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ISSUE #25 - June 20, 2001

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

                             ISSUE #25

               Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
                           June 20, 2001

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

    SPAG #25 is copyright (c) 2001 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 Stephen Granade

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

    Busted!
    Degeneracy
    FailSafe
    Guess The Verb
    Kaged
    Nothing More, Nothing Less
    Ralph
    So Far
    SpeedIF 8: A Freak Accident Leaves Seattle Pantsless
    Textfire Golf
    Zugzwang

    SPECIFICS
    =========
    Symetry

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

    Welcome to the twenty-fifth issue of SPAG, marking over seven years of
    continuous publication. If this were a comic book, I'd make it a
    double-sized issue, and maybe have a guest appearance by Spider-Man.
    Since SPAG is instead a collection of freely-submitted reviews, I really
    don't have a lot of control over what size it is. And even if Marvel was
    willing to lend me one of their properties for the celebration, I think
    ol' Spidey would lose a bit in the ASCII format. So instead, I'll mark
    the occasion by announcing a couple of new SPAG features, both of which
    were brought about by requests and discussion from the rec.*.int-fiction
    newsgroups on Usenet.

    First off, I'm proud to herald the advent of The SPAG Interview, which
    (barring various disasters) will appear in every issue of SPAG
    henceforth. Now, SPAG is no stranger to interviews -- our annual
    competition issue has featured interviews with highly-ranked comp game
    authors for as long as the IF competition has existed. SPAG readers have
    always enjoyed these interviews, and lately that sentiment has grown
    into a groundswell of enthusiasm for a regular interview feature in
    SPAG. Since I'm never one to ignore a groundswell, I've instituted just
    such a feature, and we inaugurate the series by talking with Stephen
    Granade. Granade has written several acclaimed pieces of IF including
    "Losing Your Grip", "Arrival", and "Common Ground"; he's been the Big
    Kahuna of the IF Competition for the past two years; he runs the premier
    IF web site at http://interactfiction.about.com -- this is a guy who has
    given a *lot* to IF. If SPAG had a cover, he'd be on it. I'm pleased
    with the interview, and looking forward to talking with other IF
    luminaries in the future. I'm also quite open to receiving submissions
    for The SPAG Interview, though I'd ask that you query first.

    The other new feature I'm starting with this issue is the SPAG New
    Releases Shelf, but that won't, technically, be a part of SPAG itself.
    Rather, it'll appear on the SPAG web page. This new feature comes as a
    result of discussion on the int-fiction newsgroups, where it was argued
    that a dependable reference source for recently released games would be
    a Good Thing. Regular readers may have noticed how each SPAG's News
    section contains such a listing of new games, and Lucian Smith suggested
    to me that since I compile that data anyway, maybe I could put it on a
    web page. I queried our friendly SPAG Webmaster, Joe DeRouen, and he
    said, "Sure!" -- thus was the SPAG New Releases Shelf born. The page
    will list all games that have been released in the past 3-6 months, at
    least all those that I'm aware of via announcement posts to the
    newsgroups. Because of the fundamental instability of these games'
    initial locations as they move from the incoming directory to the
    archive proper, the page will not feature links to the games, but I
    trust that stalwart adventurers such as yourselves will be able to solve
    the puzzle of where to download a particular game. If the game is
    announced but not on the archive, I'll try to include a URL for it. The
    SPAG New Releases Shelf will be updated irregularly, since IF games
    (except for competition entries) don't really emerge on any rigorous
    schedule -- I'll always include a "last update" date on the page, and
    don't panic if your newly released masterpiece doesn't appear on the
    page within moments of your announcement. It'll get there!

    Meanwhile, all the regular SPAG features like news, scoreboard, and of
    course reviews will continue, at least as long as people keep submitting
    them! Thanks for sticking with us for the past seven years -- here's to
    the next 25 issues!

