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Game Reviews E

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

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

The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date.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

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    Table of Contents
    E-Mailbox
    Earth And Sky
    The Ebb and the Flow of the Tide
    The Edifice
    Ekphrasis
    Electrabot
    The Elysium Engima
    Enchanter
    The Enchanter Trilogy
    The End Means Escape
    Enemies
    Enhanced
    Enlightenment
    Episode In The Life Of An Artist
    Eragon
    Erehwon
    Eric's Gift
    The Erudition Chamber
    Escape from Pulsar 7
    Escape from the Crazy Place
    An Escape to Remember
    Evacuate
    Everybody Loves a Parade
    Exhibition

    E-Mailbox
    From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998

    NAME: E-Mailbox
    AUTHOR: Jay Goemmer
    E-MAIL: ifauthor SP@G micron.net
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: AGT--game too short to judge parser
    SUPPORTS: AGiliTy executables, available at IF Archive
    AVAILABIILTY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition97/agt/emailbox/emailbox.agx
    VERSION: Release 0.3 (beta?!?)

    E-Mailbox is without a doubt the shortest entry in the 1997
    competition; it's almost impossible to spend more than 15 minutes on
    it, even if you try everything there is to try. The plot: you sign on
    with an ISP, you send a message, you get mailbombed, you get the
    account resurrected, and you get mail. There's a cute real-virtual
    sense, in that you get your mail from a "mailbox", but there's not a
    lot there. If you do the obvious thing at every juncture, you'll be
    just fine with E-Mailbox. There are some mechanical problems, but not
    enough to slow progress significantly; most actions that aren't what
    the author had in mind elicit "You're wasting your time!" or something
    similar.

    The problem here is not the concept--okay, maybe it is exciting the
    first time--so much as the audience. The players of the 1997
    interactive fiction competition are, by definition, those people with
    the connections, software, and wherewithal to connect to an archive in
    Germany, download a series of games, set them up on their own
    computers, and play them. In that playing E-Mailbox required locating
    and downloading the AGiliTy interpreter, there was another degree of
    complication in there. Now, I don't actually think all of that is
    extremely complicated, but I do think that those who happen to
    play--meaning the IF community, which exists solely by virtue of the
    Internet--are not likely to be those still gasping over the wonders of
    e-mail. (We may recall the inane AOL commercial wherein a woman says
    "Every time I get e-mail, it's like opening a present." Very likely,
    for the first few times or so, but most IFers, I fear, are a bit
    hardened.) I'm not, of course, saying that Jay Goemmer is one. Very
    likely he isn't. But it's a bit of a stretch to ask the player for
    whom the Internet is simply a fact of life to exclaim loudly over its
    wonders.

    There's another possibility that I'm neglecting, namely that
    Mr. Goemmer is poking a little fun at newbies and their "how do I send
    e-mail?" ways and inviting us to join in the humor. It's possible, and
    sentences like "Smack the Return key--*really* good" do bring up the
    image of a frustrated newbie taking out his anger on his unsuspecting
    keyboard.  Somehow, though, this doesn't have the air of an insider
    chuckling at an outside, if for no other reason than that an account
    that actually gets mailbombed has problems that simply reinstalling
    the software ain't gonna fix, no how, no way. It's possible that
    Mr. Goemmer is mistaking a software bug or some such thing for a
    mailbomb; we can't know for sure.  (Though an address that's only just
    been created isn't likely to get bombed.) Somehow, though, the tone
    doesn't say "parody" to me--the whole things is taken a bit too
    seriously--and while I appreciate the enthusiasm, I didn't go into
    vicarious paroxysms of joy.

    For the record, AGT comes off fine--impressive speed, though then
    again it should be, running such a small game file. But apart from
    reliving the thrill of getting e-mail for the first time, there isn't
    enough here to justify the download time, I'm afraid.

    Directory with AGT files and walkthrough

    Earth And Sky
    From: Emily Short  <emshort SP@G mindspring.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #27 -- January 4, 2002

    TITLE: Earth And Sky
    AUTHOR: Paul O'Brian
    E-MAIL: obrian SP@G colorado.edu
    DATE: October 2001
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2001/inform/eas/eas.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    This game is too short.

    It's billing itself as a prelude to something longer, and that's great,
    but I felt as though I had just really gotten revved up when... it
    ended.

    Which was a pity, because I was enjoying this: it's upbeat and chipper
    and fun, a superhero game with a gentle sense of humor and not too much
    pressure about Saving the Universe. It gives you cool powers, and it
    doesn't take itself too seriously. We've seen superhero IF before, but
    frankly, it's so entertaining that we can easily afford to see more.

    Earth and Sky begins by establishing backstory about the protagonist and
    her brother, in which we find out that their parents are missing;
    presumably this provides the plot arc for the series of games of which
    this is Game 1. But the game doesn't really dwell particularly on that.
    I was struck by the contrast with Heroine's Mantle, another superhero
    game whose premise begins with the vanishing of parents and the
    introduction of powers: where Heroine was sprawling, dramatic,
    emotional, and rough-edged in many aspects of its game play, this was a
    meticulously crafted and entirely lighthearted production.

    Let me dwell for a moment on that "meticulously crafted" bit. It's
    obvious that a great deal of care went into making this game intuitively
    interactive. Several conversation systems are provided, so that the
    player is free to take whatever approach he likes: this is novel, and
    possibly overkill, but it expresses a good faith intention to put the
    control fully into the player's hands. More impressively, perhaps, the
    game accounts for a wide variety of behavior on the player's part. I
    don't wish to spoil the game, and it is so small that any portion of it,
    even the very beginning, is perhaps off-limits, so suffice it to say
    that there is an opening scene with a number of things to tinker with. A
    less ambitious game would take steps to make sure that the player
    tinkered with them in the right order; a less well-programmed one would
    allow all the variations, but then fail to take them into account in the
    subsequent stages of the scenario. As it was, I found no flaws. After I
    played the first time, I went back and tried a number of different
    configurations of the first scene, and the NPC always reacted
    appropriately, no matter what I turned out to have done when he showed
    up.

    Speaking of the NPC, I'm not sure how I feel about the menus. The game
    offers you the opportunity to converse via conversation menus, and these
    menus contain numerous quips. This is fine, even commendable, except
    that frequently the quips were merely slightly nuanced variations of the
    same thing and that the choice of one or another doesn't seem to have
    affected the NPC especially strongly. There are also perhaps too many. I
    find, in general, that I don't like conversation menus to contain more
    entries than I can keep in my head all at once; it is perhaps a
    testimony to my pea-sized brain that this number tends to be four or
    five at its upper limit (with some variation allowed depending on how
    complex and lengthy the remarks are.) This is because, when I am playing
    a game with conversation menus, I regard the menu as representing the
    contents of the PC's head: as though the author said, Here are the
    things that immediately pop to mind in response. In a typical
    conversation I may have several things in mind that would be viable to
    say; I don't have a dozen at a time.

    That's a fairly minor quibble, however, and the fact that I reacted to
    it at all says more about my own interests and the things I pay
    attention to in a game.

    Summary: cool, fun, and promising of more to come. One of my favorites
    of the competition.

    .z5 Zcode file and readme (updated version)

    Directory with .z5 Zcode file and readme (competition version)

    The Ebb and the Flow of the Tide
    From: Mike Harris <harriswillys SP@G grandecom.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #48 -- May 2, 2007

    TITLE: The Ebb and the Flow of the Tide
    AUTHOR: Peter Nepstad
    E-MAIL: petern SP@G illuminatedlantern.com
    DATE: December 16, 2006
    PARSER: TADS 2
    SUPPORTS: TADS-2 Interpreters
    AVAILABLITY: freeware
    URL: http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/games/the_ebb_and_flow_of_the_tide.html
    VERSION: 1.1

    The Ebb and Flow of the Tide is the second of Peter Nepstad's IF interpretations
    of Lord Dunsany's short stories, the first being The Journey of the King
    released in November 2006.

    "Tide" is certainly the more successful, perhaps because the story itself is
    more readily adapted to IF and also perhaps because the prose of the story is
    less florid and more accessible to the 21st century reader.

    Fans of the usual action-adventure will take some comfort in the fact that the
    PC can not be killed during the course of the game, for the simple and somewhat
    novel reason that the protagonist starts out in this unfortunate state.

    As one can imagine, this somewhat limits the actions available to the PC, but
    the author has done a good job implementing all of the sensory commands -
    listen, feel, smell, taste.

    This should be kept in mind, as arguably the most used command in more
    conventional IF, examine, will not always further the story.  I would not call
    them "guess the verb" problems although they superficially resemble same, merely
    that the author forces the player to take a somewhat less orthodox approach
    given the limitations of the PC.  With this in mind, play should take no more
    than 15 or 20 minutes.

    Beyond this unusual twist, play is bug free and cues are well integrated into
    the responses; for example at one point examining a wall will reveal the
    existence of passages which can then be further investigated with the sensorium
    available to the PC.  At no point is a player left to wonder what to do next
    provided that they've investigated all of the current options at hand.

    The Ebb and Flow of the Tide is a memorable game, not least due to the efforts
    of the game author. The Dunsany tale is a somewhat chilling dream sequence but
    ultimately of little import; Mr. Nepstad's interpretation gave it life and
    immediacy.

    Out of 10 I give it a 3 for simplicity and 8 overall.

    Zip including TADS2 game file, cover art, and author's notes

    The Edifice
    From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #13 -- February 5, 1998

    NAME: The Edifice
    AUTHOR: Lucian Smith
    E-MAIL:
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/competition97/inform/edifice/edifice.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    PLOT: Involving (1.5)          ATMOSPHERE: Simple but well done (1.3)
    WRITING: Strong (1.4)          GAMEPLAY: Mostly good (1.3)
    CHARACTERS: Few but strong (1.4) PUZZLES: One outstanding (1.6)
    MISC: Innovative and well-thought-out (1.7)
    OVERALL: 7.2

    Lucian Smith's "The Edifice" is one of the simplest games in the
    competition -- head games involving puzzling out what's going on are
    few -- but it also tells one of the most effective stories. (Well,
    okay, some of the entries don't have much of a story at all to tell,
    but that's different.) Edifice is an example of IF where desultory
    puzzles don't matter: it's the story, and the concept driving it, that
    counts, and this is one of the best game ideas this year's competition
    produced.

    This is an allegory: you represent primitive man, moving through the
    various stages of evolution as represented by levels in a strange
    stone edifice that appears before you suddenly. The puzzles represent
    problems along the way of evolution, problems whose mastery defined
    certain levels of development -- they're mostly straightforward
    (though one is a bit confusing), but there is a real sense of
    accomplishment in solving them, somehow. Certain stages are by
    definition mind-numbingly tedious, which reflects the subject
    accurately -- these are problems that involve tedium -- but also raise
    the question of whether there might have been a better way to design
    those particular puzzles. (For a similar problem, see The Meteor, the
    Stone, and a Long Glass of Sherbet.) It should be added that the
    author isn't trying to convey every single aspect of every phase of
    evolution; rather, you represent an important breakthrough at each
    stage, and when you're done, you move on and reenter the scene much
    later, when Homo sapiens has incorporated your discovery and built on
    it.

    That raises the question that I, at least, found most intriguing about
    this: does this really have anything to do with evolution? It's kind
    of a silly approximation, after all, since it's apparent quite soon in
    each stage what the sought-for breakthrough is, and it's just a
    question of putting together the needed materials or figuring out the
    key steps. But it could be argued that Smith has designed this with
    the feeling of discovery in mind: particularly in the last two scenes,
    you have the sense of a specific need that drives the breakthrough,
    not a sudden resolve out of the blue to carve hand tools or
    domesticate animals. The sense of logical connection is less strong in
    the first one; there is very little sense that you tumble to your
    discovery because of circumstances, rather than having a
    twentieth-century computer user push him around to accomplish a
    certain goal. Perhaps that's inevitable, given the problem at hand,
    but I would have liked to have seen at least some sort of conjecture
    as to what sort of circumstances lit up that particular connection for
    Stone Age man. The game does capture the brutality of this particular
    discovery well, in that you have no particular reason other than your
    own satisfaction for doing what you do, and perhaps the apparent
    purposeless of your solution to the problem reflects the arbitrary
    kill-or-be- killed nature of the environment -- but it still felt a
    little unsatisfying.

    On the whole, I found the second stage most plausible and interesting;
    it's the only one where you deal with other characters, and though
    your interactions are limited, the characters have a certain charm. (I
    found a certain whimsical appeal in their names -- Wife, Son,
    Grandmother.) The central puzzle took real thought and felt genuinely
    rewarding to solve -- and, even as a microcosm, it felt more than any
    of the problems like what really might have happened. The first stage,
    as suggested, is a little too illogical to really feel like an account
    of the breakthrough, and the third just doesn't quite make enough
    sense; you have the sense of the original motivation for your
    character, but not what inspired him to try this particular
    approach. (And the realism/tedium element that worked reasonably well
    in the first part is simply annoying here, because it doesn't feel
    particularly logical.) Still, all three are worthy concepts, mostly
    well thought out.

    The writing is nothing special, though arguably that makes sense here
    -- too much attention to the scenery or aesthetics would distract from
    the goals at hand; you're not in the situations in question to check
    out the sights.  Certainly, the writing is adequate for the purposes;
    it sets the scene and makes clear what you need to do. My main problem
    with the mechanics of Edifice is that it's possible in the first part
    to screw up and require a fairly laborious process of restarting (it's
    probably quicker just to RESTART), which, quite apart from its
    problems for the IF player, doesn't really make much sense in the plot
    of the game. (The nature of the problems was such that the solutions
    developed over time, after all; it took many failures to make the
    discoveries required in each scene.) In several key respects, the
    first scene requires resources that can be easily wasted -- and though
    the urgency of the situation lends a certain logic to the picture (if
    you don't solve the problem, you'll die), it still doesn't really make
    much sense as an evolutionary tableau.

    Another clunky element is the hint system, which rests in a mural in
    the edifice -- clever enough, but the problem is that the mural only
    gives you the hint once you've gone out and actually done each step
    and come back and checked the mural, which I found time-consuming and
    annoying. You can't, in short, play to where you get stuck, then come
    back and check the mural, because the mural won't keep up with
    you. Among problems to be fixed for future versions, this one may
    be #1.

