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ISSUE #9 - June 11, 1996

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      The  |___/ociety for the |_|reservation of  |_|_|dventure  \___|ames.
    				ISSUE # 9
            Edited by G. Kevin Wilson (whizzard SP@G uclink.berkeley.edu)
    			      June 11, 1996.

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

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

    	Here we are again.  Another SPAG, another dollar.  We just recently
    hit SPAG's 2nd anniversary, averaging one issue every three months or so.  As
    of SPAG #8, we have published just over 100 game reviews.  That's one big ole
    hunk of text.  (Not to mention the 17 reviews in this issue)  I'd like to
    pause here a moment and thank the most prolific of my steady reviewers:

      Graeme Cree, who has written probably more reviews than anyone else.
      Palmer Davis, who helped out by reviewing all the 1995 I-F contest entries.
      Audrey A. DeLisle, who helped out a lot in the beginning.
      Christopher E. Forman, who has written quite a few reviews himself.
      Molley the Mage, who hasn't been around for awhile, but deserves thanks for
    	his early work, and his recent work.
      Magnus Olsson, who maintains SPAG's mailing list and has written some very
    	nice reviews, not to mention Uncle Zebulon's Will.

    And of course, to the authors of all the text adventure authorship programs.
    Without the toolkits like TADS, Inform, Alan, and others, a revival of I-F
    would be nigh impossible.  And of course, to all of you who have written or
    are writing a text adventure.  Thanks for helping keep my favorite hobby
    alive.

    	Thanks also to all the other contributers to SPAG.  It's been a great
    two years.

    	I-F has seen a healthy revival since I first got into it.  I hope
    that I have been a part of this revival.  Without games like Trinity, A Mind
    Forever Voyaging, and Jigsaw, there wouldn't be much around on the game
    market that had a serious theme to it, much less any literary merit.  It is
    games like these that remind us that not everything has to be a Leisure Suit
    Larry or a Doom.
    	But besides the fact that text adventures have a history of being
    better written than graphic adventures, there's also the noticeable fact that
    graphical adventures have ventured further and further from their interactive
    beginnings.  In seeking simpler user interfaces, the games have sacrificed an
    important element of control that players once cherished.  Text adventures
    still hold onto this interactivity in defiance of the mass game market, and
    maybe someday we'll have the opportunity to point out this loss of
    playability to the commercial game companies.
    	So, text adventures are important in their own ways.  They have,
    ironically, become the spearhead of research into methods of interactivity
    and characterization, even as outdated as they are claimed to be.  If anyone
    figures out how to make an NPC feel totally real, it will most likely be a
    text adventure author.
    	This issue is chocked full of chewy goodness.  There are many
    reviews, loads of updated reader scores, an in-depth analysis on The One That
    Got Away, more info on the 1996 Second Annual I-F Competition, and maybe
    some other good stuff too.  Apologies to Leon Lin in advance for the
    analysis. :)

    				G. Kevin Wilson
    				"Whizzard"

    P.S: As of next issue I would like reviewers to use the new header format
    for their reviews.  It changes nothing else, just the review header, scores
    will still be done the same.  The new version seem much more succinct and to
    the point than the old one.  And, without further ado, here it is:

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

    Consider the following NEW review header:

    NAME: Cutthroats
    AUTHOR: Infocom
    EMAIL: ???
    DATE: September 1984
    PARSER: Infocom Standard
    SUPPORTS: Infocom ports
    AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2
    URL: Not available.

    	The new header is shorter and easier to read.  It relegates the
    comments on writing, atmosphere, etc. back into the body of the review,
    which should not pose a problem.  The sections needing explanation are:

    DATE: When the game was released.  Month and year are preferred, but year
    	by itself will be accepted.
    URL: Where the game can be found on the Internet.  Obviously, Cutthroats
    	shouldn't be available on the net, so here's an example for "Shelby's
    	Light":

    	URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/shelby.zip

    	This will make the magazine a little friendlier for Web browsers.
    My thanks to Gareth Rees for the new header format.  He used it in one of
    his reviews, and I liked it so much I decided to make it the official form.

    	The EMAIL section is for the e-mail address of the game author, not
    the reviewer.  AVAILABILITY will usually have either Commercial ($price),
    Shareware ($price), or Freeware.  If the commercial price varies in stores,
    then it will just say Commercial.  If it has been released in the LTOI
    collection, this line should say so.  Lastly, if it is available on
    ftp.gmd.de, the line should add GMD.  (Demo) if it's a demo version.  The
    body of the review hasn't changed.

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

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

    NEW GAMES--------------------------------------------------------------------

    	Recent months have seen the release of _SpiritWrak_, a game in the
    spirit of the Enchanter trilogy.  It takes place in the Age of Science, when
    magic has left the planet, but the Gods remain.  You, as a priest, can call
    on them to perform magical feats for you, in a manner VERY reminiscent of a
    wizard casting a spell in Enchanter.  SpiritWrak can be found at
    ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/games/inform/spirit.z5.

    	I'm sure I'm missing a couple of recent games, like Lost New York or
    Gumshoe, but I've been pretty busy lately, and lacking in time for playing
    text adventures in general.  Between SPAG, Avalon, and my other projects, I
    could easily work straight through the summer and not finish them all.

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

    From: "Christopher E. Forman"

    NAME: Amnesia                               GAMEPLAY: Infocom-quality parser
    AUTHOR: Thomas M. Disch                     PLOT: Good, though done before
    EMAIL: ???                                  ATMOSPHERE: Very good
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial (Elec. Arts)       WRITING: Excellent
    PUZZLES: A variety                          SUPPORTS: C64, Apple II, IBM
    CHARACTERS: Satisfyingly responsive         DIFFICULTY: Challenging

            During the reign of Infocom, there were many attempts by other
    software companies to follow their recipe for quality I-F, some of them
    succeeding and some of them not, the latter occurring largely because of
    Infocom's dedication to I-F.  Firms such as Sierra, Mindscape, and Electronic
    Arts preferred to branch out and diversify their software products, rather
    than placing all their eggs in one basket (which could be another factor
    contributing to Infocom's downfall, but that's another article entirely).  In
    fact, Infocom and Level 9 were the only two companies focused solely on I-F,
    which may account for their stories outshining those of the competition --
    very few 80's text adventures that I've seen can even come close to the
    gameplay of the average Infocom game.  Thomas M. Disch's "Amnesia", however,
    succeeded where many others failed.
            As the player begins "Amnesia", he (and the main character is most
    certainly male) awakens in a New York City hotel room, naked and with no clue
    as to his identity.  This by itself is by no means unique -- ICOM's "Deja Vu"
    begins under the same pretenses.  But the story behind "Amnesia" is so much
    more involved.
            Once the most pressing problem of finding clothes is overcome, the
    player hits the streets of Manhattan in an effort to recover his lost memory
    and find out who framed him for murder.  This, in essence, is the primary
    puzzle of the game, although its solution is hampered by a need to find food
    and a place to sleep at night.  These things cost money, so earning money
    through such means as washing windows and panhandling are necessary.
            "Amnesia's" parser is perhaps the only one to equal Infocom's at the
    time.  In many places it surpasses Infocom.  With a vocabulary of about 1700
    words and a multiple-sentence parser with plenty of synonyms, you'll very
    rarely need to hunt for a word.  The one minor annoyance stems from the fact
    that objects' words aren't recognized if you try to use them when an object
    isn't in the current location -- for instance, you can't refer to a telephone
    if one isn't around, even though there may be one elsewhere in the game.  But
    this is minor.  Character interactions are detailed, and range from face-to-
    face meetings to conversations over the telephone.
            The game itself is huge, with as many as 4000 locations.  Most of
    them are street corners or parts of the Manhattan subway system (both of
    these are completely programmed into the game), although there are a number
    of buildings and New York landmarks for the player to visit.  A map (among
    other things) is included in the game package, so there's no need to draw
    your own, but you'll probably need to at least jot down some notes.
            "Amnesia" offers a variety of puzzles, from object and character
    interactions to some creative methods of obtaining money, food, and rest.
    The game's scoring system reflects this, awarding points for the categories
    of detective (how well you uncover clues), character (how well you interact
    with the denizens of New York), and survivor (how well-fed and rested -- and
    also alive -- you keep yourself).  A good balance of the three is necessary
    for victory.
            If there's one major complaint about the game, it's the copy
    protection.  The subway and city maps, address book, and street-indexing
    code-wheel would have been more than adequate to deter piracy, but "Amnesia"
    insists on forcing players to insert the original game disk for verification
    each time it loads.  It seems EA didn't think of the consequences of what
    would happen when 5.25" disk drives phased out.  You must insert the original
    disk -- a backup copy won't work -- or plan to spend several hours doing some
    heavy hex-editing, as the copy-protection is malevolently self-modifying (on
    par with some of the more evil computer viruses).  Someone out there either
    REALLY didn't want this game to be copied (even legally), or REALLY liked
    copy protection.
            Once you get past this, though, "Amnesia" is a joy to play.  It was
    written by Thomas M. Disch, who won the Campbell Award back in 1980, but this
    was done specifically for the I-F medium; it's not an adaption of any sort.
    (I've heard of a sequel -- "Amnesia II", astoundingly enough -- but have
    never seen it, and would appreciate any info anyone might have on it.)
    Disch's prose is vivid and flows nicely, spanning several screens on a few
    occasions.  It makes for good reading as well as good adventuring, combining
    the best of the two art forms.

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

    From: "Bozzie"

    NAME: Demon's Tomb				PARSER: OK.  Nothing fancy.
    AUTHOR: Mastertonic				PLOT: Stop ancient demon.
    EMAIL: ???					ATMOSHPHERE: Nice.
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial(Bargain bins)		WRITING: Very good.
    PUZZLES: Average, but logical			SUPPORTS: PC
    CHARACTERS: Very, very good (See below) 	DIFFICULTY: Medium

    This is an old game, but nonetheless it is a very good one.  It deals with
    such important issues as fighting an ancient evil, sacrificing yourself
    in order to save the world (don't worry, not a spoiler), and how to keep a
    duck from quacking.

    The game starts off with you as Professor Edward Lynton, famed archaeologist,
    in an important site in England.  Recently, some strange things have
    occurred.  Your partner has gone missing.  You have discovered things in the
    site which are both more amazing than your wildest dreams, and more
    horrifying than your worst nightmares.  You awake in the middle of the night
    and smell smoke...

    With no escape outside this recently discovered tomb, you must send a message
    to the outside world, before the tomb becomes your own (and it will, no
    matter what you do.  That's made very clear throughout the skimpy manual).
    You have only a short amount of time to do what you must do before you are
    overcome by smoke.  Despite your actions, after a certain number of moves,
    the prologue ends and the game starts.

    You are Richard, the professor's son, in a car lot near the archeological
    site.  You are here to talk to your father, but unfortunately, he is in no
    condition to talk.  As you learn more about his death, depending on your
    earlier efforts, you will find a tale of a centuries old rivalry, of evil
    about to be unleashed and that you are the only one to stop it.

    The story itself is nice, and immediately reminded me of a Doctor Who story,
    Pyramids of Mars (also a text adventure game at /pc/mars.zip.  Somewhat rough
    about the edges, but is a fairly good AGT game) .  The story generally comes
    in spurts at a time in some wonderful prose.  Notes, letters, documents all
    give some great insights at several interesting people who lived in the area.
    While most of these aren't necessary for the game, it is well worth your
    time to read everything.

    There are few, if any, "real" characters in Demon's Tomb that you can
    interact with, and most of those that there are puzzles more than anything.
    However, the descriptions, as I have said above, more than make up for the
    lack of interacting agents.  In fact, in some ways, it makes it better.  As
    recent debates on r.a.i-f have shown, there is no easy way to make a good NPC
    in a text game, and indeed, even if you manage to, there will still be
    problems with him/her.  This way, the author manages to show us some
    wonderful characterizations without having to code a lot of time-eating code.
    This is not to say that the game is simple.  Indeed, the game tries to be
    flashy by offering a menu system and some graphics, space which could have
    been used more efficiently.  Indeed, I would have liked there to have been a
    good developed character.  For example, how about a motorist I could flag
    down and warn, and then find him dead later...

    The Parser is sub-Infocom, but quite adequate for its purpose.  The puzzles
    themselves are fairly simple, but not overly simple, and they are dynamic, so
    as not to bore experienced gamers.  But that doesn't deter from the game, it
    adds to it.  There are no completely obscure puzzles, and there are a few
    interesting ones.  There are certainly no unfair puzzles, and enough of an
    area to explore, so that should you get frustrated at one problem, you'll be
    able to explore another area.  And if you really need some help, C. E.
    Forman has graciously made a hint file of the game on ftp.gmd.de.

    It is because the story doesn't try to serve complex problems, the author is
    able to work on the story, and still throw in a new and interesting puzzle or
    two. It also manages to allow freedom to explore, although tends to be mostly
    linear in terms of solving problems.  While I could hope for better, in terms
    of problem solving and a few other areas, over all, I enjoy this game, and
    it's certainly up there on my list of favorite games.

