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ISSUE #31 - January 3, 2003

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

                 ISSUE #31 -- 2002 IF Competition Special

               Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
                           January 3, 2003

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

    SPAG #31 is copyright (c) 2002 by Paul O'Brian.
    Authors of reviews and articles retain the rights to their contributions.

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

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

    SPAG interviews the authors of the top three Comp games:
       * Paul O'Brian
       * Jon Ingold and Mike Sousa
       * Steve Evans

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

    Another Earth, Another Sky
    Augustine
    Concrete Paradise
    Constraints
    Eric's Gift
    Evacuate
    Fort Aegea
    The Granite Book
    Jane
    Janitor
    Moonbase
    The Moonlit Tower
    MythTale
    Photograph
    The PK Girl
    Rent-a-Spy
    Screen
    The Temple
    Till Death Makes A Monk-fish Out Of Me!
    TOOKiE'S SONG
    Unraveling God
    When Help Collides!

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

    I still can scarcely believe it.

    I keep thinking Mark or Stephen (the comp's vote-counter and its
    organizer, respectively) are about to email me, saying, "Oh dear, I'm
    afraid there's been an error with the voting software. Turns out you
    actually came in eighth, not first." The other two times I've entered
    the comp, I rather overestimated how well I would do, and came in 8th
    place both times, humbled by the strength and quality of the games ahead
    of mine. This time, I was emotionally prepared, and made it my goal just
    to get into the top ten. I certainly didn't expect to win, especially
    after I played some of the excellent games in this year's comp. I still
    rise a few inches off the ground whenever I think about the moment I saw
    the final results.

    I couldn't be more thrilled, and as soon as I got those results, I knew
    what the subject of this editorial would be: reviews. There are a lot of
    things to which I owe my game's success, but reviews are an especially
    big one. First of all, there are all the reviews that people have been
    kind enough to write about my first three games. Almost without
    exception, each of these has helped me to improve as an author --
    there's nothing like coming to understand the faults and strengths in
    your own previous work when you set out to begin the next one. In
    addition to those, there are all of the *other* reviews that people have
    written about IF games. Reading these has allowed me to accrete a more
    and more accurate sense of what the IF audience cares about and what it
    loves to see.

    On top of all this, there are the reviews I've written myself of other
    people's games. I strongly believe that writing these has had a huge
    impact on my ability to design and program good IF. Writing a thoughtful
    review of someone else's game demands that I make the intellectual
    effort of figuring out what worked and what didn't work in that game; I
    found that the more often I performed this exercise, the better I became
    at understanding what works and doesn't work for IF in general, at least
    according to my own tastes. Not to mention the fact that simply writing
    the reviews in paragraph form gave me more practice at putting together
    clear sentences, a useful skill no matter what type of writing I'm
    attempting. If you're an aspiring IF author, I highly recommend that you
    make the effort to review IF games, the more the better.

    Which brings us to SPAG. This is a zine whose core principle is that
    reviews of IF games are valuable -- that's why we try so hard to
    encourage people to write them. I hope that some of what SPAG has done
    has helped other authors as much as it has me. And if you haven't
    written a review for SPAG, why not try it today?

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

    COMPETITION RESULTS
    I've said before that 8 seems to be my number in IF competitions, and
    consequently the 8th annual competition is one I'll long remember. This
    year saw the debut of some extremely impressive new authors, as well as
    solid and innovative entries from familiar names. This year also marked
    a decided improvement in the fortunes of ADRIFT games, with one even
    placing in the top 10. Many thanks, as always, to Stephen Granade and
    Mark Musante for organizing and counting votes (respectively). This
    issue has reviews of more than half the games submitted, and for the
    record, here are the official results:

     1. Another Earth, Another Sky, by Paul O'Brian
     2. Till Death Makes a Monk-Fish Out of Me!, by Mike Sousa &
            Jon Ingold
     3. Photograph, by Steve Evans
     4. The Moonlit Tower, by Yoon Ha Lee
     5. Janitor, by Seebs
     6. The PK Girl, by Robert Goodwin
     7. TOOKiE'S SONG, by Jessica Knoch
     8. Fort Aegea, by Francesco Bova
     9. The Temple, by Johan Berntsson
    10. Jane, by Joseph Grzesiak
    11. MythTale, by Temari Seikaiha
    12. Unraveling God, by Todd Watson
    13. Identity Thief, by Rob Shaw-Fuller
        Augustine, by Terrence V. Koch
    15. Rent-A-Spy, by John Eriksson
    16. The Granite Book, by James Mitchelhill
        Eric's Gift, by Joao Mendes
    18. When Help Collides, by J. D. Berry
    19. Evacuate, by Jeff Rissman
        Constraints, by Martin Bays
    21. Sun and Moon, by David Brain
    22. Not Much Time, by Tyson Ibele
    23. Hell: A Comedy of Errors, by John Evans
    24. Out Of The Study, by Anssi Raisanen
        Color and Number, by Steven Kollmansberger
    27. The Case of Samuel Gregor, by Stephen Hilderbrand
    28. A Party to Murder, by David Good
    29. Screen, by Edward Floren
    30. Concrete Paradise, by Tyson Ibele
    31. Scary House Amulet!, by Ricardo Dague (writing as Shrimpenstein)
    32. coffee quest II, by Anonymous
    33. Four Mile Island, by Chris Charla (writing as Anonymous)
    34. Moonbase, by Mike Eckardt (writing as QA Dude)
    35. Koan, by Esa Peuha (writing as Anonymous)
    36. Ramon and Jonathan, by Daniele A. Gewurz
        Terrible Lizards, by Alan and Ian Mead
    38. Blade Sentinel, by Mihalis Georgostathis

    NEW RELEASES SHELF
    As usual, competition season means not too many non-comp releases. One
    notable exception is Dutch Dapper IV, a lighthearted sci-fi adventure in
    the tradition of Douglas Adams. Also, just before I finished this issue,
    a slew of games were released. There were a handful of goofy gag games,
    a new episode in the mock-superhero adventures of the Frenetic Five, and
    Stark Springs' glulx fantasy game Words Of Power.
       * Schizo - Escape To The Void by Tommaso Caldarola (in Italian)
       * Wandmaster by Robert A. Kraus
       * Dutch Dapper IV: The Final Voyage by Harry Hol
       * Words Of Power by Stark Springs
       * Silence Of The Lambs 2 by "Thief Of Bad Gags"
       * Cheeseshop by David Welbourn
       * Comp02ter Game by Brendan Barnwell as Austin Thorvald
       * The Frenetic Five vs. The Seven Deadly Dwarves by Neil DeMause

    $20 TIME MACHINE! THIS IS NOT SPAM!
    With 1893: A World's Fair Mystery, Peter Nepstad has created one of the
    most expansive and absorbing settings ever seen in IF, and he's still
    making it better. While there is a free, text-only version of the game
    available on the IF archive, Nepstad is now offering a $19.95 CD-ROM
    edition, which includes illustrations, nifty feelies, and source code.
    SPAG 32 will have an interview with Nepstad, but while you wait, check
    out the 1893 website at http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/1893 for all
    the tantalizing details.

    LOJBAN NUNTALYLIHU .U'E
    As if further proof were needed that IF enthusiasts have wide-ranging
    interests, someone has now gone to the amazing effort of translating
    Crowther and Woods' original Adventure into Lojban, an invented language
    that aims to take the illogic and cultural bias out of spoken
    communication. The someones in question are Nick Nicholas, Eugene Mayes,
    and Robin Powell, and the resulting game -- nuntalylihu -- is available
    from the Lojban page at
    http://www.lojban.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Files/Programs

    JOURNAL TO THE CENTER OF THE MIND
    Erik Langskaill has taken his interest in PDF publishing and combined it
    with his interest in IF to create "The Journal", a publication that aims
    to chronicle the development of his new game from the very beginning
    stages to its eventual release. So far, he's done one issue, which
    somewhat self-referentially talks about his motivations for doing such a
    project, and lays out his initial thoughts for how the game ought to
    work. It's all waiting for you at http://www.angelfire.com/nb/if1.

    NO NO NO! DON'T STOP A-ROCKIN!
    The competition issue of SPAG is traditionally the hardest one to find
    new reviews for, but this time around our contributors came through with
    flying colors. Now let's continue that trend into the new year with more
    reviews of non-comp games for all those *other* issues of SPAG. If
    you're searching for inspiration on what to review, check out the
    following non-hierarchically-ordered list:

    SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
    ========================
    1.  Bad Machine
    2.  Dutch Dapper IV: The Final Voyage
    3.  1893: A World's Fair Mystery
    4.  The Frenetic Five vs. The Seven Deadly Dwarves
    5.  Heroine's Mantle
    6.  Hollywood Hijinx
    7.  Katana
    8.  The Oracle
    9.  Unease
    10. Words Of Power

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

    For the annual competition issue, SPAG traditionally interviews the
    highest-placing authors in the comp, but I faced some rather
    unprecedented challenges when putting together this issue's interviews.
    For one thing, since I won the comp, there really ought to be an
    interview with me, but for me to interview myself would be a little...
    unseemly, as Primo Varicella might say. As he has so often in SPAG's
    history, Duncan Stevens came to the rescue, crafting a set of interview
    questions which I could then answer without feeling too much like I had
    multiple personality disorder. Thanks, Duncan. Then there was the fact
    that the second place game was written by multiple authors, another
    first for the SPAG interview. My sincere appreciation goes to Mike Sousa
    and Jon Ingold, who agreed to share answers and interview space, and to
    submit to a bit of unorthodox editing to make the whole thing flow more
    naturally. By the time I got to interview Steve Evans, author of
    "Photograph", I was just relieved to have a normal SPAG interview to do
    for once! I hope you enjoy the following interviews with the authors of
    Comp02's highest placing games.

     =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Paul O'Brian, author of "Another Earth, Another Sky"
     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

       SPAG: Well, you often ask SPAG interviewees to tell a bit about
       themselves, but SPAG's readers may not know much about you, so -- out
       with it. Name, rank, and serial number?

    PO: Okay, fair enough. I'm 32, which put me in my teen years during the
    Infocom boom -- just about the perfect age to be, since I was old enough
    to understand and succeed at the games and young enough to have lots of
    free time to devote to them. I've lived in Colorado all my life, save
    for one ill-starred year in New York City, and I currently work in
    Boulder at the University of Colorado, where I got my degrees. My job
    there is in the Financial Aid office, as an "IT professional," which
    basically means that I do all sorts of technical stuff, from programming
    to maintaining the network to creating queries that pull data from the
    university's mainframe.

    I've been married for a little over six years, to someone who isn't an
    IF aficionado but who is wonderful about supporting my work and my
    ambitions. I'm very verbally oriented (you may have noticed) and love
    the complex uses of language. I also really enjoy programming, so of
    course I'm a perfect candidate to love IF. Aside from that, my other
    passions are music and comics, the latter of which has made the Earth
    And Sky series such a fun project to do.

       SPAG: How did you get interested in IF, and what led you to start
       writing your own IF?

    PO: The long answer to this question is the editorial I wrote for my
    first issue of SPAG, number 18. In a nutshell: my dad is a computer
    enthusiast, and we were sort of "first on the block" with a home
    computer -- initially an Atari 400, then upgrading to the
    sooper-big-time Atari 800. The first games I played on those machines
    either came in cartridge form or on cassette tapes, but shortly after he
    acquired a disk drive, he brought home Zork I for us to try together. He
    loves to bring home the coolest new things, and that was especially true
    when I was a kid; at that point the cool new thing was Zork. He lost
    interest in it before too long, but I was enchanted, and became a major
    Infocom devotee for as long as the company existed.

    I learned about the Internet right around the same time I was writing a
    paper about IF for a graduate class, and so of course some of my first
    Gopher searches were on "Infocom" and "interactive fiction." That led me
    to Curses, and once I figured out that there was a freely available
    language that would let me write Infocom-style games, suddenly a
    childhood fantasy was within reach. Being an Infocom implementor is
    still my dream job -- pity about living in the wrong time and place for
    it.

       SPAG: You've written four games now. What keeps you writing IF?

    PO: Well, in the case of the last game and the next one, it's the fact
    that I've made a promise to myself and to the audience that I won't
    leave the storyline hanging. Other than that, I suppose it's just the
    fact that I seem to have an unflagging interest in the medium. My first
    game was written to fulfill my dream of writing an Infocom-ish game, as
    I said above. LASH was just an idea that grabbed me and wouldn't let go,
    and I knew that IF was the perfect medium for it. A lot of the drive to
    write the Earth And Sky games has to do with the fact that I really,
    really wanted to play a good superhero game, and I wasn't entirely
    satisfied with any of the ones that had been released up to that point.
    So I wrote it because I wanted to play it.

