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Game Reviews K

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

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

The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date.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

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    Table of Contents
    Kaged
    Katana
    King Arthur's Night Out
    Kissing The Buddha's Feet
    Klaustrophobia
    Knight Orc
    The KORC Trilogy

    Kaged
    From: Suzanne Britton <tril SP@G igs.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000

    TITLE: Kaged
    AUTHOR: Ian Finley
    E-MAIL: domokov SP@G aol.com
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2000/tads/kaged/kaged.gam
    VERSION: 1

    I hope Ian leads a happier life than his protagonists. His games get
    grimmer every year.

    "Kaged" is a dystopian tale strongly reminiscent of 1984 (but not
    derivative). Like just about everything its author has produced, it is
    strikingly original, evocative, well-written, and suicidally depressing
    :-) I quite liked it, though it is, in my opinion, not as successful as
    "Exhibition" or "Babel". It is more ambitious than either of those
    works, which leads me to be somewhat forgiving of its failures.

    As a mood piece, "Kaged" is excellent. Every bleak, oppressive nuance of
    the world you live in comes to life in the vivid writing, enhanced by
    graphics and sound (the opening picture is especially evocative), and
    your own character is well-drawn. As a story, it is ambitious, but less
    excellent. I felt that what began as tightly woven threads unraveled
    near the end--and not just because of the protagonist's dissolving
    sanity. I came out of the experience with no real understanding of what
    had happened and why. Many hints, many seeming contradictions, no
    certainties. Normally, I like it when a game leaves the player with a
    mystery, but this was just unsatisfying. It's hard to pinpoint
    why...perhaps partly because I felt I was expected to understand much
    more than I did. Certainly, my protagonist seemed to be way ahead of me,
    and as a result, I felt less connection with him.

    (Postscript: I've since spoken with Ian, and to some extent "it's
    intentional". Apparently, his playtesters kept pushing him for more
    ambiguity. Ah, well.)

    The programming was also not quite as polished as I've come to expect of
    this author. Again, it was trying to accomplish more than in earlier
    works, I think. The world was very fleshed-out, but flawed. I
    encountered a number of guess-the-verb problems. Perhaps the most
    egregious was the matchbook. It was lazily (and unintuitively)
    implemented as a single object, leading me to fumble for awhile before I
    simply typed "strike match":

         >get match
         You already have the book of matches!

         >get match from matchbook
         The book of matches isn't in the book of matches.

         >look in matchbook
         There's nothing in the book of matches.

    Rating: 8

    From: Stas Starkov  <stas_ SP@G mail.rb.ru>
    Review appeared in SPAG #25 -- June 20, 2001

    [Our man in Russia has sent us this rather scathing review of Kaged, and
    as usual I've gone over its sentences and tried to wrestle them into
    something resembling standard English. Any misinterpretations or errors
    in the translation (and apparently there were a few in my work on last
    issue's Gateway 2 review) are my fault. --Paul]

    HOLLYWOOD STRIKES AGAIN

    First, I must warn you that this review is an attempt to provide an
    opinionated critique of the game that won the 2000 IF Competition. But I
    don't like this game a lot. So as you can guess, I'll pour manure on
    "Kaged" in this review. That's the reason why I wrote the review. And
    this review includes personal comments about the author of the game, as
    well as a lot of cynicism and flame provocation (please, resist this
    possibility). Also I must add that I live in Russia, and consequently my
    points of view differ a lot from those of Americans. So you understand
    that this review is more than a little biased. So, if you're easily
    angered, stop reading now. That's not a joke. So there.

    The shareware version of "Kaged" includes images but no music. That's
    odd, because I know that his Competition 2000 entry contained both
    sounds and images. But I didn't bother downloading these rather big
    files (in sum more then 12 Mb), so I don't know what quality these
    additional "things" add. And I have played only the competition entry.

    When I started playing the game I felt that it was a parody on
    dystopias. Why? Look at this chunk of text from the beginning of the
    game:

       The madness started a week ago.  The entire Citadel of Justice is on
       razor edge.  It began in the Department of Enforcing when a patrolman
       shot his partner.  He begged to be locked away, claiming to see
       devils.

    and a bit later:

       >z
       Time passes...

       Pieter's stomach growls.  It's not a noise you want to hear again.