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

    NEW RELEASES SHELF
    To correspond with its web presence, the regular "New Games" section of
    SPAG News gets a spiffy new name. The past few months have been a
    mini-comp-o-rama, and the new releases reflect this, but there are some
    other non-minicomp-related games in there, highlighting lesser-known
    development systems like ADRIFT and Alan. (How's that for an
    overhyphenated sentence?)
       * LOST by Eric Mayer
       * Degeneracy by Leonard Richardson
       * The Last Sonnet of Marie Antoinette by Emily Short
       * Menagerie by David Good
       * HighlandComp games
       * LOTECHComp games
       * Douglas Adams tribute SpeedIF games
       * Walkthrough-comp games
       * Bugged by Anssi Raisanen

    > OOPS
    SPAG #24 hadn't been out five minutes when I received notice that it
    contained not one, but two aggravating errors. First of all, my claim
    that Kaged did not receive any XYZZY nominations was simply flat-out
    wrong. It *was* nominated, in the "best NPCs" category. Secondly, the
    author of the SmoochieComp entry "Nothing More, Nothing Less" (reviewed
    in this issue) is named Gilles Duchesne, not Giles. I apologize for the
    mistakes.

    SUPERCHUNG
    Last issue I mentioned that chungkuo.org has become far and away the
    supreme IF telnet site (not that there was a lot of competition for the
    title.) Well, the best has become even better, by including all past
    issues of SPAG! Yes, you too can telnet to chungkuo.org and read a back
    issue of SPAG, then click on the review's link to play the game it
    discusses. Granted, this functionality is substantially similar to
    what's offered in the Review Index of the SPAG web page, but these are
    connected to the issues themselves rather than indexed reviews. Plus,
    you can telnet to it. How cool is that? Telnet!

    BACK TO AVALON
    Every community has its legends, and one of ours centers around a game
    called Avalon, later retitled Once and Future. This gigantic TADS game
    was announced, then re-announced, then re-re-announced (repeat as
    necessary) until it became the unchallenged king of all vaporware IF. In
    fact, now authors are cautioned from announcing their games in advance,
    lest they "pull an Avalon." It was the Daikatana of text adventures,
    except that when it finally did come out, it didn't suck. It was
    published by the now-defunct Cascade Mountain Publishing, and SPAG
    devoted an entire issue (#16) to it. It was a commercially published
    text adventure, and many enjoyed it. Now the game has come full circle,
    having been released as freeware on, well, April 1st. But it's no hoax:
    Once and Future is now available for free from an IF Archive near you.

    IT'S RAINING MINICOMPS
    Long, detailed games have been conspicuous by their absence from the IF
    scene lately, but a swarm of tiny little games have come in to fill the
    vacuum. I don't really have the time or inclination to run down all the
    details here, but I'm happy to hit you with a swath of URLs by which you
    can chase down the details yourself. Ready? Here goes:
       * IF art show: http://members.aol.com/iffyart/gallery.htm
       * SpeedIFs past and present: http://www.fourcoffees.com/if/speedif
       * HighlandComp: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/mini-comps/highland/
       * LOTECHcomp: http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/4746
       * Douglas Adams tribute SpeedIF: http://www.fourcoffees.com/dna/
       * Walkthrough Comp: http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/walkthrough2.htm

    REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW, WHERE ARE YOU? WE NEED SOME HELP FROM YOU NOW...
    Okay, so maybe that headline doesn't really work unless you've got the
    Scooby-Doo theme song running through your head, but the sentiment is
    what's important: SPAG needs reviews! Every three months I acquire
    several new gray hairs worrying about whether I'll have enough reviews
    to fill a respectably-sized issue. Please save me from a Clairol future
    by submitting your reviews for IF games! In case you're wondering what
    to review, here's our traditional list of wants:

    SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
    ========================
    1. The Adventures of Helpfulman
    2. Bugged
    3. Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I.
    4. Douglas Adams tribute SpeedIF games (any, some, or all!)
    5. Dungeon (the mainframe version of Zork)
    6. Heroine's Mantle
    7. Lost
    8. LOTECHcomp games (any, some, or all!)
    9. Menagerie
    10. Westfront PC

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

    [For this issue, it was my privilege to interview Stephen Granade about
    the IF Competition, his games, and his excellent About.com website.
    Enjoy. --Paul]

       SPAG: The first question is traditional: Could you tell us a little
       about yourself? Who are you, what do you do for a living, and so
       forth?