       SPAG: Another Earth, Another Sky is the second in a series. What led
       you to make a full-blown series out of this story, rather than a
       single self-contained game?

    PO: One of the things I loved about superhero comics as a kid was their
    episodic nature. I really dug the way the stories just kept going and
    going, with characters and themes woven through the whole thing,
    disappearing and reappearing as the saga unfolded. Now, with the
    emphasis on story arcs that can be collected into trade paperbacks,
    that's becoming less true in comics, but when I decided to write a
    superhero game, I knew it needed to be episodic. Besides, I really
    wanted to take another shot at the competition, and didn't want to write
    something so big that it wouldn't be appropriate for the comp. Also, as
    a corollary to that, I guess, I really wanted more and faster feedback
    than writing the whole thing as an epic would have given me. LASH took a
    very long time to write, and I wanted my next piece to be a bit smaller
    in scope.

       SPAG: The first installment was essentially a superhero game, but
       Another Earth, Another Sky has sci-fi elements along with the
       superhero aspect. Is the series becoming a sci-fi series, or are
       there more genre twists ahead?

    PO: I wouldn't say it's becoming science fiction, really, and I didn't
    set out to do any genre blending with this game. What is true, though,
    is that these games are heavily influenced by the old Marvel comics from
    the 1960s, particularly The Fantastic Four -- one of the reasons I chose
    "Lee Kirby" as my pseudonym for the first game was to acknowledge my
    debt to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who wrote many of those early comics.
    The tropes of alien invasion and Big Science were intrinsic to many of
    Lee and Kirby's stories, probably as an outgrowth of the science fiction
    comics that preceded that period's big superhero revival, so that's why
    you see those themes reflected in my games. Ultimately, though, I see
    superheroes as more a subgenre of fantasy than of science fiction, if
    the division has to be made.

       SPAG: There seem to be allusions to other IF games here and there in
       AEAS -- the setting for a large part of the game is reminiscent of
       Small World, the dome in the desert evokes So Far, the underwater
       scene has echoes of Photopia, and the touchplates reminded me of
       Spider and Web. Or am I imagining these connections?

    PO: I wouldn't say you're imagining them, but I also didn't consciously
    try to pay homage to any of those games with the elements you mention.
    However, I have played all of them, and there's no question that
    everything that goes into my brain has an influence on me. Lots of
    people have mentioned the "Small World" connection, and I certainly
    remember feeling delighted with an IF landscape that formed a sphere,
    but the idea of having the PC be able to travel between disparate
    locales by means of superhuman leaps came more from old issues of The
    Hulk than from any particular IF game.

       SPAG: The game is sprinkled with Emily Dickinson quotes. Any
       particular reason for relying on that particular poet?

    PO: Well, aside from the fact that she's pretty much my favorite
    canonical poet, Dickinson was also part of the genesis of the series. I
    went through a period where I decided to read every Dickinson poem, but
    I found it too exhausting to just read them one after another, so I
    interspersed them with comics. Indulging in this weird combination while
    thinking about what I wanted to write next gave birth to this superhero
    series where the codenames are some of Dickinson's favorite touchstones,
    and the protagonists are named after the poet and her brother. The title
    and part of the inspiration for Another Earth, Another Sky came from the
    Dickinson poem that begins "There is another sky."

       SPAG: Will the third installment wrap up the series?

    PO: That's the plan at this point. I love writing these games, but it's
    a little disheartening to realize that each episode takes about a year
    to complete. I certainly wouldn't rule out further Earth And Sky games
    somewhere down the line, but I'll be ready for a break from them once
    the third episode is finished.

       SPAG: Any other plans for more IF writing?

    PO: Beyond the third Earth And Sky game, I'm not sure. I think I'll
    probably want to turn towards writing static fiction for a while, but I
    plan to keep editing SPAG, and I don't see myself leaving the IF
    community unless it seriously deteriorates. So I'd say there's an
    excellent chance I'll find myself struck with some great IF idea and
    banging out code again sometime in the future.

     =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Jon Ingold and Mike Sousa, authors of "Till Death Makes a Monk-fish Out Of Me!"
     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

       SPAG: We interviewed Jon last year when he won with "All Roads", so
       he's already answered this question, but you haven't, Mike: Could you
       tell us a little about yourself? Who are you, what do you do for a
       living, and so forth?

    MS: I was tempted to ask Jon to write my answers and try to convince him
    this is still part of the collaboration, but I had a feeling it wouldn't
    work, so here goes...

    MS: I'm 35, father of twin girls (born 4 years ago), happily married and a
    sports nut. I work in the technical group for an IBM Business Partner
    (been there for 13 years) -- we provide technology solutions to
    retailers.

    MS: I live in Massachusetts, work in Rhode Island and my two hobbies are
    home theater and interactive fiction. I also tend to write in small
    spurts.

       SPAG: And Jon, this time last year, you were a jobless third-year
       undergraduate at Cambridge with plenty of time to write. How has your
       life changed since then?

    JI: Muchly. I'm currently writing this from the office in the school
    where I'm working as a Maths teacher, which is an almost-full-time job
    in that I work 9 hours a day but usually have a good couple of free
    periods, which are spent writing. These days when the printer cartridge
    runs out, everyone immediately accuses me. Still, it's quite fun, and so
    long as I don't get more classes on my timetable I might be convinced to
    stay here a bit longer.

       SPAG: I understand you've done quite a bit of traveling during the
       past year. Have those experiences brought you any fresh inspiration
       for your IF or your other writing?

    JI: Not a great deal that I've noticed, actually. They're more just
    things I'm glad I did -- there's a charming freedom from responsibility
    when the only worry is whether or not you'll actually get the one bus a
    week to the nearest city, or whether you'll get someone to pick you up
    within the next two hours. That said though, I guess it all feeds
    through -- it was a year after coming back from Venice that All Roads
    formed.

    JI: Oh, actually, now I think about it; I did write a play about two
    people I met on a bus in Morocco. They were called Maria and Gonzalez -
    Maria was a octolingual stunner -- Gonzalez was a hairy muppet who fell
    off his camel, twice.

       SPAG: Mike, how did you first become introduced to IF?

    MS: My friend's dad had purchased an Apple something or other in the
    early 80's. Being arcade junkies, we thought we would give this thing a
    shot, so off we went to see what was available. The artwork on the box
    of Zork was eye-catching so we bought it. We were immediately hooked.

    MS: We then proceeded to purchase practically every Infocom title that
    was produced in the next 5 years. Thinking back, it was more fun to play
    as a team vs. playing solo. I think there's more enjoyment from solving
    a puzzle together or brainstorming about something. Also, when you're
    stuck on a hard puzzle, misery loves company...

    MS: I then took a break from IF for quite some time. In the mid 90's I
    came across 'Curses' and was amazed that something this good was still
    being created. A couple of years later I picked up TADS and Above and
    Beyond! was born.

       SPAG: Let's talk about this collaboration: how did it come about?

    JI: The personals column that is a post to raif.

    MS: I'll elaborate on that a little. This collaboration came about
    because of the success of the previous one, so let me start with that
    first. After the 2000 comp I realized what was missing from my game --
    decent writing. I knew I could program fairly well and I thought I was
    creative enough but I felt that my writing was bringing the game down.
    Actually, some of the reviews for At Wit's End mentions the writing as
    needing help and that it was pedestrian. Being a problem solver, I
    figured the path of least resistance was to collaborate with a writer.

    MS: I posted a note to R*IF in late 2000 and received little interest
    but then to my surprise (and joy), there was a note from Robb Sherwin. I
    knew Robb was a terrific writer whose games sometimes suffered from
    not-so-strong coding. I thought it would be a good match. The result was
    No Time To Squeal, and even though the perception was that it had a
    major technical flaw, it still did relatively well (average score wise).

    MS: Now this collaboration...

    MS: Riding the success of NTTS, I figured I would try it again. I was
    humbled by the response and figured I would have a tough time picking a
    partner -- that thought ended when Jon's email showed up. I was floored
    that somebody with his resume wanted to collaborate so I jumped right on
    it.

    MS: We had every intention of getting the game into Adam's Spring Thing
    but our schedules didn't click so we opted for the fall comp.

    MS: I had a premise (or hook) and presented it to Jon. After several
    email exchanges the plot settled down and away we went. By the by, this
    email exchange as well as many other emails during the collaboration
    will be available on my "Till Death..." page. The page will be made
    available when version 2 of "Till Death" is released -- after the
    holidays.

       SPAG: What were the similarities and differences between your
       partnership with Robb and your partnership with Jon?

    MS: There is a long post of mine on RAIF (dated 11/19/02) which gets
    into this question in greater detail. Summing it up, the story for NTTS
    was mostly complete so Robb had a pretty good blue print to follow but
    for TDMAMOOM, only the hook was established. Both collaborations relied
    on the transcript method in terms of game play communication.

       SPAG: Jon, now that you've been through the experience of creating a
       collaborative work of IF, is there anything you would do differently
       next time around?

    JI: Er, for myself, I'd take it more seriously. The number of "Jon, are
    you still alive?" emails I had to be sent is rather embarrassing.

       SPAG: How do you think the experience of collaboration will affect
       your creation process while writing solo IF?

    JI: Probably not a great deal, to be honest. I've always bounced ideas
    around off people when writing games -- usually my friend who appears as
    an ill-fated marble bust in Mulldoon -- and otherwise solo writing is
    all about playing and replaying.

    MS: Collaboration has ruined me. No really, it has. A couple of weekends
    ago I was working on this scene for "At Wit's End Again" where there was
    this elevator crash. I wrote it 2 or 3 times. Each time I thought that
    Robb and Jon would have written that so much better and I got
    frustrated. Half kidding, of course. The real answer is that I will try
    and pay more attention to the writing. The coding comes easy.

       SPAG: Jon, what were some of the inspirations for your parts of Till
       Death?

    JI: That's difficult. The setting is from an atrocious short story I
    wrote for high-school English, which I thought at the time I'd stolen
    from "The Penultimate Truth" by Philip K Dick, though I'm assured by
    others that actually I didn't. The "hook" was Mike's idea, that he
    wanted to build the game around. The French pills come from a line in
    Hitchhiker's Guide -- "You could take some evening classes. I've got a
    bottle of them, little pink ones" -- and a short story I wrote about a
    country where everybody speaks in anagrams; the protagonist becomes
    famous for being able to solve the country's crosswords in record time,
    as the clues are all anagrams, but they're written in anagramised form,
    so our protagonist (a normal person) just copies the clue
    letter-by-letter into the grid.

       SPAG: And you, Mike?

    MS: I haven't played much IF since late '99, mostly because I've been
    busy creating it -- I still haven't finished Anchorhead, but I digress.
    Anyway, a common theme for lots of IF is to avoid the *** You have died
    *** message. Okay, not such a common theme today, but it's everywhere in
    A&B and AWE and some of the games that I did manage to play. So I
    thought it would be different to have the PC try to kill himself, but
    the game wouldn't allow it. There had to be a reason for wanting to kill
    yourself (I'm certainly not an advocate for suicide nor did I want to
    write a depressing game), such as, you're in the wrong body and that's
    the way to get out of it. "Till Death..." was born from that premise and
    then evolved to the game that it is today.

       SPAG: Were you wary of creating a game set in the by-now traditional
       comp environment of an isolated research station? What choices did
       you make with predecessors like Delusions and Babel in mind?

    JI: Actually, I never really thought about either of those. I was a
    little worried about the similarity to "Transfer" from two years ago,
    which I was involved with as a beta-tester. The main difference is
    probably in style though.

       SPAG: Speaking of style, I found the game's room descriptions quite
       striking indeed. Did you use any particular technique to come up with
       these, and what advice would you give authors who struggle with that
       part of IF creation?

    JI: Advice: don't just write something functional. You may as well try
    and phrase things in a vaguely interesting way, if you can. Oh, and do
    get hung up on trying to describe where the exits are, because there is
    nothing more dull than "You can go east, north, or west."

       SPAG: One thing that I thought was remarkable about the technical
       part of this game was its uncanny simulation of an Infocom or z-code
       look and feel, even though the game is written in TADS. What led to
       your decision to do this?

    MS: Um... I have no idea what you mean.