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

    From: "Christopher E. Forman"

    NAME: Guardians of Infinity                         GAMEPLAY: Windowed text
    AUTHOR: Paragon Software                            PLOT: Very detailed
    EMAIL: ???                                          ATMOSPHERE: Good
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial                            WRITING: Sparse but good
    PUZZLES: You'll need the docs                       SUPPORTS: PCs
    CHARACTERS: User-controlled                         DIFFICULTY: Hard

            Now this one is different.  REALLY different.  Possibly the most
    unique text adventure ever released.  Paragon did "Guardians of Infinity"
    near the end of the '80s, about the time Infocom released their graphical
    I-F, but "Guardians" has no graphics.  Rather, the player acts as one Adam
    Cooper, commander and overseer of five time-travelling agents attempting to
    prevent the assassination of JFK (Oliver Stone, eat your heart out).  The
    screen is divided into windows for each agent, as well as the player's
    command line and other features critical to the mission.  In a way, it's part
    "TimeQuest", part "Suspended", part "Trinity", part "Border Zone", and
    part...something.  "Guardians of Infinity" simply has to be played to be
    understood.  No terminology can quite do the experience justice.
            The game begins on November 15, 1963, and the player's job is to use
    the five agents to influence events in order to arrange a meeting between
    Kennedy and Cooper, so that Cooper can talk Kennedy out of his visit to
    Dallas, which in turn will prevent the assassination and the subsequent
    disruption of the time continuum which is threatening Cooper's own world of
    2087.  The agents will perform a surprising number of actions, from talking
    with those close to Kennedy, to robbing a bank to acquire funds.  The parser
    is well-programmed but substantially different from the Infocom tradition.
    You can say, for example, "STEIN, GO TO WASHINGTON AND TALK WITH VICE-
    PRESIDENT JOHNSON" or even provide answers to your agents' questions, such as
    "LEE HARVEY OSWALD IS IN DALLAS."  Walking around, picking up items, and
    brute searching are all eliminated, which lends a whole new universe of
    flexibility to the story.  It's perhaps the closest thing to "puzzle-less"
    I-F, the recent subject of debate on rec.arts.int-fiction.  (Don't get any
    ideas, though -- writing such a game would require a complete makeover on all
    the existing I-F compilers.)  Still, it takes quite a bit of getting used to.
            Packaged with the game are a 90-page novella providing
    characterization for the agents and an exceptionally well-researched 145-page
    mission manual outlining the whereabouts of everyone connected with the
    assassination during the week of the 15th-27th.  These must have had 1988
    software pirates running away screaming, as you can't possibly get anywhere
    without them, yet they enhance the game and are plot-related, making for THE
    best copy-protection ever developed (with no irreverence intended toward
    Sorcerer's infotater).  Disk #3 also contains a graphical slide-show with
    more info on the mission.
            The game's internal clock is always running, and news and agents'
    reports pop up in their respective windows constantly, leaving a lot for the
    player to juggle around.  It's an intense experience, to say the least.
    Agents' responses, and most of the game text, for that matter (aside from
    some large plot points), are typically sparse, but with a fair amount of
    realism.
            "Guardians of Infinity" is definitely worth a play, and deserves far
    better than the measly bit of recognition it got on its initial release.
    Altering history has never been such fun.  (No, I haven't won it yet, but I'm
    still trying.)

                                                -- C.E. Forman

            Incidentally, if you're having trouble locating a copy of "Guardians
    of Infinity", you may want to give the folks at Centsible Software
    (centsible SP@G delphi.com) a mail.  They sell tons of used software, both classic
    and recent, at very reasonable prices (although, if you want the original
    game boxes, you may be out of luck).  That's where I got my copy of
    "Guardians" (among other classics), and I recommend them.

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

    >From "David Seybert"

    NAME:Gumshoe
    AUTHOR: Mike Oliphant
    GAMEPLAY: Inform, usual
    PLOT: Poor
    EMAIL: oliphant SP@G cogsci.ucsd.edu
    WWW: http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~oliphant
    ATMOSPHERE: well done
    AVAILABILITY: GMD
    WRITING: Disappointing
    PUZZLES: Good
    SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
    CHARACTERS: Shallow with one or two exceptions
    DIFFICULTY: Easy

    During the opening sequences of Mike Oliphant's new Inform game "Gumshoe",
    I found myself smiling a lot.  With every turn Mike unveils yet another
    element from the private eye genre and sets the player up for a twisty ride
    through territory well blazed by the fictional likes of Philip Marlowe and
    Lew Archer.  The dingy messy office, the caustic secretary, the beautiful
    woman who suspects her husband of infidelity, the drunken hangover,
    menacing underworld types to whom you, as the hero, owe money; the corrupt
    cop who enjoys harassing you; all of these are in "Gumshoe"'s delightful
    set-up.

    I've loved the private-eye genre since I was in high school. What makes it
    great is the use of the "Gumshoe" set up as an excuse to explore the darker
    side of human nature, to guide us through a labyrinth of perversity, dark
    secrets, haunted souls and evil that strikes quickly and lasts for
    generations.  Inevitably the initial case the detective is asked to solve
    is only the tip of the iceberg; the real story lies much deeper.

    This is tricky territory to explore in interactive fiction and,
    unfortunately "Gumshoe" is not up to the task.  We are asked to prove that
    Sandra's husband is cheating on her and that's exactly what we end up
    doing.  We encounter no dead bodies, discover no dark secrets buried in
    families for generations, rescue no damsels in distress or uncover any
    surprising revelations that give us pause.  All do is prove John's
    infidelity and that's what we do and rather quickly at that.  In fact, one
    of the problems with the game is that we can provide the evidence we need
    to convince the woman of her husband's two timing very quickly.  She gives
    us the money and that's that.  Of course, there's more game to explore
    including a section where we get to prove his infidelity again, but it adds
    nothing top the story and feels like unnecessary padding.

    All of the elements that are introduced early in the game come to nothing.
    The secretary and her delightfully caustic comments vanishes early, the
    corrupt cop is quickly dealt with and never reappears, the underworld
    figures end up posing no threat and are easily bought off and forgotten.
    This lack of development might go uncommented on an another type of game,
    but character development and is what private detectives are all about
    along with plot development.

    Plot development or the lack thereof was the most disappointing element of
    the game.  Once I got the goods on her husband, I expected to go to Sandra's
    house and find her still warm corpse with a couple of slugs in it,
    preferably from my gun.  But she's home and she's fine and the game is over
    just when I expected it to take off.  Likewise, when I entered the old
    house, I expected to solve the puzzle and find a body.  But all that's there
    is the means to prove John unfaithful - again.

    Fortunately, actual gameplay is good, if a bit too linear. Everything has
    to be done in a certain sequence or you'll spend a *lot* of time sitting
    around doing nothing. I spent hours (game time) in one location before I
    realized that by acting logically (I.e. calling up my client and presenting
    her with the evidence she required) I'd made a mistake.  Puzzles were, for
    the most part, logical and easily solved.  I especially enjoyed the
    old house puzzle and the scene at the restaurant where you have to get past
    the corrupt cop.

    If you're looking for a pleasant afternoon's diversion, Gumshoe offers
    simple but enjoyable puzzles, and enough solid private-eye atmosphere to
    send you off to the video store to rent "Chinatown" or up to the attic to
    get out that old dog-eared copy of "The Long Goodbye."

    From: "Julian Arnold"

    NAME: Gumshoe                             PARSER: Inform standard
    AUTHOR: Mike Oliphant                     PLOT: See below
    EMAIL: oliphant SP@G cogsci.ucsd.edu           ATMOSPHERE: See below
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, GMD               WRITING: See below
    PUZZLES: See below                        SUPPORTS: Z-machine ports
    CHARACTERS: See below                     DIFFICULTY: See below

    URL:
         Needs a Z-Machine interpreter,

    You wake up on the floor outside your office, fully clothed and with a
    hangover.  You are Joe Gumshoe, private investigator, and you owe money.

    This is the premise upon which "Gumshoe" opens, nearly identical to the
    premise upon which so many detective stories and film noirs open, and the
    first of many noir mainstays (or perhaps I should say cliches?) which it
    adopts.  There is also the sultry femme fatale with the unfaithful executive
    husband, the corrupt cop, the seedy bar, the unseen "Mr. Big" (in this case,
    one Jimmy Voigt) whose only contact with the player is via the medium of his
    bevvy of thugs and a mention in the introductory text, and the flickering
    neon.  Sure, we've all seen this all before, but then, this is a genre seldom
    reknowned for its originality or inventiveness.  Most, if not all, successful
    film noirs (I am more familiar with cinematic examples of the genre than with
    those of literature) are based on a relatively small set of standardised plot
    devices, and "Gumshoe" makes no attempts to break new ground here.

    This is a small game which most players will be able to complete in one or
    two sittings.  A little unfortunately Oliphant has tried to incorporate too
    much into such a small game, and consequently there are too many loose ends
    and stray plot threads by the end of the game.  For example, although we are
    told of a frame-up involving the aforementioned corrupt cop and resulting in
    Joe Gumshoe's dismissal from the police force (and his subsequent involvement
    in his current line of work) this issue is never resolved.  Also, this same
    corrupt cop dogs Joe's footsteps during the early part of the game, but
    disappears entirely after his first set-back.

    The game also suffers from a few missed opportunities: the femme fatale is
    not actually fatale; no characters in the game are any more than they at
    first seem-- there are no double-crosses and no betrayal; though the plot is
    not entirely straightforward, neither does it contain any particular twists
    or surprises.  However, the NPCs, of which there are a fair number, are
    mostly well done, each one being a believable though stereotypical character.
    They usually come equipped with an interesting and not entirely incidental
    past, and are able to satisfactorily answer questions on this.

    The writing is successfully atmospheric, with the right downbeat quality,
    menacing undertone, and emotive turn-of-phrase.  For instance,

    	"Well, Mr. Detective, or should I say Mr. Private Investigator, since
    	you ain't a member of our well-respected police force no more? It
    	seems that we got a problem here. You owe Mr. Voigt a considerable
    	sum of cash. From what I can see, your little snoop business isn't
    	exactly booming, so we're gonna cut you a deal. You cough up $500 by
    	midnight tonight or you cough up a lung. Deal?"

    	"Yeah," Morty echoes, "$500 or a lung."

    The puzzles are all based around the plot, resulting in a firm and successful
    marriage of game and story.  It also means the solutions to the puzzles are
    logical and sensible-- the player is never left wondering "what do I do now?"
    or indeed "why did I do that?", but rather "I know what I want to achieve...
    now how do I do it?"

    "Gumshoe" is a short, enjoyable game.  Both plot and puzzles play an
    important part in the game as a whole, and have been skillfully interwoven by
    the author.  The writing is good, and the genre is unusual in interactive
    fiction.  These factors, combined with the unresolved plot elements, left me
    wanting more at the end.  This game also has some of the coolest music in IF.

    (I was a playtester for "Gumshoe".)

    	[This review was posted to rec.arts.int-fiction, 7th April 1996.]

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

    From: "Christopher E. Forman"

    NAME: Inhumane                         GAMEPLAY: Bare-bones Inform
    AUTHOR: Andrew C. Plotkin              PLOT: Parody of Infocom's "Infidel"
    EMAIL: erkyrath+ SP@G cmu.edu               ATMOSPHERE: Demented
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, GMD            WRITING: Passable
    PUZZLES: Get yourself killed           SUPPORTS: ZIP Interpreters
    CHARACTERS: Nope, afraid not           DIFFICULTY: Half-hour session at most

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

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

                                                -- C.E. Forman

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

    From: "Gareth Rees"

    NAME: JIGSAW
    AUTHOR: Graham Nelson
    E-MAIL: nelson SP@G vax.ox.ac.uk
    DATE: October 1995
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Infocom ports
    AVAILABILITY: IF archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/Jigsaw.z8

    "Jigsaw" opens on the night of December 31st, 1999, at a party to
    celebrate the new millennium.  Feeling out of sympathy with the
    thronging party-goers, and unable to find again the attractive stranger
    in black who has just slipped away, you wander off to explore a
    mysterious monument built by the late eccentric millionaire Grad
    Kaldecki.  You discover that Kaldecki has constructed - or somehow
    obtained access to - a time machine.  In the centre of the monument, the
    time machine takes the baroque form of a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces
    (once found) give access to turning points in twentieth century history.
    Kaldecki planned to alter history, but died with his work barely
    started, leaving his acolyte (the attractive stranger, soon capitalised
    as Black) to complete his megalomaniacal scheme.  Much against your
    will, you find yourself trailing around the century in Black's wake,
    trying to restore history to its rightful course, and searching for
    hidden jigsaw pieces.  You visit some of the most important moments in
    twentieth century history: World War I, the Wright brothers, women's
    suffrage, the Moon landings, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall.  (Though not
    every historian would place the writing of Proust's novel "A la
    Recherche de Temps Perdu" in this list!)  The quest is complicated by a
    romance between you and Black, and by hints of metaphysical significance
    when you enter a realm called `The Land', whose mist-shrouded locations
    are emblematic of the great themes: Art, Science, War, and Nature.

    It is often an axiom in time-cop novels that we live in the best of all
    possible worlds, and that any kind of interference with history must be
    disastrous.  "Jigsaw" rigidly enforces this convention by ending the
    game whenever the past is changed.  This extreme historical conservatism
    sits uneasily with some of the chapters: it is not clear why eight
    million men had to die for the sake of the world as we know it, nor what
    is so bad about the world described in the following paragraph that
    World War I was preferable:

        You shake your head, confused.  Why did the mad London-born
        architect Kettering build this monument?  Why did the government of
        the Franco-British Republic ever allow Century Park to be built here
        at Versailles?  Never mind: time to go and get a drink of potato
        brandy from the commissars and toast the new millennium.

    Sometimes it is completely implausible that the disturbance in the past
    could have led to the result you see.  For example, in the Suez Canal
    chapter, the wider outcome does not depend on your actions: even though
    Black brokered a deal to prevent the Suez Crisis, the powers that be
    always intended to renege on the deal.

    "Jigsaw" is a huge game, one of the largest text adventures ever
    written.  It is made manageable only by its episodic structure: each
    time zone can be treated more or less as a separate game, requiring only
    those objects that are nearby to solve its puzzles.  (Though there are a
    few interconnections between the eras to make life interesting, and
    attempts to use anachronistic objects inappropriately are often
    amusing.)  "Jigsaw"'s puzzles are hard; often all you can do is collect
    the available objects and fiddle with them, without any real
    understanding of what your objective is until you've achieved it.
    Particularly unfortunate in this respect are the Alexander Fleming,
    women's suffrage and East Berlin chapters.  A few other puzzles refer to
    classic works of interactive fiction including "Adventure", "Zork" and
    "Enchanter", and the novice without this background will struggle.

    Some of the puzzles, on the other hand, are inspired.  In one chapter,
    you find yourself at Bletchley Park in World War II and have to decrypt
    a message encoded by the Enigma machine.  Sweating away at this problem,
    I suddenly realised that, whereas the usual derring-do of an adventure
    game is only so much make-believe, in this case my task was made no
    easier by its fictional nature.  Of course, my 1940s counterparts faced
    a more difficult Enigma machine - Nelson's being slightly simplified -
    had to succeed without the benefit of information gained by supernatural
    means, had no access to high-speed computers, and faced rather greater
    consequences of failure than merely an unfinished game.  I found myself
    thinking, ``If Turing and Newman could do it, then surely I, with all
    these advantages, can do it too!''