    SG: I've been interested in interactive fiction for a long time. My dad
    bought a TRS-80 Model IV when I was young, and one of the first games I
    had for it was a strange little text adventure called House of the Seven
    Gables, which had nothing to do with the book of the same name.
    Eventually I moved on to Infocom games, by which time I was hooked. A
    friend of mine and I worked our way through Hitchhiker's Guide to the
    Galaxy, managing to get through the babel fish puzzle in only a handful
    of trials. I remember trying to read the microscopic printing on a
    circuit board in that game, coming up with various crazy solutions.
    ("Maybe if I put tea substitute on the board, the drops of liquid might
    magnify the print!")

    The release of the Lost Treasures of Infocom helped revive my interest
    in text adventures, as did my discovery of AGT at about the same time. A
    year later, in 1992, I stumbled upon the two int-fiction newsgroups and
    TADS and never looked back.

    Quite some time ago I moved to Durham, North Carolina to attend Duke
    University's physics graduate school. This had the benefit of giving me
    both a flexible schedule with plenty of free time and a fast internet
    connection on which to squander that free time.

    These days I am finally within sight of my PhD. Graduate school is odd
    in that you have a long-term plan and short-term goals but cannot make
    mid-range plans with any accuracy. I can tell you what I'll be doing for
    the rest of the month and be mostly right; I can make an informed guess
    as to what I'll be doing in three months; anything further and you might
    as well consult a Magic 8-Ball.

    After I graduate...well, I'm not sure. "Cannot Predict Now"

       SPAG: Let's talk a little about the competition. This is your third
       year organizing it -- what have you learned during that time?

    SG: Be patient and thoughtful. Running the competition involves a fair
    amount of responsibility, and it's not something I take lightly. I make
    the rules; I can change what I want as I deem necessary. But having that
    power doesn't mean I should exercise it willy-nilly.

    I've also learned to be content with decisions once I've made them. I
    won't be able to please everyone, regardless of what I decide to do.

    Overall, the past two competitions have gone smoothly. This has more to
    do with the nature of the interactive fiction community than with any
    great Comp Cheez skill I possess. The community is very interested in
    having the competition go well, and does its best to see that it does
    so.

       SPAG: What's the plan for this year's comp? What will be the same,
       what will be different, and most importantly, will there be t-shirts
       again?

    SG: It will be mostly the same as in previous years. The only large rule
    change I've made is that authors who enter anonymously or under a
    pseudonym must reveal their real names at the end of the competition.
    And there will be t-shirts, though probably no CDs.

       SPAG: I know that as the organizer you've maintained a pretty
       impartial stance, but you can tell us now: what have been your
       favorite comp games of the past few comps?

    SG: Arrival, of course.

    No, wait, that's from before I ran things. Being Andrew Plotkin has a
    special place in my heart -- when I began receiving games last year I
    found myself playing through it based on the title alone, and once I
    began I couldn't stop. I enjoyed For a Change, Metamorphosis, The HeBGB
    Horror!, and Six Stories a lot.

    It's very interesting to see the titles and blurbs of games beforehand.
    Authors send that information to me a month or more before the start of
    the competition, so I get to imagine what each game will be like based
    solely on that advance information. Two years ago, when Andrew Plotkin
    sent me the information for "Hunter, in Darkness," including his chosen
    pseudonym -- Dave Ahl, Jr. -- I managed to guess correctly that he was
    doing an IF version of Wumpus. Such feats of prognostication are rare,
    though. Often the games are completely different from what I had
    imagined.

       SPAG: As somebody who's written several significant non-comp games,
       but who also organizes the competition, what's your take on the
       argument that competition games get the lion's share of attention and
       that non-comp games are unfairly slighted?