       SPAG: Well, it seems to me that Inform games tend to have a different
       sort of appearance than TADS games do, based mainly on interpreter
       defaults, I suppose. Inform games generally have tended to be closer
       to what Infocom games used to look like: monospaced font, often white
       on a blue background, a particular kind of header, and so forth. TADS
       games, by contrast, use a proportional font, black on a white
       background, and have things in there by default like "HTML TADS
       Interpreter" at the top. "Till Death" fits much more into the former
       category than the latter, despite being a TADS game -- it feels
       Inform-like, right down to the little serial number in the header.

    MS: Ahh... Okay, now I got it. Two factors here.

    MS: If you're using version 2.5.7 of the TADS interpreter, you'll have
    the Game Chest feature. This allows you to manage recently played games.
    One of the features is the "profile" setting which can be set to either
    plain text or multimedia. The default setting is multimedia (black text
    on white background, proportional font). However, a game author can
    imbed a gameinfo file in the .GAM file that the treasure chest will
    extract and override the default settings. I picked plain text which
    gave us the white text on blue, mono-spaced font which had the old
    Infocom look and feel.

    MS: As for the opening of the game, I actually used that for No Time To
    Squeal (serial number, etc...) so when I started Till Death, I used NTTS
    as a starting point. (When Robb had sent over his first transcript, he
    included the "serial number" look so I just went with it.)

    MS: So in summary, it was a combination of factors that gave it that
    look and feel -- some intentional (by coding), others by setting a
    switch made available by Mike Roberts' new 'terp.

       SPAG: How interesting -- I thought it was entirely intentional. So
       what did you guys think about this year's competition? Any favorite
       games?

    JI: Yup, "When Help Collides". It's genius. It's barmy, lucid, very
    nicely refracted with all its various parts that somehow connect and
    don't connect, and above all, it's a take on walkthroughs coming to
    replace in-built hint-systems, and it's almost unplayable without a
    walkthrough. Genius. I loved it. It was the only thing that really made
    me think, and just applaud with the bizarrity of it all. It was
    imaginative and new -- the first time I've seen IF where it's not about
    starting it up and getting through to the end, it's more about starting
    and fighting with middle for as long as you can cope with it.

    MS: Janitor, Another Earth, Another Sky and The Moonlit Tower got my
    votes this year for Miss Congeniality. I thought When Help Collides was
    funny as hell -- J.D. Berry is a riot -- but got slighted a bit because
    some players gave up on it too early.

    MS: The competition contained a lot of (well) tested games and that is a
    pleasant surprise. There seemed to be very few buggy games, and I think
    the scoring proves that. (i.e., nobody averaged under 2 as in years
    past...)

    MS: I did have an opportunity this year to read every review and I
    thought it would be interesting to review the reviewers. That post is
    floating somewhere on RGIF. By reading the reviews it gave me a pretty
    good idea of the games entered since I only played about half of them.

       SPAG: Any advice you'd care to offer for prospective competition
       entrants?

    MS: Start early. Don't begin coding until you have the plot done. Get
    your beta testers involved early and *trust* them. Try and play the game
    as if you know nothing about it. Play through it with 'script on' and
    then re-read the transcript a few days later, you'll be surprised at
    what you find. Add lots of synonyms. Describe all your first level
    nouns. Describe important second level nouns. Don't settle with your
    first attempt at a room description. Of course, any writing advice from
    me should be taken with a grain of salt. :)

       SPAG: Do you anticipate being able to write more IF in the future,
       and if so what are your plans?

    MS: Yes. I am working on At Wit's End Again (finishing up my Intro Comp
    entry) and I have a WIP of another release of No Time To Squeal which
    ties some loose ends up in the plot. I do plan on working on another
    collaboration in 2003. Of course, I know by saying that I'm risking not
    doing it... But with no risk, there's no reward...

    JI: Hmm. Don't know about the future. I don't have as much time as I
    used to, and so I'm trying to save myself from having to have a career
    by finishing this damn novel I've been working on for two years. I'm now
    very satisfied with chapters 1 and 2. 3 through 6 are okay, and it all
    goes to pot after that. When I lose enthusiasm for it, I tend to move
    back to the detective game I've been working on for three years now,
    which is still *this close* to being finished. Everything's finalised, I
    just to need to write a lot of cunning demons, and then make it a bit
    more playable.

    JI: I'll probably write something at some point. Can't say much more
    than that.

     =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Steve Evans, author of "Photograph"
     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

       SPAG: For starters, could you tell us a little about yourself? Who
       are you, what do you do for a living, and so forth?

    SE: Let's see. I'm 42 years old (which is somewhat older than most first
    time IF authors, I guess). I was born in Wales but my family moved to
    Australia when I was very young, eventually settling in Tasmania. I live
    in Hobart, where I'm currently working as a system administrator with an
    Australian government department. My role there is business oriented
    rather than technical, and involves working with programmers and other
    technical IT staff in developing and maintaining one of the department's
    computer systems. Besides IF, my interests include reading (I buy rather
    too many books), amateur paleontology, abstract board games
    (particularly Go & Shogi), and trout fishing in the Tasmanian highlands
    (something I don't do anywhere near enough of). British SPAG readers may
    have seen the BBC documentary series "Walking with Dinosaurs". Parts of
    that series were filmed in the highlands of Tasmania. If you can picture
    those stark mountain scenes from the documentary, but with fewer
    dinosaurs and more trout, then picture someone in the middle of it with
    a fishing rod. That'd be me.

       SPAG: How did you first become introduced to IF?

    SE: My introduction to IF came shortly after buying an Apple ][ computer
    in 1983. The first text adventure I played was (I think) Infocom's
    Starcross. That was quickly followed by Zork 1, and then by just about
    every other text or graphic adventure I could lay my hands on.
    Unfortunately, my Apple ][ only had 64k of ram, so it couldn't run the
    later Infocom V4 to V6 games. I didn't get to play any of those until I
    bought a Commodore Amiga in about 1988-89. By rights I should have been
    exposed to IF much earlier than I was. In high school and my
    matriculation years we had access to a PDP-11 mainframe via a teletype
    terminal. How I failed to discover ADVENT during that time, I've no
    idea. I suspect some sort of conspiracy must have been at work. It was
    well after playing some of the early Infocom games that I learned of the
    existence of ADVENT, or the other early mainframe adventures.

    Within months of discovering IF, I was thinking about writing a game.
    I'd been reading Richard Brautigan's humorous "gothic western" novel,
    "The Hawkline Monster", and as I read it I kept seeing it as a text
    adventure. I spent some time mapping it out with puzzles and so forth. I
    just did it as an exercise, knowing it was all going nowhere as I didn't
    have a development system, and probably wouldn't have got permission to
    do it as a commercial game even if I'd worked out how to do it. That was
    the beginning and end of my IF writing aspirations for 15 years or so.

       SPAG: You've mentioned other sorts of writing that you do besides IF.
       Can you talk a little about that?

    SE: I know I mentioned my writing in the background section of my comp
    game, but frankly, I haven't done much of it. I wrote a bunch of short
    stories in the late '70s and early '80s (including an incomplete,
    roughed out version of Photograph), but I wasn't happy with the results.
    The ideas were good, but the writing wasn't. In the mid-'90s the muse
    returned briefly and I completed a few stories, including Photograph. I
    received some favourable reactions to these later stories from family,
    friends and others I dared show them to, but the writing still left a
    lot to be desired. After rediscovering IF a few years ago, I saw an
    opportunity to get back to writing and combine it with my longstanding
    wish to do a text adventure. My comp game was the result. I'm pleased
    with some of the writing in the game. I think parts of it might almost
    be good. So now I'm finally all set to do some more, hopefully both of
    IF and straight fiction.

       SPAG: In her SPAG review of Photograph, Suzanne Britton calls the
       game "irredeemably fatalistic." Do you agree?

    SE: Firstly I must say that Suzanne sent me her review of Photograph
    early on in the judging period, and it was great to receive such
    feedback at that stage. Seeing her review gave me confidence that much
    of what I was trying to do with the piece had worked as I'd intended.
    But, as to being "irredeemably fatalistic"? No, I can't agree, or at
    least that wasn't my intention. Although, I can see how the game, and
    particularly the ending, could be viewed that way. It was important to
    me in writing Photograph that there was a message or possible spin on
    the ending about "seizing the day" or perhaps "not dwelling on things
    that can't be changed, but concentrating on living life". I didn't want
    this message to be overriding or the only view of the ending, or to be
    seen as trivialising the protagonist's psychological condition, but I
    had to allow room for the player to take that meaning. Much of the
    symbolism in the story was directed at giving the player some
    independent knowledge that Jack had problems and that his preoccupation
    with the past was causing him further damage. While I wanted the player
    to feel empathy with the protagonist, they also needed some warning that
    his view of the world was flawed, and that life just doesn't work the
    way Jack wanted it to.

    Choosing to do this story as my first piece of IF was a decision fraught
    with danger, and as I have said on rgif, a couple of people advised me
    against it. To be successful I had to draw a very fine line between
    being too obvious and too obscure in the symbols I chose and how I
    approached the story generally. Suzanne picked up on this in her review.
    The position of that line changed several times as I worked on the game,
    but no matter where it was set there was no escaping the fact that the
    story wasn't going to work for everyone. Overall, though, the whole
    thing came together better than I'd expected, and despite some rough
    edges, I was (and am) quite pleased with it. The thing I guess I regret
    most about the game is some of the unsubtle prompting, particularly in
    the later stages. I may clean up some of that one day.

       SPAG: Some of the reviews and newsgroup posts about the game seemed
       to suggest that it would appeal more to players who were 40 years old
       or older. What are your thoughts on that?

    SE: Yes, that's interesting. It surprised me a little, particularly as
    the story and its focus were largely laid out when I was still in my
    early 20's. But, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, as much of the
    detail in the work was either written or rewritten while in my early
    40's and this may have come across more than I'd expected. I suppose
    that had I finished the story while in my 20's it would have been quite
    different from what it eventually became.

    One thing that really intrigued me is just how old and lived-in some of
    the reviewers found Jack to be. There were references to "old man" and
    "old coot". Hell, he may not have travelled well, but he was only 55! I
    guess his view of life and mindset are things that people may associate
    with older people. Although, I'm equally sure that many elderly people
    would strongly disagree with such stereotyping.

       SPAG: The game is peppered with quotes from books, poems, and songs.
       What works inspired its creation, and how?

    SE: I really liked the way quotes were used in some of the later Infocom
    games (like Trinity), and in many of the more recent works of IF that I
    admire. So I decided I'd also use them to break up the scenes and to try
    to strengthen what I was wanting to get across in Photograph. When
    looking around for suitable quotes, I turned to some of the authors,
    poets and music I've liked. In particular, I chose a couple of pieces
    from Kenneth Patchen, my favourite author/poet, and to my mind one of
    the most underrated writers and thinkers of our time. The musical
    references I drew mostly from the punk and post-punk bands whose music I
    grew up with, which included artists like Tom Verlaine and Television,
    the Ramones, Talking Heads, and the '70s and early '80s British and
    Australian punk scene. HEBGB Horror, anyone?

    As to the works that inspired the creation of Photograph, the only
    influence I recall was Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which
    also featured a blurring of the distinction between alternate realities
    by means of a portrait. The dream scene was added well after I had the
    original idea for the story, and the inspiration for that was a
    wonderful short story by William Kotzwinkle about a corrupt pharaoh
    awaiting his judgement in the afterlife. Although, the main reason for
    choosing Egyptian elements for the story was that my wife has studied
    ancient civilisations and, as a consequence, we have a number of books
    on Egypt and Egyptian mythology lying around the house.

       SPAG: What's your assessment of the state of IF today?

    SE: IF is still very much a new medium, and I think we've only just
    begun to explore what can be done with it. I know there've been some
    concerns expressed on r*if that the entries in the last couple of years'
    comps haven't lived up to the promise of the 2000 games, and that the
    number of entries in 2002 was well down on preceding years, but I don't
    think there's cause for concern. There were some very good games
    released in 2001 and 2002, both within the comp and outside it. There
    have also been some innovative games (such as the Gostak, Constraints
    and When Help Collides) which have pushed the boundaries of text
    adventure convention, and others that have breathed new life into old
    tropes. Although there were fewer games in the 2002 Comp, by all
    accounts they were generally less buggy than in previous years and this
    may simply imply that authors are holding off releasing their games
    until they are ready. Certainly, the number of intentions to enter the
    competition this year were as high as ever. In addition, there are
    people discovering IF and becoming involved, who unlike some of us,
    didn't grow up with text adventures. So, despite some comments I've seen
    to the contrary, I think IF is in a pretty healthy state and can look
    forward to a bright future.