    The end is a bit confusing. There is a cataclysmic event at the end
    that doesn't seem to fit into the evolutionary frame, as far as I can
    tell, and my guess was that it's the author's device for ending the
    story. If so, it's intriguing -- but the final sentence, even when
    you've finished the game "right" (in accordance with the walkthrough,
    anyway), is a bit of a puzzler. I couldn't decide whether it was a
    comment on the nature of evolution or simply a bug; if it was supposed
    to be the former, it could perhaps have been more skillfully done. (At
    least, it might have a sentence somehow distinguishing it from less
    satisfactory endings.) And while I enjoyed the ending -- it had plenty
    of drama -- it did weaken the allegory a bit; certainly, the
    evolutionary process didn't end where it does in this game, but the
    conclusion of the game suggests some sort of ending.

    Quibbles aside, though, The Edifice is one of the most intriguing
    games in the competition, in that it tries something completely new --
    a first-person account of the highlights of a scientific process. In a
    sense, your actions are vital to the continuation of that process --
    if you choose not to go on, progress stops with you -- and one way to
    see your role in the game is that of a guiding force at crucial
    moments in history, an intervention to ensure that the development of
    man stays on track. That, at least, would explain some of the knottier
    problems involving questionable motivations or the difficulty of
    anticipating a particular result without the player's advance
    knowledge. Part of the charm of Edifice is that the story it tells is
    sufficiently ambiguous that it can justify a variety of perspectives,
    including those who don't care for evolution as a self-perpetuating
    force at all. (The game, whether deliberately or not, provides some
    grist for the mill of the argument that mere chance could not been
    sufficient to turn ape into man.)

    Though elements of the gameplay are lacking somewhat, anything that
    Edifice lacks in playability is easily made up in sheer concept; the
    idea and the charm of its implementation earn this one an 8 on the
    competition scale.

    From: Paul O'Brian <obrian SP@G colorado.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #13 -- February 5, 1998

    You're an ape, spending your days hunting for Food and fleeing from
    Enemies. You have these little thumbs, too, that set you apart from
    the Others. Suddenly one day, a huge black Edifice appears before you,
    arousing your wonder and suspicion. I can almost hear "Also Sprach
    Zarathustra" in the background: Daaaaaaaa, Daaaaaaaaa,
    Daaaaaaaaaa.....  Da-Dummmmmmm! However, from this highly derivative
    beginning, the Edifice ventures quickly into much more original
    territory. It seems that once you enter the monolith, you find
    yourself able to enter various stages of human development, from the
    discovery of fire to protecting your village against plundering
    marauders. The idea works very nicely, putting the player into
    puzzle-solving situations which blend very naturally into the game's
    environment and using the edifice itself as a sort of frame around the
    smaller narratives as well as a hinting device.

    One section of the game in particular I found really remarkable. On
    the second level of the edifice, you find yourself as a very early
    human, living in a family unit in the woods. Your son has a fever, and
    to cure him you must find the Feverleaf, which can be made into a
    healing tea.  However, no Feverleaf seems to be available anywhere,
    until you stumble across a Stranger. Unsurprisingly, however, the
    Stranger does not speak your language, and so you are faced with a
    problem of communication. The game does an incredible job with
    simulating this situation. I was astonished at the level of realism
    which this character was able to achieve, and at the care that must
    clearly have gone into fashioning this interaction. I've rarely seen
    such a thorough and effective establishment of the illusion of
    interactivity. The Stranger did not of course respond to English words
    in understandable ways. However, you could point to objects, or speak
    words in the Stranger's language, and gradually the two of you could
    arrive at an understanding. It was an amazing feeling to be
    experiencing this kind of exchange in IF... I really felt like I *was*
    learning the Stranger's language. It will always remain one of the
    most memorable moments of this 1997 competition for me.

    I spent a lot of time on this one encounter, but I spent more time on
    the first level of the edifice, where you learn basic skills like how
    to hunt and build a fire. All of the puzzles in this section were
    logical, and the implementation was characteristically thorough and
    rich. However, this level is also where I ran into the game's one
    major flaw: its scoring system. Upon typing "score", you are told
    something along the lines of "You have visited two levels of the
    Edifice and solved none of them.  You are amazingly discontent."
    However, sometimes "amazingly discontent" changes to "very content."
    for reasons that aren't at all clear. Moreover, I did everything that
    the hints indicate on that level, but the game still insisted I had
    not solved it. I worked on this until I got so frustrated with it that
    I just went up to the next level. I'm not sure whether these
    irregularities in the scoring system were intentional or not, but I
    found that they were the only significant detractions from an
    otherwise excellent game.

    Prose: The author did a superb job with the prose. Objects and rooms
    were described carefully and concisely, and in fact their descriptions
    often changed to reflect the character's expanding knowledge. In the
    beginning, words are simple and their meanings often archetypal: Rock,
    Enemies, Others, etc. As the game progresses and the character
    continues to evolve, the diction becomes more complex and the meanings
    more specific. This is the type of prose effect that a graphical game
    could never achieve, since it arises from the nature of the prose
    itself. That the game can achieve this effect shows that it is very
    well written indeed.

    Plot: The game's plot is a clever device to put the player into
    various moments in the history of human development. Its central
    device is rather clearly lifted from 2001:A Space Odyssey, but other
    than that it's an excellent frame story around fascinating vignettes.

    Puzzles: I think the language puzzle was the best one I've seen in
    interactive fiction this year. Certainly it was the best in the
    competition -- it advanced the narrative, developed the character,
    achieved a new kind of IF character interaction, and packed a powerful
    Sense of Wonder. The other puzzles I encountered were also very good,
    arising quite intuitively out of the game's situation and objects. My
    only frustration was with the elements of the game which suggested I
    had more to solve but never seemed to indicate what those things were.

    Technical:
    writing -- The Edifice's prose was quite error-free.
    coding -- Aside from the problems with the scoring system, the coding
    was outstanding. Synonyms abounded, and almost all logical or
    intuitively available actions were accounted for. I have no doubt that
    the problems with the scoring system arose from the complexity of the
    game, and that they will be resolved in the next release. When that
    happens, Edifice will have eradicated its one significant flaw.

    Inform file (.z5) (updated version)

    Inform file (.z5) (competition version)

    Walkthrough (Frotz .rec format)

    Inform code sample from language puzzle (.inf)

    Ekphrasis
    From: Felix Plesoianu <felixp7 SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #47 -- January 16, 2007

    TITLE: Ekphrasis
    AUTHOR: JB Ferrant
    EMAIL: lejibe SP@G gmail.com
    DATE: November 27, 2006
    PARSER: Inform 6 French edition
    SUPPORTS: Glulx interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: freeware; author's website
    URL: http://ginko968.free.fr/jeux/ekphrasis.htm
    VERSION: First release

    Once in a while I get my hands on a game that is unusual in so many ways I don't
    even know where to start. You know, the kind that doesn't seem to hold much
    promise at first, but then you notice this nice feature, and that one, and you
    want to play just a little further before going to bed... you're charmed.

    To get one thing out of the way, Ekphrasis is written in French. If you speak
    the language but haven't played a French text adventure before, don't worry.
    Most commands are what you'd expect, shortcuts included (such as 'x' for
    'examiner'). You can even go west by typing 'w', something I did without even
    thinking about it. Be sure to type 'aide' at the beginning; it  will point out a
    less obvious command that happens to be used a lot during the game.

    The story is reminiscent of an old stylish detective movie. A particular
    Renaissance painting appears to have been stolen and replaced with a copy.
    You've been called to evaluate it, but things are a lot more complicated than
    they first seem. Being a cranky old professor with a distaste for modern
    technology doesn't help either. If you're expecting humor, you won't be
    disappointed. I haven't had such a laugh since Dutch Dapper IV.

    The gameplay is neatly divided between interactive scenes and "talk to"-
    triggered dialogues. The former are short and focused, usually one or two
    locations with a handful of items and NPCs and a clear goal; the latter are
    long-ish but charming, and do a great job of portraying the characters.
    Otherwise there isn't much in the way of literary style. Ekphrasis relies on
    pictures - otherwise beautiful - to describe the locations. Too bad it also
    relies on pictures for essential information such as phone numbers, which really
    should stay in the text. Be sure to keep the walkthrough at hand.

    One thing the game is particularly good at is feeling natural. Most locations
    are famous spots in Europe; the NPCs and situations are what you'd expect to
    find there. Even the maze towards the end (yes, there's a maze!) is perfectly
    justified, and not all that complicated. The NPCs, though unhelpful, are at
    least pro-active, often starting conversations on their own. Puzzles are
    generally logical, but they sometimes require perfect timing and/or performing a
    precise sequence of steps which may not be so obvious. Add to that my abysmal
    puzzle-solving skills and the sheer length of the game and you'll see why I
    ended up following the walkthrough a lot. Except, of course, when following it a
    la lettre led to an untimely death. Oh well, it's a big game. Things can easily
    go out of sync.

    Speaking of size, Ekphrasis is too large for its own good. I spent more than ten
    hours on the game, or so I think, because I lost count with all the loading and
    saving. Apparently, so did the author. Most of the scenery is not implemented,
    not even as a "you don't need that" message. A lot of synonyms are missing in
    action as well, which can become quite a problem when the game fails to
    recognize a noun from its own room descriptions. There's also a good deal of
    "read the author's mind" towards the end. I suppose it's difficult to explain
    everything when you write such a big game all by yourself. And despite the
    author's assurances that specialist knowledge is not required to win, there were
    a couple of spots when even Wikipedia couldn't help me.

    All in all, the game kept me interested to the end despite all the annoyances.
    Fun, education, suspense and even romance - Ekphrasis has them all, so allow me
    to conclude as a Frenchman would: chapeau!

    P.S. I was unable to hear the sound for technical reasons, so I can't make any
    comments about it; my apologies to everyone interested.

    Blorbed Glulx executable (in French)
    Walkthrough (plain text)

    Electrabot
    From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #5 -- April 19, 1995

      NAME:  Electrabot                      GAMEPLAY:  Poor
      AUTHOR:  Woody Hunt                    PLOT:  Meaningless
      EMAIL:  ???                            ATMOSPHERE:  None
      AVAILABILITY:  CIS - Gamer's           WRITING:  Adequate
      PUZZLES:  Arbitrary                    SUPPORTS:  AGT Ports
      CHARACTERS:  Generic                   DIFFICULTY:  Trivial

         In Electrabot you play the part of a prototype android seeking to
    rescue your creator from the clutches of the evil Barbarith.
    I don't want to be too hard on the game, as it's no mean feat to
    download a program like the Adventure Game Toolkit, read the
    instructions, understand them, and put together a reasonably
    grammatical game that will run to completion without crashing or
    causing the player numerous unintended headaches.  Author Woody Hunt
    has done all of these things.  The problem is that there's not much
    there.
         In Electrabot, you follow a more or less predetermined course
    (there are a couple of side routes), picking up objects and meeting
    creatures along the way.  Each object kills exactly one creature.
    That's it.  That's literally all there is to the game.
         Well, not quite.  There are two other puzzles.  One involves a
    direction you can use that isn't mentioned in the room description.
    The other involves a set of 3 or 4 rooms that will kill you without any
    warning if you enter them.
         For the most part, the weapons are generic.  Common sense will tell
    you which weapon kills the giant slug and the giant rat, but all of the
    others are totally arbitrary.  It's also worth mentioning that although
    you're supposed to be a high-powered android, everybody you meet (from
    the insane artist to the butler) is capable of completely cleaning your
    clock if you don't have the right item handy.

    AGT files with PC Executable runtime(.zip)

    The Elysium Engima
    From: Jimmy Maher <maher SP@G grandecom.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #48 -- May 2, 2007

    TITLE: The Elysium Enigma
    AUTHOR: Eric Eve
    E-MAIL:  eric.eve SP@G hmc.ox.ac.uk
    DATE: October 1, 2006
    PARSER: TADS 3
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF-Archive
    URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/Elysium.zip
    VERSION: 2.01

    As anyone who read my IF Comp reviews last year will know, The Elysium Enigima
    was my game of the Comp.  I noted at the time that I would like to return to it
    later to try for a full score, something the game encouraged when I completed it
    by helpfully suggesting some things that I left undone and might want to try
    next time.  I had intended to play it again soon after the Comp, but Last Resort
    and the holiday season intervened.  When Elysium won the XYZZY awards this year
    for Best Game and Best NPC, however, I was reminded to return to it, armed with
    my list of additional things to try to accomplish in search of a full score, to
    see if it was really as good as my almost embarrassingly enthusiastic previous
    review would indicate.  And so I downloaded the latest post-Comp release and
    dove in.  I am still very impressed, but also noticed a few things that bothered
    me this time around, as I was able to spend more time with the game and,
    unbothered by the joy of first discovery, view it with a bit more of a critical
    eye.

    First, though, let me explain the premise and the many positives for anyone
    coming to the game for the first time through this review.  You play the role of
    a rather junior interstellar diplomat sent on a routine mission to the planet of
    Elysium, a backwater colony world populated by ludites who reject all but the
    most basic technology and have a rather ambivalent attitude about being a part
    of the Empire you work for at all.  You are supposed to -- literally -- show the
    imperial flag, meet with a few of the society's elders if they desire it and
    make note of their concerns or complaints, and be on your way. The inevitable
    complications arise in the form of a mysterious and attractive female who
    doesn't seem to belong here.  You must also deal with the suspicious natives,
    and may even be able to learn the reasons for their latent hostility toward the
    Empire.  A lot is going on here, and the story, setting, and implementation are
    as well fleshed-out as you are likely to find in IF.  Like all of Eric Eve's
    TADS 3 work, the whole serves as fine advertisement for the power of TADS 3.

    Most of the commentary on the game has focused, rightfully so, on the mysterious
    Leena, one of its three NPCs.  You meet her early in the game, when she
    approaches you in the guise of a dirty and apparently hungry, but nevertheless
    very shapely, outcast.  Much of the game revolves around figuring out just who
    and what she really is.  I am already treading right on the line of spoilerdom
    here, so I will not go into more detail but rather defer to Valentine
    Koptelsev's SPAG Specifics piece, which focuses on Leena's role in the game.  I
    agree with many of Valentine's concerns about Leena's sometimes illogical
    behavior, but also remain very impressed with Mr. Eve's masterful job in
    creating her.  You can converse with Leena in great depth and breadth.  The TADS
    3 conversation system is in full flower.  Talking with Leena doesn't feel like a
    game of "guess the topic," but rather feels at certain stretches like real
    conversation, as the two of you probe and feint, each trying to determine just
    what the other is really about.  It's a fine merging of technical and artistic
    mastery that remains as impressive to me as it did when I first played the game.
    These interactions with Leena and (to a lesser extant) the two other NPCs,
    along with the thoroughly implemented environment, pull the game away from the
    text adventure feel and into something that feels more like a true interactive
    story.