    SG: I am ambivalent. Back in 1998, Lucian Smith did a rough-and-ready
    analysis of games released from 1994 through 1997 and concluded that
    about six large games were released in any given year, and that that
    number had not dropped during the years of the competition. But Lucian's
    data is now several years old. The number of large games per year hasn't
    really increased, and it certainly hasn't kept pace with the growing
    author pool.

    It's hard to measure how much attention large games get. People mention
    them for a while on the newsgroups if you're lucky, but pretty soon the
    game has dropped out of sight. Games entered in the yearly competition
    are buried under piles of reviews and feedback. Large games take so much
    effort to create that it's easy to be disappointed at the potentially
    miniscule response. Projects like the Interactive Fiction Review
    Conspiracy and the IF Bookclub are trying to put the spotlight on longer
    games, but those can only do so much.

    What we've seen recently are mini-competitions for small games. The
    number of minicomps keeps growing each year, and I worry that between
    them and the yearly competition, few authors will be interested in
    putting in the time and effort required for a large game.

       SPAG: Can you talk a little about your interactive fiction site on
       About.com? It's pretty widely regarded as first-rate, but I'm
       interested to know how you got the job, what your arrangement is with
       About, things like that.

    SG: About, Inc., a Primedia property; formerly About, Inc.; formerly
    About.com; formerly MiningCo; formerly The Mining Company; formerly (for
    a brief period) Total Quality Network. They began recruiting "guides,"
    as they call us, in early 1997. Recruiters looked at web pages devoted
    to different topics and then invited the authors of those pages to apply
    for a job. (Why was interactive fiction included? To this day I have no
    idea.) This sparked a running discussion on rec.arts.int-fiction about
    the unsolicited mail and whether what the company planned on doing was
    reasonable. The overall newsgroup response was tepid; this leads me to
    believe that I was the only one who applied, and thus got the job by
    default.

    My job is an interesting blend of librarian and essayist. I write
    columns about adventure games and maintain a library of links to other
    pages. I also have a news page and watch over a forum and weekly
    newsletter. For this I am paid via an arcane formula involving how many
    people visit the site and how much advertising revenue is taken in. I
    cover both text adventures and graphic adventures, with an emphasis on
    design issues.

    As I see it, the main benefit of my site is that it introduces new
    people to interactive fiction. I've gotten mail from people who came to
    my site to find information about graphic adventures and were pleasantly
    surprised to learn that text adventures were still being written.

       SPAG: What's been the best part of running that site?

    SG: The people I've met. I've had the opportunity to talk to Brian
    Moriarty and Jane Jensen about adventure games; I've also gotten to know
    a number of my regular visitors, who've turned out to be neat folks. I
    have friends I would never have met were it not for my site.

    The site's even helped people, as unlikely as that sounds. One woman
    told me how she was unable to leave her house much due to illness. To
    distract herself from her pain she'd play adventure games. My site
    helped her find more games, and gave her a place to go to read more
    about adventures. When I started working for About, I had no idea that
    it would grow so much or that it could have such an effect on people.

       SPAG: You've been a fairly prolific author. Which of your games are
       you proudest of, and why?

    SG: This is remarkably like asking me to choose which of my fingers is
    my favorite.

    All of my games do at least one or two things which I am proud of. If I
    had to choose one on which to pin the ribbon, I'd choose "Common
    Ground." Not because I think it was a spectacular success, but because
    it is the most I've stretched myself in writing a game.

    Let me wander a bit afield for a moment. I'm one of the poster children
    for "You can get better at writing IF through practice." Writing
    interactive fiction requires skill as well as native talent. Practice
    can improve your skill immensely. Few can spring full-formed from Zeus's
    brow, ready to craft works of great import. Just because your first game
    wasn't all that wonderful isn't reason in and of itself not to write
    another one.

    Mind you, if you're on your fifth game and still don't seem to be
    getting better, then you might consider a different line of work.

       SPAG: Do you plan to write more IF in the near future? If so, can you
       give us a little preview of the projects you have in mind?