       SPAG: Do you anticipate being able to write more IF in the future,
       and if so what are your plans?

    SE: Well, I think it's safe to say that I've now been bitten by the
    *bug*. I'd very much like to write more IF, but will have to give
    careful thought as to what form it will take. The response to
    Photograph, and in particular its strong placing in the comp took me by
    surprise, and may have created a degree of expectation that I find
    daunting. While I've got some half-formed (half-baked?) ideas for my
    next game, I don't have any definite plans at this stage. However, I'd
    like the next one to be different from my first effort -- probably more
    puzzle than story based, and perhaps with alternative endings. We'll
    have to see.

       SPAG: What did you think about this year's competition? Any favorite
       games?

    SE: This was the first year that I'd played many of the games during the
    judging period. In the past, I've waited for the results and reviews and
    then selected a few games to play. By all accounts the entries this year
    were generally less buggy than in previous years, which is clearly a
    step in the right direction.

    I thought the writing in Yoon Ha Lee's The Moonlit Tower was great, and
    look forward to seeing what Yoon may do with a larger story. I
    particularly liked Another Earth, Another Sky, TOOKiE's SONG, and the
    more experimental Constraints and When Help Collides. I also liked
    TDMAMFOOM, but I preferred the earlier sections of the game to the later
    bits. There are still some games I haven't played and look forward to
    trying, including Janitor and The PK Girl. Several games didn't appeal
    to me, but in the main it was an enjoyable experience.

       SPAG: Any advice you'd care to offer for prospective competition
       entrants?

    SE: Some of this may be stating the obvious, but nonetheless, here are
    my tips:

    1)	Read through past years' post-comp reviews and r*if comments, to give
    yourself some idea of what to expect.

    2)	Play through a few of the better comp games, and also a few that
    fared poorly.

    3)	Before designing your game, read as much of the wealth of material on
    game design in the IF Archive and elsewhere as you can.

    4)	Don't be afraid to ask for help with coding problems. There are
    always nice folk on raif who are happy to help out.

    5)	Get yourself some good beta-testers, the more and varied the better.

    6)	Understand that what's obvious to you is more than likely not going
    to be obvious to someone playing your game.

    7)	Listen to your testers. If a tester has a problem with something,
    someone else is certain to have a problem with it as well. Fix it.

    8)	Don't try to take short-cuts in coding and hope that no one will
    notice. They will.

    9)	Don't, whatever you do, submit a game to the comp if it's not ready.

    10)	See 9).

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

    Consider the following review header:

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

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

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

    From: Adam Myrow

    TITLE: Another Earth, Another Sky
    AUTHOR: Paul O'Brian
    EMAIL: obrian SP@G colorado.edu
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Glulxe interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: freeware IF-archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/glulx/eas2/
         Directory with hints, release notes, and game
    VERSION: 1

    Last year, Paul O'Brian entered a very short game called Earth and Sky
    into the competition under a pseudonym. This game introduced us to the
    fact that he intended to make a series of games based on two newly-made
    superheroes. The number one complaint about his first entry in this
    series was that it was just too short. So, this year, Mr. O'Brian makes
    up for it and produces his most puzzle-filled and detailed piece of IF
    to date. In Another Earth, Another Sky, you play Austin Colborn. This is
    the superhero who wears the "earthsuit." This suit gives him the
    strength of a giant and the capability of jumping over buildings. In
    part one, you played his sister, with the power to create fog, fly, and
    shoot electricity. I thought that Emily's powers would be more fun, but
    I was soon proven wrong. That super strength of Austin's is much more
    fun than I imagined. How many times have you wanted to break down a
    locked door only to be told something like "violence isn't the answer to
    this one?" Well, this time, you get to break those doors down. As for
    the story itself, there is a lot to learn. You are continuing your quest
    to find your parents. This search will eventually take you to an alien
    world that is quite unique. I really thought the descriptions made it
    easy to imagine.

    The thing that impressed me about this game is the detail. For example,
    there is a bedroom with curtains which can be opened and closed despite
    the fact that the curtains play no part in the story. Nearly every
    object mentioned in room descriptions can be examined. This is always a
    good thing to me. Of course, what would a Paul O'Brian game be without
    doors that can be unlocked from the inside and room descriptions that
    change as the PC learns about his surroundings? These elements are
    present and only add to the feeling of being there.

    So, is there any problem with the game? A few, but they are very minor.
    Mostly, they are a matter of personal taste. For example, I wanted to
    see more teamwork between the superheroes. Others have mentioned this, so
    I suspect we will see it in part 3. Another thing is that I preferred
    the titles to the sections in Part I over the Emily Dickinson quotes.
    They seemed more like what should be in a comic book and that is what
    this story is trying to emulate. As I said, this is personal
    preferences, and it wasn't enough to make me really downrate this game.
    It was a pleasure to play after some of the other competition games this
    year. Mr. O'Brian, a fine piece of work and a well-deserved first place
    finish!

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

    From: Adam Myrow

    TITLE: Augustine
    AUTHOR: Terrence V. Koch
    EMAIL: teviko SP@G softhome.net
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: TADS 2
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware IF-archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads2/augustin/
         Directory containing game, hints, walk-through, and release notes
    VERSION: 1.0

    Terrence Koch is a new author to watch out for. While his first piece of
    IF, Augustine, isn't perfect, it has the right idea. In this story, you
    play a man who has lived over 600 years. Back in the early 1400's, your
    family and friends were wiped out in a brutal raid of your village.
    Though you were still a child, you sought the man who had done this and
    tried to kill him. You never got to kill him, but vowed that you would
    never rest until you did. He also made the same oath about you and you
    are now both cursed to live until one of you kills the other. The story
    tracks the history between the two of you all the way to 2002, where you
    meet on a ghost tour set aboard a ship. For some reason, you always meet
    in St. Augustine, Florida, so that city holds a special place for you.
    This is where the game gets its title.

    The author concedes that this game is similar to the TV series and movie
    called Highlander, but insists he came up with the idea independently. I
    thought this was a bit defensive, but I can understand where he's coming
    from. Anyway, I really liked the concept. The game alternates between
    the present and flashbacks with a few lengthy cut scenes. By the end, I
    felt like I had participated in a story, which is, to me, the whole
    purpose of interactive fiction. Granted, the story isn't perfect,
    especially in terms of spelling and bugs. There are several spelling and
    grammar problems as well as some parser quirks. Yet, when I played, I
    found myself overlooking a lot of this. It may have been because I had
    played a particularly buggy entry just before it and was willing to
    overlook problems if the game at least made sense and didn't spit out
    nonsense every few moves. Also, I give a lot of leeway to an author who
    attempts to tell a story as complex as this in such a short game.

    Interactive flashbacks, in particular, are extremely difficult to do
    well -- too much interaction and the whole story has been changed. Too
    little, and it may as well be a long cut scene. The author strays back
    and forth across this line. The opening flashback, which details the
    village raid, is more like an instant death puzzle. How can you die in a
    flashback? Later flashbacks still have some possibility for ending the
    game abruptly, and even later, it is practically impossible to change
    the predetermined course of events. As I said, this is tricky ground,
    especially for a first-time author. The biggest problem with the way the
    story is presented is that the flashbacks are too close together. Near
    the beginning, you take a walking ghost tour which is almost completely
    non-interactive. You basically follow your tour guide and read long
    descriptions of the thoughts going through your mind. This would have
    been a perfect time to place the flashbacks, but instead, they are all
    bunched together on the ship.

    So, overall, I liked the story, but the implementation was problematic.
    I would really like to see a post-competition release of this game. With
    a bit of cleanup, it stands to be an outstanding first work.

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

    From: Mike Roberts

    When I came to the part of "Augustine" where the player character takes
    a guided tour of the city of the game's title, I immediately recognized
    what had been vaguely bothering me about the game up to that point. The
    guided tour is not just a major chunk of the game's plot; it's at the
    heart of the game's design. The entire game is, in a way, a guided tour,
    and has some of the good and bad features of any guided tour.

    The story opens in the year 1400, somewhere "just outside of Wales,"
    where the player character is a young villager. A cruel warlord rides
    into the village with his army, and proceeds to kill everyone in the
    village except the player character. The PC manages to evade the
    soldiers by hiding; after the raid, the PC vows vengeance on the
    warlord, and sets out to track him down. From here, the story gives us a
    capsule summary of the PC joining an army that opposes the evil warlord,
    training for combat, and entering his first battle against the warlord.
    In the course of the battle, we encounter the warlord himself; we chase
    him into a hidden part of his castle, where a magical transformation
    causes both the PC and the warlord to become effectively immortal,
    immune to death or serious injury except at one another's hands.

    That might sound like a lot of story, and it is; but the interactivity
    through this part is so limited that it takes all of about twenty turns
    to get this far. I think the author intended this portion as an extended
    introduction, and couldn't resist the temptation to cram the entire
    back-story here; but the trade-off is that all of these big events are
    just sketched out, and you feel like you're being rushed along. The
    opening scene where the PC's entire family is killed, for example, ought
    to have a visceral emotional impact; but it doesn't, because we haven't
    really had a chance to meet any of the other characters or see their
    relationship to the PC. It also doesn't help that the PC has to just sit
    there and hide during the whole enemy raid scene; it would have been
    more satisfying if the PC had tried his best to defend the village but
    had been unable to overcome the superior force of the raiders.
    (Explaining how the PC survived in this scenario might have been
    trickier, but not impossible; he could have been badly wounded and left
    for dead, for example.) But the PC so willfully keeps his distance from
    the action that it distances us as well.

    The story next moves from 1400 to the modern day, where the main action
    is set. The PC is still alive, thanks to the magical transformation, and
    is now in the town of Augustine, Florida. Here the plot development
    becomes less frantic, and we're able to do some more leisurely
    exploration. Even here, though, our exploration options are limited,
    more so than they first appear; we can walk through the town's streets,
    but we can't enter any of the buildings. This is where I first got the
    feeling that I was in a museum, with velvet ropes keeping me on the
    approved path and safely out of reach of the exhibits. In fact, this is
    exactly where we eventually take the actual guided tour; the tour guide
    leads us around these same streets, pointing out historical events that
    took place in all of those buildings we can look at but not enter.

    The guided tour is an interesting device for filling in the back-story,
    but in this particular game it seems an odd choice. During the tour, as
    the guide points out bits of history, the PC reminisces about his
    personal involvement in those events. Why, then, doesn't the PC have
    anything to say about all of those significant places when visiting them
    on his own, outside the tour? The PC doesn't even seem to recognize the
    places before the tour. I can understand why the author wanted to dole
    out the back-story using the tour, but there's no good reason within the
    context of the story that the PC shouldn't be able to reminisce all by
    himself; the tour as a narrative device seems better suited to a
    static-fiction rendition of the story.

    As for the writing, it's mostly decent, but I have a few quibbles. The
    technical polish is a bit spotty in places: there's at least one
    it's/its confusion, some weird comma placement, and a few spelling
    errors. The story in one place uses "ironic" to mean "coincidental"
    (which I hear is the latest direction in the drift of the popular
    meaning of "ironic", "sarcastic" being the previous one, but this is the
    first time I've personally spotted this new meaning in actual use). The
    writing affects a style that I think is meant to evoke the sweeping
    historical epic; this gives the writing a certain stiltedness in places,
    but you get used to it pretty quickly.

    It probably sounds as though I didn't like this game much, given the
    number of weaknesses I've focused on; but I wouldn't have gone into so
    much detail if I didn't at least want to like it. I actually didn't warm
    to the game immediately, partially because I was put off by some of
    these design problems and partially because the story seemed awfully
    similar to the film "Highlander" (a resemblance the author acknowledges
    in the README file, with an explanation that it's a coincidence).
    However, as I got further into it, I found I was enjoying the game quite
    a bit. The feeling of running on rails remained, but it was less obvious
    after the early parts of the game; and more importantly, the story
    became increasingly engaging as it progressed. There's simply a lot of
    story here, especially considering the constraints of the competition's
    two-hour play limit (which the game does a pretty good job of obeying) -
    and as the plot develops, the resemblance to "Highlander" fades.
    "Augustine" has plenty of flaws, but its story is interesting enough
    that it's worth a look.