    I think this feeling contributes to the disappointment I felt with some of the
    non-character interaction puzzles.  First, though, I should mention that Mr. Eve
    did vastly improve in this post-Comp release the most egregious offender, a
    fiddly puzzle that required a degree of, shall we say, lateral thinking, and was
    borderline unfair.  I complained about it in my previous review, and was
    apparently not alone.  It's nice to see an author listening to his players and
    taking his work seriously enough to revise it and incorporate their input.

    Some of the other puzzles still bother me, though, because they destroy the
    sense of reality the game otherwise so masterfully creates.  The worst offender
    comes when you find a housecat lying on top of a chest you would dearly like to
    open.  Removing said cat requires solving a sequence of absurd puzzles that
    might be amusing in a Monkey Island-style comedy adventure but clash horribly
    with the believable tone of this story.  I am an intrepid, healthy young
    adventurer visiting a planet as the representative of a powerful Empire, and I
    am stymied by a housecat?  I love animals as much as the next guy, but... just
    kick the damn cat out of the way, already!  The game doesn't need stuff like
    this to artificially lengthen it.

    I want to see more simulation-oriented puzzle-solving in IF, something at which
    TADS 3 should excel, and less fiddly set-pieces like this.  (I know that places
    me outside the consensus position in the community, but so be it.)  Apparently
    others complained about some of the puzzles as well, as Mr. Eve mentions in his
    notes on this release that taking their suggestions would entail making more
    extensive revisions than he was ready to undertake, in effect making the new
    release into an entirely new game.  Fair enough, I can certainly understand that
    position, but do hope that he will consider our comments when writing his next
    game.  He is so very, very close to achieving the most fluid storytelling we
    have yet seen in IF that it is a shame to see his efforts foiled by
    ill-considered puzzles seemingly inserted out of a sense of obligation.

    But let me place my complaints aside to state again that Elysium is a brilliant
    piece of work.  It does not attempt to radically, explicitly innovate for the
    sake of mere cleverness, but rather molds its form to its function of providing
    the player with a fun, immersive interactive story.  Even the writing does not
    call attention to itself, but flows fluidly and cleanly out of the way of the
    story.  The game stands as my personal favorite of a very strong year, and I am
    happy to see the XYZZY voters recognize it.  If you are reading this review to
    find out if you should play it... Yes, you should.

    Zip containing TADS 3 game file, latest revision
    TADS 3 game file, original Competition version
    Plain text walkthrough

    Enchanter
    From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #15 -- October 11, 1998

    NAME: Enchanter
    AUTHOR: Marc Blank
    E-MAIL: Beats me
    DATE: 1983
    PARSER: Infocom Standard
    SUPPORTS: Infocom ports
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial
    URL: N/A
    VERSION: Release 29

    Enchanter, as most Infocom fans know, is the first in a fantasy series
    intended to complement the Zork trilogy, a set of games where success
    depends both on wits and on judicious use of magic. (By implication,
    the adventurer in the Zork trilogy is a sort of grunt by contrast,
    using combat skills as opposed to spell-casting, which isn't really
    true--but the blend of the two in Beyond Zork lends credence to the
    idea that it was supposed to be a resolution to both trilogies.) The
    player's use of magic in this series is based on a simple system of
    copying spells into a book and then memorizing the spell each time it
    is cast, an approach that has earned much criticism over the years but
    which I still enjoy and find realistic (well, realistic on
    fantasy-game terms, anyway). It feels more natural to have known
    spells in a book than floating around in one's head constantly,
    somehow, even though it can become a form of inventory
    management. Part of the fun of this magic system, moreover, is the
    humor value inherent in casting certain spells on inappropriate
    objects (and the funny responses Infocom provided, of course).

    Anyway, the plot of Enchanter is a fairly standard save-the-world
    deal, wherein you, the novice enchanter, are sent into Krill's castle
    because your powers are minimal enough that he won't bother to get rid
    of you.  (Why it wouldn't be worth his while to smush someone prowling
    around his castle isn't wholly clear to me, but oh well.) The layout
    of the plot is rather "wide," in design parlance, meaning that almost
    the entire territory and most of the puzzles are available early in
    the game; it's up to you to figure out what can be solved at any given
    time. Wide games can be irritating if the puzzles must be solved in
    one particular order, but 'tisn't so in "Enchanter", fortunately;
    quite a few of the puzzles are solvable very near the beginning of the
    game.

    The puzzles themselves are mostly good, and not especially difficult,
    with one exception--one vital action is without motivation and relies
    on a somewhat obscure hint. There is another instance of a verb I
    didn't expect the game to recognize and spent hours upon hours
    devising alternative solutions to the puzzle--and no, my copy was not
    pirated; I just didn't think to look at the verb list, I guess. There
    are a few other mildly unfair elements--the effects of a spell expire
    after a small number of moves, but there's no way of knowing that (and
    no sign when it happens) and it might seem at first like that spell
    doesn't have the desired effect. Another puzzle, while the idea is
    fairly obvious, requires considerable trial and error for success--and
    there are some incorrect solutions, for which the game gives a fairly
    obvious warning. As an introduction to the use of magic in puzzles,
    Enchanter succeeds admirably; you use almost all of your spells at
    least once, often in creative ways.  If there's a weakness here, it's
    that virtually everything you do turns on magic; whereas the other two
    installments in the series called for more puzzle-solving and less
    trying spells, Enchanter is largely solvable by pulling out a spell
    for every occasion. It's not a major drawback, but it's not optimal
    either.

    Enchanter's plot, as noted, is not especially innovative, and is beset
    by contradictions, primary among them that Krill would not bother to
    notice when you acquire the means to defeat him (and that said means
    is sitting around in his own castle). That said, though, the
    atmosphere and the setting are quite well done--the abandoned village,
    the view of the castle from the Lonely Mountain, and the spread of the
    effect of Krill's spell, characterized thus: "Everything you see is
    gray and lifeless, as though covered with a veil of ash. Sound is
    muted and there is a faint acrid odor." Room descriptions change as
    well as the spell spreads, deteriorating from reasonably tidy
    abandoned castle to something altogether more sinister; it reminded me
    of the Nothing from Neverending Story. The effect is to lend some
    urgency to the plot, even though the time allotted to accomplish the
    mission is far more than needed, and to make the game something more
    than a collection of puzzles. There is humor as well, though: possibly
    the high point of the game is the arrival of the "adventurer," who
    seems to be you in the Zork trilogy (though it does, sadly, assume
    that said adventurer is male), and who plays on all the sillinesses of
    Zork and its genre, from illogical "wonder what happens if I do this"
    actions and their snappy responses ("The adventurer attempts to eat
    his sword. I don't think it would agree with him.") to classic
    vacuum-cleaner adventurer behavior--put the adventurer in a room and
    watch him pick everything up. In that and in a few select instances--a
    ludicrously overguarded door, for instance, and the arrival on the
    scene of the Implementors, meaning the game authors--Infocom manages
    to get in a few digs at the swords-and-sorcery universe, even while it
    invokes many of its cliches.

    It's interesting, though, that as a fantasy game, Enchanter plays
    everything much more conventionally than the Zork series did. The
    parody elements largely address adventure games themselves, not of the
    fantasy world; the evil warlock, the good sorcerer, the friendly
    animals are all reliable fantasy elements, and Enchanter doesn't do
    much with them--whereas the Zork trilogy derived its humor value from
    making fun of fantasy itself. The feel, moreover, is less lighthearted
    than the Zork trilogy (at least, less than I and II; III was a
    departure in that respect); the adventurer's pratfalls aside, the
    onset of the "veil of ash" and the way it takes over the game has a
    sinister quality that doesn't fit well with the humorous
    aspect. Krill's sidekicks are more menacing than any enemies from the
    Zork series, since they're not given foibles or funny lines (no lines
    at all, actually); even when the thief in Zork I was intent on killing
    you, it was hard to actually be afraid of him because the game took
    pains to play up the "gentlemanly" aspect. Here, though, when
    "guttural voices seem to be coming in your direction," there's a
    genuinely ominous feeling. An early description sets the tone:

        To the east, far away, can be seen a great castle at the edge of
        the Sea.  Three turrets it has; two, old and still majestic, lie
        on either side of a third, cold, black as night and squat as a
        toad. An evil smoke seems to emanate from this tower, shrouding
        the others in a darkening fog. A small mountain trail leaves the
        peak and descends to the south into a small village far below.

    Obviously, there isn't a lot that's new here; the ideas and images
    could have come directly from Tolkien or from one of his
    imitators. But the writing is restrained enough that these and other
    atmosphere moments work well--the game builds up to your final
    encounter with Krill by giving more and more space to the
    looming-menace aspect. It's hard to explain why it works well, but it
    does--though you start in a bucolic natural setting, as the game
    progresses, your discoveries bring you closer to the heart of the
    castle, and the atmospheric changes are calculated to reflect that
    progress. Likewise, your accomplishments as an enchanter build on each
    other: you move from minor triumphs in the beginning to more
    significant or daring uses of magic later in the game. The point is
    that Enchanter does quite a lot with a sparely written plot and its
    few puzzles, and the cliched aspect doesn't prevent the story from
    being effective.

    On the whole, Enchanter works, and while there are problems--I wish
    the authors had rethought the insistence on hunger, thirst and sleep,
    for example--this is an example of one of Infocom's more solid early
    efforts.  Though it takes a very different approach to its fantasy
    element than does Zork I, it's no less entertaining for that.

    Solution (Text)

    The Enchanter Trilogy
    From: Molley the Mage <mollems SP@G WKUVX1.WKU.EDU>
    Review appeared in SPAG #2 -- September 26, 1994

      NAME: The Enchanter Trilogy             PARSER: Early Infocom
      AUTHOR: Infocom                         PLOT: Save the World!
      EMAIL: ???                              ATMOSPHERE: Very Rich
      AVAILABILITY: LTOI 1                    WRITING: Tremendous
      PUZZLES: Wide Range                     SUPPORTS: Infocom ports
      CHARACTERS: Typical IF
    DIFFICULTY: Enchanter - Average; Sorceror - Easy; Spellbreaker - Hard
                (Enchanter - 5/10; Sorceror - 3/10; Spellbreaker - 8/10)

    The "Enchanter Trilogy" was Infocom's second big line of more or less
    "connected" games.  All three featured a better parser and more levels of
    interaction than the Zork games did, and a *much* greater emphasis on plot
    and storyline.  No longer collections of disparate puzzles surrounding the
    gathering of treasures, these games in my opinion really brought Infocom
    into their own as far as writing goes.

    Enchanter, the first of the series, features you as a novice magician who
    is sent to do battle with an incredibly powerful evil sorceror who is
    destroying the world.  The reason you, a near novice, are sent instead of
    the more powerful mages in charge of you is because Krill (the evil
    warlock) could easily detect a mage of great power, while you won't even
    register as a blip on his mental radar screen.  This will supposedly allow
    you to slip in and defeat him while he's not looking.  The game is set in
    and around Krill's castle, where there are various traps, tricks, and
    treasures, not to mention a group of nasty henchmen who carry you off to
    your death whenever they find you.  The game basically centers around the
    collection of more and more magical spells to add to your arsenal.  These
    spells are what enable you to defeat the aforementioned tricks and traps,
    along with some well-timed help from a few NPC's (including the Adventurer
    from Zork I, a classic moment if ever there was one!).  Eventually you
    arrive at the requisite showdown with Krill, who goes down rather easily
    (somewhat anticlimactic for a world-conquering sorcerer, eh?)
    Nevertheless, Enchanter is a fun game that will provide you with some hours
    of enjoyment.

    Sorcerer is the sequel to Enchanter (obviously) and once again you are
    called upon to do battle with great evil.  In this case, your mentor Belboz
    (head of the Circle of Enchanters to which you were admitted after your
    amazing defeat of Krill) has been captured, imprisoned, and possessed by a
    malevolent demon, Jeaarr.  Using Belboz's sorcerous powers, the demon will
    of course be able to ... you guessed it ... take over the world, so off you
    to the rescue again.  Your quest this time takes you back into the Great
    Underground Empire, where you will visit an ancient castle, an amusement
    park, and other locales en route to a showdown with the demon.  Two scenes
    bear particular mention: the glass maze, which you must navigate in a
    unique way, shows that not all mazes have to be annoying and boring.  There
    is another puzzle involving time travel and meeting your "younger"  and
    "older"  selves which is worth playing the entire game for, as I found it
    one of the most imaginative and challenging IF puzzles ever.  As a whole,
    the game is rather easy, but I enjoyed it immensely.  Highly recommended.

    Spellbreaker, the conclusion of the trilogy, is truly an epic game.  It was
    Infocom's largest and most ambitious project when it came out, featuring
    about three times the puzzles (1000 points) of any other Infocom game.  For
    me, it was love at first sight.  This is one of my all-time absolute
    favorite games.  It seems that after you rescued Belboz in Sorcerer, you
    took his place as the Head of the Circle of Enchanters.  Now magic has
    begun to fail everywhere in the world, and all of your fellow mages have
    been turned into small amphibians by malevolent sorcery.  You, however, are
    strangely unaffected, and must pursue the source of this evil.  What you
    will discover is a game which deals with metaphysics and magic with equal
    facility, along with challenging puzzles and wonderful writing.  In short,
    Spellbreaker is a game with almost no equal.  Be warned, however, that it
    is HARD -- much more so than either of the previous two games in the
    trilogy.  However, the puzzles are all quite logical, and most involve the
    intelligent applications of the various spells which you will again find,
    along with the collection of strange white cubes which when invoked in the
    proper manner transport you to alternate places and times.  The only thing
    I didn't like about this game was the inclusion of the ancient "three
    weighings on a scale"  problem (although it was presented in a novel
    manner).  The ending was both surprising (to me) and satisfying.  This is a
    game not to be missed!

    As a whole, the Enchanter Trilogy is my favorite set of Infocom games, far
    and away.  Again, I recommend getting them in the original packaging if
    possible, but they are also in the LTOI package, so they are again
    accessible to a new generation of interactive fiction lovers.  If you play
    no other Infocom games in your life, play these three together -- they are
    classics.