    SG: I just wrote "Constraints" for Emily Short's TranscriptComp, after a
    hiatus of over a year (not counting the two IF Arcade games I wrote). I
    have a few ideas kicking around. One involves a $70 time machine and a
    TV remote control; the other is for a traditional score-driven
    puzzlefest. I'm hoping that the release of TADS 3 will help encourage me
    to actually write the damn things. Of course, I'm sure I'll have plenty
    of time to write them once I'm supposed to be writing my dissertation.

       SPAG: Finally, here's something I've always wondered about: why is
       your name on the ifMUD "Sargent?"

    SG: Ah, an easy one. My initials are SRG; long ago I came up with a
    number of words and names based on those initials. When I first logged
    into ifMUD lo those many years ago, I chose Sargent from that
    half-remembered list.

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

    Consider the following review header:

    NAME: 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.
    If you choose, you may also provide scores for the games you review, as
    explained in the SPAG FAQ. The scores will be used in the ratings
    section.  Authors may not rate or review their own games.

    More elaborate descriptions of the rating and scoring systems may be found
    in the FAQ and in issue #9 of SPAG, which should be available at:

            ftp://ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/magazines/SPAG/
     and at http://www.sparkynet.com/spag

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

    From: Murderous

    NAME: Busted!
    AUTHOR: Jon Drukman (also did port)
    EMAIL: jsd SP@G cyborganic.com
    DATE: July 1993 ADVSYS; 2001 Inform port
    PARSER: Infocom Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters; unreviewed ADVSYS version
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/busted.zip
         ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/advsys/busted.dat

    This is a port of an older Advsys title in order for the author to learn
    Inform and two things are clear: the game is firmly-rooted in the "old
    school" of adventuring; and that the author is not yet a master of
    Inform.

    You start as a University student with an urgent story-hook: an
    answerphone message from a friend who has just been ... busted! He has
    given you enough warning that you can hide all your 'stuff' before the
    cops catch up with you.

    You're provided with plenty of locations, but you visit rather than
    explore; there's plenty of objects, but their placement is so obvious
    it's fake. 'Random' events (turn-timed or location dependent) range from
    the disjointed to the outright daft. Nothing subtle here.

    The introduction was quite effective in bringing the immediacy of the
    situation to play, but it's abandoned for 'eat in X turns or die'.
    Thereafter the urgency proved too difficult to resurrect, so it was
    replaced by a 'get some sleep or die'. Eh? What happened to the urgent
    starting hook?

    Tech warning - there are a number of bugs, object conflicts, and the
    parser is 'functional' at best; but while they can be annoying they
    don't entirely destroy the game, just keep it simple. It's a plain urban
    school adventure, on mild drugs.

    The trump-card of this title is the humour, and if you hate/hated parts
    of your academic life then you'll find the game all the more funny: the
    truly appalling food, the space-case friends, evangelical Christians --
    BUSTED certainly has its moments. There are funny remarks and cute ideas
    that break up the otherwise sparse text. It's free. And you start with a
    joint in your inventory, which is an immediate saving grace, so the game
    isn't entirely without merit. But with all the brilliant IF in the world
    it's hard to be enthusiastic about it either.

    PLOT: Strays (0.7) ATMOSPHERE: Suitably rendered (1.3)
    WRITING: Functional, with humour (1.0) GAMEPLAY: Flat or dips (0.7)
    SOME HUMOUR AND FUN: Can't deny it (1.3)
    TOTAL: 5.0

    CHARACTERS: Colourful cardboard (1.1) PUZZLES: Arbitrary obituary (0.7)
    DIFFICULTY: Not a brain taxer, but parser and bugs don't help.

    SUMMARY: Check it out if you're interested in some retro adventuring
    with a drug twist, but it's probably better st0ned.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Degeneracy
    AUTHOR: Leonard Richardson
    E-MAIL: leonardr SP@G segfault.org
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: Inform standard (modified slightly)
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/degen.z5
    VERSION: Release 0.50

    One of the nice things about fantasy IF--particularly the sort of
    fantasy IF that Graham Nelson has called "lazy medieval," which covers
    anything prior to the invention of gunpowder--is that the ground is so
    heavily trodden that it's easy'n'fun to stand the player's expectations
    on their head. Leonard Richardson's Degeneracy does just that, and while
    the trick itself isn't an unqualified success, it works well enough.