       >examine pieter
       Pieter has a sausage face set with two piggy eyes, like raisins.
       His spectacles are huge, saucer-like things that don't help the
       appearance.

       Pieter taps you on the shoulder.  "Um...  where would our office be,
       Commissar?"  There's something incredibly irritating about his voice,
       like the whine of a petulant child.

       >z
       Time passes...

       Pieter coughs behind you, a wet, phlegmy noise.

    Well, you see that it is possible to interpret the game comically. But
    then things show their darker side, and suddenly you notice all the
    misery of the world. And, gee, it's another dystopia. And not the best
    one I must add. I've read several dystopias but never found one that
    feels true enough for me. But more about that subject below.

    Ian Finley is not a novice author. This is his fourth (I think) game,
    but the first that I have played. And I don't want to play his other
    games now. Ian Finley was 20 years old (according to SPAG #23) when he
    wrote "Kaged" and he was studying acting at the University of Utah at
    that time. And I think that his theater and movie influences caused all
    that I don't like in this game.

    I live in Russia but I see a lot (and I mean *a lot*) of bad American
    movies. Even the latest Oscar's big winner "Gladiator" got me sick. It's
    not that this movie is bad. Not at all. But when I see that rich and
    beautiful woman run to a dying man that she hardly knows but already
    loves, I can sympathize and even (barely) understand her the first,
    second or even tenth time I see this thing. But when I see the same
    scene for the hundredth time (and I mean hundredth) in yet another
    movie, I get sick. I want to say that "Kaged" is very similar to _bad_
    American movies. The only thing that's missing is a girl-friend of the
    PC (and the pseudo-hero running hand in hand with her with a huge
    explosion in the background, as at the end of the usual bad movie). I
    read quite a lot of SF stories, so I'm hard to surprise, though. And
    this game shows nothing that I haven't read or seen before. Nothing that
    doesn't reek of decay.

    Which brings me to the question of plot. The plot wouldn't be that bad
    if you took only the very beginning and very ending of the game. At
    least it would be original. But when I saw the middle of the game and
    all those story twists I felt that I was seeing another bad movie with
    all the cliches and standard devices that I have already seen a thousand
    times. And the author manages to place at least two conflicting plots in
    this game. During the middle part of the game, my best guess was that
    this plot was entirely a mad dream of a druggie after a good joint.
    Later I found that my supposition was not far from the real plot, since
    for half the game author just lies to you. Yet another story of mind
    manipulation -- yet another idea that was beaten to death (Example: the
    dystopian movie "Brazil", which, by the way, is far better than
    "Kaged"). Another feeling that I had during game play: I felt that the
    author grabbed me from behind and I was dragged to the end of the game.
    This feeling was due in large part to the puzzles.

    Puzzles? Hah. There are puzzles but they're not the strongest side of
    the game. And considering my above descriptions I think you understand
    that I think that the puzzles stink badly. Why? This game is not a
    puzzleless game, so there are puzzles. But they are the worst puzzles I
    have ever seen. Why? OK, I'll give you an example (not from the game):
    Imagine that you only have a big piece of flammable wood (which you must
    get by helping an old man to find all his long lost teeth), a bottle of
    gasoline (which you steal) and a single match (which you found by
    pushing a high tree). When you have all of the above, you are teleported
    to the dark room. Huh! What do I need to do to find a ray of light in
    the kingdom of darkness? I hope you can guess the "solution". Yes, you
    can work out the solution easily, but can you find the match so easily?
    So, I ended up with the walkthrough, which is twice as odd because the
    puzzles in common are very straighforward. It's very, very annoying when
    all puzzles are based on _giving_ you the right and obvious tools to
    solve another puzzle. (And did you notice the old man in my example? He
    is there only to give you a piece of wood, but you must solve his errand
    first.) And this feels so unnatural, that I got sick (again). The
    puzzles stink badly. So there.

    Another feature that is not very interactive is the "talk" verb (as in
    "talk to worker"). According to the game, "this action will cause your
    character to examine the current situation and say whatever would be
    most appropriate." Someone on R*IF said that the menu-based
    interrogation system is a bad thing, but this "most appropriate"
    conversation is far less interactive and looks like a device from
    graphic adventures. Well, you have now two possible ways to interrogate:
    (a) to talk or (b) not to talk. But this restriction is solved
    brilliantly -- the game ignores your silence and continues to talk to
    you as usual. Dumb, dumb!

