladylike, such as climbing a tree or walking into the bedroom of her
    sleeping (male) host. But the other PC, the autoist Troy Sterling, is
    characterized by a more interesting device: a number of odd or
    inappropriate behaviors are permitted, but if Troy tries them he loses
    points. Failing to wave to strangers, say, or treating a young lady with
    disrespect -- these things detract from Troy's decorum score. Soon the
    player is obediently doing all the things Troy is "supposed" to do,
    however silly or irrelevant to the progress of the game's larger goals
    -- in other words, cooperating in the character of someone whose chief
    concern is how he appears to others. (That he in fact looks like a bit
    of an idiot is clear not only from the reactions of the other NPCs, but
    from the view that we have of him when playing Melody Sweet. The player
    knows that Troy is being silly, but the game shepherds him into playing
    the character as written, even so. Troy's refusal to drive as far as the
    length of his own driveway without a full kit of automobile attire is
    more comical evidence of this same trait.)

    The segments with Melody are less broadly played. Melody isn't as much
    of a figure of ridicule, and she's allowed to succeed at more of what
    she does; there are fewer pratfalls set up for her to take. It is in
    Melody's portions of the game that the setting is allowed to shine most:
    the backstory of the artifact fits perfectly into an early-20th-century
    kind of archaeology, and at times it's somewhat creepy, though for the
    most part the game's lightheartedness prevails. Still, I was a bit
    unnerved when, as Melody, I started speaking ominous nonsense.

    I might have liked there to be slightly more attention lavished on the
    room descriptions, some of which are little more than lists of exits.
    Even so, there's enough there to provide interest and serve as a
    counterpoint to the broader Troy-centric sections of the game. The use
    of the period song about automobile drivers, for instance, and a few
    other accurately researched touches do a good deal for the setting; I
    was reminded of some of the things I like best about Peter Nepstad's
    1893. This game, naturally, is attempting something different, and uses
    its researched details much more sparingly, but they are valuable
    nonetheless.

    Also charming were Melody's interactions with Pratt in the final
    chapter, which work on a similar principle to the Troy slapstick: the
    author provides a number of opportunities to interact (somewhat
    flirtatiously) with Pratt. The player's natural inclination to explore
    the game -- to interact where obvious interaction is available -- leads
    her into and through these little scenes, without any real sense that
    her hand has been forced. Though there was actual puzzle-solving to do,
    I was finding it much more fun hanging around Pratt, and was disinclined
    to leave until I had to; in the meantime I was content to let Troy
    bumble around, trying unsuccessfully to solve the puzzles himself.

    Overall, I see a great deal of potential in this game -- if it were
    finished, which it still isn't. Until the plot concludes, it will always
    be a bit unsatisfying. All the same, the author has developed certain
    aspects of game design to a high art, with excellent characterization
    for PCs and NPCs alike, and an original premise and setting. And the
    management of the humor is ground-breaking.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    From: Adam Myrow

    TITLE: Sunset Over Savannah
    AUTHOR: Ivan Cockrum
    E-MAIL: ivan SP@G cockrumville.com
    DATE: 1998
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/savannah.gam
    Version: 1.0.3, 3/5/98

    Sunset Over Savannah was one of the most experimental games of the 1997
    competition, and to my mind, tried something more daring than most games
    before or since. I honestly can't think of any other game that has you
    play the role of somebody else so completely. The story is simple
    enough: you play a person on the last day of his/her vacation. This
    person has realized that they hate their job and are thinking of
    quitting. That's it. This is such an ordinary situation that it would
    take some serious effort to make it interesting. In many respects, the
    author of this game succeeds at doing that. The method is to have the
    player go walking on the beach and try to come to a decision. This isn't
    just any old beach, however. It's Tybrisa Island in Savannah, Georgia. I
    have a feeling that Ivan Cockrum has been to this place. The
    implementation is so detailed that I honestly hope it's accurate. I
    really feel like I've been there. How many games will take the time to
    let you build sand castles, swim in the ocean, even do dumb things to
    get hurt? On top of that, it even gives clever responses when you try
    going up or down in a location where you can't.

       >d
       Going to dig a hole to China, are you?

       >yes
       But you'd burn up at the earth's fiery core!

    The status line shows your current state of mind, which serves both as
    score and as a temporary description of your physical state. My favorite
    moment was when I foolishly put my hand in boiling water and the status
    line changed to "boiled."

    The game is so detailed that it even lets you eat a live shrimp! It's
    not something I'd do in real life, but the description of it gave me an
    idea of what it might be like. In fact, I didn't even notice that this
    passage contains a grammar error until just now!