    It seems you've been enlisted to kill a certain Baron--not only have you
    been enlisted, in fact, you've gone and done it just before the game
    starts, and your mission is now to get out of the Baron's castle.
    Problem is, the Baron has cursed you, and the curse prevents you from
    escaping, so you need to delve into some alchemy books to undo the
    curse. There's also a time limit of sorts, it turns out, though it's
    generous enough that you don't need to be extremely efficient. The game
    itself isn't particularly long--it can easily be solved in under 100
    moves, and the time limit kicks in at about 200 moves or so.

    The puzzles aren't especially exciting--there are only a few of them,
    and reading the manuals you find is essentially all you need to do--but
    there's lots of fun to be had in the writing. Much of it is
    mock-Elizabethan or thereabouts--lots of Surprising Capitalizations, for
    one thing, often put to amusing purposes. (There's one object containing
    water that you can pour over your head; suitably instructed, the game
    tells you that "you fit your Head under the deluge from the [object],
    and moisten your Hair." Better still are the antics of a pig you
    encounter, such as:

       The Pig wanders over to the heavy Portcullis & pokes its snout
       through on of the gaps in the iron Gate. A wistful look comes across
       the Pig's face, as it ponders a more carefree time in its life, a
       time redolent with Rolls in cool Mud & games of <>
       with its thirty-seven Grand-Children.

    The hints, liberally sprinkled with fake hints in the style of Infocom's
    Invisiclues, add to the humor. (E.g., in response to a question about
    how to get out of a certain room: "You might follow the carpet." "It
    leads off 'toward the sunrise'." "From which direction does the sun
    rise?" "Go east." "This is not technically a puzzle.") It's true that
    the game doesn't take every opportunity for humor that comes along--at
    least, so it seemed to me--but there are some surprisingly funny bits.
    (All the funnier because the game appears to take the dour persona of
    the PC so seriously.) The author wrote "Guess the Verb!", from the 2000
    competition, which was similarly full of sly humor.

    As mentioned, there's a trick of sorts in the game, on which I won't
    elaborate here. It's not a total success; some players, I know, thought
    it was a bug, which it most certainly isn't. There are indications that
    something's afoot well before the trick happens, though they depend to
    some extent, I think, on whether the player's moving around--fewer, if
    any, of the clues would be apparent to a player who's staying in one
    room working on a puzzle. (Technically, none of the puzzles are so hard
    that such concentration should be warranted, but you never know.) The
    nature of the trick is such that, unless duly warned, the player's
    likely to attribute the effect to a bug--that the author isn't extremely
    well known works against him in this case. (If it were Zarf trying to do
    the same thing, in other words, the player might tend to have more
    faith.) The moral is that an author planning a surprise of this kind
    should err on the side of overcluing (and taking excessive precautions
    to ensure that the player will see the clues). That aside--and I did get
    the clues, so it did work for me--it's a pretty clever idea, and again,
    the medieval setting helps: the player expects breaches of the fourth
    wall less, perhaps, than he or she might otherwise.

    It's also worth noting that, for a short game that may well exist for
    purposes of the above trick, Degeneracy's world is quite thoroughly
    created. There's a religion that, if not exhaustively described, comes
    across enough to be understood. There's a political system (well, hints
    about one). There' s a reasonably complex system of alchemy. And aside
    from all this, there are a couple of magic systems that have a variety
    of effects and are reasonably consistently applied. The production
    values are good enough, then, that this isn't simply lazy medieval
    fantasy.