    But you might still believe that this game didn't get first place in the
    Competition for nothing. OK, I'll open your eyes. I'll tell you about
    the prose in this game. First, the amount of writing in "Kaged" is just
    huge. Second, for me any good (but not outstanding) prose with rotten
    thoughts behind it is just useless crap. And the more text in any art
    form, the worse, because I must force myself to read all these chunks of
    text trying to find something good. Well, it is possible to interest me
    with extraordinary writing wedded to a lame story (plot, I mean), but
    "Kaged" is not on this level of art. Writing must be on the same level
    as a story. If the writing is lower than the plot, the whole work will
    be unenjoyable (but that's not a rule). If a bit higher, the work will
    be boring and overblown. "Kaged"'s writing is the latter type.

    Many people like the atmosphere of the game. Well, yes that's something
    that you can try to play a game for, but for me atmosphere was broken by
    the rotten plot and stupid puzzles. Ian Finley shows himself as a
    skilled author, but concept of the game was a total disaster.

    This game reminds me of Stephen King's stories -- a lot of text, a lot
    of fake story turnings, a lot of characters, but the result is just
    boring. Yes, both authors (King and Finley) tried hard to make me
    believe in the story, but they failed. But King, at least, writes for
    money and the more text he produces, the more money he'll get.
    "Hollywood strikes again," I must say. "Kaged", for me, is a game where
    bad movies merge with the unstoppable urge to write.

    The dystopia is an old genre. (The first dystopia was written, I think,
    in the first half of the nineteenth century.) And all dystopias look the
    same to me. There's always a common story -- some variety of "Big
    Brother looks at you.", i.e. mega-government takes total control over
    people's lives, people who are just foolish soulless dolls and who work
    (the prime purpose of their lives) during all their miserable lives. Why
    is this concept is not working for me? Because life doesn't work like
    that. Life can be more grim but not so obviously evil. Sure, it's very
    visually striking to show a dystopia, but it was beaten to death ages
    ago. So if "Kaged" is somewhat of a premiere for IF (at least for me),
    for literature it's something like the rotten carcass of a horse. And as
    far as I can recall, _new_ dystopias are not published any more.

    What can I recommend to the author? Better spend your time on books and
    movies (and not only on good ones) first. And when you're sick from all
    this crap, you'll understand how not to implement a game. Write a story
    on the paper, read it and if you don't hear as your stomach growling in
    hate then, and only then, start to write an IF game. At least the game
    will be original.

    Directory with TADS .gam file and associated files (competition version)

    Katana
    From: Valentine Kopteltsev <uux SP@G mail333.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #34 -- September 24, 2003

    TITLE: Katana
    AUTHOR: Matt Rohde
    EMAIL: rohdemusic SP@G yahoo.com
    DATE: 2003
    PARSER: TADS Standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/katana.gam
    VERSION: 2.0

       Judge for yourself, Valentina Mikhailovna -- in the 15th century, the
       Heaven knows who sails up to you and starts speaking Japanese.
                         -- V. Belobrov, O. Popov, "Valentine's Day"

    Are you tired of IF experiments? Are you looking for an old-school game
    you could spend a few quiet days with? Then you should give Katana a
    try.

    Yes, it's basically a rather conventional text adventure, set in Japan.
    A disclaimer is needed here: it's difficult to judge the depth of the
    author's knowledge of Japanese history and traditions by this game; the
    only thing that's sure is that he knows a whole lot more about it than I
    do. Likewise, I can't say the game provided me with a comprehensive
    picture of Japanese culture, in general, or Japanese mythology, in
    particular, but that didn't seem to be the author's intention anyway.
    The only purpose of all the Far-Eastern decorations, references, and
    characters (which, by the way, they served very well) seems to have been
    the creation of an atmospheric setting -- and it's probably better so.
    One of the pleasant aspects of such an approach is that one doesn't get
    the impression that the author plumes himself with his erudition; at
    least, I never got the feeling of being talked down to because of my
    lack of certain knowledge, as has sometimes happened with other games.