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

    From: Mike Roberts

    TITLE: Concrete Paradise
    AUTHOR: Tyson Ibele
    EMAIL: ivanisavich SP@G yahoo.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: TADS Standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads2/concrete/concrete.gam
    VERSION: 1.0 / 052202

    I'm not sure what this game was meant to be. The story seems to be about
    a carefree youngster, whose age is never precisely specified but which
    we can infer must be in the late single digits or early teens, who's
    sent away to an island prison for life due to an essentially trivial and
    unintentional crime. The main story takes place three years into the
    life sentence, and revolves around escaping the prison.

    The opening of the story is somewhat jarring, in that before the player
    character gets sent to prison for life, he's portrayed as an innocent
    kid who's not even trying to get into trouble. We're not really trying
    to do anything at all, for that matter; there's not any particular goal
    at this point.

    On my first couple of tries at the opening scene, I figured the prison
    sentence must simply be an elaborate "death" scene. In other words, I
    figured that the game was telling me the equivalent of "*** You have
    died ***", which is the traditional message an IF game displays when the
    player character is killed by an incorrect action. I got this impression
    because the actions in question seem so random and trivial, and because
    there are lots of them; in some games, such a variety of ways to "die"
    would simply indicate boundaries of the game, with the deadly
    consequences meant to guide players away from those boundaries and back
    to the correct path. (It's not an especially subtle way of marking a
    game's boundaries, and authors lately tend to favor other means, but
    plenty of older games use this approach.) However, after a few tries, I
    realized this must actually be the way forward in the story.

    Once we're in the prison, there's nothing to do but set about escaping.
    And here we encounter another jarring plot development: almost
    immediately, we have to kill a guard in the course of our escape. The
    player character's original crime is depicted as essentially accidental,
    with no evil intent, but the murder of the guard is quite deliberate.
    It's made clear that the player character is no psychopath -- he feels
    bad after the fact that he had to kill the guard -- but this just means
    he's become an utterly ruthless pragmatist who kills in cold blood when
    it serves his goals.

    So is "Concrete Paradise" a cautionary tale, a meditation on the
    poisonous consequences of vindictive criminal justice, that turns an
    innocent youth into a vicious killer in a few years' time?

    Probably not. As the game progresses, it seems quite free of such
    serious implications; this is simply a puzzle game that happens to have
    some rather grim plot elements. If anything, the sensibility is
    cartoonish, the grimness of the plot just a wild exaggeration for the
    sake of an interesting story.

    As a puzzle game, "Concrete Paradise" is serviceable, but suffers from a
    few flaws. The most consistent is a certain fussiness about command
    phrasing; in some places, an alternative syntax will reply with a
    message about the command you should be using (which is annoying enough:
    if the game can tell me "try this instead," it should almost always just
    do that instead, instead), but in many others it simply didn't recognize
    reasonably conventional phrasings for things that could be accomplished
    with other phrasings. Which isn't quite as bad as the usual "guess the
    verb" problem, where the only correct phrasing is unusual; rather, the
    correct phrasing in these cases is perfectly ordinary, but other
    equivalent ordinary phrasings aren't accepted.

    Another deficiency in some of the puzzles is insufficient information to
    motivate the solution. In one place, for example, I think you're
    expected to simply try different directions randomly; in the location in
    question, it's clear that you can't see where you're going, so this
    isn't as bad as an unannounced exit in an otherwise ordinary location,
    but you're given no reason to think the location would have any exits
    other than the one you came in from. In other places, objects -- or
    details of objects -- are found to be unusual only after close
    inspection, even though they should be obvious at less detailed levels
    of examination. For example, if there's something obviously unusual
    about a wall, I shouldn't have to examine the wall to discover that,
    because an obviously unusual feature of a major room component ought to
    warrant mention in the room's top-level description.

    Despite the occasional flaws in its puzzles, and the puzzling thematic
    intentions, this game is fairly well written and playable. I didn't feel
    greatly drawn in, mostly because of the unclear motivations of the main
    character, I think; but most of the puzzles are logical and well
    integrated into the story, and so are satisfying to solve.

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

    From: Tony Baechler

    TITLE: Constraints
    AUTHOR: Martin Bays
    EMAIL: martin SP@G zugzwang.port5.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/constraints/constraints.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    If I had to describe this game in one word, I would pick "crazy." This
    game, or series of mini-games, is wacky. Yes, it makes some sort of
    weird sense, but you will probably only get a headache trying to figure
    it all out. No, it is not confusing. The stories or sections in
    themselves are easily understood. Trying to put all of them together and
    figure out what the author's point is will drive you crazy, so just sit
    back and enjoy the ride.

    The fun of this game is not the puzzles or trying to figure out what to
    do. For example, in "Falling" it is completely obvious what is
    happening. You are falling and there is nothing you can do about it. The
    enjoyment comes in trying every weird or wacky response you can think of
    and watching what happens. I particularly liked "xyzzy." Ultimately, you
    are forced to go along with the ride but it is short and amusing. After
    you have finished, try "walkthrough" to see what I mean.

    In another section, you get a completely opposite response to what you
    expect. If you type "z," you get "Time does not pass." In fact, no
    matter what you do, you cannot affect anything. Again, in terms of a
    puzzle this is rather minimal and boring. The entertainment is in trying
    everything. I can easily imagine this game becoming an IF classic in its
    own right. I would definitely not recommend it for new IF players,
    although it can show off what a really good parser can do. It goes
    without saying that anything I could think of got a response and I think
    I never got a default library message.

    Unfortunately, there were two problems. One is an unnecessary use of
    profanity. It added nothing and the game would have had just as much
    charm without it. This is really too bad. The other problem was a very
    small grammar error. Towards the end, it says "hint's" instead of
    "hints." This is very small and would normally be overlooked, but for a
    game which is otherwise so well written it stands out. The final problem
    is an unnecessary maze. No, this is not a typical IF maze, but a Nethack
    style maze. I wish I could have found a way to finish it because it
    would be nice to see the closing text, if any. Oh well.

    All three of the above brought the game down a point or two. If there
    would have been a different constraint instead of the maze, this game
    could rank a 10. It is not that I never give out scores that high, it is
    just that most games are not worthy. I might give it another point
    anyway, but I doubt it. This is just a suspicion, but I think Magnus
    wrote this. It is not his traditional writing style, though.

    My comp rating: 8

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

    From: Mike Roberts

    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.

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

    From: Mike Roberts

    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.

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

    From: Adam Myrow

    TITLE: Fort Aegea
    AUTHOR: Francesco Bova
    EMAIL: fbova SP@G mts.net
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: any Z-code interpreter
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, If-archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/ftaegea/
         Directory with game and various maps in PDF files plus walk-through
    VERSION: 2

    It has been said that when being interviewed, you are primarily judged
    by the first 10 seconds. For me, this is partly true of Interactive
    Fiction as well. I am more likely to stick to a game which has a good
    introduction than one whose introduction is poorly written. An
    introduction full of spelling errors and bad grammar makes me tend to
    question the game. In this regard, I was really unsure what to think
    when I loaded up Fort Aegea and got this introduction.

       "AAACHOOOO!!"

       Waking up with a start, you stare blankly into space, and rub your
       watery eyes. While fumbling around on your night table you find a
       piece of parchment in which to blow your nose and wipe your brow.
       It's spring and with it comes your annual bout of hay fever; a
       condition that is certainly not made any better by the fact that
       you're living on an outpost in the wilderness. No matter. You rise
       from bed with a yawn and a stretch, trying to focus mentally for the
       day ahead.

       Being the sole Priestess representing the Order of the Amylyan Druids
       in this distant Northern outpost has never been easy. However, as the
       settlers are incredibly humble and always helpful, your experience
       has been very rewarding.

       Oh well, another day filled with dispute resolution, work
       preparation, and general governance over your small settlement. The
       sun hasn't risen yet, so you still have a few minutes to yourself.

    I don't think there's ever been a PC in all of IF with hay fever, and
    the only case of hay fever I can recall offhand is the ogre in
    Spellbreaker. So, right off, I had a good sense of my character, but no
    clue what the story would be about. This is often a good thing, and the
    story in this particular game is complicated enough that a lengthy
    introduction would be a detriment, but still, this didn't do anything
    but make me wonder what I was getting into.

    This game is a sequel to The Jewel of Knowledge, and that made me feel a
    bit odd since I'd never gotten around to playing that particular game.
    However, this one stands on its own for the most part. The story is
    described in an interactive prolog which is a nifty idea. Basically,
    it's just another ordinary day until a farmer comes in through the gate
    of Fort Aegea badly wounded. He tells you of a demon who wants the blood
    of 4 virgins over 30 just before dying. Terrified, you consult some
    higher authorities and learn that this demon is actually a dragon. The
    dragon breathes toxic gas rather than fire and is rather nasty.
    Desperately hoping to save the fort from certain destruction, you let
    the dragon talk you into a dangerous game of cat and mouse. You have to
    survive the day while the dragon tries to kill you. If you survive, he
    will leave. Otherwise, he has the whole fort's population for lunch. So,
    the bulk of the game involves trying to keep your hide intact and
    protect others.

    There were two things I really disliked about this game. First of all,
    and by far the most important, there is a huge amount of violence in the
    story. While I can understand that dragons are mean and hurt people, I
    think the author went a bit too far. For example, a husband and wife
    with a baby are some of the people you try to help. First, the husband
    dies like so:

       The Dragon throws an agile paw at Pierre and knocks him heavily off
       the path and unfortunately, off a precipice that you're sure will end
       off a few hundred meters down the side of the mountain.

       "PIERRE!" screams Annie, the look of hysteria gaining momentum on her
       face. She hands you Etienne and sobs, "You must protect him
       Priestess, at all costs!"

       Annie turns to face the dragon and begins running.

    As is obvious, the next move, Annie meets her maker even more violently:

       Annie runs screaming head first into the Dragon's midriff. The dragon
       deflects her mild blow and clasps his arms around her waist with
       little effort. There is a short struggle followed by a bone-crunching
       snap, after which the Green Dragon throws Annie's lifeless body into
       the shrubs surrounding the clearing. His visage shows a hint of pity.

    It wouldn't be so bad if these were the only instances of such, but this
    sort of thing happens repeatedly throughout the story. There is some
    attempt to explain it at the end, but I found it to be a thin excuse.

    The second thing that hurt Fort Aegea for me is the spell casting. You
    have a few spells you can cast which have very unique effects. However,
    the problem is that almost every single puzzles solution involves
    casting one of about four spells. There is one spell that is completely
    useless in the game, though. The game specifically mentions that you are
    an experienced druid and therefore have many spells memorized. I would
    have preferred it if more of the puzzles involve non-magical solutions.
    I keep thinking of Graham Nelson's The Craft of Adventure in which he
    warns against overuse of magic. He said "the majority of puzzles should
    be soluble by hand -- or else the player will start to feel that it
    would save a good deal of time and effort just to find the 'win game'
    spell and be done with it." I completely agree with him on this point
    and note that in the entire Enchanter trilogy, there are at least some
    puzzles that can be solved without magic. One good thing about the magic
    system is that you never have to learn spells. You always have them
    memorized and can even look them up individually through a menu. The
    spell names also make sense for a change. For example "crewa" means
    create water. So, I didn't mind the magic system, and some of its uses
    were clever, but I would have preferred that more than one or two
    puzzles could be solved without it.

    I think the best thing this game has going for it is the completeness of
    the world. It is a fairly detailed world model and it feels very real
    with the exception of the description of the dragon that sounds like it
    came straight from Dungeons and Dragons or one of its imitators. Another
    plus is the interactive introduction. It lets the player get comfortable
    with the environment, start to understand what things are normally like,
    and to really appreciate the shock of the dragon's sudden appearance.
    Lastly, the game has two endings, and I always find multiple endings to
    be a nice touch when done well.

    So, overall, Fort Aegea is a real mixed bag with both good and bad
    points. I rated it a 6 in the competition.

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

    From: J. Robinson Wheeler
    [This review originally appeared on Rob's webpage at
    http://raddial.com/if/reviews/index.html]

    TITLE: The Granite Book
    AUTHOR: James Mitchelhill
    EMAIL: warning SP@G hotpop.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads2/granite/granite.gam
    VERSION: 1.0

    I've taken a slightly different approach to reviewing this work, the
    latest by the author of the most-vilified game of last year's
    competition. My usual practice is to write my thoughts down as soon as I
    reach the end of the game. For this one, which left me more than a
    little baffled, I didn't write anything right away. I took a brief break
    to mull it over, then I engaged a couple of friends in conversation
    about it, sharing my reactions and processing theirs. Then I slept on
    it, played another game, and reviewed that one. Then I opened the
    transcript from my "Granite Book" session and re-read the whole thing,
    paying more attention to details I skimmed while playing it.