    The End Means Escape
    From: Adam Cadre <ac SP@G adamcadre.ac>
    Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000

    TITLE: The End Means Escape
    AUTHOR: Stephen Kodat
    E-MAIL: skodat SP@G blazenet.net
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2000/tads/endmeans/endmeans.gam
    VERSION: Release 1

    I really liked the first segment of this game. Not only were the animate
    objects cool and funny, but the way the player is meant to go about
    resolving the situation -- asking everyone about everyone else --
    appealed to me much more than if the solution had been to perform some
    clever engineering trick. I wasn't quite sure how the stuff I was doing
    was getting me any closer to opening the door, but I went along with it
    and entered the book...

    ...and then splat. I didn't get part two at all. I understood how to
    manipulate the words -- the hint system told me that much -- but I
    didn't have the slightest clue what my goal was, and the hints crapped
    out at that point. So I put the game away, figuring I'd give it about a
    five. Then I read a solution to part two on the newsgroup -- and I
    *still* didn't get it. It was like getting stuck on a puzzle where
    you're trying to open a safe and finding out that the combination is
    43-49-25... and why? Because it just sort of is. "You turn hard"? Say
    what?

    And then the third segment... goal, please? I think this says it all:

       >HINT
       There's just some people standing around.

    Right. And I was one of them. Maybe there are some people who, presented
    with a bunch of playing pieces in a game they don't recognize, would
    start messing around with the pieces for hours on end until something
    happened; me, I'm more inclined to just leave them alone until I have
    some *reason* to play with them, some *objective* I'm using them to try
    to accomplish. And "escape" is insufficient. Yes, you do escape, but how
    are you supposed to know that X will achieve Y? Doing what the hints
    tell you to do with the segments' various playing pieces, and
    consequently "escaping," is like the bit in A GOOD BREAKFAST from Comp97
    where you're looking for a spoon, happen across a robot, play Lights-Out
    with it, and then when you win, the robot randomly hands you a spoon as
    a reward. Or, to use an invented example for the sake of clarity:

    You're in a cell. You want to get out. The door won't budge, and there's
    a guard posted outside. You have a gold coin.

    GOOD DESIGN: Get the guard to open the door and let you go free in
    exchange for the coin.

    BAD DESIGN: Swallow the coin. This randomly causes the door to fall off
    its hinges onto the guard, allowing you to make a break for it.

    THE END MEANS ESCAPE is full of examples of the latter type of design.
    Open up a guy's surgical incision? Why? Just because you can (with
    difficulty)? Apparently so -- that's how you advance to the next stage,
    though there's no particular reason why that's so. The end justifies the
    means? In this game, they rarely seem remotely connected.

    Score: a low THREE, and only because I did get some fun out of the first
    bit.

    From: Tina Sikorski <tina SP@G eniac.stanford.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000

    Walkthrough? No (in-game hints)
    Genre: Surrealism

             +------------------------------------------+
             |Overall Rating        B+|Submitted Vote  8|
             |Writing               A-|Plot           C+|
             |Puzzles               B |NPCs           B |
             |Technical             B |Tilt           A+|
             +------------------------+-----------------+

    *** Initial Thoughts

    A lot of people really disliked everything but the first section of this
    game. I, on the other hand, got more into it the more I played it; I
    won't say I enjoyed the first section the least, but neither did I find
    it the best of the sections. I believe this will be a narrow appeal
    game, which in a way is a pity and in a way is just how things work.

    I will note that this was the game that got me to dub this "Surreal
    Comp"; between it, Shade, and (to a lesser extent) Planet of the
    Infinite Minds, not to mention the Rybread parody, this was probably the
    most surreal of the comps ever...

    *** Writing (A-)

    First off: bonus points for the correct use of "its", something a lot of
    authors don't seem to understand.

    Any game in which there are word puzzles is probably going to garner
    either a rather low or a rather high score in writing. In this case, you
    will see it's "rather high". But this was not only because of the
    (somewhat difficult, but entertaining) word puzzle in the second
    section, but the sheer amount of work that must have gone into crafting
    the initial section's NPCs, giving them character and consistency.

    Many of the descriptions were simple and unadorned, but knowing when to
    do this is as important to writing as elaborate, full, and intense
    descriptions of one's environment. Others (mostly later in the game) are
    detailed and interesting, but oddly those seem to occur when they are
    least important. I don't know if this was a deliberate stylistic choice,
    but for me it added to the surreal factor -- and I so enjoy the surreal
    factor, so this is a good thing.

    Possibly the best use of words was not in the writing itself, but one of
    the puzzles (see below). Indeed, until that section, I was actually
    somewhat out-of-sorts with the style presented; as I put it in my notes
    "This is the kind of HIGH-FALUTIN' High Art thing I dislike, isn't it?"
    However, it grows on one...

    *** Plot (C+)

    Now, those of you who played this game will be saying "Plot? Was there a
    PLOT?" Well, yes and no. There was certainly no coherent plot I could
    identify, but it seems as if each section contained a bit of one, and
    they were internally consistent. On this basis -- rather than that of
    understanding and being able to articulate the plot -- I rated it just
    above average, consistency being one of the building blocks of a good
    plot. So if you're looking for a full-blown story, I'm afraid you are
    out of luck; this game does not, so far as I could tell, have one.

    There are basically four (five?) little tableaus that are, at least as
    far as I could tell, separate, yet each has as its basis understanding
    or at least discovering the nature of something. This, I think, is what
    ties the game together. I may be the only person getting this out of the
    game (other comments certainly suggest such) but... for me it works.

    *** Puzzles (B)

    Oh GOD, the PUZZLES. They are fiendish! They are evil! They required me
    to use the hints regularly...

    ...and yet...

    I'm fascinated by word puzzles. I was particularly fascinated by the one
    in part two of this game, where your inventory contains a certain number
    of words, the room contains a certain number of words, and you have to
    manipulate them in various ways to make certain phrases. In the interest
    of leaving -some- surprises to the reader, I shall not reproduce the
    entire puzzle, but I will say that:

    a) There is more than one (somewhat) sensical "solution", but only one
    actually -works-
    b) Yes, it did mean something to ME (though not, I gather, to others).

    Then there was the puzzle with the basically inanimate people. That one,
    I did not like. No. But it wasn't because I felt it was unfair or even
    that it was difficult to figure out (aside from being very limited in
    solvability). It was just that it was... icky. I suspect it was meant to
    be metaphorical, but some metaphors I'd rather not, er, explore.

    Still... frustrating at times, but the hints do work well, and... if you
    like symbolism and wordplay, you should enjoy this aspect of the game.

    *** NPCs (B)

    Well, some of the NPCs were a bit wooden and stiff... (that's a joke
    only those who have played the game will get).

    Many of the Others you interact with in this game are not, strictly
    speaking, people. They have personalities, they speak, they react,
    but... they're objects. Animate objects. It's quite bizarre. Surreal,
    even.

    And I loved the way it was done. Each object had a personality that fit
    with what it was. Each object had something to say about its
    surroundings and fellow objects. Sure, it was simple, a closed
    environment, but that's something you can't say about some games: the
    NPCs knew about each other and would comment on each other. In fact...
    it was vital to the game.

    *** Technical (B)

    A few little neat tricks gave me reason to up the technical score a bit,
    despite a couple really nasty disambiguation problems in one section.
    Specifically, I liked the fact that changing state (due to actions
    taken) resulted in changing responses (descriptions and reactions),
    something that takes some time and care and effort to do, and I enjoyed
    the word-inventory puzzle as a purely interesting technical feat as well
    as just as a puzzle. It's nice to see a little extra like this.

    *** Tilt (A+) and Final Thoughts

    Many people started this game, liked it, and then slowly grew to dislike
    it. I started out not enjoying the philosophical High Art but grew to
    appreciate it once I began to see the full shape of things, and aside
    from an "ick" factor at one point, enjoyed the entire experience. This
    may say more about me than the game.

    If you can deal with fiendish (if well-hinted) puzzles, surreal
    situations, and the sense that you are in an alien landscape -- or if
    those things outright appeal to you -- this game is worth checking out.
    Even if that is not your usual bag, the first section is possibly worth
    taking a look at.

    TADS .gam file (competition version)

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

    NAME: Enemies
    AUTHOR: Andy Phillips
    EMAIL: aphillips SP@G ma.man.ac.uk
    DATE: January 1999
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/inform/Enemies.z8

    Andy Phillips has a thing for .z8 games. In 3 attempts he's produced 3
    REALLY big puzzle-oriented games with varying degrees of success. The
    one constant has been that with each successive attempt, he's made great
    improvements in terms of both game design and story. Enemies, his most
    recent work, doesn't fail to impress in many ways and is certainly more
    "user friendly" than his first two offerings. The game chronicles the
    life of Charlie Johnson, accountant and every day Joe, who has
    unknowingly attracted the attention of an enemy (who it also turns out
    is a serial killer). The enemy is a person from Charlie's past who has
    been planning to test Charlie's resolve and intelligence for sometime.
    The enemy contends that Charlie's had life 'too easy' up until this
    point and needs to prove his worth. As an added incentive for Charlie to
    participate in the game, his enemy has also kidnapped his girlfriend.
    The game is broken into three sections: a prologue section (where
    initial bits of Charlie's past are revealed); a main story section
    (which revolves around an obstacle course full of puzzles and memories
    that take place in Charlie's former college); and an ending section
    (where Charlie's enemy is revealed and a final battle ensues). There's
    lots of prose to work through here and the puzzles are many and varied.
    But with such a cavernous game to review, the question is where do you
    start?

    Well, let's start with the positives. The best thing about Enemies is
    (surprisingly) the atmosphere. I mention the surprise because what had
    always impressed me about Phillips' work in the past were his puzzles.
    His storytelling conversely had been a little weak. In Enemies, however,
    it's his prose that takes the foreground. The writing is generally very
    creepy and Phillips does a great job of making the player feel that the
    threat is real and around every corner. There were a few instances when
    the prose went a little over the top and when it got to be too much it
    typically fell into one of these two categories:

    Aggravatingly repetitive

       "It's quite easy to get caught up in the world of finance and forget
       about the rest of us unfortunates who never had your chances."
       "I'd like to see you fail for once, Charlie. You think you're a major
       player, but in reality you're just a pawn in a very big game -- and
       it's time to start playing."
       "Imagine having to write your obituary, Charlie. If they had the
       decency to be truthful, they'd say what a heartless creep you were,
       but the ability to lie is second nature to accountants."

       - This is a sample of Charlie's enemy's dialogue, anytime Charlie's
       enemy comes within earshot of Charlie. By the end I felt like saying
       "Alright, either kill me or get some new material because I can't
       keep going on like this!"
                                        OR
    Cringe-inducing

       "She never had a chance to say, 'I love you'."

       - Charlie's reaction after discovering his dead fiancée. Wait a
       minute, after dating for two years and proposing marriage, she never
       told him she loved him? Boy, that upper lip in England gets stiffer
       every year. :)

    But it was worth going through that drivel to get to the little gems
    like this one:

       "It's difficult to ascertain an age since wet sandy hair covers most
       of her blistered face, but she can't be much older than twenty. You
       only see her body for a split second before sheer revulsion makes you
       look away, but the details are memorable: ankles bound with strong
       twine, adhesive tape starting to peel off her swollen mouth, tattoos
       of red flowers on her hips."

       - A description of one of your enemy's many victims. Most of the
       victims are done like this and it's quite unsettling when you find
       them within the fondly described rooms of your former college.

    Another technique Phillips uses to sustain the atmosphere is the
    flashback (which is used when Charlie either gets knocked out or
    stumbles onto something that triggers a memory). Through the flashbacks
    we learn about Charlie's history - more specifically his college years -
    and the characters from Charlie's past. The characters are all well done
    with the usual suspects in full force; we have the bully, the love
    interest(s), the victim, and Charlie's teachers. From this group, a few
    suspects with potential motives arise but unfortunately, all of their
    motives are suspect in turn.

    Phillips tries hard to create tension between Charlie and the other
    characters with the flashbacks but what the flashbacks really illustrate
    is that - contrary to his enemy's ravings -- Charlie was a victim for a
    good part of his college life, and had it anything but easy growing up.
    If I feel sorry for anyone in this game it IS Charlie. His past would
    constitute the lead role in any Shakespearean tragedy. In fact, if any
    character has a motive for vengeance it's him. Did Charlie make mistakes
    in his life? Sure. But they were very human mistakes and certainly not
    intentional. That's what makes his enemy's hatred (and through that any
    of the supporting cast's motives for wanting to kill him) a little
    unrealistic. Enemies also tries to convey the feeling that it was
    Charlie's actions that drove his enemy to (amongst other things) serial
    killing. Given Charlie's past, this too seems flawed.

    Maybe it's the case then that Charlie's enemy is a psychopath, and that
    Charlie is a casualty of circumstance -- a victim, caught in the wrong
    place at the wrong time. If this was the author's intent, however, then
    the story loses a bit of its effectiveness and the game changes from a
    battle between two masterminds to that of a lowly victim being hunted by
    a mindless predator. My jury's still out on this because I don't think
    that was Phillips' intent. At any rate, it ends up being a minor speed
    bump on the road through a very chilling story.

    As I'd mentioned earlier, the focus of Phillips' games in the past have
    been his puzzles. He's racked up a few XYZZY puzzle nominations already
    for some of his previous work and with Enemies he continues to impress.
    I was reading one of the int-fiction newsgroups a while ago and noticed
    someone making a comment about Andy Phillips' previous game Heist. Their
    comment was that in many cases it looked like the plot was being built
    around the puzzle and not the other way around. I had personally never
    seen it that way (maybe it's because Heist is one of my favorite games
    or maybe it's because I've always preferred puzzles to plot), but in
    retrospect I think the author of the post may have had a point. Enemies
    improves a bit on Heist in that respect with many of the puzzles
    centering around different college-related courses including chemistry,
    mathematics, history, and astronomy. The college section is also capped
    off with an entertaining macro-puzzle (a spin off of the board game
    Clue) that brings everything together quite nicely.

    Once you move through the college into the final confrontation with your
    enemy, there are fairly strict time limits imposed which require a lot
    of saving and restoring, and in most cases there can't be progress
    without a little learning by death. I know most players don't view this
    as a terribly good thing, but in this case I think it supports mimesis.
    After all, how much time would a serial killer give you if they were
    intent on killing you?

    The final battle between you and your enemy is also done very well. It
    involves both offensive and defensive maneuvers as well as some
    pre-planned setups. I've always been impressed with good fight sequences
    in IF because getting the timing done correctly and keeping up the
    player's intensity is considerably more difficult than with a graphical
    game.