    The story underlying this work is a fine match for the setting. Sure,
    it's not the fanciest I ever encountered, but it's still a pretty good
    one. The author tells it very competently using the flashback technique.
    My only complaint about it was that the player character somehow didn't
    get emotionally involved into it -- he seemed to remain a distant
    observer. That's all the more paradoxical, since this story concerns the
    PC's ancestor, and since in the course of the game, the PC makes
    considerable efforts in order to put right injustices of the past.

    The puzzles are an essential part of old-school text adventures; in
    Katana, I'd describe them as "not exceptional, but solid". Their main
    virtue is the smoothness with which they fit into the story. Let's put
    it this way: while probably none of them will be an aspirant for the
    "Best Puzzle" Xyzzy Award for 2003, they do help to create a consistent
    and well-built structure for the game. Many of them are based on careful
    examination of your surroundings. There's nothing wrong with that,
    though I got the feeling that this trick was a bit overused. That's
    pretty much all I can say about the puzzles, except for an observation
    of minor importance: the layout of the first major puzzle in the game
    reminded me of one certain episode in the movie "The Fifth Element" by
    Luc Besson -- with the only difference that Milla Jovovich was missing
    from the centre of the composition; I assume that, if she were of
    Japanese origin, she wouldn't be. ;)

    In addition to being a traditional text adventure, an atmospheric piece,
    and a story-driven game, Katana is one more thing: a first attempt. And
    while it clearly represents a decent one, there're a number of details
    showing that its author had little or no experience when working on it.
    I'm not talking about bugs, though there are some; after all, this is a
    review, not a public beta-test report. (However, I'll be glad to send
    one to the author if he's interested, and asks me to do so.) Here's an
    example from the game illustrating what I mean:

       >x door
       It's a solid slab of granite that fills the entrance to the tomb.
           There's a Kanji symbol for fire carved in the granite.
           There's a Kanji symbol for air carved in the granite.
           There's a Kanji symbol for water carved in the granite.
           There's a Kanji symbol for earth carved in the granite.

    It seems to me that the author followed the path of least resistance
    here. If he'd had more experience, he probably would have formulated
    this description some other way -- at the least, he'd have listed all
    the Kanji symbols in one single phrase instead of using four nearly
    identical sentences. Other details I implied when talking about first
    attempts are similar, so that I won't dwell on them any further, except
    for one feature that significantly affected the gameplay. I refer to the
    way that the game parser makes extensive use of responses of the type
    "If you want to do such and such, just say so" (for instance, typing
    "turn on car", and being told, "I think you mean 'START THE CAR'.")
    Somehow, I got such responses a bit more often than I'd like to. (After
    writing this, I remembered how frequently I did the same thing in my own
    first game. Then, I recalled that game I played some time ago, which had
    a shimmering curtain of light in the northern wall in its opening scene;
    it harassed me for at least twenty minutes by rejecting all my attempts
    to enter, go in, go through, etc. that darn curtain with the message, "I
    don't know how to <put the appropriate verb here> the shimmering curtain
    of light", until I finally happened to type "north"... Well, looks like
    I'm getting to be an old grumbler. ;)

    Fortunately for Katana, being a first attempt doesn't necessary consist
    of disadvantages only. The positive aspects are the genuine fun the
    author clearly had writing it (this fun shows through, say, in a number
    of witty responses to weird player input), and the attention to details.
    And they outweigh the negative ones, despite the fact that you could get
    a different impression reading all my nitpicking. ;)

    So, to sum up, if you prefer longer text adventures, and don't mind some
    minor technical flaws... hey, it's time to look at the beginning of the
    review again!;)

    ...and the SNATS[*]:

    PLOT: Reasonably solid, matches the setting very well (1.2)
    ATMOSPHERE: Certainly original (1.4)
    WRITING:    Sometimes not emotional enough (1.1)
    GAMEPLAY:   Just what you'd expect of a traditional text adventure --
                with minor issues that are listed in the review (1.1)
    BONUSES:    The rich setting and the many Easter eggs (1.2)
    TOTAL:      6.0
    CHARACTERS: Convincing enough (1.2)
    PUZZLES:    Fit into the game structure very smoothly -- so smoothly
                they don't stand out at all (1.1)
    DIFFICULTY: An appropriate ordeal for a novice samurai (5 out of 10)