    The most interesting feature of "Jigsaw" is the way it deals with
    Black's sex.  By cunning paraphrase, Nelson manages to avoid ever
    stating whether Black is male or female: knowing only that Black is
    attractive to you, you are free to project your own preference onto the
    situation.  This is a more elegant device than the outright question
    ``Are you male or female?'' or the various contrivances by which Infocom
    games force a decision on you.  Not every reader appreciates this
    elegance: at least one person posting to rec.games.int-fiction, having
    noticed that both you and Black are able to pass yourselves off
    successfully in masculine roles, argued that you and Black must
    therefore be gay men.  But given the fantastic nature of the piece, and
    the famous cases of women who have gone disguised as men for long
    periods of time without detection, it is foolish to rigidly insist on
    such an interpretation.

    "Jigsaw" is Nelson's second game.  His first, "Curses", grew by stages
    into a mish-mash of Celtic Druids and King Arthur rubbing shoulders with
    classical Greek Gods and the poems of T.S. Eliot.  The effect is
    certainly startling, but I imagine that a writer as attracted to
    elaborate formal structures as Nelson could not be satisfied with the
    outcome.  A new game gave him the opportunity to make amends.  The
    result is dominated by structures based on the numbers 16 and 100.
    There are 16 time zones, 16 chapters, 16 jigsaw pieces, 16 animals to
    sketch, 16 locations in the Land and the game starts with 16 minutes to
    go before the start of the new century.  There are 100 years in the
    Twentieth Century and 100 points to be scored.  There are also pairings
    of opposites: Prologue and Epilogue, Black and White, nature and
    technology, the dead Land and the living Land, the party at the end of
    the century and the party at the beginning, the chapel unbuilt and the
    chapel disused.

    At times I felt the correspondences and allegory were too obvious and
    too much; Black's schematic role rather overshadows the tentative story
    of Black's relationship with the player (and this is not helped by the
    flexible order of the chapters).  "Jigsaw" also lacks the excitement and
    unpredictability which "Curses" achieved by being so chaotic.

    Still, "Jigsaw" is extremely good by the standards of existing text
    adventure games, and certainly good enough to be worth paying the
    compliment of taking it seriously.  Although it adopts a traditional
    puzzle-based style of game-play, and doesn't make any technical advances
    beyond the state of the art, it does wonders with the limited techniques
    at its disposal.  Everyone who enjoys text adventures should play it.

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

    From: "Magnus Olsson"

    Name: Lethe Flow Phoenix		Parser: TADS standard
    Author: Dan Shiovitz			Plot: Linear
    Email: scythe SP@G u.washington.edu		Atmosphere: Slightly surreal
    Availability: F, GMD			Writing: Excellent
    Puzzles: Logical, rather simple		Supports: TADS ports
    Characters: See review			Difficulty: Below average

    "Lethe Flow Phoenix" is one of those works that one approaches without
    really knowing what to expect.  On one hand, it's been mentioned as
    small and simple, solvable in a few hours; on the other hand, there's
    the obscure, almost pretentious, title that implies a mythical
    significance.  Add to that various comments - including spoiler
    requests - that hinted at great depths, and it felt like a
    "must-play".  I wasn't disappointed - it turned out to be even more
    interesting than I had expected: "Lethe Flow Phoenix" is an ambitious
    attempt to deal with questions not normally addressed in IF, and an
    attempt to extend the traditional adventure game to be able to do so.

    At first, you are not very likely to notice much of this.  The
    introduction is short and somewhat sinister: memories of a camping
    trip, and falling - or stepping - off a cliff, then nothing more until
    you find yourself in a slightly surrealistic fantasy world, with no
    idea of how you got there or what to do next.

    There is nothing very original about this opening - the sudden
    abduction to a strange world seems to be becoming a cliche of IF - nor
    about the world you've ended up in.  In fact, everything in the world
    is vaguely familiar: it seems to be assembled out of common IF icons
    such as gazebos, bird cages and waterfalls.  This is probably
    intentional (an explanation is given later in the game) and does not
    imply any lack of originality on the part of the author - the puzzles
    involving these familiar icons are perhaps not of stunning novelty,
    but they certainly don't feel old and worn either.  The atmosphere in
    this early part of the game is sweet and idyllic, somewhat reminiscent
    of "The Sound of One Hand Clapping", though there are dark undertones
    that foreshadow later revelations.

    After having you explore this tiny world (only 15 or so locations) and
    solve a number of not too difficult puzzles, all at a rather languid
    pace, the author suddenly turns the tables on his unsuspecting
    audience.  It is here that "Lethe Flow Phoenix" changes from a light,
    innocent puzzle game to rather dark interactive literature, that at
    least attempts to touch deep, existential questions.

    It starts innocently enough with a puzzle involving a spider and a
    mushroom.  The conclusion of the puzzle is, however, not just an
    increased score and a longer inventory, but an entirely unexpected
    series of events that plunges you into what first seems like a
    nightmare, plagued by ghosts from your past.

    Via a series of essentially non-interactive "cut scenes" - there is
    seldom a choice of actions, but either just one obvious thing to do,
    which triggers another cut scene, or no option but to watch and listen
    as the plot advances by itself - you are led to an encounter with the
    central NPC, Daniel, who in a long monologue explains what is going on
    and how crucial a role you're actually playing in the scheme of
    things.

    The encounter with Daniel is the climax of "Lethe Flow Phoenix", and
    acts as a centre of symmetry; it is followed first by another
    confrontation with your past, and then you are back where you were
    before, in a "traditional", puzzle-based adventure game.  The
    difference is that after meeting Daniel, you are prepared to do
    something about your past, to derive inner strength rather from it
    rather than just grieving over lost opportunities.  Similarly, when
    you're attacking the puzzles again, you are armed with the means to
    manipulate not only the various objects in the world, but the world
    itself.  This enables you to go back and finish certain puzzles that
    were left open before, thus bringing everything to a satisfying
    conclusion.

    While not very original, the outer parts of the game are quite well
    written, with attention to detail even in objects that would normally
    be considered decorations.  People who like red herrings will probably
    enjoy this; personally, I find significant-looking objects that turn
    out to be unimportant a bit of a distraction, but this is a matter of
    taste.  On the other hand, the author sometimes fails to realize the
    full potential of the really significant objects.  The gazebo scene,
    for example, or the remote control, are wonderful devices with lots of
    possibilitites for experimentation and clever puzzles; I was a bit
    disappointed that in both cases the intended use for this complex
    machinery was quite simple.

    Still, in a game of this small size, it is perhaps just an advantage
    to have simple puzzles.  And though simple, the puzzles are not
    trivial. In most cases they require thinking in several steps and
    solving them gives you that nice feeling of accomplishment that is
    perhaps the adventurer's best reward.  There is only one NPC in the
    outer parts of the game.  It is very simple and not very interactive,
    and anyway, in the case of this particular NPC it's quite in
    character.

    I had a few parser problems (the most serious one being that you can
    enter a cave by typing just "enter" in the right place, but the
    command "enter cave" gives the response "I don't see any cave here"),
    and the way the magnet is handled is extremely awkward, but my only
    major complaint with the outer parts of the game is the very first
    puzzle.  Unfortunately, it is of the tired "find food or you'll die"
    variety, and, as usual, the time before you starve is far too short,
    forcing you to restart from the beginning over and over again until
    you've found all the objects necessary to get food.  The puzzle in
    itself is quite nice, but the time limit detracts considerably from
    the enjoyment.  Perhaps it was put in to give a sense of urgency to
    the rather placid early game, but in that case it is almost certainly
    not the right method.

    Apart from a this, gameplay flows smoothly and a reasonably
    experienced adventurer should be able to solve it in a few sittings.

    The central section is entirely different.  Almost all the action
    takes place in the cut scenes, and the player is led through the plot
    without the option to deviate from the path, being told what he thinks
    and feels, never really given a chance to act.  The centre of the
    centre, so to speak, is entirely non-interactive; a story within the
    story, told by Daniel in a monologue that must be the longest speech
    by any IF character so far, at least outside "The Legend Lives".

    There are no real puzzles in this section, and the NPCs are essentially
    non-interactive, although it is possible to extract some interesting
    background information by asking Daniel questions after he has
    finished his speech.  The author uses the cut scenes very effectively,
    gradually leading the player into longer and longer, and less and less
    interactive scenes.  The writing is very good indeed, the imagery
    evocative, the language beautiful and poetic, without degenerating
    into empty effects - and what is being said is important: not only the
    background to the entire setting, but the player character's internal
    conflicts and attempts to come to grips with his or her past.

    Dan Shiovitz is addressing very deep questions for an adventure game,
    and perhaps he has chosen the only realistic way of doing so.  Still,
    I must confess that it fails to be really engaging.

    I think one reason for this is simply the enormous contrast with the
    outer parts of the game, and especially the differences in time scale.
    Solving the first part of the game takes at least a few hours, during
    which one gets into the mode of thought appropriate for a puzzle game.
    Then one is presented with an enormous amount of text, which takes
    perhaps ten minutes to read - only to be abruptly dumped back into the
    remainder of the puzzle game, which will take some time to finish.
    The effect is that what should be the central part and climax of the
    work turns into a short interlude, while the rest of the game, which is
    infinitely less important in terms of emotional content, dominates it
    totally.

    Also, although the writing is excellent, I feel that author attempts
    too much.  He certainly seems to have given his imagination free
    reins; the result is a story that combines fallen angels with alien
    invaders, philosophical speculation with battle scenes; a struggle of
    enormous proportions - and this is just the background.  The player
    character's immediate concern is not this cosmic drama, but coming to
    grips with himself and with the ghosts of his past.

    Somehow, this combination of myth and science fiction, legend and
    psychological drama, science fiction and ghost story, saving the world
    and achieveing personal fulfilment, all presented in just a few pages
    of text, fails to have the desired impact just because it is _too_
    powerful, too all-encompassing.

    I'm not saying that it is impossible to combine these elements into
    one story, just that the author may be making it just a little bit too
    hard for himself - and for his readers.  There are limits to the
    ability to suspend disbelief.  If the author had concentrated on one
    or two aspects of this story, instead of trying to do everything at
    once, it would have been much more effective; the message would have
    come across much more powerfully without all the fireworks.

    To summarize, "Lethe Flow Phoenix" is a work with strong centrifugal
    tendencies - it flies apart into quite disparate components.  Taken by
    themselves, these parts are perhaps not perfect, but very good indeed,
    considering that this is the author's debut work.  Together, they fail
    to yield an artistic unit, partly because of the author's high
    ambitions; however, he shouldn't be blamed for failing to achieve
    everything but praised for even making the attempt.  Without
    experimentation, we would never get anywhere.

    "Lethe Flow Phoenix" is very interesting for what it tries to achieve,
    and the ways in which it succeeds or fails to succeed in doing so.  It
    contains some pieces of excellent writing, as well as some good work
    in the invention of puzzles and intricate puzzle machinery.  IF
    authors are advised to study it carefully.

    And for everybody, authors or non-authors alike, it remains a very
    enjoyable game.

    From: "Gareth Rees"

    NAME: Lethe Flow Phoenix
    AUTHOR: Dan Shiovitz
    DATE: August 1995
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS ports
    AVAILABLE: IF archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/lethe.zip

    It is universally acknowledged by writers of fiction that realistic
    characters are hard to do.  Any adventure game programmer would add, I
    am sure, that maintaining that realism while making it possible to
    interact with characters is well beyond the current state of the art.

    So what to do?  Keeping the interaction and accepting the loss of
    realism is one approach, but a second possibility is to lose the
    interactivity and try to salvage the realism somehow.  Infocom's games
    often toyed with this approach, from the mysterious gentleman who
    occasionally robs the player in "Zork", to the unseen and unsettling
    presence of cousin Herman in "Hollywood Hijinx".  David Baggett, in his
    game "Legend", experimented with a variation on this approach, by
    confining most of the character exposition and major turning points in
    the plot to `cut scenes', long conventionally narrated passages which
    break up the more conventionally puzzle-oriented interactive action.

    Dan Shiovitz's game "Lethe Flow Phoenix" (1995) takes this approach to
    its logical conclusion.  In this game, all plot, characterisation and
    background is confined to the cut scenes, and the interactive portions
    are completely unrelated to the ostensible plot.  The effect is
    unnerving and surreal.

    The matter of the plot is this: you play an unhappy young man or woman
    experiencing an existential crisis.  While travelling in the American
    desert to try to make sense of your life, a supernatural force pulls you
    off a cliff, and you find yourself in a fantasy world.  After some
    exploring, you find a fallen angel called Daniel who explains that the
    Earth is being invisibly taken over by alien invaders, and that you are
    one of the chosen ones intended to fight this secret war. [Spoilers
    removed.]

    It's hard to imagine how an adventure game could get to grips with this
    kind of powerful and emotional material, and Shiovitz doesn't even try.
    The interactive parts of the story are conventional puzzle-solving
    involving a talking tree, a levitating gazebo, a magic mushroom and
    other fantastic trappings.  Various aspects seem intended to suggest
    Brian Moriarty's game "Trinity" (1986): there are giant mushrooms, and a
    sun that moves and casts shadows on a giant sundial.  All very
    entertaining, but it seems rather petty when compared to the
    Earth-shaking apparatus of the plot.

    The most curious aspect of "Lethe Flow Phoenix" is how well done the
    individual parts are!  The puzzles are uniformly excellent and
    well-motivated (except for one curious action, which most players will
    eventually work out for lack of anything else to do).  There are several
    impressively complex interactive mechanisms, which all seem to have been
    coded flawlessly, and there are as many synonyms and alternate ways of
    expressing actions as a player could want.  On the plot side, the
    writing is very fluent and readable despite the weightiness of the
    material (although not up to the task of compressing God, angels, alien
    invaders, human avatars, a deprived childhood, adolescent angst, family
    breakdown and forgiveness into the space of a few screenfuls - as if any
    writing could be!).  But the plot and the puzzles make a game bolted
    together like a Frankenstein monster: neither side supports the other,
    and the result is neither successful as a game, nor as a story.

    Still, I look forward to Shiovitz's next game with interest; if he can
    produce a game and story which go together to make something greater
    than the sum of the two parts, the result will be very impressive.