    There were 2 puzzles however that I think might really taint the
    player's perception of this game. The first one in particular ended up
    being a point where I know a lot of gamers stopped playing, and it's
    unfortunate because they miss out on a thrilling finale. Without giving
    too much detail, the puzzle involves an intricate number of steps where
    each step has to be performed correctly. If one step is missed, the
    player gets killed. This sort of thing isn't terribly uncommon in IF but
    the problem here is that the game doesn't give you any clues as to
    whether you're on the right track or not. To make matters worse, the
    puzzle is very complex and requires several boatloads of author
    telepathy to be done correctly. To finally make this puzzle truly
    horrible, there is a random element to the puzzle that means never
    producing the same set of information for the same game so that even
    after reading the walkthrough, I still had difficulty. In frustration, I
    had to e-mail the author with my set of data and he had to feed me back
    the answer. My motivation to play Enemies after completing this puzzle
    was severely diminished, and it took many moons to get my appetite back.

    Perhaps not as brutal, but equally frustrating was a poorly implemented
    puzzle revolving around viewing certain pieces of evidence and then
    confronting your enemy with their existence. Although I did see all the
    necessary evidence, I never managed to make the connection that I had to
    see it all in the same saved game, and thus was killed immediately when
    my enemy confronted me. I actually figured out the enemy's identity
    early on in the game because of a subtle hint in one of the puzzles (in
    fact, it was so subtle it may have been inadvertent), so not being able
    to confront my enemy with the evidence made this puzzle even more
    frustrating.

    These were my two main sticking points with the puzzles but there were
    also a few minor problems with the parser, and some guess-the-verb
    problems. The problems were so minor, in fact, that they might not even
    be worth mentioning, but I think I will because I've noticed that these
    particular problems are quite common in bigger games. There were
    instances where I had a vague idea as to what I was supposed to do, but
    the solutions revolved around non-standard Inform actions (i.e., throw
    (x) over (y), put (x) under (y)). In a game like this, it's tough enough
    trying to figure out what to do when you're armed with a stable of
    common Inform verbs, but throw some "not-so-obvious" ones in there, and
    things get exponentially more difficult. A suggestion to remedy this
    problem might be to include a piece in the INFO section detailing all
    the verbs that can be used in the game. A good example of how to do this
    is Jon Ingold's 1999 release, and similarly puzzle-oriented game, The
    Mulldoon Legacy. Ingold lists all the potential commands in the game in
    a special section in the help menu and this makes a very difficult game
    puzzle-wise, much more enjoyable. Ingold also makes a comment in the
    help section of his game that guessing what verbs to use shouldn't be
    part of the puzzle. I tend to agree with him, especially in this case,
    because Enemies would still be sufficiently hard with a comprehensive
    verb list.

    There, that's my last squabble with the puzzles. The truth is that there
    were at least two or three puzzles in this game that could easily be
    nominated for XYZZY awards, and the sense of satisfaction I got from
    completing most of them was very high. A recommendation might be to play
    this game with a walkthrough close by, and when you hit one of the
    killer puzzles (believe me you'll know when it happens), you can save
    both your gaming experience and yourself the grief of trying to plow
    through them.

    The ending as I'd mentioned is really well done but one last thing sort
    of irked me. If you finish the game with a full point score, you're
    awarded the rank of "Man of Little Merit". Not that I'm sure Charlie
    ever had anything to prove, but if he did, he at least proved that he
    was worthy of life. Not a big deal, but it left a bad taste in my mouth
    when I finished.

    All gripes aside, Enemies is a fine game and for those of you who like
    puzzle-heavy games that don't completely sacrifice plot, this may be one
    to download.

    Inform .z8 file

    PC Executable

    Solution

    Enhanced
    From: Roger N. Dominick <dominirn SP@G ucunix.san.uc.EDU>
    Review appeared in SPAG #2 -- September 26, 1994

      NAME: Enhanced                                  AUTHOR: SophistiChaos
      AVAILABILITY: Shareware $10 IF Archive                 PUZZLES: Logical, interesting
      CHARACTERS:   1-D, but fun.                     PARSER: small vocabulary
      PLOT: Well-planned, linear.                     ATMOSPHERE: Dark and corny
      WRITING: Good, little "purple"  prose.           SUPPORTS: Any TADS run-time.
      DIFFICULTY: Medium, a few parser problems
      EMAIL: Hans Persson: unicorn SP@G lysator.liu.se
             Dominik Zemmler: dz SP@G lysator.liu.se

    I recently played the (unregistered, ftp'd) shareware version of
    _Enhanced_, the first (only?) chapter in the "Cyberventure Trilogy".

    Possibly the first truly cyberpunk adventure game I've played (unless
    A Mind Forever Voyaging counts), and certainly entertaining as an
    example of that genre.  However, some of the actions that must be taken
    in the game depend upon the player's familiarity with certain cyberpunk
    terminology ("ice," etc.), and a lot of the in-jokes are *really* in.
    There is also one spot where you have to do a very repititous task
    again and again, and more than one place where plurals either cause
    problems by being too much ("connector"s being a good case in point) or
    not enough (I dearly wished to be able to refer to "plastics," in the
    plural).  I had a few word-hunt fights with the parser, especially in
    one puzzle -- took me 30+ turns to figure out the expected wording to
    do something required to finish the game alive!

    The screens-long opening serves as a fast-if-not-especially-believable
    way to get the character into the main thick of the action.  Once
    there, the plot moves briskly through a storyline filled with in-jokes
    and almost-caricature NPCs... but it somehow remains fun and engaging.
    I got stuck twice, and ended up using a step-through from the if-archive
    for one bit.  Enhanced and the solution file are ftp'able from the
    if-archive, ftp.ifarchive.org.

    I enjoyed the game, for a while; when I began to have parsing problems,
    my enjoyment was diminished.  I'm looking forwards to seeing what else
    comes out of this trilogy, and with a little polish, SGD's games should
    be excellent.  I am going to mail a check off to the authors this
    weekend; for $10, including source code, it's a very good value.

    PC Executable (.zip)

    MAC (.sea.hqx)

    Other TADS Formats (.tar.Z)

    Solution (Text)

    Enlightenment
    From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #17 -- May 10, 1999

    NAME: Enlightenment: A One-room Absurdity
    AUTHOR: Taro Ogawa
    E-MAIL: Taro.Ogawa SP@G navy.gov.au
    DATE: 1998
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/enlighte
    VERSION: Release 7

    Enlightenment is proof positive that one-room games need not be
    one-joke or one-puzzle in style; in fact, they can be quite diverse
    and difficult.  In a competition with several of them, Enlightenment
    stands out as the most accomplished: there is a certain unity to the
    puzzles that justifies the one-room framework, and they are difficult
    enough to tax the player's mental energy, even within the confines of
    the room.

    The game also features a take-off on the Infocom "feelies" of old,
    with an HTMLized excerpt from Popular Enchanting and several silly but
    amusing tidbits. The excerpt reproduces the goofball feel of the
    Infocom manuals, and fits with the game's persistent tweaking of
    Activision (the darkness is inhabited by g***s, notably, and being
    eaten by one is "both g***ling and g***some"). (The prologue also
    refers to Frobozz Magic Napalm and a Frobozz Magic Tinning Kit, so
    there's not much ambiguity about who we're imitating.) The game blends
    traditional fantasy elements with anachronistic bits like
    battery-operated appliances in a way that likewise recalls Infocom;
    one of the familiar objects is a aerosol can of g*** repellent.

    The puzzles, though the solutions are sometimes silly enough to recall
    Steve Meretzky, would qualify as among Infocom's more difficult:
    several turn on realizing the physical properties of some of the
    objects you're holding, properties not at all obvious to the
    unscientifically minded. Still, the puzzles are inventive and require
    some lateral thinking--and some combining of objects in several
    cases--to solve; the difficulty stems less from unfairness or obscure
    facts than from the one-object or one-property conventions of most IF
    puzzles. The real fly in the ointment is the hint system, which seems
    badly broken--one must go through the hints for the concept of the
    game as a whole in order to get to those for specific puzzles, whether
    or not one has already grasped the goal. There may be a reason for
    that--the headings for the individual puzzles might give the game away
    for the player who hasn't picked up the point yet--but surely there
    must be a way to avoid that problem without such a maladaptive
    system. At any rate, in a game this difficult, the hint system is
    essential--and beyond the initial glitch, the system works well.

    The plot--at least, what can be revealed here--is simple enough: at
    the end of a cave-crawl hack-and-slash fantasy quest, you have to
    cross a bridge guarded by a troll. Therein lies the excuse for giving
    you an inventory full of sundry objects, presumably, which makes
    possible difficult and complicated puzzles. But the way you go about
    getting rid of the troll is more inventive than the premise suggests,
    and suggests an ironic reversal of one of the adventurer's commonplace
    tasks. Likewise implied is a jab at the interchangeability of fantasy
    quests, since the quest as a whole is clearly generic; you never find
    out, after all, what you were after in the first place. The joke, of
    course, is that the game sprinkles offhand references to other things
    you've already encountered in your quest, as if the premise were
    actually worth developing, more than an excuse for the one-room
    problem.

    Enlightenment is a short but extremely solid game: the puzzles are
    challenging enough that solving them feels rewarding. If it feels less
    like a game than a small section of a larger game, that's presumably
    the intent, and while it might be more satisfying to play a full-blown
    game, this sort of entry is ideal for the competition. With enough
    Infocom references to make fans nostalgic, and some of the feel of
    early Infocom, Enlightenment is an unabashed puzzle-fest that boasts
    some of the competition's toughest problems. It does what it does well
    enough that I gave it a 9 in the competition.

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

    What is it with all the one-room games this year? There must be some
    kind of movement happening in the collective IF unconscious which says
    "Plot?  Who needs it? Give me one room, and as long as it's got one or
    more puzzles in it, I'm happy." Well, sometimes I'm happy too. And,
    more or less, this is one of those times. Despite its title,
    Enlightenment has very little to do with gaining awareness or
    understanding Zen koans. To say what it *does* have to do with would
    probably be a bit too much of a spoiler, but it involves deliberately
    placing yourself in a situation that most text adventurers would avoid
    at all costs. Because of this, it took me a little while to actually
    catch on to how the game is supposed to work -- I just couldn't
    believe that deliberately placing myself in danger was the right
    path. It is, though, and getting there is all the fun. Like last
    year's Zero Sum Game, Enlightenment puts the PC at the *end* of an
    adventure of dizzying proportions. Unlike Zero Sum Game, Enlightenment
    isn't really an unwinding of the PC's accomplishments -- you get to
    keep your score, and even increase it. You've already overcome dozens
    of obstacles, collected lots of treasures, and scored 240 points out
    of 250; now there's just the little matter of getting past a canonical
    troll bridge and scurrying out of the caverns with your loot. But how?
    In the game's words:

       If only you hadn't used your Frobozz Magic Napalm on that ice wall...
       If only you hadn't used your TrolKil (*Tm) to map that maze...
       If only you hadn't sold your Frobozz Magic Tinning Kit.
       If only you hadn't cooked and eaten those three Billy Goats Gruff...
       ... or that bear ...

       If ONLY you'd checked the bloody bridge on your way in.

    This brief excerpt is representative of the writing in the game: it is
    both a very funny parody of the Zork tradition as well as an
    enthusiastic participation in that tradition. In fact, as you can see
    from the above quote, the game actually features some familiar parts
    of the Zork universe, such as Frobozz Magic products, rat-ants, and
    even certain slavering lurkers in dark corners. Activision apparently
    granted permission for this usage, as they did for David Ledgard in
    his adaptation of the Planetfall sample transcript for his game Space
    Station. Activision's willingness to grant permissions for such usage,
    as well as their donation of prizes to the competition and their
    sometime inclusion of hobbyist IF on commercial products, is great
    news for a fan community like ours -- their support of IF means that
    more people will devote their time to it, resulting (hopefully) in
    more and more good games. Enlightenment is one of the good ones, and
    one of its best features is its writing. Another way in which it is
    unlike Zero Sum Game is that it doesn't take an extreme or harsh tone.
    Instead, the writing is almost always quite funny in both its comments
    on text adventure cliches (the FULL score listing is a scream) and its
    usage of them. The game is littered with footnotes, which themselves
    are often littered with footnotes. Sly allusions and in-jokes abound,
    but they're never what the game depends on, so if you don't catch
    them, you're not missing anything important. Of all the one-room games
    I've seen this year, Enlightenment is definitely the best-written.

    It even includes some fun outside documentation in the form of the
    HTML edition of the latest issue of Spelunker Today: "The magazine for
    explorers and adventurers." This kind of mood-building file has been
    included with a few competition games this year, and Enlightenment's
    extras are definitely the best of the bunch. The writing in the faux
    magazine is just as good as the writing in the game, and the graphics
    look sharp and professional. I like these little extras -- they really
    do help set the mood of a game -- and they definitely add to the fun
    of Enlightenment.

    The one problem I had with this game was that, although the writing is
    funny and clever, it is sometimes not precise enough to convey the
    exact nature of a puzzle or its solution. In a heavily puzzle-oriented
    game like Enlightenment, this can be a major setback. For example, at
    one point in the game you're called upon to cut something, but it
    won't work to use your sword on it. You must find something else to
    cut with. Well, there is something else, but that object is never
    described as having a sharp edge. This is one of those puzzles that
    made me glad I looked at the hints -- the only way I would have ever
    gotten it is by brute force, and that's no fun anyway. In another
    instance, a part of the setting is described in such a confusing way
    that I still don't quite understand what it is supposed to look
    like. Part of the difficulty, I think, is that the game features a
    gate, with metal spikes at its bottom set into the stone floor. Now,
    this made me think of bars, like you might see on a portcullis.
    However, as far as I can determine the game actually means a solid
    wall, with spikes at the bottom, which I wouldn't describe as a
    gate. This kind of imprecision is a real problem when the objects so
    imprecisely described have to be acted upon in precise ways in order
    to solve puzzles. So I used the hints for a number of the puzzles, and
    I don't mind that I did, because I wouldn't have solved them on my own
    anyway. But imprecision aside, I'm still glad I used them, because it
    enabled me to play all the way through Enlightenment, and the trip out
    of that one room was well worth taking.

    Rating: 8.6

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

    This game is based in the Zork Universe. You have just completed your
    mission and escaped with a load of treasure, but a troll blocks the
    last bridge to freedom, you can't go back because you've booby-trapped
    the gate. This is a one room adventure which I find a bit
    constraining, with only one NPC, the troll. Your inventory includes a
    lot of treasures, and a few other adventurer type items.