    * SNATS stands for "Score Not Affecting The Scoreboard"

    TADS .gam file

    MacBinary .bin file

    Macintosh BinHex format

    King Arthur's Night Out
    From: Adam Cadre <ac SP@G adamcadre.ac>
    Review appeared in SPAG #19 -- January 14, 2000

    NAME: King Arthur's Night Out
    AUTHOR: Mikko Vuorinen
    EMAIL: mvuorine SP@G cc.helsinki.fi
    DATE: November 1999
    PARSER: ALAN
    SUPPORTS: ALAN interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition99/alan/arthur

    This may seem like an odd choice for such a high ranking, but it
    succeeded in doing something no other game this year did: it made me
    laugh out loud. Five times, in fact.

    Much of the humor derives from the fact that the author has taken a game
    that could've been set just about anywhere -- more than anything, it
    reminded me of a Lockhorns strip -- and cast King Arthur in the central
    role. This leads to the expectation that all sort of elements of the
    Arthurian cycle are going to pop up... and they never do. Excalibur
    becomes nothing more than a yardstick to poke around under the bed with.
    That's *hilarious*. It's exactly the sort of comedy underlying the #2
    entry in the Top Ten Things Abraham Lincoln Would Say If He Were Alive
    Today: "Eeeagh! Iron bird!" Because, you see, he wouldn't recognize an
    airplane, being from the 19th century and all... "But why Abraham
    Lincoln?" you cry. "Of all the things we know about Lincoln, you make a
    joke about his unfamiliarity with the airplane? You could've picked
    anyone! Why Lincoln? Why??" Man, I'm laughing again just typing this.

    Then we come to the language used in the game. This could very easily
    have been written as an overly-clever Douglas Adams pastiche, but that
    would've spelled instant doom for this project. Instead, the author
    chooses a tone not at all unlike the comedy of Norm Macdonald, and it's
    a perfect fit. (Macdonald, for those unfamiliar with his work,
    specializes in punch lines that are boorishly blunt enough to stun one
    into laughter, yet somehow delivered in such a way so that, unlike with
    Don Rickles, you don't want to punch him in the face. "Magic Johnson has
    received a $900,000 retainer to write a book on how not to get AIDS.
    Chapter 1: Don't Have Sex With Me.")

    But there's such a fine line between stupid and clever -- what makes
    Rickles's brand of humor the former and Macdonald's (and, here,
    Vuorinen's) the latter? This is an especially tricky issue where gender
    politics are concerned: the response to >X QUEEN ("Guinevere is the most
    beautiful woman in the land. You are lucky to have her as your wife. But
    she can be a real bitch sometimes.") is a potentially dangerous one. I
    think that in the end it comes down to the with/at distinction. Comedy
    in the Rickles mode encourages the audience to laugh at the person being
    mocked. But here's a sample of a Norm Macdonald joke I find screamingly
    funny:

          "In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a man allowed his eight-year-old
          daughter to take the wheel of his car, and an accident ensued
          that damaged seven other cars and injured six people. Which
          once again proves my theory: women can't drive."

    "Women can't drive" is, of course, a staple of The Lockhorns and its
    ilk, and is pretty offensive. But is that the point of the joke? Of
    course not. The reason for the crash is that the driver was eight years
    old, not that she was female. The "theory" is, therefore, obviously
    wrong, and therefore funny. We're not laughing with the misogynist and
    at the girl; we're laughing *at* the misogynist. In the same way,
    Vuorinen makes it clear that his King Arthur is meant to be a lout,
    without overplaying his hand by making him a belching idiot: it's the
    little touches, like Arthur looking forward to a pleasant spell of
    urination after a night at the bar, that make the game work.

    And the game does work: I didn't notice any obvious bugs, and thought
    the size and level of difficulty were just about perfect. Were this an
    entry in last year's comp, I would've ranked it a touch below the
    similarly slight and funny but superior DOWNTOWN TOKYO; given how buggy
    most Comp99 entries were, though, and how this was the only game all
    year that made me laugh, I found myself feeling very charitable when it
    came time to slap a number on it.

    Score: a low NINE.