    Now, here I am, still wondering what to say. I'll start with what I said
    to my friends last night: This is another work where the author seems to
    have a clear idea what it's about, but it's not coming across very
    clearly. The game exists in its own universe, bending even parser
    messages to conform to its distinctive voice. It is all symbolic, like a
    dream; also like a dream, its symbols are difficult to reckon. There is
    enough consistency to the story and its imagery to seem thoroughly
    thought out, but it remains opaque to my comprehension all the same. I
    can see that there is an active mind behind it, but I cannot fathom what
    the mind intended to communicate to me.

    One of my friends had a definite theory that worked for him, one which
    explained the characters and the settings; part of his theory keyed on
    the response to "UP" in the first scene of the game: "We had lost our
    wings long ago." Once with wings, now with claws. Lost underground. I
    don't know.

    On a technical level, I had one or two sore spots with the
    implementation. [There's a spoiler coming up here, though Rob's point is
    how impossible the puzzle is to guess without spoilage. Skip to the end
    of the indented section at your discretion. --Paul] The game shied me
    away from interacting with an NPC, and then the hint file copped a funny
    tone as it instructed me that I needed to do exactly this to proceed in
    the game:

       >talk
          [We could not understand the word "talk".]

       >ask girl
          [what should we ask it about?]

       >girl
          She would not reply to anything we said. We began to think she did
       not understand our language.

       >show vellum to girl
          [The girl did not react.]

       >girl, get on pedestal
          [The girl either did not understand our commands, or she would not
       obey them.]

       >girl, get on table
          [The girl either did not understand our commands, or she would not
       obey them.]

       >girl, sit on table
          [The girl either did not understand our commands, or she would not
       obey them.]

       ---

       Q. So what's this about the table?

       Light: Have you tried laying on it?

       Medium: You can order the girl to do some things, you know.

       Heavy: GIRL, LIE ON TABLE

    The girl doesn't understand our language, nor any command I tried. So
    no, I don't know I can do this, thank you.

    I remain bothered by two unexplained elements: the sheet of vellum with
    designs on it, and the plate on which you find the vellum.

    In general, the only direct fault I can find with it is that it is not
    to my taste; however, I can see how it might also be someone else's
    favorite game. By which I mean, I cannot personally rate it highly, but
    I cannot say that it is of poor quality, either.

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

    From: Jessica Knoch
    [This review originally appeared on Jessica's webpage at
    http://www.strangebreezes.com/if/reviews/comp02.htm]

    TITLE: Jane
    AUTHOR: Joseph Grzesiak
    EMAIL: jane SP@G ifcomp.org
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/jane/jane.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    This was an interesting one. It starts right out telling you that it
    "deals with the potentially uncomfortable topic of domestic abuse."
    Telling the player up front about the topic is a very wise move, in this
    case: Jane is really nothing like a traditional work of interactive
    fiction. The idea is simple. You play the role of various characters
    over the course of a few weeks/months in the story of a woman with a
    violent husband. There isn't a lot of room for changing the course of
    what happens; in fact, I think it's pretty much impossible. You may not
    notice it much the first time, but play it through again. This isn't
    just the linearity of a story-game, though: the inability to affect the
    ultimate outcome of the story actually lends to the sense of
    helplessness in the title character, and the helplessness too of those
    around her, who watch and want to help but can't seem to find the right
    thing to do or say.

    The conversation is done with menus, which is a fine way of doing it
    when you're trying to tell a specific story. The problem is this: a menu
    with only one option isn't really much of a menu. The author explains in
    the afterword that he would have preferred to implement more
    conversation options. I can imagine it's a pain in the butt, keeping
    track of conversations and characters and stuff -- heck, Emily Short has
    written more than one game entirely consisting of complex conversation.
    So I don't mind too much.

    I also agree with what the author says in the afterword about alternate
    endings: if he had implemented an ending where Jane gets away from her
    abusive husband, then he would risk making any ending where she doesn't
    seem like a "losing" ending, and that can't help but trivialize the
    subject. It's a difficult thing to handle in a work of interactive
    fiction, but I think this is an excellent attempt.

    It is a little disorienting to switch from one character to another --
    yes, I know everyone always says that. It doesn't make it any less true,
    and it's also true that it detracts from the overall feel of character
    and cohesiveness of the story. At the same time, though, the two scenes
    near the beginning that we get from the husband's point of view are
    invaluable for a deeper understanding of the complexities of the topic,
    which is something the author was clearly trying to portray.

    There's no question that the piece is being used to raise awareness of
    domestic abuse, and I'm not really sure that the Comp is the place for
    such things. On the other hand, it certainly is honest about what it's
    doing, and uncomfortable though it is to play through, there is no doubt
    of it's sincerity. And I do approve of raising awareness of such things
    in general. This is by no means a fun game, but it is well coded and a
    competent job of story-telling.

    There are a couple of oddities that only an "IFer" would notice, mostly
    scenery objects that can't be interacted with as you might expect in
    reality: shoes that can't be picked up, a bench you cannot sit down on,
    and a wife you can't kiss ("Keep your mind on the game" is quite a
    jarring response when I've forgotten that this is anything related to a
    "game" at all). Plus I couldn't save or transcript and I don't know why.
    In summary, a thoughtful piece that addresses a serious issue in a
    skilled and competent way.

    (There, I went the whole review without mentioning Photopia. D'oh, I
    just did!)

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

    From: David Welbourn
    [This review originally appeared on David's webpage at
    http://webhome.idirect.com/~dswxyz/comp02reviews.html]

    TITLE: Janitor
    AUTHOR: Peter Seebach and Kevin Lynn
    EMAIL: ifcomp SP@G seebs.plethora.net
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/janitor/janitor.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Do you like puzzles? Do you like a challenge? Are you nostalgic for
    games like Colossal Cave and Zork I? And do you like breaking mimesis?
    Yes? Then this is the game for you.

    Remember Zero Sum Game from 1997? In that game, you had just finished an
    adventure with the high score, but then your mom ordered you to put all
    your treasures back where you found them. Janitor starts out much the
    same way, except this time you’re a janitor at the Flavorplex Text
    Adventure Company, a player has finished the game, and it’s your job to
    put everything back. And just like in Zero Sum Game, the score goes down
    when you solve a puzzle, not up. Fortunately, Janitor is far less
    bloodthirsty.

    An added conceit to the proceedings is the addition of mimesis and space
    warping technologies. The internal game, a cave-crawl called Flavorplex
    Qualifying Adventure, is built like a series of movie sets adjoining the
    company’s hallways, and populated with actual treasures. But internally,
    a mimesis field makes the sets seem real and hides the access corridor
    exits, while some other pseudoscience connects the rooms so that they
    follow the adventure’s desired layout. And you’re equipped with a
    mimesis disruptor in your mop so you can see how the rooms really are
    and get your job done.

    So once you’ve understood all that (and probably made two contradictory
    maps of the place), and stopped chuckling at all the in-jokey game
    references, you can start figuring out what goes where. As you might
    imagine, it’s somewhat tricky, and in places somewhat unfairly so. I
    wasn’t done when my two hours ran out, and I had to rate it partway
    through. (There are hints, both in-game, and in an external html file
    should you need them. And, in time, I did need them.)

    Still, the game wouldn’t let me go. Quite apart from the desire to
    successfully reset the game, there were clues that something wasn’t
    quite right about Flavorplex; there’s a mystery to solve as well. You
    might want to talk to your boss’s secretary, Eva, guest starring from
    Grim Fandango, about a few things.

    And when you’ve won Janitor, you can still continue to play by playing
    the Flavorplex game forwards! What fun.

    Rating: 8

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

    From: Tony Baechler

    TITLE: Moonbase
    AUTHOR: Mike Eckardt (writing as QA Dude)
    EMAIL: mike SP@G tiredparents.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: TADS 2
    SUPPORTS: TADS 2 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads2/moonbase/moonbase.gam
    VERSION: IF Comp release

    This game was all right, but apparently had a bug which prevented it
    from being completed. Also, there were spelling errors which should have
    been noticed. I am going to spoil a puzzle because I know that many
    players will not appreciate it. There is an instant death room to the
    north of the storage room, but because of the bug there seems to be no
    way to get around it. When I tried to get or wear the item needed, I was
    told that my load was too heavy, even though I dropped everything.

    Upon checking the walkthrough, I found out that I was in fact doing the
    right thing and no other solution was offered so I gave up. I have a
    slight objection to having to go to the author's site for the
    walkthrough. I also object to the assumption that everyone uses HTML
    TADS, so they must be using Windows or similar and can access Java. I am
    referring to the plaque in the foyer. It so happens that I do use
    Windows but my preference is the plain DOS TADS interpreter. It also
    happens that I am blind and have almost no access to Java sites, even if
    I use Internet Explorer. Authors, please quit assuming that everyone
    uses your OS and has the same resources available as you. This has
    applied to Adrift in the past and applies to this year's Glulx game.
    (No, I had no problem with reading the walkthrough, just the Java site.
    It did not look terribly interesting anyway, so I guess I did not miss
    much.)

    Sorry I was on my soap box, but I am done complaining for now. For a
    first time effort, the game is not too bad. It is fairly short and the
    puzzles are simple. There are no hints but they are not really needed.
    For amusement, read the curtains in the transporter rooms. That was
    probably the best part of the game. I quit with 13 points. Except the
    instant death room, I have no serious complaints. There is another
    slight bug, but not serious. If you climb the ladder, it never shows up
    on the status line and in fact it seems you cannot get off the ladder.
    Movement is unrestricted though, so I think a flag is set and nothing
    else. Also, the "x all" feature works and most objects have
    descriptions. There seems to be many unnecessary objects but I think I
    never got to the puzzle which required them. It also seems that you only
    need to use one puzzle per object. You must be carrying a certain tool
    to wear the item in the storage room. That is fine, but if you try to
    "tighten" something it will not work.

    My comp rating: 3

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

    From: Emily Short
    [This review originally appeared on Emily's webpage at
    http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Comp2002Reviews.html]

    TITLE: The Moonlit Tower
    AUTHOR: Yoon Ha Lee
    EMAIL: requiescat SP@G cityofveils.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/moonlit/Moonlit.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Prose compels a certain pace. This is a game to be read slowly, as
    though dreaming. I tend to be wary of poetic diction in IF, because it
    can confuse and clutter the imagery, make interaction difficult, and
    stop immersion with its excesses of pretense. There's some danger of
    that here, too. It takes discipline not to let the eye skim for nouns to
    interact with.

    There is much that is lyrical and strange and compelling here, all the
    same. This is a game of phantom scent and overheard whispers; it all
    takes place in averted vision, full of longing and grace. It is like
    haiku, or that poem of Ezra Pound's with the jeweled stairs and the dew
    on the stockings, where all the sense lies in the interstices of what is
    said.

    Now, you may call me inconsistent for liking this game when I decried
    The Granite Book for being mood-driven and obscure. The central story is
    a bit hard to be certain of here, too, but I felt I had a better guess.
    I don't deny Moonlit Tower has some flaws. The puzzle design is not its
    strong suit. I would not have guessed how to use the maple leaf; I never
    did figure out how to acquire the lanterns; I only saw what one can do
    with the comb when I read the AMUSING.

    Even leaving that aside, the structure of the game was a bit vague: it
    seemed as though parts were a little uncertain, a little less organized
    than they might have been, the symbolism chosen but its full meaning
    unexplored. The excellence of this game is in the language, and even
    more in the textures, the lighting, the play of senses. I was content to
    see and be amazed.

    The only thing that threw me was the amalgamation of material from
    distinct Asian traditions; I kept trying to place the story, and
    failing. But that's just as well, perhaps. I was grateful for the
    endnotes.

    This was my favorite game of the competition.