    I'm afraid I couldn't work out what to do, and was running to the
    hints within 10 minutes. I thought all the illuminated objects were
    some kind of programming error, probably me being a bit dense. I'm
    afraid the level of puzzles in this game was to complex for me, I only
    managed to solve a handful by myself, and kept having to use hints. I
    could never have completed it on my own.

    The game also comes with a mildly interesting HTML web page
    set-up. The author would of been wise to include a few subtle hints
    here, so people wouldn't have to use the hint system straight away,
    and point out it exists in the run file. Once you start using hints it
    ruins the game, and just becomes a chore of reading hints, and typing
    in what they say.  The game also has a footnotes system, but I never
    found footnotes much fun after the novelty value, and the old Footnote
    10 - Read Footnote 11, Footnote 11 - Read Footnote 10; and Footnote 20
    - we didn't mention that Footnote; jokes have worn off. It's just a
    thing to show off one's programming skill, and annoy the player.

    This game is well coded - I didn't find any errors - but too complex
    for my taste, and I suspect a lot of other people. The author has a
    Japanese sounding name, whether he is or not I don't know, but the
    game certainly seems Japanese: Ultra Efficient, and Ultra Boring.

    Directory with Inform .z5 file and associated files

    Episode In The Life Of An Artist
    From: Virginia Gretton <VGretton SP@G aol.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #35 -- December 31, 2003

    TITLE: Episode In The Life Of An Artist
    AUTHOR: Peter Eastman
    EMAIL: None provided
    DATE: October 2003
    PARSER: TADS2
    SUPPORTS: TADS2 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2003/tads2/artist
    VERSION: Release 1 (competition version)

    Never judge a book (virtual or otherwise) by its title I told myself as
    I opened up the game. I might be a scientist who thinks chemistry is the
    best subject on the planet, but a title like "Episode In The Life Of An
    Artist" does not necessarily mean an arty, poetic, puzzleless offering.

    The opening scene is a bedroom, which could have been instantly
    sleep-inducing for the player. Luckily, I was fascinated by the author's
    choice of quotations and continued. Exploring led me into a pretty
    run-of-the-mill dressing sequence but at least I wasn't trapped in one
    room waiting to discover the magic command that would open up the game.
    And the kitchen was fun for a few turns.

    A possibly frustrating time is encountered outside the house but it
    doesn't defeat the intellect to find the key to moving the action along.
    Entertainment is provided while this section is unfolding its vital
    pieces of information.

    And then -- suddenly -- the game began to grow on me. Almost against my
    will. There is a wonderful sequence after the PC reaches the main game
    destination, which speaks volumes about his pernickety attention to
    dress code. The timing is exactly right and the PC's shock at the event
    is an enduring memory.

    Yes, there are bugs. Yes, there are times when starting again is the
    only thing to do. The game still managed to overcome my irritation at
    its implementation and logic gaps. It made me want to finish. I'm glad I
    did, because the final screens are worth the playing time by themselves.

    From: Paul E Coad <coad SP@G sonic.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #35 -- December 31, 2003

    I really enjoyed playing Peter Eastman's entry in the IFComp, "Episode
    in the Life of an Artist." This is largely because game contains many
    references to and is in the style of other works that I have enjoyed.
    After playing the first section, I nearly quit and moved on to the next
    game on my list, but I was completely hooked by the second. The game's
    tone is much lighter than many other of the games in the comp, it's
    playable in 2 hours, and it's fun.

    The story starts with the character in bed with the alarm buzzing. The
    remainder of the initial section is concerned with getting cleaned up,
    dressed and ready for work. This part is a little dull but serves to
    introduce the character. Most story-oriented games contain few or simple
    puzzles, and Episode is no exception. None of the puzzles are very
    difficult and a few are just tedious. Still, they are not the point;
    they're just plot devices. The writing is simple but of high quality.
    The game is segmented into discrete areas. Within each area the player
    has freedom to explore, but once one of the trigger actions occurs, the
    character is moved to a new segment. At first this is a bit jarring but
    it is a relief not be required to, for instance, find the bus stop,
    right bus, etc.

    The setting is a skewed version of the intersection between the here and
    now, Zork, and Daniel Pinkwater universes, with bits of others mixed in.
    Included in the Zork references is a mention of a "five zorkmid bill"
    being in the character's wallet. Usually the references to the Zork
    universe take the form of similar items or locations. On the Pinkwater
    side, several his books contain variations on the chicken man. His
    appearance in this game kept me playing when I was just about to quit
    and move on to the next entry to be judged. More than the chicken man
    has the Pinkwater vibe. The structure of the story, its simple and
    childlike main character, and the strange characters/machines/job are
    all common Pinkwater elements. Also included are nods to HHTG, and
    likely a few more that I missed.

    At the end of some movies while the credits are being shown, outtakes
    from the filming are shown as well. Jackie Chan movies do these
    particularly well. They show funny mistakes, goof-ups, and occasionally
    Jackie Chan being taken away in ambulances. They do not add to the
    story, but they add some extra humor and a peek at the human side of the
    people involved. We are invited to laugh with the actors instead of just
    at the characters. Some Pixar movies also contain outtakes at the end.
    These, however, are obviously scripted, animated, rendered, and
    artificial. In Episode, after the end of the game the player is given
    the option to view outtakes. These were mostly well done, but felt more
    like the Pixar outtakes than the ones from Jackie Chan.

    The game is not perfect. The beginning is slow. The end is abrupt. Parts
    of the game are scripted in ways which are a little sloppy. In a few
    places, long asides are added to room descriptions; these make sense the
    first time the location is entered, but break the mood when they are
    shown each time the player enters the location. None of these problems
    is enough of a problem to really knock off too many points off my score.

    I rated this game a 7 in the judging. It placed a respectable 11th.
    Hopefully we will see more games from Peter Eastman.

    Directory with TADS2 .gam file and walkthrough

    Eragon
    From: Stephen Bond <stephenbond SP@G ireland.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #46 -- October 17, 2006

    Title: Eragon
    Author: Anonymous
    E-mail: ???
    Date: July 2005
    Parser: Inform 6
    Supports: Zcode Interpreters
    Availability: Free, available on official Eragon site
    URL: http://www.alagaesia.com/game
    Version: 1

    One kind of r*if post I hate (one of many) is the "IF reference at
    dingbats.com!" variety, where I'm meant to be grateful because some badly-drawn
    comic strip has mentioned a grue on panel 3, or some blog has posted an
    "amusing" "satirical" IF transcript, which has all your favourite commands,
    from >XYZZY to >FROTZ LANTERN, but never my favourite command, which is >QUIT.
    As you might gather, I'm never excited by this kind of exposure; it invariably
    tends to reinforce old stereotypes about the form, playing to a gallery that
    associates IF with dungeon crawls, treasure hunts, mazes and magic words. In
    the unlikely event that anyone's interest is piqued by such stuff, they'll come
    to r*if expecting more of the same.

    A recent example of mainstream IF exposure is Eragon, a zcode dungeon crawl
    apparently based on a book of the same name by Christopher Paolini (and because
    it's hosted on his official site with no other attribution, he'll have to take
    the blame for the game as well). Eragon takes its game design cues from the
    homebrewed BASIC Zork knock-offs that padded out coverdisks in the 80s, and so,
    true to form, we have a maze, we have parser problems, we have guess-the-verb
    for every puzzle, we have laughably static NPCs, and we have bad, bad writing.

    "A bundle lays wrapped at his feet", we are told early on, and further
    occurrences of the same error reveal that the writer really does think "to lay"
    means "to lie". He splices pleonasms together with commas, writing "to the east
    stands a crude tent, the source of the singing comes from within it" instead of
    "the singing comes from a crude tent to the east." In fact, the prose is
    littered with so many grammatical, spelling and formatting errors that I can
    begin to appreciate why the novel took a year in the writing, and two years in
    the editing. That said, I hope the game was written by some deluded fanboy and
    not by Paolini himself. If this is anything like the published novel, then I'm
    amazed it ever got out of the slushpile.

    Eragon's setting and story are the miserable third pressings of Tolkien, with
    the ancient dwarf stronghold Khazad-Dûm -- sorry, "Farthen Dûr" -- coming under
    attack by orcs -- sorry, "Urgals". It's the kind of place where all the proper
    names suffer from Klingonitis, being peppered with glottal stops and random
    diacriticals. The exception is the incongruous "Angela", an unmoving herbalist
    who is clearly supposed to be a bit of a character, but just repeats the same
    screen-long infodump every time I talk to her. The PC is entirely without
    character and the dungeon is entirely without atmosphere, a state not helped by
    the presence of rooms called "Maze M3" and "Hallway H19". "The northern wall
    appears to be a mycologist's dream!" we are told at one stage, which is an odd
    coincidence, because the rest of the game is a proctologist's dream.

    As a game, Eragon is less than worthless, but I suppose the real issue is
    whether it's likely to encourage new people to check out the IF community. On
    balance, I don't think I'd like r*if to be overrun with consumers of EFP, but
    Eragon offers little danger of that. There are no links to the IF community on
    the site, and no credit is given to the development system, only to some
    mysterious and unnamed "open source technology". The Inform banner has been
    hacked away from the start, but the undocumented >SCRIPT ON reveals the game to
    have been written in Inform 6.3. (This also reveals the game to have been
    released in debug mode, so that I can solve one puzzle with >PURLOIN -- my
    other favourite command.) Given the number of default responses left in, a
    chunk of the game's text is actually by Graham Nelson; but rather than
    acknowledge a debt, the game prefers to hide the competition. A dishonest
    strategy, but no doubt the only profitable one when you've got such a duff
    product!

    Erehwon
    From: Mike Roberts <mjr_ SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #19 -- January 14, 2000

    TITLE: Erehwon
    AUTHOR: Richard Litherland, writing as Josiah Pinkfoot
    E-MAIL: lither SP@G marais.math.lsu.edu
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition99/tads/erehwon/erehwon.gam
    VERSION: Release 1.0

    "Surreal" games are, at worst, collections of random locations and
    characters, each included only for its puzzle value, held together by a
    tenuous framework. Sometimes these games are classified as surreal only
    because they're so random, and sometimes the author uses the surrealism
    as an excuse to avoid having to make things make any sense. Some of the
    very earliest text adventures fell into this category: locations with no
    conceivable connection were often juxtaposed, and pointless anachronisms
    abounded. And after the success of Myst, graphical adventure designers
    cranked out lots of bad surreal games; it's even arguable that Myst is
    one of them, although it at least made an effort to justify its
    contrived settings.

    At their best, surreal games are just as self-consistent as realistic
    games, but take place in fantastic settings with their own rules:
    different laws of physics, perhaps, or different rules of social
    interaction. Brian Moriarty's Trinity was probably the first adventure
    to meet this standard, and to many people is still the best surreal
    adventure game ever written.

    Erehwon is probably not going to unseat Trinity as the benchmark surreal
    adventure, but it's another fine example. The game takes place in a kind
    of meta-universe where different parallel universes can be connected
    according to complicated rules. The plot is minimal - you have to
    collect a number of objects so that you can take part in a role-playing
    game (which is, it turns out, a role-playing version of the text
    adventure). The setting, though, is varied and detailed, and richly
    imagined.

    Erehwon is an unabashedly puzzle-oriented game. Most of its puzzles are
    reasonable and fair, although a good many are pretty tough. And there
    are lots of them; the game has five major puzzles, which involve
    collecting five objects, but each of these has a number of sub-puzzles
    that must be solved first. The number and difficulty of the puzzles
    makes the game daunting as a competition entry; within the time limit, I
    only managed to make it about two-thirds of the way through the game,
    even after making extensive use of hints.

    Fortunately, the game has an excellent hint system. Hints are delivered
    incrementally, so it's possible to get a little bit of help and still
    feel like you did most of the work. The hint system is
    context-sensitive, and offers hints only on puzzles that are currently
    accessible, which avoids giving away upcoming events by showing topics
    too early.

    This game is large, with lots of things to see and lots to do. It's also
    very ambitious in its mechanics; for example, it has a movement system
    that lets the player mix compass directions with relative movement. All
    of this works; the game is technically dazzling.

    If it hadn't been for the hint system, I probably wouldn't have made
    much progress in the game, and I would have thought it was far too
    difficult. With the hint system, though, I thoroughly enjoyed the game's
    clever construction and detailed, imaginative world.

    Score: 8 (clever and amusing, well-implemented)

    Directory with TADS .gam file and walkthrough

    Eric's Gift
    From: Mike Roberts <mjr_ SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #31 -- January 3, 2003

    TITLE: Eric's Gift
    AUTHOR: Joao Mendes
    EMAIL:joao.mendes SP@G netcabo.pt
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: TADS Standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads3/ericgift/ericgift.t3
    VERSION: IF Comp Release

    This is one of those stories where you have to get to the end to fully
    understand what's going on at the beginning, so I won't say anything
    about the storyline except that it was interesting throughout, and the
    ending satisfying. Otherwise, I'll limit my comments to the work's more
    technical aspects.

    This game falls into the puzzle-free category, where a lot of authors
    have focused their efforts in the past few years, especially for
    Competition games. In overall form, this one is fairly typical of the
    category: very little inventory, a small number of locations with lots
    of detail, and well-developed characters. Puzzle-free games vary in
    their degree of interactivity; at one extreme, you just sit there and
    press the space bar to get to the next chunk of text, and at the other
    you do more or less the same things you'd do in a more traditional game,
    but never encounter any locked doors or other obstacles. "Eric's Gift"
    is at the latter end of the spectrum; it even uses the traditional
    ASK/TELL conversational system, rather than one of the more constrained
    systems often seen in puzzle-free works.

    Conversation is a big part of this game, and it's handled quite well. I
    usually don't like ASK/TELL very much as a conversation system, because
    it's so artificial: in real life, you never just walk up to random
    people and start unceremoniously peppering them with questions -- and if
    you did, they wouldn't just answer as though they'd been standing there
    all day waiting for you. There's an ebb and flow to a real conversation,
    and a certain amount of protocol for initiating and terminating one.

    "Eric's Gift" does a couple of things to make its ASK/TELL style of
    conversations seem much more natural. First, each question is narrated:
    when you type an ASK ABOUT command, the story puts your question into
    the narration:

        >ASK BOB ABOUT LANTERN
        "Do you know how to work this thing?" you ask Bob, holding up
        the lantern.