    Directory with ALAN game files and text files

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

    NAME: Kissing the Buddha's Feet
    AUTHOR: Leon Lin
    EMAIL: leonlin SP@G uclink.berkeley.edu
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/kissing
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    An instant classic.  Your goal is to help roommate John study and
    finally pass that psych class after 12 long semesters.  John's friends
    have a different agenda, though, so you must get rid of them and any
    other distractions around the house.

    Every single character is hilarious, from the unresponsive Carl to the
    eternally drunk Bob, and even your own character exhibits a compulsive
    cleanliness that rivals Howard Hughes.  My personal fave: Evan, the
    god of thoroughly useless trivia, who follows you around, constantly
    spouting drivel on anything that strikes his fancy - a pet parrot he
    once had, the origin of the game's curious title, speculations about
    what the world would be like if it were like a text adventure, error
    messages to improperly phrased commands, and so much more.  The
    characters offer a wide variety of optional interactivity to fill the
    two-hour time allotment, and there's even a trivia game that provides
    some side-splitting references to other text adventures.

    The setting, though collegiate, is nonetheless unique.  By focusing on
    the personalities of John's friends, and interlacing them with some
    extremely imaginative puzzles, "Kissing" avoids the pitfalls and
    cliches of the college I-F genre and makes for genuine entertainment.
    This game is bust-a-gut funny and very well-implemented, making it my
    personal choice for first place.  Many of this year's entries are very
    strong in one area, but flawed in others - "Tapestry" occasionally
    feels too much like hyperfiction, "Delusions" is buggy, "In the End"
    didn't offer me enough story, - but this game excels in all areas.
    Truly fantastic.  I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard.

    Wait a minute... I guess I can.  It was last year, when I played Leon
    Lin's "The One That Got Away."  I'm going to venture a guess that this
    entry was done by Lin, as it exhibits his talent for superb I-F humor
    and the same quantity of amusing things to try as "The One."  Am I
    right?  Am I right?

            [Amazingly enough, he was.  I guess Leon just has a very
    distinctive game-writing style. -GKW]

    TADS .gam File (.zip)

    Klaustrophobia
    From: Audrey A. DeLisle <rad SP@G crl.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

     NAME: Klaustrophobia                            PARSER: Good (AGT)
     AUTHOR: Carol Hovick                            PLOT: Excellent
     EMAIL: ???                                      ATMOSPHERE: Hilarious
     AVAILABILITY: IF Archive S15                           WRITING: Excellent
     PUZZLES: Hard                                   SUPPORTS: AGT ports
     CHARACTERS: Excellent                           DIFFICULTY: Hard

            Klaustrophobia, an AGT text adventure, just won the 1994 AGT contest
    (with a co-winner, The Jeweled Arena, by David Raley).  I had the pleasure (?)
    of testing it.
            It is an hilarious account of your vacation.  You start preparing for
    your trip at home and at the office,  then head for the airport(s).
    Somehow your flights keep getting diverted.  Part 2, you arrive in
    Hollywood and appear on several game shows.  Your big prize is a
    vacation in Mexico which takes you to Part 3.  This is not easy, but is
    very funny.  Those who have played Jacaranda Jim will find it especially
    amusing in Mexico.  Look for KLAUS.ZIP.  A sequel is planned, but this
    took about 18 months to complete, so not soon.  Hilarious and hard.
    Funniest yet, but subject to the limitations of AGT-BIG.  Also, the
    registered version comes with pophints!  The author, Carol Hovick, is a
    big fan of Bureaucracy.  Her game was somewhat inspired by it, but it is
    not the same.

    AGT files with PC Executable runtime (.zip)

    Knight Orc
    From: Robb Sherwin <robb_sherwin SP@G juno.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #15 -- October 11, 1998

    NAME: Knight Orc
    AUTHOR: Level 9 Computing
    E-MAIL:
    DATE: 1987
    PARSER: name unknown, excellent
    SUPPORTS: DOS, , Amiga, ST, C64, Apple, Amstrad
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial
    URL: N/A (ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/wadster/level9art.htm)
    VERSION: IBM PC

    Level 9 released "Knight Orc" in July of 1987 and soon thereafter
    changed what I felt entertainment software could be. While Knight Orc
    falls short of becoming a classic on the merits of pure art through
    this medium (unlike, say, "Sentinel" or "The Space Under The Window")
    it nonetheless does hold up eleven years later due to the strength of
    its atmosphere, gameplay and sheer indifference it shows to the
    player.