    Rating: 10

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

    From: Edward Lacey
    [Originally posted on rec.games.int-fiction]

    TITLE: MythTale
    AUTHOR: Temari Seikaiha
    EMAIL: temari_se SP@G yahoo.co.uk
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/mythtale/MythTale.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Any game based on the mythology of Ancient Greece would have to capture
    some of their grandeur in its writing if it is to succeed, and MythTale
    does not disappoint in this regard. In fact, by setting the body of the
    game in the house of a modern day myth-enthusiast, with various
    mythological vignettes triggered as he uncovers a set of items, the
    author goes one stage further and contrasts the world of mythology,
    where you battle giants and bring the dead, with life with the real
    world, where the worst monster to face is the spider in the garden shed.
    The difference in the nature of the events described is brilliantly
    reflected by a distinct shift in the style of the writing (be sure to
    try X ME in both the real world and the myths), and within this context
    passages that might seem slightly dull or overblown are entirely
    justified. I don't think there's a Muse for interactive fiction, but
    this is one of the competition entrants that shows we can do quite well
    enough without one.

    Unfortunately, how precisely the mythological vignettes relate to the
    main part of the game is not at all clear. It is suggested at the start
    of the game that they represent the protagonist's daydreams (and the
    response to CONSULT MYTHS ABOUT ME lends support to this), but it is
    possible to die in them and bring the game to an end. The endgame, in
    which the player is confronted with a decision about what to do with a
    particular object, seems rather detached from what precedes it; the
    object and the opportunities it brings could represent the fruits of the
    modern character's labours, and may call to mind an object acquired in
    the brief introduction, but I was left wondering how the character I'd
    been playing through most of the game got on after I left him, and the
    lack of an explanation of how the items he'd been searching for had
    ended up where they were was disappointing.

    Some other small criticisms can be made. There are a few
    guess-the-syntax moments, one puzzle involves a device that I can't
    believe any sane person could have designed (though most of the other
    puzzles are logical) and one object was incorrectly classified as
    plural, which caused confusion when I attempted to refer to it as 'it'
    and received a message about a different object. None of this prevents
    MythTale from being well worth playing, but it isn't going to last as
    long as the myths it refers to.

    My Rating: 6

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

    From: Suzanne Britton

    TITLE: Photograph
    AUTHOR: Steve Evans
    EMAIL: trout SP@G netspace.net.au
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/photo/photo.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    "Photograph" is a vivid, professionally well-written and competently
    programmed work. It is story-based and nearly puzzleless, but manages to
    carry the player through the plot at a comfortable pace, without
    dissolving into the tedium that sometimes characterizes pure-story IF.
    There are things to do, problems to solve, and each project serves to
    drive the plot. Occasionally, though, the prodding feels a little too
    blatant, as if the player is being bounced from point to point (need to
    eat, need to sleep, etc.) with bits of story in between.

    "Photograph" is a rather dark character study, reminding one of
    "Rameses" from two years ago. It is the story of a man who fixates on a
    single "wrong turn" in his past, only to find, in the end, that the
    hollowness within him runs deeper than he knew. What most raises
    "Photograph" above the ordinary is the rich symbolism with which it
    embellishes this tale, particularly the use of Egyptian mythology. It
    skates the thin line between over-blatant and over-obscure, occasionally
    erring towards the former, but usually just right. One is left with a
    host of questions and intriguing ideas, especially regarding the
    parallel between the Akhnaten dream and the fate of the protagonist (a
    parallel reinforced throughout the story by subtle and not-so-subtle
    means).

    Akhnaten stands on the shore, awaiting the boat which will take him to
    the afterlife. Belatedly, he wonders if it was wise to reject the
    Egyptian pantheon in favor of Aten. But then he reaches under his robe
    and finds a cavity where his heart should be. This "doesn't auger well
    for [his] meeting with Osiris (the weigher of hearts).".

    Consider the protagonist, who also made a decision that he later
    regretted, and blamed that decision for the hollowness that grew within
    him. Yet when he gets a chance to go back and take the other branch of
    the fork, the epilogue describes a man who dies just as lost, just as
    empty. Akhnaten worried that his choice of deities might bar him from
    the afterlife, only to find in himself a deficiency so severe--a hollow
    heart--as to render the question moot. Perhaps Jack's deficiency is also
    pre-existing.

    This is but one of many lines of thought to follow. Another would
    explore the symbolism of the picture frame. Is it, as the final lines
    suggest, a shriveled organ, waiting in a jar for the boat of Ra? Was
    Jack's mistake in fixating on this frame--this single deciding moment in
    his life--to the exclusion of all else, much as Akhnaten threw away the
    richness of the Egyptian pantheon in favor of his pet god, Aten? But on
    the other path, Jack makes the same mistake of fixation: he gets
    swallowed up in his work.

    Whichever way you approach it, "Photograph" is irredeemably fatalistic.
    The protagonist seemed doomed from the beginning, by his own nature, to
    lose himself. I can't agree with such fatalism; nevertheless, the work
    is too rich and thought-provoking not to love.

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

    From: Mike Russo
    [Originally posted on rec.games.int-fiction]

    TITLE: The PK Girl
    AUTHOR: Robert Goodwin
    EMAIL: sakurafiend SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: ADRIFT
    SUPPORTS: ADRIFT runtime
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/adrift/the_pk_girl/the_pk_girl.taf
    VERSION: IF Comp release

    This anime-inspired game takes a story-driven IF and mixes in a dating
    sim and whole mess of world interactivity. The amount of depth here is
    impressive; there's something like half a dozen girls you can woo, a
    bunch of nonessential locations that evolve as the game goes by, and a
    truly amazing number of objects you can find and play with.

    The central plot is nothing to write home about -- cute girls with
    psychic powers stalked by a mysterious conspiracy -- and dating sims in
    general strike me as somewhere between creepy and pathetic, but where PK
    Girl really shines is in the incredible amount of stuff you can do. I
    wound up picking up an ice-cube tray early in the game; later on, I
    managed to fill it with water, stick it in a freezer, pop out the
    finished cubes, and started to make a frozen dessert with it. There was
    no obvious puzzle associated with it, although I'm sure there was a use
    for it, perhaps in currying favor with one of the girls. That level of
    interactivity is present throughout the game; you can help a character
    cook dinner, for example, or help comb another's hair. The sheer wealth
    of different objects to play and experiment with, some useful to the
    plot, some not, really makes the game feel more interactive and engaging
    than much story-driven IF, to say nothing of the average dating sim,
    which typically relies on simplistic multiple-choice gameplay.

    I'm not a particular fan of this genre, which hurt its appeal a bit, but
    for a player with different sensibilities, PK Girl could well be the
    most enjoyable game in the comp, with enough replayability and depth to
    have a long lifetime beyond the judging deadline.

    Rating: 8

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

    From: Emily Short
    [This review originally appeared on Emily's webpage at
    http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Comp2002Reviews.html]

    TITLE: Rent-a-Spy
    AUTHOR: John Eriksson
    EMAIL: joers SP@G wmdata.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/rentaspy/RentASpy.z8
    VERSION: Release 1

    This reminded me in some ways of an Andy Phillips game -- Heroine's
    Mantle, say -- but without the mad verve. It does have the persnickety
    puzzles that have unbelievable solutions, and the somewhat sketchy
    implementation. There were a number of things I did that I think
    shouldn't really have worked; I don't, for instance, believe it is
    actually possible to open elevator doors in the way this game's PC does.

    Once again we have an office setting, once again we have to guess
    people's passwords -- and they're shamefully bad about choosing
    appropriate ones, too. Most password systems protecting data of any
    significance will refuse to allow you to use common words or names, but
    this is a rule that apparently does not exist in IF-land. The part of
    this game that could've been a more interesting setting -- the medical
    lab, with the potentially dangerous chemicals and funky machinery -- is
    under-implemented.

    I do like the fact that the game encourages you to clean up after
    yourself in good spy manner. I have a bit of a quibble, though: it
    doesn't apply this rule universally. You can leave one thing out of
    place -- because it is physically impossible to leave it in its original
    position and still escape -- and no one seems to notice that, though it
    seems just as significant as all the other things that you are required
    to tidy up after yourself in order to obtain a perfect score.

    Some other nitpicks that drove my score for this down a little: there
    are some grammatical errors. The writing is serviceable, but not
    stellar. The responses, especially towards the end of the game,
    inexplicably flicker between first person and second person. Debugging
    mode was left on, making it possible to find information you're not
    supposed to know (though in my case this was convenient, as it allowed
    me to cheat without actually having to go to the walkthrough until
    nearly the end of the game). The truck is peculiarly implemented and for
    some time seems only to be a message-daemon, since it passes through the
    room in which you're standing and then cannot be referred to again.
    (This wouldn't be so important except that the truck is obviously part
    of a puzzle solution; the player is going to be trying to interact with
    it. The game ought at least to recognize such attempts, with comments
    like "the truck has gone by too quickly for you to catch", rather than
    acting as though something of critical importance has not even been
    implemented.)

    Little things, you know, but they add up, making the whole seem slightly
    shabby around the edges.

    Rating: 5

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

    From: Tony Baechler

    TITLE: Screen
    AUTHOR: Edward Floren
    EMAIL: edwardfloren SP@G netscape.net
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/screen/screen.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    I really enjoyed this game, but it had small faults. Before I mention
    them, I would first like to mention that it was very well-written. I
    found no obvious grammar errors. Almost everything I examined had
    descriptions. I found no obvious bugs. I liked the overall premise. The
    best way to describe it without spoilers is "short and sweet." However,
    it is just the right size for what it is trying to do.

    It had small faults. Probably the biggest was that it could not make up
    its mind about whether we are in first or third person. At the beginning
    it was obviously first person. It moved into standard IF, which I think
    is second person. Finally, it was third person in the cut scenes. This
    was a little jarring since I had already figured out my name but it kept
    referring to me by name as if I was reading a book about a stranger. I
    felt myself becoming distanced from the PC, as if I am looking at him
    through an outside window or some such. Overall, this was minor but
    detracted from the game.

    Secondly, I felt it could have transitioned into the three parts more
    smoothly. In other words, suddenly I am in a different part and am
    trying to figure out who I am and what I am doing. I guess it did a good
    job though because the first thing I thought to do was examine myself.
    It did a fair job of describing me, but I thought that part 3 was better
    done with more described characters. The NPCs were cutouts but that was
    perfectly fine for a game like this. They both gave clues as to what
    they wanted, so by poking around it was obvious what I was supposed to
    do in part 2.

    Finally, it lost some points for originality. Sorry, but similar devices
    have been used before. Besides, I am a little confused how the screen
    got there in the first place. Again, though, I emphasize that these
    faults were very minor. The game was slightly above average. The faults
    might have been less noticeable if the game was larger, but I think the
    reason why I liked the game as much as I did was because of its small
    size. It is enough to capture my attention but is not too long and drawn
    out. I was never this PC but can relate to his nostalgia, even with the
    narrative style changing as it did.

    If the transitions were slightly smoother, this would be a good game to
    polish and release after the competition is over. It is a pleasant way
    to spend 10-20 minutes. Congratulations and good job. I would like to
    see more from this author, since I like his writing style.

    My comp rating: 6

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

    From: Mike Russo
    [Originally posted on rec.games.int-fiction]

    TITLE: The Temple
    AUTHOR: Johan Berntsson
    EMAIL: temple SP@G ramsberg.net
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/temple/temple.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Hoary as the genre is, I'm a big fan of Lovecraftian horror, and The
    Temple manages to nail the obscure sense of existential menace that
    makes it work; the city it depicts feels almost like a living thing,
    aged, decrepit, and full of hate, although the descriptions do provide a
    few moments of unintentional hilarity (the "irregular-sized basalt
    blocks of irregular size" spring to mind). Though there are no elements
    that are specific to the Cthulhu Mythos that I could detect, the
    dream-world setup echoes the best of Lovecraft's work, and while
    Charles' longing for his lost love seems more out of Poe than anything
    else, it certainly adds a welcome complexity to the theme; there's hope
    as well as despair, which makes the ultimately positive ending fit the
    story better than it would in a straight Lovecraft pastiche.

    I enjoyed the puzzles and felt them to be generally well-integrated,
    although that could reflect my own bias in favor of messing around with
    rituals. I did need to consult the walkthrough at one point, since
    knowing how much Lovecraft liked cats, I hadn't thought of throwing
    things at the one in the game, but for the most part there were enough
    clues to know both what to do next and why it was important.

    The inclusion of an NPC in the same situation as the player was a nice
    touch, permitting a few fun puzzles that required teamwork, and cleverly
    allowing the author to play up the horror of the situation without being
    forced to manipulate the player too heavy-handedly. I did run into one
    fairly significant design bug -- Charles helped dig me out of a cave-in
    after I opened up a portal and sent him back to his own time! -- but
    aside from that, the game was quite solid.