    Degeneracy isn't a masterpiece, but it's not strictly a one-trick pony
    either--there's plenty to appreciate aside from the central gimmick.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: FailSafe
    AUTHOR: Jon Ingold
    E-MAIL: ji207 SP@G cam.ac.uk
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/FailSafe.z5
    VERSION: Current release

    The "narrative at war with a crossword" that describes most IF
    games--the competing demands of plot and puzzles, and the attempt to
    accommodate both without sacrificing either--is actually, as many have
    noted, a stand-in for a more fundamental question: how to involve the
    player in the story the author wants to tell while still telling that
    particular story? The answer is usually "with puzzles that don't detract
    from the structure/pacing/logic of the plot," but not always--it's
    possible to get the player involved in a story by means other than
    puzzles. Jon Ingold's FailSafe is a might-have-been in this
    respect--it's a story that could, I think, have stood on its own, and
    which is hindered more than helped by the puzzles it includes.

    The protagonist is the only one alive on a spaceship which has taken a
    beating after a battle with an alien ship, and is radioing to you, the
    player, for help. Specifically, the protagonist wants you to help him
    get the ship back in order before the next attack comes along. The
    signal isn't very good, though, and the protagonist is less than fully
    coherent, so ascertaining what's going on (or has gone on) secondhand is
    something of a challenge. (Particularly because all of the standard
    system commands--QUIT, SAVE, UNDO, the whole lot of them) are
    disabled--the better to reproduce the sense of actually communicating
    with someone, of course.) It's an interesting challenge,
    though--reconstructing past events (for purposes of gaining insight into
    a present situation) is an underused and potentially fruitful IF
    technique.

    As it happens, though, that's not the focus of what goes on here--there
    are a few puzzles, and then you reach one of a variety of endings. The
    puzzles aren't especially good; one amounts to trial and error (made all
    the more irritating by the absence of UNDO), and another is hindered by
    some thoroughly unhelpful syntax. (Yes, admittedly, a person is not a
    parser, and it's not entirely realistic to expect a person's
    comprehension to work the same way as a parser, but guess-the-syntax is
    guess-the-syntax.) The endings are good--thought-provoking and well
    worth reaching--but the puzzles, to my mind, don't fit.

    Here, it seems, you have a premise that makes the interactive hook, in
    the form of puzzles, largely unnecessary. The *game* is a puzzle in
    itself; you' re trying to figure out what exactly happened, and you're
    battling the protagonist's vagueness and confusion and the chaos
    inherent in a partly wrecked ship. The nasty/strange/welcome surprises
    that you come across should be able to tell the story and keep the
    player involved all by themselves, particularly when the game is this
    small. (Well, okay, it would probably have to be a little larger if
    there were no puzzles.) There's also room for more story development in
    the distance between player and protagonist: do they trust each other?
    What do each of them know that the other doesn't? (FailSafe does hit
    that angle at one point, but there's more that could be done with it.)

    Unnecessary puzzles aside, though, FailSafe has its moments. One
    particularly effective touch is a series of messages that the player
    receives from a computer analyzing what's happened and who was aboard
    the damaged ship, messages that the protagonist doesn't receive; the
    juxtaposition between the player's semicoherent account and the
    computer's records is occasionally chilling. The inadequate descriptions
    are part of what makes the game compelling--when several turns of static
    pass before the protagonist's voice returns, there's genuine suspense.
    There are also some nicely done red herrings--while there isn't as much
    exploration potential as there might be, there's enough to keep the game
    from feeling like a small set of puzzles. And the endings are genuinely
    surprising (though spoiled somewhat by the game's XYZZY award
    nomination; don't read the nominee list before you play the game), and
    force the player to rethink what's come before.

    FailSafe's small size works against it, I found--there's too little
    there for the player to be really pulled up short by any surprising
    turns. (The player doesn't spend long enough interacting with the
    protagonist, and getting a mental picture of the story, to be truly
    caught off guard by unexpected events; the assumptions and mental
    pictures aren't around long enough to cause much surprise when they're
    challenged or disproved.) Still, it's got an intriguing premise and it's
    creatively done, and its spin on the player-PC relationship makes it a
    must-play for IF theorists.

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

    From: Cedric Knight

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