        Bob takes a look at it.  "You probably need a new battery."

    This game didn't invent this technique, certainly, but it works well
    here. It's surprising that more games don't use this device, because
    it's simple to implement and a big improvement over the traditional
    style of showing only the other character's response. Some people
    complain that narrating a question puts words into the player's mouth;
    but in a game that distinguishes the player from the player character,
    it's actually putting words in the player character's mouth, which is a
    different matter. And anyway, there's some implication of words in the
    PC's mouth no matter what: it's not as though the PC is literally meant
    to say simply "LANTERN?" That's part of what feels artificial about
    unnarrated questions; clearly the PC is meant to be posing a question in
    some normal conversational form, so it's weird to omit it from the
    narration. For authors who can't get past the words-in-mouth thing,
    perhaps you could at least narrate the fact that a question was asked --
    just something like "You ask Bob about the lantern"; this would serve as
    the ASK ABOUT equivalent of the simple acknowledgment that a command
    like TAKE or DROP would get.

    The second conversation technique this story uses is to establish a
    certain amount of context to each conversation. One of the things that
    usually makes ASK/TELL feel unnatural is the way you walk up to an NPC
    who's never seen your character before and ask a question, and the
    response makes it sound as though you're an old friend and you'd been
    gabbing for half an hour already. Why would the NPC just answer, rather
    than asking who the heck are you and what's with the scuba get-up? This
    game is different; each conversation has a clear starting point,
    establishing that we're engaged in conversation for subsequent queries.
    This allows a certain amount of normal conversational protocol to be
    observed. The game also arranges things so that once a conversation has
    begun, it stays the focus of the interactivity for a while, further
    enhancing the sense of an ongoing conversation. The game accomplishes
    this largely through a limited physical setting, so there's not a lot to
    do other than continue conversing -- which works well here, but it
    obviously wouldn't be appropriate for every game. Despite the limits on
    the PC's options during conversations, I never had the sense of being
    tied to a chair; the limits are subtle and gentle, since they're
    presented as motivational rather than physical constraints.

    In sum, this is a well-implemented piece of puzzleless IF with an
    interesting story. It doesn't break extensive new technical ground, as
    it mostly relies (with fairly good results) on techniques that have been
    developed in other puzzle-free works over the past few years; its
    conversational system does have some subtle refinements that are worth
    looking at, though.

    Directory with TADS3 .t3 file

    Source code

    The Erudition Chamber
    From: Virginia Gretton <VGretton SP@G aol.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #35 -- December 31, 2003

    TITLE: The Erudition Chamber
    AUTHOR: Daniel T. Freas
    EMAIL: erthwin SP@G cox.net
    DATE: October 2003
    PARSER: TADS2
    SUPPORTS: TADS2 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2003/tads2/erudite
    VERSION: Competition release

    I came away from this game feeling I would forgive the author anything.
    Although I'm a non-fan of MUDs -- from which the game derives
    inspiration -- the opening pulled me in. I am not aware of visualising
    in any conscious way normally but such a vivid image was conjured by the
    opening description that I laughed out loud. This (more than any other
    piece in the competition) reminded me of the heady days when we queued
    to pay money for adventure games. A time when whole weeks were lost
    fighting with puzzles and resisting hints from coded clues in the back
    of the manual.

    I loved the way situations had multiple and logical solutions. It was
    compulsive in a self-assessing way because you just had to find out
    which sect fitted you best. I also loved the way doors disappeared
    behind you as new areas were entered. I was left in no doubt that I
    should go forward with the equipment in my current inventory. No
    fifty-move treks across the map to retrieve an essential object
    discarded earlier.

    The central puzzle was a perfect struggle of my intellect against the
    Maester. I was meant to prove myself and the contrived game world became
    perfectly believable to me. So what do I need to forgive the author for?
    Only that The Erudition Chamber ended much, much too soon. I would have
    happily continued through another five or six tests. Bravo!

    Directory with TADS2 .gam file and hints

    Escape From Pulsar 7
    From: T. Henrik Anttonen  <henrikanttonen SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #33 -- June 25, 2003

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       It is no use trying to use
       KEY

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

       It is no use trying to use
       KEY DOOR

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

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

    C64 disk image, packaged with 10 other Howarth "Mysterious Adventures"

    PC executable

    Z80 snapshot for Spectrum emulators, packaged with 19 other Howarth games

    Z80 snapshot for Spectrum emulators, packaged with a bucketload of other Spectrum games

    Zcode version, packaged with 10 other Howarth "Mysterious Adventures"

    ScottFree version, packaged with 10 other Howarth "Mysterious Adventures"

    Stepwise walkthrough, packaged with a bucketload of other walkthroughs

    Commented stepwise walkthrough, packaged with a bucketload of other walkthroughs

    Escape from the Crazy Place
    From: Mike Harris <M.Harris SP@G spi-bpo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #46 -- October 17, 2006

    TITLE: Escape From the Crazy Place
    AUTHOR: JJ Guest
    EMAIL: jason.guest SP@G gmail.com
    DATE: August 14, 2006
    PARSER: HTML TADS 2
    AVAILABILITY:  Freeware; IF Archive
    URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/Escape.zip

    JJ Guest writes, “I began writing Escape from the Crazy Place when I was
    thirteen years old, and have now finally finished it, aged thirty-six. In spite
    of this I still haven't the slightest idea of what it's about.”  And how.

    I can only imagine that the vast stretch of time was spent on the technical
    details of adapting the game to the parser, as the admittedly bug-free play
    reads like something written by a 13 year old.  The game opens with an NPC
    hamburger vending clown named Donald McRonald who eventually “takes two fingers
    and stuffs them up your nostrils for a joke,” and it deteriorates from there.
    The play, the “puzzles” (such as they are) and the illustrations are simple,
    sophomoric and pointless.

    If this sort of humor is your cup of tea, have at it; it’s the only thing
    Escape From the Crazy Place has going for it.  If on the other hand you find it
    as irritating and unfunny as I do, you’d be well advised to give it a pass.

    Zip containing HTML TADS 2 executable

    An Escape to Remember
    From: Mike Harris <M.Harris SP@G spi-bpo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #47 -- January 16, 2007

    TITLE:  An Escape to Remember
    AUTHOR: The 2nd IF Whispers Team
    EMAIL: dbs SP@G cs.wisc.edu
    DATE: July, 2006
    PARSER: Inform 7
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF-Archive
    URL: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/ifw2
    VERSION: 1

    An Escape to Remember is a "Chinese Whispers / Telephone" style interactive
    piece, written by 14 different authors each of whom only saw the preceding
    section of the game.  Needless to say, this makes for a very schizophrenic story
    line.  That said, and perhaps in spite of itself, it's quite fun to play.

    The story starts out with a timed puzzle with a sort of secret agent / escape
    from a locked room premise and ultimately morphs into a surreal, almost Roger
    Zelazny finish.  In turns it's easy, difficult, serious, silly, well written,
    juvenile, buggy and error free.

    Unless I'm mistaken at least some of the authors fudged the premise.  There's a
    segment about mid-game that incorporates a return to a much earlier module, many
    sections are seamless enough that the transitions between what in retrospect are
    probably multiple authors is not obvious, and some puzzles incorporated a
    similar style of solution that charitably might be dismissed as inherent to the
    insular nature of IF but which in reality likely came from some "against the
    rules" cribbing.  To be fair, I suppose that this could also be attributed to
    some clean-up after the fact to improve playability.

    I did run into some trouble in the earliest part of the game, before I
    understood that objects collected in a previous module could be employed in the
    subsequent one.  Of course, I then had the PC toting a huge number of red
    herrings from module to module, not wanting to drop the ones I (correctly)
    suspected as useless out of apprehension that I would not be able to backtrack
    and collect them had they been needed.

    The best puzzles required some thought, several objects and multiple steps taken
    in the correct order to solve.  Others were almost irritatingly easy, leaving
    only the most obvious course of action as a solution.  The modules involving
    them might have been more compelling and memorable had a little bit more
    "challenge" been built in.

    Players should be aware that there is one particular puzzle in about the first
    third of the game that, as far as I could tell, can only be solved by trial and
    error, with the results of an unsuccessful trial putting the game in an
    unwinnable state.  To my way of thinking, the "Undo" or "Restore" commands have
    no place in the routine solving of an IF puzzle and I was more than a little bit
    disappointed in the author of this section for forcing this.

    There are some bugs.  Some modules have minor, annoying but ultimately
    irrelevant syntax bugs.  For example, the PC might run across a "Mauve Paisley
    Grip":

    > Open Mauve

    You can't see any such thing.

    > Open Paisley

    You can't see any such thing.

    > Open Grip

    You can't see any such thing.

    > Open Mauve Paisley Grip

    Opened.

    Or

    >Read paper

    Nothing is written on the paper.

    >X paper

    Written on the paper is the Gettysburg Address.

    The buggiest are two modules involving a subterranean railroad - I found it
    possible to pick up a location as though it were an object, large objects that
    require the PC to drop everything else in inventory can be placed inside
    containers and lifted without such restriction, and I was able to search the
    contents of a container held by an NPC before obtaining possession of the
    container itself.  None of these bugs made the game unplayable but they're the
    sort of thing that should have been caught and fixed before release.  I might
    also add that the buggy sections were redeemed at least in part by some of the
    best, most entertaining and richest writing of the game.

    Despite the inherent continuity problems in such a format I enjoyed playing An
    Escape to Remember.  Although there were flaws there were also some good puzzles
    and entertaining mini-plots which definitely made play worthwhile in spite of
    the more uneven bits.  On a scale of 1 to 10 I give it a 5.5 to 6 for difficulty
    and a 6.5 to 7 overall.

    Blorbed Z-code game file

    Evacuate
    From: Mike Roberts <mjr_ SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #31 -- January 3, 2003

    TITLE: Evacuate
    AUTHOR: Jeff Rissman
    EMAIL: unknown
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: TADS Standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads2/evacuate/Evacuate.gam
    VERSION: 1.0

    This game reminded me of "Planetfall", which is probably inevitable for
    a story about escaping a spaceship on the verge of destruction.
    "Evacuate" is hardly a Planetfall clone: the plots and settings are
    really only similar to the extent that they both start on spaceships in
    urgent need of evacuation, and there's nothing in this game that's
    directly borrowed from Planetfall. Even so, there are stylistic
    influences here and there that brought Planetfall to mind while playing.

    The plot is that the player character has to escape a spaceliner that's
    been attacked by an enemy ship and is rapidly falling apart. The PC has
    somehow slept through the attack, and by the time he wakes up, everyone
    else has already left the ship via escape pods. Not surprisingly, the
    damage the ship has sustained makes it more difficult to escape, since
    some escape routes are blocked by rubble, and many of the ship's systems
    are no longer operating properly.

    The story and setting are perfect for a traditional puzzle-solving
    adventure: the scene of a disaster is naturally full of physical
    challenges, and the science fiction setting means that virtually any
    kind of machine or device is fair game for mechanical puzzles. The game
    doesn't squander this advantage: it does a great job of developing
    story-driven puzzles, and virtually every goal is based on overcoming
    some obstacle to escape created by the damage to the ship. Most of the
    puzzles involve machinery that would be plausibly in the player
    character's path of escape. Only a few puzzles feel deliberately
    contrived as puzzles; the worst of these is a maze, which has a
    relatively interesting gimmick as mazes go but still sticks out as
    highly contrived.

    (Actually, I'm probably being far too easy on this maze; because of the
    competition's time constraints, I was already using the walk-through by
    the time I reached it, so I didn't even try to figure out the maze on my
    own. If I had tried, I would probably not be so dispassionate. The
    maze's gimmick is interesting, but it's not one of those gimmicks that
    lets you bypass the drudgery of brute-force mapping with a flash of
    insight; on the contrary, it's one of those gimmicks that requires you
    to have the flash of insight before you can even start on the drudgery
    part. If I hadn't already been using the walk-through, this maze would
    undoubtedly have sent me straight to it, and I undoubtedly would have
    few kind words to say about it.)

    Even though the puzzles are integrated well into the story, many of
    their solutions seem arbitrary. There are two ways for a puzzle to make
    sense: before you solve it, or after. In the latter category, a puzzle
    can make perfect sense after you know the solution, but only because the
    solution contains information that helps explain the logic, or because
    it wasn't clear until after solving the puzzle that it was a puzzle in
    the first place. This kind of puzzle isn't as bad as the kind that makes
    no sense at all, but it can still seem arbitrary, since there's no way
    to explain why the player character, within the context of the story,
    would have thought to do the right thing. This is the kind of puzzle
    that seems to occur many times in this game.

    Two things are lacking in many of this game's puzzles: hinting, and
    motivation. A few puzzles would be much more fair if they provided a
    hint when the player tried doing something close to the right thing; in
    one place, for example, we have to use a fairly unusual command to open
    something, but using a plain OPEN command doesn't give any encouraging
    feedback. The OPEN command should respond with an explanation of why the
    object can't be opened directly; this would suggest that opening the
    object is the right idea, but we need to figure out how. As it is, the
    response to OPEN merely suggests that the object isn't openable at all.
    Other puzzles simply had syntax that was too specific; for example, in
    one situation we must DIG IN something to move it, but none of MOVE,
    TAKE, PUSH, or PULL have any effect on the object.

    The game's writing is quite good. It's especially above par for a
    puzzle-oriented game, since authors of such games tend to put a lot more
    effort into the puzzles than into the writing. The setting is especially
    well described; the locations are richly imagined and described in great
    detail, and are implemented to substantial depth as well. I greatly
    enjoyed exploring the early parts of the setting; it was sort of sad
    that the ship was being destroyed, since it would have been fun just to
    explore it more.

    I have a small complaint about the pacing of the plot. Despite the
    obvious urgency of the situation, there's no real *feeling* of urgency
    to the player character's actions. If you just wander around the ship
    doing nothing, the supposedly critical situation doesn't deteriorate one
    iota. Now, I'm not suggesting that I'd prefer the game to have a timer
    forcing you to complete certain tasks in a certain number of moves; that
    would only make the game mechanics too obvious by forcing the player to
    constantly save and restore, which for me destroys any sense of
    immersion by reducing the story to a puzzle-box to be taken apart and
    solved. Nonetheless, it's strange in this particular story that, despite
    the blaring klaxons and piles of rubble everywhere, the setting is
    completely static, and doesn't change except in response to the player
    character's actions. I don't have a lot of suggestions for how to
    improve this; it's difficult in interactive fiction to invest
    time-critical situations with a real sense of urgency without either
    putting the game firmly on rails or killing the PC, neither of which I
    like. In this particular game, I think it might make a big difference if
    the ship at least felt like it was falling apart in real time, by
    showing some locations to grow noticeably worse as the game proceeds.
    The deterioration need not be life-threatening or alter the course of
    the plot; a new pile of rubble could appear in a hallway, for example,
    making the hallway harder to pass but still passable.