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

    From: "Molley the Mage"

    NAME: The Light: Shelby's Addendum	PARSER: TADS 2.2
    AUTHOR: C. A. McCarthy			PLOT: Darkish science fiction
    EMAIL: mlkuehl SP@G students.wisc.edu (?)	ATMOSPHERE: Excellent!
    AVAILABILITY: Shareware, GMD		WRITING: Highest quality
    PUZZLES: Obscure, not well done		SUPPORTS: TADS 2.2 ports
    CHARACTERS: Richly developed		DIFFICULTY: NP-Complete

    "The Light: Shelby's Addendum" is a fascinating piece of science-fiction IF
    from a very talented writer, C.A. McCarthy (a regular contributor to the
    interactive fiction newsgroups as well).  The game casts you as Shelby,
    the "apprentice" (functional equivalent of a graduate student) to the
    Regulators, two physicists who maintain a beacon which is critical to the
    survival of the Earth (in between their studies of subsurface sonar
    phenomena).  When you return home from a trip to find that the beacon
    is no longer alight, and no one seems to be left at the project site,
    you must embark on a search for the truth behind the evil
    happenings which have befallen the Lighthouse.  What fate has befallen
    the Regulators?  What's happened to the phase modulator?  And why didn't
    anyone feed the chickens, for crying out loud?

    As it turns out, you'll get to know the Regulators quite well before
    meeting either one of them.  Barclay and Holcroft come to life through
    Shelby's observations on the everyday things around him, and through
    other sources (a diary, for example).  You'll learn that something
    sinister is definitely afoot, and that one of the Regulators has placed
    all of Earth's inhabitants in danger by embarking on a dangerous "quest"
    of his own.  His motivations, as well as his methods, must be unraveled
    if Shelby is to succeed.

    The first problem, however, is the fact that without the beacon, Shelby
    (and any other living thing) is out of phase with the rest of the world.
    If you do not find some way to prevent it (and quickly!) Shelby will meet
    a grisly death within just a few turns of the game's beginning.  In my
    opinion, the time limit imposed by the game to solve this first puzzle is
    too tight.  You get 100 moves before dying, which may seem like a lot,
    but trust me -- it's not.  This is definitely a "restore puzzle" and one
    which will probably take you several restarts to solve.

    Which brings me to my only major complaint with the game: the puzzles.
    "The Light: Shelby's Addendum" contains several puzzles which are more or
    less original in concept.  Unfortunately, they are terribly executed.
    While a genuine attempt has been made by the author to integrate the
    puzzles into the story, the nature and difficulty of the puzzles is such
    that they stick out like a sore thumb.  Not only are some of the more
    important puzzles (like the first one you'll need to solve in order to
    stay alive) just downright obscure, the author has chosen to "hide" most
    of the objects in the game deep within the scenery.  You'll need to look
    under, over, around, behind, and through every single piece of scenery to
    avoid missing vital objects without which you cannot complete the quest.

    In particular, the places where the keys are hidden on the mainland is
    extremely unfair.  Quite frankly, I don't recommend playing this game
    without at least a hint sheet (and probably a walkthrough) or you will
    almost certainly become hopelessly stuck at any of several places.  You
    may consider this "puzzle wimpiness" on my part, but consider that
    Trinity and Spellbreaker are my two all-time favorite Infocom games, and
    perhaps that will put my opinions of "Shelby"'s puzzles into perspective.

    This is not to say that *all* of the puzzles are bad: several of them are
    quite clever, and the implementation of all the puzzles is basically
    seamless (with one exception, but it doesn't affect your ability to
    finish the game).  There's one puzzle near the end of the game which
    involves a weight-sensitive elevator and is quite nifty in its
    execution.  In fact, the implementation of the whole game seems
    *very* solid.  I didn't discover any unknown bugs in the game, nor did I
    notice any typos (other than a couple of places where "its" was used
    instead of "it's") and the game mechanics and pacing flowed beautifully.

    In truth, despite the incongruency of the puzzles, I hasten to say that I
    enjoyed "Shelby's Addendum" a great deal.  This game is well written.  The
    plot is great, there's a bit of horror (but nothing overboard), the
    characters are well-developed (including the player's character, which is
    unusual in IF but handled beautifully here), and the room descriptions
    and scenery descriptions are vivid and consistently of the highest
    quality.  The "cut scenes" (areas of long text where various central
    characters interact) and the original storyline throughout made me think I
    was reading a top-notch science-fiction short story instead of playing a
    computer game.  Did I mention that I think the prose is *really* good?  I
    have to be sure and work that little tidbit into this paragraph somewhere.

    There's an undertone of ecological (ir)responsibility in the game, but the
    player is not really "hit over the head" with any kind of great theme or
    moral message.  One does get a glimpse into how far a man might go to regain
    that which he has lost, and a more convincing NPC than Barclay I have not
    seen in an interactive fiction game for some time.  There is plenty of
    material here for your philosophical brain cells to chew on, as well as a
    good amount of technical descriptions and other "futuristic" science.
    The game logic is consistent all the way through, and everything is eminently
    believable.  The author has certainly created a seamless experience as
    far as I am concerned.

    However, many players will be turned off by the puzzles.  I know that
    after several hours of extreme frustration when Shelby first came out, I
    was unable to survive the 100-turn limit and put the game away for
    another day.  I just dragged it out today, actually, and pretty much
    lucked into the solution to that first puzzle.  Once you have managed to
    locate the wall safe, however, the rest of the steps needed to
    preserve Shelby's physical integrity should be easier.  However, this is
    only the first of several major frustrations you will encounter.  The only
    word of advice I can give to players is examine EVERYTHING.  And I mean
    everything.  If a noun is mentioned in a room description, you had better
    look at it or you may well miss something crucial.  While I always have
    been and remain a great advocate of the rule that "if a noun is used in a
    room description, the player should be able to examine it", I believe
    that the author has gone a bit too far in making the player search for
    important objects and other pieces of information in unlikely places.

    In summary, "The Light: Shelby's Addendum" is not going to make my list of
    the top three interactive fiction games of the year, because frankly it
    wasn't that much fun to play, what with the puzzles being such a mess.
    However, it rates number one for 1996 in quality of writing,
    characterization, story, and plot.  This is a game which begs to be
    *read*.  This is a game which could have been published as a short story.
    This is a game which, if you can get past the first few frustrations,
    will reward you amply.  I've not played any of Colm's other games; (he
    mentions two in the accompanying text file), but I would sure like to
    read some of his fiction -- because his instincts as a writer are right
    on the money.  Some better puzzles and a bit less random searching, and
    this would be one of the best games ever to come down the pipe.  As it
    stands, "Shelby" is much like a lighthouse itself -- brief periods of
    dazzling illumination punctuated by deep darkness.  But the light
    pierces, straight and true.  Give this one a chance, folks.

    Also, I have to give a good review to any game which implements a full
    bottle of the finest liquid refreshment on Earth, Guinness Extra Stout.
    Brought a tear to my eye, it did.  The only thing I regretted was that
    there was only one bottle.  :)

    From: "Gareth Rees"

    NAME: The Light: Shelby's Addendum
    AUTHOR: Colm A. McCarthy
    DATE: December 1995
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS ports
    AVAILABILITY: IF archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/shelby.zip

    In this game you play Shelby, a young apprentice to the `Regulators',
    Holcroft and Barclay.  You live in a remote lighthouse where you
    nominally study physics, but actually spend most of your time cooking
    and scrubbing floors.  Returning to the lighthouse after an extended
    period of absence, you find that things have gone wrong.  An ominous
    mist surrounds the lighthouse and Holcroft and Barclay are nowhere to be
    found.  It is up to you to find out what is the matter, and to put
    things right again.

    Most of the fun in this game is figuring out the background to the world
    McCarthy has created here, so I won't reveal too much about it.  Suffice
    to say that this is a world somewhat like ours, but in which `physics'
    is a very different subject from the physics we know.  The how and why
    of this world is revealed tantalisingly slowly, a little bit in the room
    descriptions, some more in books, magazines and other papers that you
    read, and some more that you have to guess for yourself.  The idea of
    alternate worlds, and the uses to which they might be put (if technology
    were to allow their manipulation), play a strong part in the rationale
    for the plot and some of the game mechanics.  (However, it is a bit
    disappointing that the working of the plot depends on so many people
    being complete idiots!  If the `phase modulator' is so essential that
    its removal can threaten the destruction of the world, why does the UN
    leave it to be guarded only by two old physicists?)

    Although the discovery of the background is interesting, the actual
    mechanics of the game are disappointing.  Some of the text is good,
    notably the introductpry paragraphs, but much of the rest is rather
    lacklustre.  Room descriptions have a tendency towards lists of
    furniture and exits, and there are rather too many rooms in which
    nothing happens (I counted 25 that could have been removed without
    loss).  Far too many of the puzzles require you to read through the room
    description, examine every object mentioned and look under every piece
    of furniture.  Several locations seem to be full of clutter for the
    express purpose of distracting you from the one object you need to
    investigate.

    There are a few places where over-enthusiasm on the part of the writer
    rather spoils the atmosphere.  There's a submarine trip in which you're
    treated to jokey descriptons of characters from television programmes
    (Flipper the dolphin, the puppets from "Stingray" and so on).  These
    seem completely out of place with the more serious tone of the rest of
    the game, and would have been better turned into Easter eggs.  Late on
    in the game, with the island crumbling around you and doom approaching,
    you are treated to messages along the lines of ``All around you the
    earth groans horribly'', presumably in order to instil in you some sense
    of urgency.  But these messages appear every turn, and it turns out that
    there is in fact no time limit, so after fifty or more repetitions the
    effect is ludicrous rather than alarming.

    Some of the puzzles seemed completely arbitrary to me, and even after
    solving them I still don't understand why the solution worked.  For
    example, there's a puzzle with two circles on the ground; if you put the
    right objects in the circles, a secret door opens.  As far as I can
    tell, there are no clues to which objects to use.  Another puzzle uses
    an oxygen cylinder and a pump to make a submarine appear; I might have
    understood this if the submarine had been in an underground chamber full
    of water that needed to be pumped out, but in fact the submarine
    appeared in the open sea.  So what was the oxygen used for?

    Some other puzzles are made difficult by programming errors: there's a
    trapdoor in the ceiling which is too high to reach, but you might not
    realise this because the commands `touch trapdoor', `push trapdoor' and
    so on give messages that suggest you can touch it.  A pivoting balance
    is implemented so that it only moves when you put an object on one of
    the plates.  If you change the weight of an object while it's on the
    plate, the balance stays where it is.

    However, a few of the puzzles are well done: two cleverly-clued password
    puzzles gave me an ``Aha!'' feeling when I got them right first time.

    I've been rather harsh in this review; there are good aspects to "The
    Light: Shelby's Addendum", and it would not have been out of place had
    it appeared as a mid-period Infocom game.  But I didn't enjoy playing it
    very much because the moments of excitement were few and far between.  I
    had expected the eventual encounter with Barclay and Holcroft to liven
    things up a bit, but, when they do appear, these characters are passive
    and unresponsive, implemented with the minimum of effort necessary to
    carry them from their rediscovery to their disappearance a handful of
    turns later.  The one point in the game that really ought to be exciting
    - a ding-dong fight between Barclay and Holcroft in an underground
    laboratory - was made completely non-interactive, with nothing for the
    player to do but yawn as several screenfuls of text scroll by.

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

    From: "Christopher E. Forman"

    NAME: The Multi-Dimensional Thief             GAMEPLAY: AGT or Parser/GUI
    AUTHOR: Joel Finch                            PLOT: Escape the Dungeon
    EMAIL: ???                                    ATMOSPHERE: Fragmented
    AVAILABILITY: Shareware ($15), GMD            WRITING: Not Bad
    PUZZLES: A Few Surprises                      SUPPORTS: PCs
    CHARACTERS: Unresponsive                      DIFFICULTY: Below Average

            "The Multi-Dimensional Thief," which was a winner in one of the AGT
    Programming Contests a few years back, comes in two formats: A text-only
    AGT-based version, and a Legend-esque graphical game engine, with command
    buttons, clickable text, and mouse input.  Both versions of the game have the
    same layout, but I found the latter to be a bit more playable, as the parser
    is a slight improvement over AGT's standard, though still far from perfect
    (the AGT version is not bad either, merely missing a few nice features).
    They're both a bit buggy, though -- I found three or four rather obvious
    mistakes as I played through them, but nothing serious.
            The plot is nothing we haven't seen before.  You're a thief, and you
    want to become part of the Multi-Dimensional Thieves' Guild.  So you're
    placed in a magical dungeon and must escape to prove yourself.  Pretty
    standard stuff, but the simple concept serves the game well.
            Throughout your travels, you'll visit a number of different places,
    many of which are barely connected to the game world.  That's my primary
    complaint about "Thief" -- it seems as if many of the locations are simply
    stuck together with no regard for a streamlined overall design.  Travel to
    exotic, faraway places works well in I-F if there's perceived spatial
    distance and a central logic to it (for instance, the Oracle in "Zork Zero").
    But "Thief" puts so many diverse environments in such close proximity to one
    another that it tends to make the game appear incongruous and fragmented.
            Some of the puzzles are quite clever.  The portable hole, in
    particular (obviously inspired by the classic Warner Brothers cartoon), is
    one of my favorites.  A few (some of the Oz puzzles, for instance), require
    some inside knowledge from the original sources that inspired their I-F
    counterparts.  All in all, though, it's not too hard, and shouldn't take an
    experienced player more than a few days to play through.
            The AGT version comes with a set of pop-hints, which in turn come
    with a list of fun things to try and some rather amusing bogus topics.  This
    is one feature that I missed in the graphical release.  If you detest
    graphics, the GUI version isn't going to endear them to you, but it's worth
    checking out for the novelty of implementation.  Better yet, show it to your
    graphic-crazed friends, and perhaps they'll be willing to give parser
    adventures a try.
            (BTW, the graphical version won't run on some older systems -- it
    requires a VGA or SVGA video card.  Also, SVGA users need at least a 386.)

                                                -- C.E. Forman

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

    From: "Christopher E. Forman"

    NAME: Oo-Topos                                 GAMEPLAY: 1 or 2-word commands
    AUTHOR: Michael Berlyn                         PLOT: Strictly rudimentary
    EMAIL: ???                                     ATMOSPHERE: A few nice touches
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial (Sentient Software)   WRITING: Minimalist
    PUZZLES: Not overly difficult                  SUPPORTS: C64, Apple II, IBM
    CHARACTERS: Lifeless obstacles                 DIFFICULTY: Medium

    [This review is based on the Apple II version of the game.]