    Knight Orc was one of the first games to give a voice to a "villain."
    The player assumes the role of an orc named Grindleguts, abandoned by
    his buddies after a night of hard drinking. The orcs, caught in an
    inebriated stupor by a pack of foppish human knights, arrange for a
    "Contest of Champions" to take place in the morning. Which is all well
    and good, as they have no plans on sticking around for it. The orcs
    tie Grindleguts (completely passed out and in no position to argue) to
    a horse and give him a lance. The knights, bound by their code can do
    nothing but watch as the roving evil horde skulks off into the
    darkness. Much like the Baltimore Colts leaving for Indianapolis,
    really.  The orcs then destroy the bridge and make good on their
    escape.

    (The backstory is related in a novella that accompanies the game
    entitled _The Sign of the Orc_ by Peter McBride. Having purchased
    hundreds of computer games throughout my life I maintain to this day
    that the story is the finest ever to accompany a piece of computer
    software. It's very clever and funny and somehow manages to convey
    warmth and stunning brutality all within paragraphs of one another.)

    The interface to Knight Orc is much like that of the typical Magnetic
    Scrolls wares. Text dominates the bottom of the display, while painted
    visuals (that unfortunately lost quite a bit in digitization on my IBM
    version) are displayed on top. While the PC version did not allow
    manipulation of the image size, much more text is present than on the
    default settings for the Magnetic Scrolls games. Knight Orc's parser
    is excellent -- objects can be located using a FIND command --
    regardless of whether or not you have seen them (this does not work
    for special items you will learn about, and the command will not do
    any problem solving for you). It will understand virtually anything
    you throw at it, or give you helpful reasons why it doesn't.

    So, then. You're an orc trapped in human country. While attempting to
    pick up some rope to cross the river you will encounter the first bit
    of magic the game has to offer: the characters. I have never witnessed
    a greater collection of thugs, losers, egomaniacs and self-important
    motos than I have in this game.  The descriptions offered by the
    parser as to the wandering characters are cruel --

    The gripper: "he is a squinty, rat-like youth, with an orcish squint."

    Kris the ant-warrior: "she is a muscle-bound champion, armoured with
    plates of giant ant cuticle and wearing a strange ant-head helm. She
    looks a lot like an ogre-sized fried roach."

    Denzyl: "he is a right gullible and stupid-looking person."

    Fungus the boggit-man: "he is a lanky, twitchy-fingered,
    nicotine-addict."

    -- but a riot. Efffing genius.

    Furthermore, there are plenty of hapless denizens just waiting to have
    horrible things happen to them. I offer the following story as to why
    this game works so well: During one stretch on the first episode I was
    being identified as an orc rather easily. When a character recognizes
    an orc, her or she will attack. While getting thumped by the Green
    Knight (arguably the most powerful character in the episode till you
    solve his puzzle), a do-nothing slacker named "Sam the Grey Earl"
    jumps into the fray for a bit. After dying, I restored the game. I
    take a different route around, and Sam follows me for a little bit
    when I happen upon a cemetery. For whatever reason, Sam is lapping
    along like a puppy. I find the vampire for the first time, who offers
    me a spell in return for a victim. And guess who just happens to walk
    into the tomb?  Sam is sucked down just for being in the wrong place
    at the wrong time and because the little bastard couldn't leave me
    alone he is slain. And I get the spell.  Justice. Absolute justice.

    (Such an event is completely impossible to reproduce. The denizens in
    the game seem to have some "goals," like picking up treasure and
    killing orcs, but while Sam never followed me again I can not say that
    the characters in the game really move in completely random patterns.
    Somehow, Level 9 were able to create an environment filled with rich
    characters leading their own lives all while not creating an
    impression of headless chickens running around in a maze. )

    The last two episodes of Knight Orc are interchangeable -- without
    giving away too much, the end game involves a story of revenge and
    escape against those that tormented you -- and yet, reading the
    novella and playing the first episode does not begin to prepare
    you. (I should note that it ties into Level 9's earlier "Silicon
    Dreams" trilogy. Very, very nice.)