       >eat shrimp
       You look with trepidation at the live, wriggling shrimp. Well, if
       it's good enough for sushi eaters... You pop the shrimp into your
       mouth and crunch down on it, shell, legs and all. You're struck with
       a brief sense of nausea that passes as quickly as it came. The
       shrimp's juices roll over your tongue and trickle down your throat,
       at the same both time [sic] sharply salty and subtly sweet. In the
       end, you decide it's not that bad. Not that bad at all.

    Yet, with all this hard work, I ended up filling strangely empty after
    completing the game. I almost feel guilty about it, because it may be
    the most interactive environment ever to be written. The problem I had
    with the game was that its environment was so realistic that when
    something that didn't quite fit with real life occurred, it broke the
    rhythm. Yet, these events are what makes the game into something besides
    an interactive art piece. Here's what I'm talking about.

    Right at the beginning of the game, we get this:

       A sign advertising boiled peanuts points east, into the pavilion.
          You see a clam shell here.

       Your stomach grumbles at the sight of the boiled peanut sign. You
       realize that, in your agitated state, you've completely forgotten to
       eat dinner.

    This was a perfect start. It gives the player an initial goal which fits
    right in with the introduction. It's perfectly reasonable to imagine
    that you would have forgotten to eat if you were in the preoccupied
    state described in the intro. So, my natural response is to go east and
    work my way to the snack bar to buy some peanuts. Of course, as luck
    would have it, the vendor is about to close. Well, I was lucky enough to
    catch him in time and this is what happened.

       >buy peanuts
       You clear your throat to get the vendor's attention before asking,
       "Pardon, could I have some peanuts?" "Oh, sure," says the vendor. "I
       think I've got a few left... yup, you're in luck. I'm closing up for
       the night. Another few minutes and I woulda tossed 'em." He takes a
       pot holder from beneath the counter and uses it to grab a wireframe
       sieve resting in the boiler. He bends over the boiler, and as he
       does, a small steel key slides out of his shirt pocket and falls into
       the bubbling water. Using the sieve, he scoops up the bobbing
       peanuts. He waits a moment while the sieve drains, and then dumps the
       peanuts into a brown paper sack. You dig a dollar out of your pocket
       and hand it over, and he in turn hands you the sack of peanuts.
       Apparently, he hasn't noticed his missing key.

    Now, I'm not thinking at all like an adventure game player right now.
    I'm role-playing. What would I do in this case? I'd say "hey, you
    dropped your key in the water. You'd better get it out of there." The
    vendor would get the key with his sieve and be quite grateful. It could
    be his house key, car key, or any number of other important keys. So, I
    tried to tell him about the key.

       >tell vendor about key
       It occurs to you that you ought to keep that bit of information to
       yourself. If the vendor recovers the key, you may not get another
       chance to acquire it.

    Suddenly, the game has slapped me in the face and said in essence, "Hey,
    you're an adventurer! Don't you know that you should value any key with
    your life and not let anybody else have it?" Now, I realize that there
    had to be something to keep it from being dull, but I think it would
    have been much better to not have shown the player the key until the
    vendor left. What this demonstrates is just how hard it is to make an
    ordinary setting into a game.

    Compare this to the opening of Lurking Horror. It starts out in an
    ordinary setting with the player merely being told to write a term
    paper. I won't get into the specifics, but basically, it becomes very
    obvious that something weird is going on and the player will become
    interested in such things as crowbars and keys. In other words, I feel
    that by prompting the player to buy peanuts immediately and not giving
    any chance for exploration, there is no motivation for getting the key.

    Of course, that key turns out to be incredibly important. Getting the
    key is not a particularly easy thing. After the vendor pours out the
    boiling water and remaining peanuts, a flock of gulls shows up to fight
    over the trash. So, you now have to get that flock of gulls out of the
    way before you can sift through the trash and find that key. This was a
    fairly natural puzzle. Once I had the key, I was able to open the gate
    and find a crowbar and two barrels. One barrel was full of aluminum cans
    and the other was full of glass bottles. With further exploration, I
    found the glass mites. These are insects which take glass and build
    their home out of it. I was also now seeing an intriguing flash of light
    from the water pipes. Something was up there, and I wanted to get it.
    This was the way the first puzzle should have been handled. Show the
    player the obstacle first, then he or she will want to solve the puzzle
    instead of treating it like real life.