            "Oo-Topos" is an oldie but a goodie.  It was written billions and
    billions of years ago (to be exact, 1981), during the dawn of the home
    computing era.  It was also the very first game written by Michael Berlyn,
    before he went on to write "Cutthroats", "Infidel", and "Suspended" at
    Infocom.  (Incidentally, to add to the recent "Where Are They Now?" article
    in April's "Computer Game Review," Berlyn also worked at Accolade for some
    time, where he did the "King's Quest"-like "Altered Destiny" a few years
    back, and was also part of a team which created Sega and Super Nintendo games
    -- he worked on the original "Bubsy," for instance.)
            The plot is very straightforward as sci-fi stories go: You were
    transporting a shipload of scientific equipment and a serum to cure an Earth-
    bound plague, when aliens caught your ship in their tractor beam and grounded
    it on their homeworld of Oo-Topos.  You begin the game in a cell, having
    forced the door open, and must escape the prison, collect the scattered
    cargo, and locate the necessary parts to put your ship back together.
            You interact via a two-word parser superimposed on a minimal
    interface -- there's no prompt, just a cursor, and the text spans 40 columns,
    all in caps.  Still, it looks more like the Infocom format than the Scott
    Adams adventures -- "Oo-Topos" has full (albeit rather sparse) room
    descriptions as opposed to a simple room name and a list of objects, which
    makes it feel less mechanical.  Even so, there's not much of a command set.
    There are no synonyms, it's impossible to examine room scenery, and you can't
    even examine objects unless you're carrying them.  (There are a few
    exceptions to the last one.)
            According to the sleeved package the game comes in (mine has a $32.95
    price tag still attached -- wow!), Berlyn spent a year and a half writing and
    programming the game.  The writing is passable for such an early effort, but
    it's very prosaic, nowhere near the level of Berlyn's books.  (He's had four
    science-fiction novels published: "The Integrated Man," "Crystal Phoenix,"
    "Blight," and "The Eternal Enemy.")  Players get little sense of wonder as
    they wander the corridors of the alien prison, as the text suffers from the
    sparse minimalism of early adventures.  The aliens themselves are particularly
    lifeless, serving only as obstacles to impede the player's progress.
            The puzzles, though no doubt original at the time, are pretty simple
    by today's standards.  A 2-word parser doesn't allow for something as complex
    as, say, the Enigma machine in "Jigsaw."  Don't forget that the game had to
    fit on a 180K single-sided floppy as well.  Much of the game is derivative of
    the original Crowther and Woods Adventure (when you die, you're resurrected,
    but your possessions are lost, etc.).  A few bits of text pay humble tribute
    to Adventure (such as eating the food -- you're told that it's "pretty tasty
    food").  Most puzzles embody the characteristic cause-and-effect logic --
    setting up conditions so a solution can occur -- but there's no veil of
    atmosphere or plot to conceal the fact that these are simple logic puzzles.
            Sprinkled throughout the game are a number of drop-an-object mazes.
    These are hard, no two ways about it.  You'll have to make maps if you expect
    to get through them.  Maze-haters will likely become fed up very quickly.
    But, considering that the game's date places it in the company of "Adventure"
    and the "Zork" Trilogy, I'm willing to let that slide.
            Despite these criticisms (which can largely be excused because the
    game is so old), I had a lot of fun with "Oo-Topos," and have scored it
    accordingly, breaking several rules of the SPAG rating system in an effort to
    keep it from being slighted.  If you can appreciate the adventure game at its
    most primitive level, you'll enjoy "Oo-Topos."  I felt a little thrill in
    watching the red disk-access LED on my Apple II light up, as I waited for the
    next location to be loaded into memory.  "Oo-Topos" is a piece of I-F history,
    a nostalgic trip down memory lane, a perfectly preserved relic from an age of
    computer gaming whose mystical aura can only be recaptured by those of us who
    were there to watch the computer adventure grow up.

                                                -- C.E. Forman

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

    From: "Christopher E. Forman"

    NAME: Quarterstaff                         GAMEPLAY: Combination Parser/GUI
    AUTHOR: Infocom & Westwood                 PLOT: Fairly straightforward
    EMAIL:                                     ATMOSPHERE: Perhaps a bit lacking
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial (quite rare)      WRITING: Not bad
    PUZZLES: Not many, in the true sense       REQUIRES: Mac or Mac emulator
    CHARACTERS: Pseudo-intelligent             DIFFICULTY: Below average

            For centuries, the various Druid sects have been responsible for
    preserving peace and prosperity among the four kingdoms of Rhea.  But when
    the Tree Druids, the most powerful sect of all, mysteriously vanish, disaster
    threatens the world.  A party of three great warriors was sent to investigate
    the disappearance, but was never heard from again.  So a new party has been
    selected as the last hope to rescue the Tree Druids and restore their Majik.
    (Just in case anyone cares, this is #3 on the list of different Infocom
    spellings of the word -- there was the traditional "magic" in the Zork and
    Enchanter Trilogies, the archaic "magick" in Wishbringer and Beyond Zork, and
    now "majik."  But I digress...)
            "Quarterstaff: The Tomb of Setmoth" is famous for a lot of reasons.
    First, it was one of the company's very last releases (if not _the_ last)
    under MediaGenic.  Second, unless you count the breakdown of "Dungeon" into
    the Zork Trilogy (which I don't), it's the only Infocom adaption of an
    already-existing game -- "Quarterstaff" is based on a little-known earlier
    FRPG of the same title by Westwood Associates, who also collaborated with
    Infocom on "Circuit's Edge", "Mines of Titan", and the two "BattleTech"
    games.  Third, it's notorious for being incredibly difficult to find, as only
    the Macintosh version was ever released.  (And, contrary to popular belief,
    there is _no_ finished-yet-unreleased PC version lurking about the ruins of
    Infocom.  David Lebling has denied this rumor several times.)  As a result,
    "Quarterstaff" is something of an Infocom Holy Grail, sought by devoted
    collectors everywhere.  As an obscure collector's item, it's one of the best
    there is.  But how is it as a _game_?
            It took me quite awhile to really be able to learn that for myself,
    as the game obviously requires a Macintosh to play.  I'd tried "Executor", a
    Mac emulator (available from vorlon.mit.edu), but couldn't get it (the
    emulator) to load properly on my machine, and finally had to resort to playing
    "Quarterstaff" down in the campus Mac lab.  Not being overly familiar with
    Macs (I'd never used one in my life), I had to grab the basics of the Mac
    operating system as well.  Also, the game has problems loading if you're
    not running the right system.  If you don't have System 6.0 and Finder 6.1,
    you'll need to boot the game with the System Disk supplied in the game
    package.  Just trying to play "Quarterstaff" was an adventure in itself!
            But I'm happy to report that, although it's nowhere near the level
    reached by Infocom at their height, "Quarterstaff" manages to be a moderately
    entertaining game with a nifty combination of windows and parser for a play
    system.  It reminded me of nothing so much as Virgin's Magnetic Scrolls
    interface, with perhaps a bit of the old C64 game "Rogue" mixed in.  There
    are windows and menus for text, inventory, objects in the vicinity, optional
    graphics, maps, and an extensive on-line help and hint system.
            And what of the Infocom parser?  Yes, it's still present, and more
    or less up to their regular standards, aside from a few annoying twists --
    non-cardinal directions such as northeast and southwest aren't used, the
    "UNDO" command is absent, and some of the basic I-F commands have been
    altered slightly ("WAIT" is replaced by "PASS" or "GUARD", and "REPEAT" is
    used instead of "AGAIN"), with few abbreviations allowed.  Let this serve as
    a lesson: NEVER stray too far from the firmly established text adventure
    conventions; you'll only confuse and annoy players accustomed to time-honored
    I-F tradition.
            At heart, though, "Quarterstaff" is an RPG, not pure I-F.  And in
    traditional RPG style, the game puts you in control of not a lone quester,
    but a party of adventurers, necessitating a slightly different method of
    play.  Members of the party are classified as either leaders or followers,
    and behave accordingly -- with a directional move, the followers follow their
    leader.  In other situations, the followers can take their own non-directional
    actions, and the "Quarterstaff" player types one command for each member.
    Special commands include the aforementioned "PASS"; "MIMIC", to imitate the
    leader; and "SPLIT" and "JOIN" to disband from the party and regroup,
    respectively.  The need to enter separate commands for every member of the
    party inevitably leads to a considerably longer play session.
            Unlike most RPGs, this game does not classify characters as fighters,
    thieves, magic users, etc.  Rather, all characters are able to use the entire
    spectrum of skills to some extent, and their proficiencies continuously
    increase or decrease according to the frequency with which the character
    practices them.  Other aspects of FRP are incorporated rather realistically.
    Takeable items have such properties as size, shape, and weight, and NPCs
    wander about of their own accord (some will join your party).  It's necessary
    to "WIELD" weapons before using them (a la "Beyond Zork"), and characters
    must also provide themselves with food, water, and sleep (interestingly,
    lack of sleep will actually cause a character to take damage points).
            The writing is about par for Infocom, good but not outstanding,
    although Amy Briggs ("Plundered Hearts") is credited with producing some of
    the text.  As for puzzles, well...there just aren't very many in the true
    I-F sense.  Your progress depends largely on discovering hidden objects and
    keys, unlocking doors, replenishing light sources, and opening secret
    passages.  In most cases a little careful observation is all that's needed.
    Although the layout is fairly vast, there just isn't much variety, as the
    game is primarily combat-oriented ("ATTACK", "THROW", and "SHOOT" are used
    ad nauseum...though the "SMILE" command is kind of cute).
            IMO, the most significant "real" puzzle is that of deciphering a set
    of magic words using a parchment and wooden coin included in the game
    package.  (Apparently quite a few players were stumped by this -- Infocom
    actually gave away the entire solution in the very last issue of "The Status
    Line."  Refer to the notes at the end of this review for details on how to do
    it.)  There is also one critical bug -- the game crashes your entire system
    if anything with nested objects (containers and NPCs holding items) is set on
    fire.  This causes problems in two areas in particular -- the Charred Room
    and the second dungeon level (again, see below for info on avoiding the
    crashes).  On the plus side, there are no "fatal mistakes" for players to
    make.  You can't screw up the game completely unless your entire party is
    killed off.
            How well does all this work when put together?  Sadly, only so-so.
    "Quarterstaff" is really neat at the outset, but sooner or later the novelty
    wears off and it becomes rather tiresome to play through toward the end (as
    did Infocom's other RPG offerings, "BattleTech" and "Mines of Titan").  Once
    you've played through, it's doubtful you'll feel much like experiencing it
    again.  "Quarterstaff" simply doesn't have the same play value as the
    all-text games.
            But then, that's not the reason most Infocom fans want a copy.

                                                -- C.E. Forman

    (SPOILER ALERT!)

            Now, about that coin and parchment:  The poem on the top of the map
    is just a cryptic way of explaining what you're supposed to do.  Basically,
    you use the coin, the compass rose on the parchment, and the identify wand
    (it's pictured on the parchment above the poem) to decipher and use four
    magic words, one corresponding to each of the messages on the bottom of the
    parchment.  Each message is used to form the word that can be spoken to
    identify unnamed keys, wands, scrolls, and potions (provided the character
    who uses the word is actually holding the identify wand in his hands).
            Make sense so far?
            Each message on the bottom of the parchment reveals four things:

                    1) The correct placement of the coin.
                    2) The starting point for determining the word.
                    3) The number of steps (letters in the word).
                    4) The direction in which to decipher.

            What you want to do is put the coin on the compass, making sure the
    coin's arrow points in the direction specified by the message.  Then,
    beginning at the starting point, move the number of "steps" in the direction
    the message says, around the circumference of the coin and parchment, writing
    down one letter for each step.  Letters alternate between the coin and the
    parchment, and can start on either.
            As an example, the magic word for keys is "GURZ", and the word for
    potions is "NESOE".  The last two are left as an exercise for the player.

            As for the crashes...
            In the Charred Room, all you need to do is unlock the bronze seal.
    Once you've found the key, disband a single member (preferably one with a
    high resistance to heat) and send him back to unlock it.
            For the dungeon, the problem area is the region labeled A1-A5, etc.
    Stay on the D's and the 5's, and you'll be safe from the mines.

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

    From: "Christopher E. Forman"

    NAME: Spur                           GAMEPLAY: Quirky but not frustrating
    AUTHOR: Kent Tessman                 PLOT: Unfolds nicely
    EMAIL: as400477 SP@G orion.yorku.ca       ATMOSPHERE: Good
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, GMD          WRITING: Good
    PUZZLES: Logical but not obvious     SUPPORTS: Hugo ports (DOS, Amiga, Linux)
    CHARACTERS: Fairly convincing        DIFFICULTY: Medium

            Considering the potential for atmosphere and adventure puzzles with a
    western theme, it's something of a surprise to me that Infocom never did a
    game in this particular genre, not to mention the fact that there is so
    little I-F in general set in the Old West.  Kudos are due Kent Tessman, who
    has found a relatively unexplored niche in the world of I-F in which to place
    "Spur."  The game is full of atmosphere and serves as a good showcase of the
    Hugo language's capabilities.
            Since no one has yet done a review of a Hugo game (since there are so
    few to begin with), I suppose I should analyze the parser and overall user-
    friendliness of the system before examining the game itself.  Relative to the
    most popular development systems out there, Hugo's parser is far superior to
    AGT's standard, but a number of strange quirks keep it from matching Inform
    and TADS for ease of use.  For instance, a number of common phrases aren't
    understood -- "OPEN DOOR WITH KEY" as opposed to "UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY" is
    one that comes to mind.  To ride a horse, you must first "GET ON THE HORSE"
    and then "RIDE" in the desired direction ("RIDE HORSE" won't get you on the
    horse in the first place).  "KILLing" and "SHOOTing" someone are two
    completely different actions.  Also, I found one that was quite
    (unintentionally) amusing:

                    >steal the axe
                    You'll have to buy the pick-axe first.