    The puzzles, jokes, characters and parser are all up to par with the
    best that Infocom had to offer. I suspect that this game did not
    receive the props that it should have due to its subject manner --
    playing the "bad guy" didn't really become in style until "Syndicate."
    While Grindleguts is a greedy, violent, angry little pit he is also a
    character worthy of our respect. Especially among the piles of spods
    he's running around with. I suspect that the background characters in
    Knight Orc are set to mirror the kind of individuals we (the gaming
    community) can't -- in theory -- stand or relate to in real
    life. Jocks, Girls, urchins, soldiers... one can make the argument
    that when they are in our world (a game) they should be the
    outsiders. Knight Orc describes them with as much distaste as we
    normally get in "their" environments. Bloody fabulous.

    If you take the time to enjoy this game -- to smell the roses --
    Knight Orc will return your attention with an incredible amount of
    pleasure. If Knight Orc were a woman, it would be the very cute, very
    sarcastic, yet seemingly shallow girl who melts like butter for you
    when you steer the pillow talk completely in her direction... and you
    then fall in love with her depth.

    Spectrum Z80 Disk Image (.zip)

    Clue sheet (Text)

    Solution (Text)

    Manual (HTML with JPEG images) (.zip))

    The KORC Trilogy
    From: J. J. Farmer <J.J.Farmer-CSSE94 SP@G computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #4 -- March 2, 1995

      NAME: The KORC Trilogy                          PARSER: Limited
      AUTHOR: AMF the Doomwatcher                     PLOT: Linear (ish)
      EMAIL: ???                                      ATMOSPHERE: Unique
      AVAILABILITY: Freeware                          WRITING: Brief, Preaching
      PUZZLES: Interesting, Moral                     SUPPORTS: Acorn Archimedes
      CHARACTERS: Weird but Shallow                   DIFFICULTY: Medium-Low

            It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that the KORC trilogy
    consists of three separate games ("Welcome to the Kingdom of Relative
    Concepts," "Return of the Timebringer," and "The Waking of AMF the
    Doomwatcher" ), the plot of all three being centred around one person's quest
    (yours) against corruption in a world moderately similar to ours.
            Throughout this quest, you meet all manner of weird characters,
    ranging from the author (who describes himself as a "timid genius" in the
    first two games), to Ergol the pi-reciter (whose life is devoted to reciting
    pi), to an old guy who asks you to kill him.
            This last character sums up the atmosphere of all three games; the
    author seems to be trying to preach a number of moral points at you.  The
    only problem is that occasionally he has you do something that goes against
    these teachings (like killing somebody).  Whenever this does happen,
    though, the feelings of guilt that consume you (and I'm not being sarcastic
    here) are a testament to how well the author is getting his message across.
            The characters, for all their weirdness, don't seem to have much
    depth to them - apart from their purpose in the story, they consist only of a
    few "fob off"  statements (usually something like "I exist, uncorrupted.
    Is that not enough?" ).  They certainly aren't as fascinating as the
    characters in Scapeghost, for instance.
            The user interface is a complete washout.  Rather than multi-tasking
    (as all good adventure games should), the games single-task in Mode 12
    (80 columns by 32 rows, 16 colours, for those non-Archimedes users reading
    this), although the colour scheme is at least bearable.
            The parser is just plain annoying.  It doesn't understand the normal
    abbreviations for compass directions (N for North, and so on), and doesn't
    even recognise the full compass directions (NORTH, SOUTH, etc).  Only
    commands like GO NORTH will move the player around; this is extremely
    irritating and there is no good reason for it.  To be fair, the movement
    commands are stored on the function keys (so pressing F1 will move you
    north), but this is no excuse.
            Despite their limitations, I actually found these games very
    enjoyable, especially the third.  It didn't take me long to finish KORC 2 and
    3 (although I did cheat and take a peek at the program code once or twice).
    I personally found KORC 1 the most difficult, and it is probably the largest
    (nothing to do with the presense of a character called Olaf the Fatty!).
            In the instructions, the author hints that a second KORC trilogy is
    on the drawing board, and I certainly hope that this is true.  Until then,
    the KORC trilogy is free and reasonably addictive.  What more could you want?

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