    This also began a second turn from realism into text adventure mode.
    That is, destruction of property. However, this first act of
    destructiveness is apparently not expected by the PC. Perhaps, he or she
    was thinking that by getting the glass bottles near the mites, it would
    be possible to have them help out in getting that mysterious object. The
    plan works, but not quite as expected.

       >push canister east
       You put your shoulder to the canister again and try to move it
       further east, fighting the friction of the sandy floor. Sand piles up
       against the leading edge of the canister, but still you struggle
       onward, making slow progress. You make it almost to the far end of
       the pavilion, where the canister freezes in the sand. You brace
       yourself and try to force it with a good, strong shove... until
       crash! the canister goes over on its side, and you with it. You look
       up to find that the canister has begun rolling down the slope towards
       the ocean. You chase after it, but it's picking up speed. It
       continues its descent, heading towards one of the pier's cement
       pylons. You redouble your efforts to catch it, and it looks like you
       just... might... make it... Crash! The canister rebounds off the
       pylon and shatters with a hideous cacophony, spewing bottles and
       chunks of thin blue plastic in a rain of broken glass.

    Now, it was fairly easy to get the mite into a glass bottle of water and
    drop the bottle on the pile of glass and plastic. Presto, a castle is
    built which reaches the mysterious object and we score a first step. So,
    this was a pretty well-done puzzle. The object turns out to be a scuba
    mask.

    Next, we notice an old bottle that doesn't get used by the glass mites.
    It turns out to have a treasure map in it! So, I thought the game had
    pulled a brilliant bait and switch, giving me a new goal. Why not?
    Finding treasure would certainly give the PC more money and they could
    quit that dull office job without a care in the world. So, how to get
    that treasure? Well, this involves yet more destruction of property.
    This time, it's deliberate. It includes breaking a stave on a trash can,
    ripping a shingle from a roof, and moving benches into a staircase. The
    staircase thing isn't destructive, but it would sure get some weird
    reactions in the morning from tourists who saw it. In the mean time,
    there is a scoring opportunity when looking at the sunset from the roof.
    We are told of a weird vision where the PC sees himself leaving his body
    and floating high into the sky to overlook the area. A little strange,
    but tolerable.

    I don't know why, but I really thought the destructive things the PC
    does just didn't fit. For one thing, the default response to violence is
    to the effect that the PC is at one with the world and not violent
    especially after the vacation. Ok, so if the PC is so at peace with
    things, why is he/she tearing the place up? Oh well, back to the
    treasure hunt. That turns out to be another let-down. After improvising
    the shovel with the shingle, we dig like mad until, just as we hit
    something, the hole collapses. Buried in sand, the PC has another
    vision. This time, it is a vision of being tied up and captured by
    pirates. When the PC comes out of it, an elderly couple helps him/her
    out of the sand and asks what he/she was digging for. After brushing off
    the question, the PC is left alone to wonder what just happened. It also
    gets another scoring chance out of the way. By this time, the only goal
    left for the PC is to talk him/herself into quitting their job. I was
    quite frustrated at this point. It would have been much easier to type
    "quit my job" at the prompt. However, I had to keep motivating the PC
    towards that goal. The rest of the puzzles became less and less
    believable. The destruction of property continues at a break-neck pace.
    By the end of it, there will be a 200-year-old brick missing from the
    sidewalk. It is permanently lost in the waves. The PC will have another
    weird vision of dancing in the 1920's or so just from seeing part of the
    floor of the old pavilion and later typing "dance." They will finally
    catch a crab which must be boiled to get it out of its shell. Of course,
    since the boiler at the vending stand is locked up with a clamp, the PC
    will just have to rip the lid off with that ever handy crowbar. The
    shell, once relieved of its occupant, fits perfectly into that sculpture
    of a dragon. Surprisingly, the sculpture turns into a real dragon and
    flies off! So, the PC decides to quit their job. The game ends here with
    the PC ready to write that resignation letter.

    So, a game which started with great promise of how to make a natural
    setting into an interesting place had to resort to wild inconsistency to
    make an adventure out of it. If the game had stuck to things like the
    glass mites and a coral reef that the PC encounters, it would have
    worked better for me. It would have also been nice to undo some of the
    damage. For example, having the brick wash ashore so it could be
    replaced, and somehow having an optional puzzle to fix the roof.

    The bottom line is that this game was hampered by trying to be an
    adventure when the author clearly wanted a work of art. I suspect that
    it could have been released in the IFArt Show many years later and would
    have been able to go for pure setting and dispense with the artificial
    puzzles and fantasy elements. What I learned from Sunset Over Savannah
    was that while realistic and detailed settings are important to me,
    believable plot is just as important if not more so.

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