    I enjoyed the writing and detailed setting of this game. Given the
    two-hour Competition judging time limit, I had to consult the
    walk-through, so I didn't get the full effect of solving all of the
    puzzles. My sense, though, is that many of the puzzles are quite
    difficult by virtue of being rather arbitrary; however, they're probably
    no more so than in a lot of other adventures, so people who enjoy
    solving hard adventure game puzzles might find this a good challenge.

    Directory with TADS .gam file and walkthrough

    Everybody Loves A Parade
    From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #12 -- December 13, 1997

    NAME: Everybody Loves a Parade
    AUTHOR: Cody Sandifer
    E-MAIL: Dunno
    DATE: 1996
    PARSER: TADS advanced
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/Parade.gam
    VERSION: Release 2.1

    Everybody Loves a Parade manages a difficult feat: it's an enjoyable
    and rewarding game in its own right, whose puzzles take real thought,
    but it also essays an important innovation in IF playing style and
    carries it off brilliantly. That innovation will not be revealed here,
    as the surprise is part of the value of the innovation and giving it
    away would spoil the fun for future players, but I know I was
    thoroughly caught off guard at a certain point late in the game. On
    the face of it, that development is only a small part of the game and
    its effect on gameplay is minimal--but when players who have completed
    the game remember it, I think it is safe to say that one particular
    moment, more than any other, will remain with them. At first, I
    questioned the author's judgment in engineering the moment in the way
    he did--but eventually decided that his approach, more than any other
    (well, aside from similar strategies), grabbed the reader's attention.

    The plot is entertaining and reasonably original. You are an engineer
    sent across the country to start a new job, but you bog down in the
    wilds of Arizona with almost no gas, stuck behind a parade for a "rock
    festival"--and no, Janis Joplin is not in town. The events that ensue
    are engagingly cartoony; though most of the parade elements amount to
    amusing but irrelevant sideshows, the silliness adds to the charm. (A
    gravel float? A tank full of jars of pebbles?) The characters are also
    well done, though better developed in some cases than in others; the
    humor value of the New Age bikers is considerable, but it might have
    been nice to see what they do when you ask them about things like
    inner peace, meditation, truth, etc. (Not to nitpick, but the line
    "The bikers toss an unruly customer out of the pub and forgive
    themselves for their trespasses" is a little silly. Since when do New
    Agers care about sin?) The encounter with the bikers does, if the
    randomized movements come out right, produce this exchange...

            As the words pass before your eyes, your spirit energies ebb
            and flow between hidden layers of conscious awareness, broken
            judgment, and unspoken truth. Once the trance lifts, your soul
            speaks of love and respect through haiku verse, the natural
            language of inner peace.

            The old man turns his pockets inside out to search for spare
            change.

    ...which one could take as a commentary on quite a lot of things if so
    inclined. At any rate, though the characters never lose the feel of
    being props or obstacles, they do provide considerable amusement.

    Everybody Loves a Parade is not extremely difficult once the first
    puzzle is solved -- but that first puzzle involves searching of
    scenery that just barely gets a mention, and as such might take quite
    a while to solve. Two other puzzles later in the game require a fairly
    large intuitive leap, and a willingness to pursue courses of action
    that don't seem initially helpful (and which are, well, largely
    motivationless), and those moments pose considerable stumbling blocks
    among mostly logical puzzles. (Though one solution in particular is
    rather clever, and rewards careful reading.)  The quality of the
    puzzles can be appreciated once they are solved, but the intuitive
    leaps required can be a bit daunting at times. (I'm not sure what it
    says about me, though, that the final puzzle -- at least, the way to
    get the final 10 points -- seemed like a natural reaction to the
    previous line, and it was the first thing I tried.) There is much
    amusement to be had in the game even when stuck, though, just from
    wandering around and trying things -- it seems safe to say that this
    game has the most particularized responses to SMELL [object] in the
    history of IF.

    Mechanically, Everybody Loves a Parade works well; the TADS parser is
    adequate for the job, and there are several synonyms for most
    words. The writing is also quite good, though not exceptionally
    descriptive--few of the scenes actually came alive from the writing,
    though admittedly that would have been difficult given the bizarre
    quality of the situations. The author trades absurdity for realism,
    mostly, and does quite well with it--but creating absurd scenes is a
    different task from creating real ones, and it is therefore hard to
    compare the writing to a game that seeks to bring a place or event to
    life. Cody Sandifer creates a carnival atmosphere, but a carnival
    atmosphere is hard to sustain on repetition--a bouncy or silly room
    description fades on the tenth reading in a way that a menacing or
    dreary mood does not. All this is not, obviously, to say that
    Everybody Loves a Parade is not written effectively, merely that the
    intent is more to amuse and entertain than to create lasting
    images. Well, actually, as noted above, that isn't true -- there is
    one image that does last, and quite well -- but the circumstances for
    that are unusual.

    Mr. Sandifer clearly spent quite a while writing Everybody Loves a
    Parade: it's full of humor that indicates real thoroughness. There are
    several irrelevant objects -- "objects", perhaps -- that cannot quite
    be considered red herrings because it would be difficult to consider
    most of them potential solutions to problems, and which reduce the
    feel of "am I done coding yet?" that sometimes plagues IF. (An author
    who takes the trouble to code a "pulsing hunk of supernatural
    hypermatter" is an author who cares about his finished product.) That
    some scenes made me wish for more development is more a testament to
    the amusing ideas at work than any laziness about coding; I certainly
    can't say that there were many logical responses that went unprovided
    for.

    Perhaps of my initial objection to the twist alluded to above was that
    it didn't fit the game, but when I thought about it more, I revised
    that assessment. Only in a romp like this could the author pull the
    player up short in the way Mr. Sandifer does -- and there are (at
    least, it seemed so to me) very unfunny (as in, not a laughing matter)
    issues at stake when it does happen, both within and outside the
    game. There is certainly a place for games like "Tapestry," where the
    player has to shut his or her eyes and ears to miss the Important
    Underlying Message, but the IF world should not underrate the power of
    this game's approach in making the player think.

    There is, on the whole, much to like about Everybody Loves a Parade,
    and though there are slow points and though the humor slows a bit when
    the player has traipsed through the few locations several times, such
    is the nature of humorous IF; Mr. Sandifer carries off his ideas
    well. It is a testament to the author's skill that the player can look
    back on Everybody Loves a Parade as both entertaining and thoroughly
    thought-provoking.

    TADS file (.gam)

    DOS executable (.zip)

    Windows 95 executable (.zip)

    Macintosh BinHex format (.sit.hqx)

    Solution and comments from the author (Text)

    Exhibition
    From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #19 -- January 14, 2000

    TITLE: Exhibition
    AUTHOR: Ian Finley
    E-MAIL: domokov SP@G aol.com
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition99/tads/exhibit/exhibit.gam
    VERSION: Release 1

    (Note: the following comments are based on the game as played with a
    straight-text interpreter, but it does have HTML-TADS features.)

    How important is it that interactive fiction be, well, interactive? Can
    the medium--i.e., story advanced by reader/player's prompts--accommodate
    stories that don't rely on anything the player does, that don't even
    give the player an objective to drive the plot? These are some of the
    questions posed by Ian Finley's Exhibition, a remarkably well-written
    and thoughtful piece that gives the player so little to do that the
    piece could have worked perfectly well as straight fiction. Moreover,
    given most players' expectations, the playing experience in the
    interactive medium is rather distancing--and yet the story itself is
    genuinely intriguing, so much so that the player can almost forget that
    he has no part in it.

    It's a simple concept: you're in an art gallery viewing an exhibition by
    an artist who recently killed himself, and you're viewing it through the
    eyes of four different people--two of which knew the artist personally,
    two of which didn't but assessed the exhibition as art critics. That's
    the story: you look at the exhibition, switching back and forth between
    the various characters as you please to view all the paintings, and you
    also get various stray details about the crowd and the design of the
    museum. In a sense, you discover that the real action of the story has
    already happened, and you reconstruct it by examining the paintings, by
    scrutinizing the various characters' reactions to the paintings, and by
    choosing to credit this assertion about the artist and discredit that.
    This is similar in a way to Infocom's mysteries, since the point of
    those games was to reconstruct past events, though the problems there
    were much more concrete--finding clues that lead to conclusions about a
    murder, generally. The focus here, by contrast, is on the relationships
    between the characters, between the artist and his church, between the
    artist and his country-- well, obviously, plenty is going on here, and
    much of it is really very interesting. Moreover, the author doesn't take
    sides on the proper interpretation of the paintings--unlike conventional
    mysteries, there is no right version to glean, though chances are that
    the player will feel strongly by the end that a particular view is by
    and large plausible.

    There's an inherent difficulty here, though, in that it's relatively
    easy to involve the player in tangible tasks like figuring out who
    committed a murder; it's much harder to make him or her care deeply
    about an artist's relationship with his church. The distinction is
    simply the difference between having an objective and having a story to
    read. To be sure, poorly done IF with a concrete objective can be highly
    uninvolving, and the author here brings considerable skill in writing
    and character development to bear on the noninteractive story--but,
    honestly, making a player genuinely care about the characters and
    relationships over the course of a fairly short work of IF is a
    difficult feat. It's true that the player may respond intellectually
    where he or she does not respond emotionally, i.e., warm to the task of
    getting to the heart of the character simply because it's fun to sift
    the material for the truth. It's a rather esoteric premise for a game,
    though, and it's hard to see this as an IF genre with a lot of potential
    adherents. This may be because the exercise doesn't really have much
    bearing on anything outside the game--the speculation and debate
    engendered by the game, if any, focuses on what this fictional artist
    was like and what his various fictional paintings meant, not on anything
    broader regarding art or psychology (or religion or sexuality, for that
    matter)--which makes the intellectual exercise feel more like a logic
    puzzle than a serious inquiry.

    Is that asking too much? Perhaps. But let's be realistic here: IF is
    hardly an art form so divorced from an entertainment aspect that it can
    avoid the requirement of a hook, something to draw the player in,
    entirely. (Are there any such media? Maybe not, but the instinct, in
    dealing with visual art or with music, is that those works need not have
    a hook to succeed--whereas a medium like cinema, even when it aspires to
    art, faces somewhat different expectations.) And what Exhibition really
    lacks is a hook, or anything else giving the story a shape; broader
    ramifications, perhaps in the form of an argument by the author about
    something with life outside the game, might have done just that. As it
    is, Exhibition is easy to appreciate as a well-written and well-crafted
    piece, but it is difficult to imagine that people will be swept away by
    its story. This may sound like pandering; I see it as realism, an
    important aspect of storytelling. (For what it's worth, Babel, by the
    same author, was absolutely terrific in this respect.)

    None of this makes Exhibition a bad game, of course; I'd say it does
    what it does remarkably well. The paintings are richly described, and
    the character of the speaker comes across vividly in each description
    (almost too vividly, in the case of one character who insists on
    filtering everything through her own rather constricted experience, and
    who becomes rather irritating--but, it seems clear, intentionally so).
    The characters are designed so that certain people have more or less
    insight into certain aspects of the artist, but none of them really
    understand all of him--and the character perhaps in the best position to
    understand him was in denial about a key part of his life. It all makes
    for intriguing speculation, and it's possible to develop a measure of
    sympathy for the artist along the way, though exactly how much will vary
    with the player and with the way the player approaches the game (for
    example, getting all the comments of one character at once, or viewing
    each painting through four different lenses before moving on). Moreover,
    the depth of characterization is highly unusual for IF, and it struck me
    along the way that I would find it genuinely entrancing if I sensed that
    understanding the character would somehow lead me to understand
    something, accomplish something--even within the game. Exhibition, in
    other words, may be significant more for what it could lead
    to--development of a particular character in order to move a story--than
    for the story it actually tells, where the trials and tribulations of
    the artist are the plot.

    There is an obvious comparison here. Adam Cadre's Photopia elicited
    similar complaints of noninteractivity, from me and from others, after
    the 1998 competition (though many others felt the interactivity quotient
    was just right, of course). The difference between Photopia and
    Exhibition, though, is that the former provided the illusion of
    interactivity; the player's actions at least seemed to move the story
    along, even if much of the story progressed without the player's help or
    input. Here...well, there's no story to move along as such, so it's hard
    to say there's an illusion of anything, really. More importantly, the
    story Photopia told was well calculated to leave an emotional mark on
    the player--too well calculated, some might say, but to deny its
    effectiveness is to concede that the game did land its punch, so to
    speak. It is a matter of opinion whether the emotional tug overcame the
    limited interactivity there, but here the game is over before it
    starts--the effect of the gallery as a whole is diffused over the course
    of the explorations, and there is no particular moment that any player
    is likely to remember. Moreover, part of the reason Photopia's illusion
    of interactivity worked was that the game put the player in a variety of
    settings and required him or her to perform a variety of
    actions--whereas, here, EXAMINE, LISTEN and SMELL will yield just about
    everything Exhibition has to offer. As those are arguably the most
    passive verbs that conventional IF has to offer, other than WAIT, the
    player has almost no power to affect the environment (and doing anything
    out of line yields a message along the lines of "I don't do that sort of
    thing," customized for each character). That passivity highlights, in
    turn, how little the player can do in the story, and how similar the
    experience is to reading a long series of descriptions of paintings.

    This sounds more negative than it should be, because I did, in fact,
    find Exhibition fascinating at many points along the way-- the author
    plays the various interpretations off against each other very well,
    particularly when a character makes a confident assertion about the
    artist that, the player can feel reasonably sure, is entirely wrong. The
    imagery is rich, and often disturbing; the critic's analyses show that
    the author has a good sense of how to look at a painting. The stray
    details, particularly when certain characters comment on people in the
    crowd, are illuminating, and suggest that the characters viewing the
    gallery are as much under examination as the artist. In the end, though,
    I felt like Exhibition would work best as an extended, well-developed
    aspect of a much larger game, rather than a game in itself, and I gave
    it a 7 in this year's competition.

    TADS .gam file (Updated version)

    Windows executable (Updated version)

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

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