    ("STEAL" seems to be a synonym for "TAKE" in this case.)  Much of the scenery
    can't be examined either.  Don't get me wrong, most major objects such as a
    billiards table are present, but tables, chairs, and even Grady's bar aren't
    even recognized.
            I'm not trying to be overly harsh here; I merely want to give players
    a basic feel for how the parser handles, and Hugo handles quite well overall,
    with most of the standard "ease-of-use" features ("UNDO", "OOPS", command
    recall, etc.) implemented.  If a particular syntax doesn't work, it usually
    takes little experimentation to find another common one that does.  Rarely is
    there a need to guess a particular phrase, and if the need seems to arise,
    it's more than likely that you're on the wrong track, so it's not too
    terribly frustrating.  To perhaps put it more tangibly: I usually score the
    AGT parser around 0.7 (with a couple of exceptions), and both the TADS and
    Inform parsers around 1.5 or 1.6 on average.  By this standard, Hugo would
    come in at 1.3 or so.  (This is Hugo 2.0, BTW.  As no games have yet been
    released with 2.1, I can't offer comment.)
            The action begins immediately, with the player thrust into the middle
    of a gunfight, and doesn't let up.  The outset is fast-paced, pushing the
    player along, but it doesn't force the sort of do-or-die time limit where
    you're dead if you don't do everything exactly right (such as the opening to
    "Demon's Tomb" or the endgame of "Christminster").  Some events are timed,
    but sufficient warning is provided.
            "Spur" has a pleasant western atmosphere to it, with appropriate
    situations and puzzles, and some intentional anachronisms tacked on for
    humor.  Those more familiar with the western genre (and I for one am not)
    will no doubt spot some minor cliches but I found nothing so obvious as to
    make me cringe.
            The game is linear overall, and it's sometimes easy to overlook
    things.  Quite a few problems rely on the other characters and can't be
    solved unless you gain the right information from the right person (much like
    "The Path to Fortune").  Reading the sample commands in the online help will
    give you some nudges if you're stuck in the early stages.  What's interesting
    here is the fact that the Hugo engine prevents you from asking characters
    about something if you haven't actually seen it.  This adds a degree of
    realism, but has the side effect of being a pain on subsequent playthroughs.
    It's a trade-off.
            The characters in "Spur" are quite nicely done, many of them with
    reasonable mobility and most of them fairly responsive.  The fact that
    they're observing your behavior as well lends to the realism.  Grady the
    bartender has a superstitious streak, but you can't trick him by giving him a
    fake charm if you create it while he's watching you.  Little Jimmy whines
    incessantly if you steal his taffy.  Old Dan, the town drunk, wanders about
    on his own personal quest for liquor.  Sheriff Argyle is a constant threat
    until you can escape town.
            Your own character is not the typical John Wayne western hero.  The
    story reveals that you're not a very good shot at all, and most other
    characters don't have a very high opinion of you.  It's also necessary to do
    some rather unkind things in order to complete the story.  (The scoring
    system reflects this by summarizing your exploits rather than using a point
    tally, and the effect is pleasing.)
            Although "Spur" is not a long game, it's a detailed one.  You're more
    or less free to do what you choose, with few messages to the effect that
    "violence isn't the answer."  Killing off other characters, though fatal, is
    a perfectly valid move (shooting Sarah's horse was particularly fun -- gawd
    I'm sick!).
            "Spur" is a fairly unique work of I-F, and a fine example of what the
    Hugo language can do.  I'm looking forward to more games from Kent Tessman in
    the future...as well as more Hugo games.

                                                -- C.E. Forman

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

    From: "Stephen Granade"

     NAME: The Windhall Chronicles I: Path To Fortune
     PARSER: Inform's usual
     AUTHOR: Jeff Cassidy and C.E. Forman            PLOT: Spacious
     EMAIL: ceforma SP@G rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
     ATMOSPHERE: Well done
     AVAILABILITY: Shareware, GMD                    WRITING: Slightly uneven
     PUZZLES: From enjoyable to illogical            SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
     CHARACTERS: Static                              DIFFICULTY: Medium+

    Path to Fortune (PTF) is the first in the Windhall Chronicles series.  In
    it, you play Aerin, "a simple blacksmith's apprentice, nothing more."
    However, by a bizarre bit of reasoning on your village's part, you are
    chosen to save the village from taxation without representation by finding
    the treasure horde of Kirizith, a huge dragon.

    The game begins with most of the world available for exploration, and the
    world is large and complex.  There are many places to explore and many
    puzzles to attempt, which helps if you are stumped by one particular
    puzzle.  It would have been nice had the game not shown its whole hand at
    the beginning; additional areas which you can explore only after solving a
    puzzle hold my interest more than being able to visit (almost) everywhere
    at the beginning.  There were only three areas I couldn't visit without
    solving a puzzle, and all three involved at most two rooms.  After enough
    tromping about Windhall, I was ready for something new to explore.  Of
    course, "enough" is a relative term--as large as Windhall is, it took a
    long time before I was familiar with it.

    The open design of PTF weakened its plot somewhat.  At times I felt as if
    I were slogging through endless puzzles, marking time until I could find
    the dragon.  If you ask Denvil the elf about the fish dinner he wants you
    to supply, he says something to the effect that it is just one of those
    sub-plots adventurers are always fulfilling.  A lot of the game felt like
    that--sub-plots I had to finish in order to get to the dragon.  More
    direction towards the end goal was needed.

    The initial puzzles' difficulty range from fairly easy to slightly more
    difficult.  However, as time went on, I found the puzzles becoming more
    and more illogical, possibly due to my solving the logical ones early on.
    The puzzle involving a werewolf and ogre locked in battle struck me as
    completely unmotivated, even after I was helped by someone who had already
    finished the game.  Too often I had to resort to the brute force approach
    of trying every object out on every other object; I would have much rather
    reasoned how to solve the puzzles.

    The main strengths of the game, its size and number of NPCs, are also its
    main weaknesses.  Due to the size of the game and the number of NPCs, it
    felt as if none of the NPCs were fully realized.  The NPCs reacted to a
    large number of questions, but all were of the "ask xxx about yyy"
    category.  None of the NPCs had a life of their own.  Every day Baezil
    cursed over his unlit stove; every day Mielon and Idah stayed in their
    house.  There are an ogre and werewolf who are fighting to the death, day
    in and day out, for as long as you are willing to watch.  The NPCs could
    have been improved by having motivations of their own.

    I enjoyed playing PTF immensely, the above nitpicks notwithstanding.  The
    game is an excellent addition to the growing pantheon of Inform games, and
    well worth the time spent.  I look forward to seeing the next installment
    in the series.

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

    From: "Julian Arnold"

    NAME: Waystation                          PARSER: TADS standard
    AUTHOR: Stephen Granade                   PLOT: See below
    EMAIL: sgranade SP@G phy.duke.edu              ATMOSPHERE: See below
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, GMD               WRITING: See below
    PUZZLES: See below                        SUPPORTS: TADS run-time ports
    CHARACTERS: See below                     DIFFICULTY: See below

    URL:
         Needs TADS run-time (v2.2 or later),

    While driving home from work at night your car's engine dies.  Stopping at
    the side of the road you get out to investigate (not because you have the
    slightest clue of what the problem is, but rather because that seems the
    thing to do).  Moments later you are engulfed in blue light and pass out,
    awakening once more in a dungeon-like cell.

    The introduction to "Waystation" can be seen as analogous to the game as a
    whole-- rarely do you have a reason for your actions, other than that they
    seem like the right thing to do at the time-- objects are collected simply
    because they can be, and used by the same rationale.

    Your goal in the game is not revealed until over half-way through, so for
    the majority of the game you are reduced to moving purposelessly from
    location to location and solving seemingly arbitrary puzzles.  It could be
    argued that you are exploring the environment, but the game-world is not rich
    or coherent enough for this to be a satisfactory explanation.  Indeed, the
    game is a mish-mash of genres-- Granade has played with many ideas, but
    expanded on almost none of them. The introduction suggests alien abduction,
    but then you are transported to an all-too-human cell and seemingly left to
    rot there; after your escape you fetch up in an Orwellian world of barcoded
    and overalled workers, repressive armed guards, and unquestioning order;
    later, by way of the waystations of the title (interplanetary teleportation
    booths), you visit a garbage-dump planet, and a decaying, war-torn alien city
    (in which you find a Roman Catholic church untouched by the bombs which
    decimated the rest of the city-- shades of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds"?).
    This hotch-potch of genres overflows into the local geography in places.  For
    example, one building contains the worker's bathroom, the cafeteria, a
    strange museum-cum-library, an armoury, and a rather sensitive computer room
    all along the same corridor.

    The writing is quite good, the location decriptions are vivid and all the
    text is clear in it's meaning.  However, a somewhat juvenile humour pervades
    the game, with the produce of the worker's cafeteria likened to school
    dinners and the not uncommon trap thrown in which unfairly kills the player
    after luring him into considering it a puzzle (the most obvious example being
    the slightly infamous exploding toilet "puzzle" early on in the game).
    Equally, the solutions to some puzzles verge on the ridiculous (passing the
    laser beams) or are only apparent with foreknowledge gained through previous
    failure (protecting yourself from the acid rain, escaping the ruined house,
    or using the viscous liquid).  Also, there are a lot of red herrings, both
    portable objects and referrable-to, but useless, scenery objects.  Used
    sparingly and carefully such red herrings can contribute to a game's
    atmosphere and "realism", but here they generally do neither, and the lack of
    a satisfactory container (such as, say, "Curses" rucksack) results in the
    need for annoying inventory management.

    In summary, though the game is not wholly disappointing, neither is it
    particularly gratifying or inspired.  If you do not expect too much from it,
    in the way of a strong or developed plot, or detailed interactive NPCs (there
    are none) the game succeeds reasonably well as just that-- a game.  The
    puzzles, many of which seem to exist for their own sake only, as I've
    mentioned before, are generally of medium difficulty, and do not noticeably
    differ in this respect throughout the game.  Overall "Waystation" is a fun
    game, which perhaps offers as many lessons in how not to write IF as it does
    in how to write it.

    [This review was posted to rec.arts.int-fiction, 5th April 1996.]

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

    From: "Bozzie"

    NAME: The Witness				PARSER:Infocom
    AUTHOR:Stu Galley				PLOT:30's mystery
    EMAIL:???					ATMOSPHERE:Very Good
    AVAILABILITY:LTOI 1, Mystery Col.	WRITING:Good
    PUZZLES:Few, but well done.		SUPPORTS:Infocom ports.
    CHARACHTERS:Excellent			DIFFICULTY:EASY/MEDIUM

    You've been hired by Freeman Linder, a businessman who is scared for his
    life.   After you arrive to his home, he tells you his story, just before he
    is shot.  Now you've got a murder to solve, before its too late.

    This is an excellent game. But then, as it was the first game I ever played,
    more then 10 years ago, I may be somewhat partial to it.  It features one of
    the most coherent, realistic mysteries, and possibly one of the most
    consistent stories all together.  Mr. Galley worked hard on this one and it
    shows.  There are no plot holes, and the game makes complete sense.  That is
    one of the vital things about a mystery, and even more so an interactive one,
    where you have to consider every possible storyline, and every tangent you
    can take.  [For example, try not going to the house one time and see what
    happens].  He also is careful to place clues in the writing.  You could just
    follow the "obvious" beginning path and get at least 2 clues without
    examining or questioning anybody.

    Another important step is having good, believable characters, and this is
    where Mr. Galley truly shines.  The characters here are as believable as they
    have ever been in text adventures.  They lie, bluff, change their minds and
    more.  They move around with reasons, and will keep in mind you (The
    detective) when considering their actions.  I'll admit, I fell in love with
    Monica, despite her calling me a masher consistently.  I would, however, have
    liked at least one more character to have had.  Three is never a good number
    to pick when making mystery suspects.  I would have liked someone from Mr.
    Linder's business, for example.  Still, I won't be too choosy.

    The puzzles in this game are standard mystery type.  You question the mystery
    suspects.  You read the prose carefully for clues.  You spy on characters and
    their actions.  You try to search every room and examine every evidence you
    find, with Sgt. Duffy by your side to help assist when you need his help.

    The Atmosphere is well done, if sometimes overly cliched.  But, for some
    reason, I think Mr. Galley may have wanted that effect.  You were watching an
    old 30's mystery movie, not conducting a criminal investigation.  Still,
    while most people think that it has the atmosphere of the Maltese Falcon, I
    would tend to think it was more like the Charlie Chan movies.  You weren't
    heading off everywhere to look for clues, just remaining in a somewhat
    restricted area, questioning people.

    READER'S SCOREBOARD----------------------------------------------------------

       Notes:

    	A   - Runs on Amigas.
    	AP  - Runs on Apple IIs.
    	GS  - Runs on Apple IIGS.
    	AR  - Runs on Acorn Archimedes.
    	C   - Commercial, no fixed price.
    	C30 - Commercial, with a fixed price of $30.
    	F   - Freeware.
    	GMD - Available on ftp.gmd.de
    	I   - Runs on IBM compatibles.
    	M   - Runs on Macs.
    	S20 - Shareware, registration costs $20.
    	64  - Runs on Commodore 64s.
    	ST  - Runs on Atari STs.
    	TAD - Written with TADS.  This means it can run on:
                    AmigaDOS, NeXT and PC, Atari ST/TT/Falcon, DECstation
                    (MIPS) Unix Patchlevel 1 and 2, IBM, IBM RT, Linux, Apple
                    Macintosh, SGI Iris/Indigo running Irix, Sun 4 (Sparc)
                    running SunOS or Solaris 2, Sun 3, OS/2, and even a 386+
                    protected mode version.
            AGT - Available for IBM, Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST.  This does not
                    include games made with the Master's edition.
    	ADVSYS - Available for PC and Macintosh only, or so my sources tell
                     me.  (Source code available as well.  So it can be ported
    		 to other computers.)
    	HUG - Written with Hugo.  Runs on MS-DOS, Linux, and Amigas.
            INF - Infocom or Inform game.  These games will run on:
                    Atari ST, Amiga, Apple Macintosh, IBM, Unix, VMS, Apple II,
                    Apple IIGS, C64, TSR-80, and Acorn Archimedes.  There may be
                    other computers on which it runs as well.

     Name		       Avg Sc  Chr  Puz  # Sc  Rlvt Ish       Notes:
     ====                  ======  ===  ===  ====  ========       ======
    Adventure               7.7    1.1  0.7    2     8      F_INF_TAD_ETC_GMD
    Adventure 350		6.5    0.0  1.5    1     x
    Adv. of Eliz. Highe     3.1    0.8  0.3    1     5      F_AGT
    All Quiet...Library	4.5    0.7  0.7    3     7      F_INF_GMD
    Amnesia			7.7    1.3  1.4    1     9      C_AP_I_64
    Another...No Beer	2.4    0.2  0.8    2     4      S10_IBM_GMD
    Arthur: Excalibur	8.6    1.8  1.7    1     4	C_INF
    Awe-Chasm		2.4    0.3  0.6    1     8	S?_IBM_ST
    Balances		6.4    1.0  1.3    2     6      F_INF_GMD
    Ballyhoo		7.0    1.8  1.5    3	 4	C_INF
    Beyond Tesseract	3.7    0.1  0.6    1     6	F_I_GMD
    Beyond Zork		8.1    1.5  2.0    3	 5	C_INF
    Border Zone		6.7    1.4  1.4    4	 4	C_INF
    Broken String		3.1    0.5  0.6    1	 x	F_TADS_GMD
    Bureaucracy		8.3    1.8  1.6    3	 5	C_INF
    Busted                  5.2    1.0  1.1    1            F_INF_GMD
    Castaway		1.1    0.0  0.4    1     5      F_IBM_GMD
    Change in the Weather   6.1    0.8  1.1    2     7      F_INF_GMD
    Christminster           8.6    1.8  1.7    3            F_INF_GMD
    Corruption              6.7    1.4  1.4    1     x      C_I
    Cosmoserve		8.7    1.3  1.4    2     5      F_AGT_GMD
    Crypt v2.0		5.0    1.0  1.5    1     3	S12_IBM_GMD
    Curses			8.3    1.3  1.7    7     2	F_INF_GMD
    Cutthroats		6.4    1.4  1.2    5	 1	C_INF
    Deadline		7.0    1.3  1.4    4	 x	C_INF
    Deep Space Drifter	5.5	    1.4    1     3      S15_TAD_GMD
    Demon's Tomb            7.4    1.2  1.1    2     9      C_I
    Detective		1.1    0.0  0.0    4     4-5    F_AGT_GMD
    Detective-MST3K		6.0    0.6  0.1    3     7-8	F_INF_GMD
    Ditch Day Drifter	7.1    1.2  1.6	   1     2      F_TAD_GMD
    Dungeon Adventure	6.8    1.3  1.6    1     4	F_SEE REVIEW Issue #4
    Dungeon of Dunjin       6.2    0.5  1.5    2     3      S20_IBM_MAC_GMD
    Electrabot		0.7    0.0  0.0    1     5      F_AGT_GMD
    Enchanter		7.1    0.9  1.4	   5     2	C_INF
    Enhanced		N/A		   0	 2      S10_TAD_GMD
    Eric the Unready        7.4    1.5  1.4    1     x      C_I
    Fable, A		2.0    0.2  0.1    1     6      F_AGT_GMD
    Fish                    7.1    1.2  1.5    1     x      C_I
    Forbidden Castle        4.8    0.6  0.5    1     x      C_AP
    Gateway                 7.5    1.6  1.5    1     x      C_I
    Great Archaelog. Race	6.5    1.0  1.5    1     3      S20_TAD_GMD
    Guardians of Infinity   8.5    N/A  1.3    1     9      C_I
    Guild of Thieves        6.8    1.1  1.2    1     x      C_I
    Gumshoe                 6.3    1.3  1.1    2     9      F_INF_GMD
    Hitchhiker's Guide	8.0    1.6  1.6    5     5	C_INF
    Hollywood Hijinx	5.7    1.0  1.5    4	 x	C_INF
    Horror30.Zip		3.6    0.0  0.9    1	 3	S20_IBM_GMD
    Horror of Rylvania	7.7		   1     1	C20_TAD_GMD (Demo)
    Humbug			7.4		   1	 x	S10_GMD (Uncertain)
    Infidel 		7.0	    1.4    7     1-2	C_INF
    Inhumane		3.6    0.2  0.7    1     9      F_INF_GMD
    Jacaranda Jim		7.0		   1	 x	S10_GMD (Uncertain)
    Jeweled Arena, The	8.0    1.5  1.5    1     x      ?
    Jigsaw			8.7    1.6  1.6    3     8,9	F_INF_GMD
    Jinxter                 6.7    1.1  1.3    1     x      C_I
    John's Fire Witch	7.2    1.1  1.6    5     4	S6_TADS_GMD
    Journey			6.9    1.3  0.8    1     5      C_INF
    Jouney Into Xanth	5.0    1.3  1.2    1     8	F_AGT_GMD
    Klaustrophobia		7.3    1.2  1.4    4     1	S15_AGT_GMD
    Leather Goddesses	7.8    1.4  1.7    5	 4	C_INF
    The Legend Lives!	8.2    0.8  1.5    1     5      F_TADS_GMD
    Lethe Flow Phoenix      7.5    1.7  1.5    1     9      F_TADS_GMD
    The Light: Shelby's Ad. 8.0    1.6  0.5    1     9      S?_TADS_GMD
    Lurking Horror, The	7.1    1.4  1.3    5     1,3	C_INF
    MacWeslyan(PC Univ.)    5.6    0.7  1.0    1     x      F_TADS_GMD
    Magic.Zip		4.5    0.5  0.5    1     3      S20_IBM_GMD
    Magic Toyshop, The	3.6    0.5  1.0    1            F_INF_GMD
    Mind Electric, The	5.1    0.5  0.8    2     7-8    F_INF_GMD
    Mind Forever Voyaging	8.5    1.4  0.6    4	 5	C_INF
    Moonmist		5.9    1.4  1.3    5     1	C_INF
    Mop & Murder		4.9    0.5  1.0    1	 4-5	F_AGT_GMD
    Multidimen. Thief	5.6    0.4  1.0    3     2,9    S15_AGT_GMD
    Mystery House           4.1    0.3  0.7    1     x      F_AP_GMD
    Night at Museum Forever 4.1    0.0  1.0    3     7-8    F_TAD_GMD
    Nord and Bert		4.8    0.5  1.0    2	 4	C_INF
    Odieus': Flingshot	3.3    0.4  0.7    2     5      F_INF_GMD
    One Hand Clapping	7.1    1.1  1.3    2     5	F_ADVSYS_GMD
    One That Got Away, The  6.4    1.2  0.9    2     7-8    F_TAD_GMD
    Oo-Topos		5.7    0.2  1.0    1     x      C_AP_I_64
    Path to Fortune		6.8    1.4  0.8    1     9      S_INF_GMD
    Pawn, The               6.5    1.0  1.2    1     x      C_I_AP_64
    Perseus & Andromeda     3.4    0.3  1.0    1     x      ?
    Planetfall		7.5    1.7  1.6    6	 4	C_INF
    Plundered Hearts 	7.8    1.4  1.3    2	 4	C_INF
    Quarterstaff		6.1    1.3  0.6    1     9	C_M
    Sanity Claus		9.0	           1     1	S10_AGT_GMD
    Save Princeton		5.8    1.2  1.3    2	 8	S10_TAD_GMD
    Seastalker		5.5    1.1  1.0    4	 4	C_INF
    Shades of Grey		8.0    1.3  1.4    4	 1-2	F_AGT_GMD
    Sherlock		8.2    1.5  1.6    2	 4	C_INF
    Shogun			7.1    1.5  0.5    1     4      C_INF
    Sir Ramic Hobbs		5.0    1.0  1.5    1     6      F_AGT_GMD
    Sorceror		7.3    0.6  1.6	   5	 2	C_INF
    South American Trek	0.9    0.2  0.5    1     5      ?_IBM_GMD
    Space Aliens...Cardigan 1.8    0.5  0.4    4     3      S60_AGT_GMD
    Spellbreaker		8.2    1.2  1.8	   4	 2	C_INF
    SpellCasting 101        7.0    1.0  1.2    1     x      C_I
    SpellCasting 201        7.8    1.5  1.6    1     x      C_I
    SpellCasting 301        7.5    1.4  1.5    1     x      C_I
    SpiritWrak              6.6    1.0  0.6    1     9      F_INF_GMD
    Spur			7.2    1.4  1.2    1     9	F_HUG_GMD
    Starcross		7.0    1.1  1.3    5     1	C_INF
    Stationfall		7.6    1.6  1.6    5	 5	C_INF
    Suspect			6.2    1.3  1.2    2	 4	C_INF
    Suspended		7.5    1.3  1.2    4	 8	C_INF
    Theatre			6.8    0.9  1.2    3     6      F_INF_GMD
    TimeQuest               8.6    1.5  1.8    1     x      C_I
    TimeSquared             4.3    1.1  1.1    1     x      F_AGT_GMD
    Toonesia		6.3    1.1  1.2    2     7      F_TAD_GMD
    Tossed into Space	3.9    0.2  0.6    1     4      F_AGT_GMD
    Treasure.Zip		N/A		   0     3	S20_IBM_GMD
    Trinity			8.8    1.4  1.7    8     1-2	C_INF
    Tube Trouble		3.3    0.5  0.4    1            F_INF_GMD
    Uncle Zebulon's Will	7.6    0.9  1.3    3     7      F_TAD_GMD
    Undertow		5.2    1.0  0.8    1            F_TAD_GMD
    Undo			1.9    0.1  0.4    2     7      F_TAD_GMD
    Unnkulian One-Half	7.0    1.3  1.7    4     1	F_TAD_GMD
    Unnkulian Unventure 1	7.1    1.2  1.6    5     1-2	S10_TAD_GMD
    Unnkulian Unventure 2	7.2    1.4  1.5    4     1	S10_TAD_GMD
    Unnkulian Zero  	9.0 	           1     1	C25_TAD_GMD (Demo)
    Waystation		5.7    0.7  0.9    2     9      F_TAD_GMD
    Windhall Chron. 1 - See Path to Fortune.
    Wishbringer		7.6    1.3  1.3    4	 5-6	C_INF
    Witness, The		7.2    1.7  1.2    5     1,3,9	C_INF
    Wonderland              7.5    1.3  1.4    1     x      C_I
    World			6.5    0.6  1.3    2     4	F_SEE REVIEW Issue #4
    Zanfar			2.6    0.2  0.4    1     8	F_AGT_GMD
    Zork 0			7.1    1.3  2.0	   2	 x	C_INF
    Zork 1			6.0    0.7  1.5	   9	 1-2	C_INF
    Zork 2			6.4    0.8  1.5	   7	 1-2	C_INF
    Zork 3			6.1    0.6  1.4	   5	 1-2	C_INF

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

    The Top Five:

    	I've decided that we finally have enough competitive entries on the
    scoreboard to have a Top Five instead of a Top Three.
    	A game is not eligible for the Top Five unless it has
    received at least three ratings from different readers.  This is to ensure a
    more democratic and accurate depiction of the best games.

     1. Trinity		8.8	8 votes
     2. Jigsaw		8.7	3 votes
     3. Christminster	8.6	3 votes
     4. Mind Fvr Voyaging   8.5	4 votes
     5. Curses		8.3	7 votes
        Bureaucracy		8.3	3 votes

    	Say, is it just me, or do we really like serious games better than
    others?  The more serious games on the list seem to consistantly score better
    than the rest.  Both of Infocom's serious games make the Top 5, Graham
    Nelson's games are there too, and he writes pretty serious stuff as well.
    The only real exception is Bureaucracy, which has done quite well considering
    how few copies it originally sold.  Another interesting bit, Spellbreaker is
    the next game down the ladder, with an 8.2 and 4 votes, and there's a serious
    game in many ways (with admittedly, some silliness, but the theme is deadly
    serious.)

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

    Editor's Picks of the Month:

    	My pick of the month is _Lethe Flow Phoenix_.  Dan Shiovitz's work
    about alien invaders and biblical allusions is certainly worth a look.  See
    the various reviews in this issue for information on where to download it.

    ADVERTISEMENTS---------------------------------------------------------------

    Soon, the unlikeliest of heroes will be chosen to embark on the unlikeliest
    					   of adventures.../\
                                                             /    \
                                                    / \    /     /
                                                    \   \/     /
                                                      \      /
             THE PATH TO                              / \   \
             ___________                            /    /\   \
            |  _________|                         /    /    \ /
            | |_________                       _/    /
            |  _________|  ______   _____   __| |__/  _   _   _____   ____
            | |           |  __  | |  ___| |__   __| | | | | |  _  | | o__|
            | |           | |__| | | |    /   | |_   | |_| | | | | | | |__
            |_|           |______| |_|  /    /|___|  |_____| |_| |_| |____|
                                       |___/
                       VOLUME ONE OF "THE WINDHALL CHRONICLES"
                           BY JEFF CASSIDY AND C.E. FORMAN

    Windhall has fallen upon hard times.  Lord Osrich, ruler of the realm of
    Rysch, has threatened to reclaim the tiny village and send its inhabitants
    away, unless a great debt is paid.  The town's only hope lies in finding
    and recovering the treasure of the great dragon Kirizith, hidden and nearly
    forgotten for so many centuries...

    Meet Aerin.
    A simple blacksmith's apprentice, nothing more.  Certainly not the hero
    selected by the village to seek out the dragon's lair...

    ...Or is he?

    Meet the cast.
    Fifteen fully-developed characters help and hinder Aerin in his quest:

      Borthur, the dwarven blacksmith, Aerin's mentor and best friend.
      Mielon, the mayor of Windhall (since no one else wanted the job).
      Idah, his wife, the finest storyteller in the land.
      Baezil, preparer of Windhall's finest culinary delights.
      Sir Gunther IX, the most incompetent and tongue-tied knight in Rysch.
      Creston the cleric, master of alchemy...when he feels like it.
      Kytan the thief (guard your gold closely).
      Denvil, the jovial (or is it pain-in-the-neck?) wood elf.
      Midknight, swordsman extraordinaire.
      Kaela, the enchanting young wizardess of Aerin's dreams.
      Mighty Nostrophidius, an ancient sorcerer whose powers are unmatched.
      The ever-rhyming Mire Cat, master of riddles and wordplay.
      The Haughty Chameleon, appearing and vanishing in the blink of an eye.
      Grrarr, werewolf of the Forest of Ansalon.
      And of course, the mighty Kirizith himself.

    Meet the quest of a lifetime.
    In a world where magic is the ultimate power of mortals,
               where only the most skilled warrior can survive,
               where only the most clever explorer can uncover the secret,

                               ADVENTURE IS INEVITABLE.

                                "The Path to Fortune"
                       Volume One of "The Windhall Chronicles"

                       Available on a ZIP Interpreter near you.

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

                            Feeling a little paranoid?

                                    You will be.

                               S  C  I  M  I  T  A  R

          A new adventure from the author of "The Light: Shelby's Addendum"

                       You'll never trust your mother again

                                    Coming in '96
                                        from
                                Illusory Mental Images
                               "We know where you live!"

    IN DEPTH ANALYSES---------------SPOILER WARNING! BEWARE!---------------------

    	First, I am going to apologize to every author whose game I am taking
    apart with tweezers below.  I'm sure you'll all refuse to speak to me for a
    month or so after reading my analyses of your games.  I promise you this,
    however.  I will endeavor to explain WHY I say the things I say.  There will
    be no 'empty' criticism in these articles if I can help it.

    		[This space intentionally left blank.]

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

    			The One That Got Away

    	_The One That Got Away_ (TOTGA) was my second favorite game from the
    1995 Competition.  It lost out only to _Uncle Zebulon's Will_.  The reason is
    hard to put my finger on, so I will muse on it below, and perhaps clarify
    both to myself and others why TOTGA doesn't quite stand up before Zebulon.

    TECHNICAL ASPECTS: The parser was excellent.  Leon did a great job of
    both simulating a complicated act (fishing), and explaining to the player
    exactly how the simulation works.  The pamphlet in the game that tells the
    player how it works is both funny and straightforward.  No complaints on this
    front.  Leon thought of many phrasings and synonyms and made them usable.

    PLOT: This is one of the two areas where Leon really hit the nail on the
    head.  The plot is engaging (if short) and serves to bring out the humanity
    in the characters.  It is a gentle bittersweet touch to contrast the comic
    effect of the rest of the game.  If television comedy writers could regularly
    reach this level of compassion and feeling, then I would start watching
    sitcoms.  Perhaps the very weakness of the game, its size, helped in this
    area.  Static writers edit, cut, re-write, and cut some more when working on
    a story.  They try to distill the literary experience down to its essence.
    At least, the good ones do.  Padding out a game is something many of us are
    guilty of, and it really shouldn't be condoned, but remains standard practice
    both for us hobbyists, and for the gaming industry at large.  We want to find
    room for a certain puzzle, or we need to stretch the playing lifespan of the
    game just a little more.  But what we usually end up doing is diluting the
    experience.
    	Leon just put in what he needed to tell the story, no more.  When he
    was finished, he stopped.  That's the greatest praise I can give him.

    ATMOSPHERE: Here he was on some shaky ground.  With only four rooms, and a
    very few objects, a sense of the game's atmosphere failed to materialize for
    me.  There was some sense of a quiet country lake, but where was the gentle
    breeze, the quiet rustling of the grass?  Leon did in some aspects neglect
    the senses.  He had the birds, but the sound of the country is a rich and
    wonderful thing, very hard to capture in words.  He had the raw fishing
    experience, but failed to capture the thrill of a whining reel as the mighty
    fish races for the darkest depths of the lake.  There was some good progress
    towards a unified feel in the game, but Leon needs to work more in this area.
    Atmosphere is a game designer's bread and butter.

    WRITING: This is another area that really stands out as exceptional.  The
    turn of the comic phrase is everywhere to be seen in TOTGA.  There are many
    little references to other works of this vein (Moby Dick, among others), and
    the writing seems caring and conversational while still being informative.
    I would perhaps rank the writing between Zebulon and A Change in the Weather.
    TOTGA's writing avoids the sometimes deadpan delivery of Zebulon, but fails
    to capture the truly beautiful phrasings that pop up so often in Weather.
    Altogether not a bad place to be ranked, betweeen two 1st place winners.

    PUZZLES: I think that enough has been said on this matter.  Suffice it to
    say that TOTGA is too short, and the puzzles a bit too easy for most people's
    tastes.  However, on a related soapbox issue... ;)
    	There are many legitimate reasons to do this, but in a competition
    voted on by many die-hard puzzle lovers, a game that attempts it is simply
    going to suffer unless the writing is truly, truly magnificent.  It must
    capture the attention of the puzzle-goers and draw them into the plot, even
    as puzzles do in normal IF.  It's not impossible, it's just a heckuva lot
    harder to do without all the smokescreening and handwaving that goes on in a
    more traditional IF work.
    	This too to consider.  Players have certain expectations about games,
    and different ones about stories.  If your puzzles are lean, then expect to
    be lumped into the story category, where you will find it very hard to keep
    up with static fiction.  Remember, in terms of work alone, you are doing 4-5
    times the work that an author of a static fiction work might do, probably
    more.  You must read the player's mind and anticipate the player's actions,
    then write the myriad plot branches, whereas a static writer only writes one
    plot.  The puzzles put the player into a different mindset, where less is
    expected of the writing, as the player remembers that this is just a game.
    Not a satisfactory situation, in my mind, but a real one, nonetheless.

    CHARACTERS: The one main NPC in TOTGA is a truly excellent example of how to
    make an NPC that feels like a person.  Due to limitations on parsers and the
    author's time, we have come to a certain set of commands that are expected to
    work for most NPCs.

    >show x to person
    >ask person about x
    >tell person about x
    >person, do x

    The NPC in TOTGA doesn't go anywhere, doesn't even do much, but the SHOW and
    ASK verbs are very well-implemented for him.  These are fairly key to
    bringing an NPC to life, at least until another NPC grammar (or AI) is
    invented.  The NPC in TOTGA (Bob of the bait shop) reacts to all sorts of
    questions and objects.  He has motivation, a purpose for being, and a
    personal history.  This last is too often neglected in IF NPCs.  A character
    needs a past, a present, and hopes for the future in order to feel real.  Our
    perception of time, and our ability to plan sets us apart from most animals.
    A human NPC that lacks all indication of these traits is going to fall flat
    on its virtual back.  I personally write a history for any NPC that I create,
    unless it is some sort of unintelligent animal.  Even in that case, I still
    make a list of traits.  Is it irritable?  Does it have a fear of water?  If
    you master the art of getting inside an imaginary person's head, then you
    will soon thereafter master the art of the NPC.  And the art of the character
    is the art of fiction, because, as many writers will tell you, stories are
    about people first, events and places second.

    	So, my recommendations to Leon?  Work on a longer game, and practice
    bringing a theme, or a more unified feel to your writing.  The puzzles
    weakness is a very difficult thing to overcome.  The only help for it is to
    practice inventing puzzles.  You get better at it over time.  Knowledge of
    first order logic and AI is helpful when you remember that at its heart, any
    truly complicated mechanical puzzle can probably be reduced to some form of
    Turing machine. So, invent an interesting set of states, a set of operators,
    and a start and finish state, and then invent the imagery to go from there.
    Mathematics are very helpful in some forms of puzzle design.  But remember
    too not to cram your games full of the 'soup can' puzzles so popular in
    graphical games today.  There should be logic and careful planning behind
    each puzzle.  There must be a reason that the player wants to solve each
    puzzle.  The reason can be to get to a treasure that he/she knows about, or
    to help an old lady out of the goodness of his/her heart, but don't just put
    a strange boardgame in the game and expect the player to enjoy playing it.
    Another lesson that I need to learn myself, but I'm working on it, cross my
    heart.

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

    	That concludes my analyses for now.  I will continue this practice
    in future issues of SPAG, unless there is some great demand that I
    discontinue it.

    CLOSING REMARKS--------------------------------------------------------------

    Whew, thanks for sticking with me.  I know that this is a really huge issue,
    and I'm glad to see that you plowed your way through it, because there were
    some really thoughtful reviews and such this issue.  For those of you who
    haven't seen my fairly hastily cobbled together Web Page, it's at:

       http://ocf.berkeley.edu/~kevinw

    On that note, I would like it if someone would volunteer to update the game
    review pages.  You would have to take issues 7-9 (or as many as you can
    handle) and add the reviews in them to the page, converting to HTML as you
    go.  Knowledge of HTML is necessary, I reckon, and you need to be able to
    check the ftp links you make.  If you are willing to give 'er a go, lemme
    know.

    Lastly, here is a copy of the more or less finalized version of the
    announcement for the 1996 I-F Competition for those of you who haven't heard
    about it yet:

    -=-=-

          Announcing the Second Annual Text Adventure Authorship Competition
    				Administered by whizzard SP@G uclink.berkeley.edu

          -=The Rules=-

      The text adventure you enter must be winnable in under two hours.  Judges
    will be asked to rate it after playing for that long.  Please note that your
    game will NOT be disqualified if it exceeds this length, but judges may not
    see it in its entirety before rating it.

      The entry may be written in any programming language, including any of the
    text adventure creation utilities available (such as TADS, Inform, AGT, or
    Alan, to name a few.)  If your game is unplayable, then it won't receive
    enough votes to be eligable for prizes.  (See Judging.)

      This year, do NOT post your entries ahead of time.  Jumping the gun is
    punishable by disqualification.  Instead, you will need to send me your
    entries privately, either through e-mail (as a uuencoded file) or some other
    arrangement that you will have to work out with me.  The entries must be
    received by September 30th, 1996.  No entries will be accepted after this
    date.

      Entries will be sent by me to ftp.gmd.de on October 1st, 1996.  Only
    entries uploaded by me will be eligible.

      If you want your entry to be anonymous, then leave your name off it and
    email me that it's your entry.  I advise a secret command that pops up the
    author and copyright message.  Anonymity is not required, and I hope to be
    able to continue to do this in the future.

      Speaking of copyright, all games must be entirely your own creations.  You
    may parody established works, but you may not, for example, write a game
    based on Sherlock Holmes.  This avoids the entire issue of copyright and the
    ethics involved.

      All entries MUST be freeware or public domain.  So don't enter a game
    you've worked on for 2 years if you don't want to give it away.  No
    shareware, no donorware, no commercial products, etc.  Only clear and free
    games.

      Lastly, and this is a NEW rule, somewhat controversial at that.  All
    entries must include some sort of walkthrough.  By this I only mean that
    somewhere in the game package there must be explicit directions on how to
    play the game from beginning to end, and that this info must be available to
    the player from the very start of the game.  A walkthrough is fine, as is a
    hint system that progresses all the way to blatant spoilers.  If you like,
    you could even have an NPC take over for the PC if enough time has been
    spent on a single puzzle.  I don't care how you do it, but do it.  Any entry
    without something of this nature will be returned to its author, and the
    author will be asked to rectify the oversight.

    			      -=Judging=-

      The judging will be a 'People's Choice Awards' type deal for the most part.
    Everyone is able to vote.  All you have to do is play every game that you are
    able to (you are bound on your honor to play as many as possible and give
    each of them an equal chance.) and then rate each game on a scale of 1 to 10,
    no decimal places please.  The site to mail votes to will be announced later
    on this year, but it will not be me.  I would appreciate receiving no votes,
    please.

      Votes will begin to be taken on Oct. 15th, and must be in by Oct 31st.
    Shortly thereafter, results will be announced, and prizes will begin to be
    distributed to the winners.

      Any game that does not receive at least 10 votes on it is removed from
    prize consideration.

      The winner will be the game with the highest average score.  Each winner
    will have a draft pick to choose a prize of his/her choice until there are no
    longer any prizes left.  Tied entrants who both select the same prize will be
    decided between by a flip of the coin, the loser receiving his second choice.

      Authors and official betatesters may vote, but must head their votes with
    the subject: "MISS CONGENIALITY VOTE" so that the counter is able to seperate
    them.  These votes will be counted towards an author's best of show choice.
    The winner will receive a copy of "The Interactive Writer's Handbook",
    donated by me.

    	The Prizes This Year Include:

    	$75.00 cash, donated by Martin Braun.
    	"Creating Adventure Games on Your Computer", by Tim Hartnell.
    	  Copyright 1984, donated by Matthew Amster-Burton.
    	The original sketch of the "Path to Fortune" map, donated by
    	  Christopher E. Forman.
    	A registered copy of "Lost New York" (which includes on-screen hints,
    	  a manual, and some goodies), donated by the author, Neil deMause.
    	5 copies of the book: "Computer Adventures - The Secret Art", donated
    	  by the author, Gil Williamson.
    	A PC copy of the Magnetic Scrolls Collection which includes Fish,
    	  Corruption and the Guild of Thieves, donated by Colm McCarthy.
    	"One-of-a-kind deluxe scraps of paper with stuff written on them"
    	  registered version of "The Light: Shelby's Addendum", signed, with
    	  hint sheets and maps, and a whole mess of scribblings that no-one
    	  in their right mind would ever want, donated by Colm McCarthy.
    	One free copy of "Avalon", assuming it's done by then, donated by the
    	  author, me, as if you didn't know.

    	Cecilia Barajas of Activision (Author of Zork Nemesis) has donated
    	the following items:

    	  A copy of "Lost Treasures of Infocom vols. 1 and 2." (to be awarded
    	    as a matched set.)
    	  A copy of "Zork Nemesis."
    	  A Zork Nemesis t-shirt

    	Andrew C. Plotkin (Last Year's Inform Winner) offers the awardee's
    	  choice of:

    	  A) Dinner at a (pretty) fine restaurant in the Washington, DC area,
    	     with me, plus hours of fine conversation on the art of
    	     interactive fiction or other topics as desired.

    	    or

    	  B) $20.00 cash (US), plus I'll email you some of my old posts from
    	     r.a.i-f.

    	Lastly, assuming that:

            1) We have at least 20 entries in the competition.  (By that, I
               mean 20 valid, on-time, non-disqualified entries.)

            2) At least 5 of the entries are done by female authors.

    	Then Christopher Forman will also award five free registrations of
    "Circle of Armageddon", Volume 2 of "The Windhall Chronicles".

    	That should do us pretty well for prizes this year.  I think there
    are good odds of everyone getting at least a smaller prize.  If not, well,
    I'll be thrilled to see a turn-out of over 20 or so entries.

    	Thank you to all prize contributors for helping to make this yeat's
    contest a reality.  If you offered a prize but don't see it in here, then
    I've decided to try and save it for next year's competition.  We have a nice
    bonanza of stuff right now, and I'd feel weird giving out multiple prizes to
    entrants.  Maybe we'll have more entries than prizes, but considering all the
    generousity this year, it'll be a tough feat to pull off.

    -=-=-

    	Finally, we have enough official betatesters.  If you are entering
    and want to use their services to test your game, then you'd better get your
    game in to me soon (as in before mid-August).

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    	   Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive!

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