    It's true that The Temple isn't fleshed out as completely as it could
    have been -- leaving plenty to the reader's imagination is a critical
    part of Lovecraft's style, but it still would have been nice to know
    more about the presence trapped in the vial, or have a better idea about
    where the cultists generally got their victims -- and the puzzles
    generally feel lightweight -- boiling two powders together isn't quite
    as eldritch a ritual as I'd have liked. But it succeeds quite well at
    evoking and sticking to a mood, and presenting gameplay that fits that
    mood admirably.

    Rating: 7

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

    From: Jessica Knoch
    [This review originally appeared on Jessica's webpage at
    http://www.strangebreezes.com/if/reviews/comp02.htm]

    TITLE: Till Death Makes A Monk-fish Out Of Me
    AUTHOR: Jon Ingold and Mike Sousa
    EMAIL: jonnyingold SP@G netscape.net, mjsousa SP@G attbi.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: TADS 2
    SUPPORTS: TADS 2 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/tads2/tildeath/tildeath.gam
    VERSION: Release 1.0

    Heh. Great title. One of the neatest things about this game is the way
    the TADS is made to look like Inform, the way it used to look on my old
    interpreter no less. This is indeed very kewl. But on to the game!

    You play a scientist at some unspecified point in the future with a
    nifty device that allows people to transfer their consciousness to other
    people's bodies, apparently for a short time. You are going to use the
    device to vacation on the surface for a while (oh, you and your fellow
    scientists are at an underwater base, did I mention?) when something
    goes horribly wrong. The scene where something goes horribly wrong is
    actually sort of funny, and well-coded, and in general fun. For
    instance, there's an emergency switch to open the door and get out. If
    you try to pull it first, the game says "It's a push switch," and if you
    try to push it first, it says "It's a pull switch," just to make you
    take that extra turn. This is great. Normally, this sort of artificial
    time-wasting is not great, it's just annoying, but it works here because
    the game doesn't start until after you don't make it out of the first
    scene. Clear?

    Ah, there are some great moments in this game. The first two puzzles,
    involving getting out of where you wake up, are terrific and clever (and
    I solved them without hints). By the way, the hints come in three
    different levels of helpfulness, and are location-dependent, so that
    when you are in a certain room you get the hint for the puzzle it thinks
    you're working on. Not always the right one, but it does take into
    account what you have in your inventory, or at least it sure seems to.
    It's very cool, although (as I said) problematic. Come to think of it, I
    solved the next puzzle or two on my own also. Very well done.

    What's also fun about the game is that you, as the player, actually know
    more about your situation in some ways than the PC does. Then again, the
    PC knows what the machine was supposed to do and you, the player, do
    not. So it's kind of a trade-off. Still, the quirkiness and, well, I
    almost want to say naiveté of the PC are really very humorous. I lose
    the humor a bit when I suspect that the PC knows things about how the
    computer works that he isn't sharing, but with a few hints you can get
    by. The password and key puzzle from the latter section of the game is
    very very tricky, but quite novel and very good. By the way, when I was
    halfway through the puzzle I thought, "All right! What's 'dog' in
    French?" and typed "chien" without thinking much about it. When that
    didn't work, I spent five minutes trying to remember how on Earth you
    say "dog" in French (since I had it wrong). But as I said, the actual
    solution was terrific.

    Where does the game miss out? Well, there was the frustration of not
    being able to do something and not finding any hints, because I was
    going about the solution in the wrong way. I assumed I needed to
    re-enter a room to get something, when actually I needed to be in a
    different location to get what was in the room (thus the problem with
    location-based hints). And there are some spelling mistakes and
    punctuation quirks. At one point, the status line lists you as being "on
    on the trolley." And an item is "far to heavy" to pick up. There are
    also a few missing synonyms, like using "Rosalind" after she's in
    pieces. And it's tough, I know it's tough, to implement being in a
    location within a room by implementing it as a separate location (which
    is what seems to have happened with the metal drawers). It's tricky
    because there are basic things in the larger room that you want to be
    able to refer to from the smaller section of room. Let me clear things
    up: You are on a large drawer, pulled out from a wall of drawers, and
    the room description mentions both metal drawers and a ceiling. But from
    where you are you "don't see any ceiling here," nor the metal drawers.
    It's a bit misleading, but very forgivable.

    Anyway! For most of the game, the writing is either effective but not
    attention-getting, or startlingly funny. For instance, a metal plate
    sticks up from the ground "like a wafer in an ice cream," and later a
    particular item is sticking up "like a cocktail stick from a sausage."
    Those are attention-getting phrases, and while not smooth or sweet, they
    do bring a chuckle. I did feel pretty involved in the story, even if I
    didn't realize it until I was racing down the corridor on a metal
    gurney, being pursued by God knows what, and it occurred to me that I
    was pretty caught up in it. The best part was, I wasn't anxious or
    worried about being caught by the thing because of the overall light and
    amusing tone. Very impressive.

    There was one programming trick which, while I liked it at the time,
    caused me some puzzle-solving problems. If there was one particular
    object that the game wanted to draw your attention to, it would prevent
    you from examining other things by saying "Your eyes slide back to the
    ." That's pretty slick, and also effective because the player
    looks at whatever the thing is. The problem is, a line like that at the
    bottom of a room description makes me skim the room description faster,
    which means I missed critical objects that were listed and had no idea
    (for instance) that there was a hand scanner in the control room.

    My only other complaint would be that the ending is somewhat
    anticlimactic. I always like a good long ending that really wraps up all
    the loose ends, or just hits you over the head with them, and I wasn't
    really sure that the ending I got with Monk-Fish was the best one. I
    don't see what I could have done differently, but I still wonder.

    Overall, a very strong work with excellent writing and clever puzzles.
    Great job all around!

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

    From: J. Robinson Wheeler
    [This review originally appeared on Rob's webpage at
    http://raddial.com/if/reviews/index.html]

    TITLE: TOOKiE'S SONG
    AUTHOR: Jessica Knoch
    EMAIL: jessicaknoch SP@G mindspring.com
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/tookie/tookie.z5
    VERSION: Release 1.0

    This game has the same relentlessly cheerful narrative tone that Laura
    Knauth's "Trapped in a One-Room Dilly" did. I don't know whether such a
    tone is good or bad on its own, but if the player happens to be in a
    surly mood when it comes belting out at him, it can be a bit much.

    However, I don't take off points for friendliness; I just thought I'd
    mention it.

    The first comment I'd like to make is a general one, but I'll use
    "Tookie" as an example. I think that authors need to exercise restraint
    when it comes to opening text. One brief paragraph will usually suffice,
    if carefully crafted. If you need more than that to get across all of
    the material you have imagined, perhaps what you need to do is start the
    game in a different place, and have the exposition unfold interactively.

    Here is the first third of "Tookie"'s opening text:

       It started out a normal enough Saturday...

       You slept in late and watched part of the ball game in between naps,
       until Tookie, your faithful hound, ran over with the leash and would
       not be refused. You set out on a walk through the neighborhood (fully
       intending to be back in time to see the last few minutes of the
       game), when you spotted a rather strange thing in the sky.

    By this point, I was already thinking to myself, "Gee, this could have
    been done as IF, instead of as a cutscene." I could have started the
    game plopped out on the couch, or whatever, and Tookie could have run in
    with the leash and nagged at me until I figured out that I needed to put
    the leash on his collar and take him outside. And then I could have been
    alerted something in the sky, perhaps by Tookie, and EXAMINEd it for
    myself.

    It continues:

       Before you could say "Golly, I wonder what that is," an alien
       spacecraft had landed and three beings that looked like giant cats in
       silver jumpsuits had hopped out, grabbed Tookie right off his leash,
       and hustled him back into their spaceship! A voice hissed out at you,
       "Perhaps if you're clever enough, you can have him back, earthling,"
       and then the spacecraft jumped right into the ground, leaving nothing
       behind but a small hole and some scorch marks!

       Well, naturally enough, you started down the hole in pursuit of your
       dog! Man's best friend, and let's not forget this one is a purebred
       bloodhound, but the point is that no alien cat is going to steal your
       Tookie! The tunnel twisted and turned, but you followed it all the
       way down, slipping a bit at the end to find yourself here.... but
       where is here?

    See what I mean? This material also could have been part of the game. It
    might have been more fun, and more engaging of my interest. Although, if
    it had started that way, I might have ended up being disappointed with
    what I found down in the hole, which was a "collect the four gems"
    set-up, with multiple puzzles obstructing the path to each one.

    I can enjoy a good collect-the-gems game now and then. This one was not
    bad, although I was groaning a bit when I discovered that one of the
    puzzles was an algebra problem and another was a bowling match, even
    though I knew there would probably be a sensible solution to each of
    them.

    I was going to complain about the very first puzzle in the game, the
    acquisition of a ring of keys to the four locked doors, but I found out
    later on that the element I was going to complain about reappeared to
    more useful effect later in the game. Uh oh, thing-in-the-well won't let
    me touch the keys! I'd better figure out how to defeat it! Except, uh, I
    don't have anything to defeat it with. This turns out to be
    misdirection, and you can get the keys anyway, and the defeating of the
    thing in the well comes later on, for a different reason. Still, it kept
    me thinking along the wrong lines enough so that I went to the hints
    instead of solving it myself. I think that could have been designed a
    bit better, because the actual solution to the keys problem, and the
    in-game clues to solving it, were fairly original and clever, but I
    didn't appreciate it very much because I had to look up the answer.

    The game slightly confused me at one point, when I saw two rooms with
    holes in the wall, one of which had a gigantic aquarium tank, and I put
    a bowling ball through the hole in the wall upstairs from the tank,
    heard a smashing of glass, and returned to the tank to see that nothing
    had happened. I thought there was a bug, and I restarted, only to find
    out the bowling ball had shown up again in a completely different place,
    with no clue as to why. The in-game hints say that the aquarium is a
    completely useless bit of scenery -- so, er, why is it there? Just
    because the author had fun coding up a giant squid in a tank? I guess
    that's allowed. I guess.

    I had some gripes about the ring of keys, in that the game almost acted
    like it was smart enough to disambiguate automatically which one I meant
    -- I went south first, and the game took it upon itself to try the key
    for that door for me. But, for the other three doors, the process was
    more tedious. Once I have the key ring, the doors should just fling
    themselves open when I walk in the right direction.

    I want to point out two strange authorial choices that were irritating
    when they did not need to be. First:

       >x door
       You can't put your finger on it, but something about the large door
       in the wall makes you think of it as a "dropping" door. There is a
       row of colored leaves hanging from the top of the door.

       >x leaves
       See the row of icicles text.

    If you're going to bother to make a scenery object and give it a
    description, just put an actual description there. Especially when a)
    the reference is mimesis-breaking (mentioning game "text"), and b) the
    reference, if consulted, doesn't make any sense:

       >x icicles
       Cool, sharp, aloof. Each icicle looks to be about a handswidth long,
       perfectly symmetrical, and slightly bluish. I suppose that's to be
       expected.

    So the leaves are also cool, sharp, aloof, a handswidth long, perfectly
    symmetrical, and slightly bluish, as to be expected?

    The second example, similarly, shows the author taking the time to code
    a response that provides an unhelpful redirection, instead of being
    practical:

       >u
       The wide staircase curves around to enter the upstairs room on the
       north wall.

       Space Bar
       The walls here are decorated with black paint and pictures of stars
       and planets, which, coupled with the futuristic-looking tables and
       chairs scattered about and the bar, lead you to believe that what you
       are in is supposed to be, well, a space bar. The room is brightly
       lit, and all of the tables are empty of people, but there is a
       strange looking figure standing behind the bar. Finally, you can see
       the top of a curving staircase set in the north wall.

       >d
       There are two ways of going down from here: you may walk north to the
       spiral staircase, or enter the hole in the corner of the room.

    If I can go "UP" to get here, why can't I go "DOWN" to leave by the same
    staircase? You know where I want to go when I type that, because you put
    the code there to print this message. Maybe it's that you wanted to make
    sure I tried "ENTER HOLE" (which isn't actually an exit, either),
    because the response to that command provides a hint for a puzzle. Bad
    form.

    I had some gripes about the solution to Eddie's math problem. [Rob's
    answers have been changed to prevent the spoiler. --Paul] The problem
    was that I was saying "4" instead of "FOUR," but I think that the author
    could reasonably have accounted for this, sparing me trying a dozen
    different variations:

       >say 4 p.m. to eddie
       >say "4 p.m." to eddie
       >eddie, 4 p.m.
       >answer 4 p.m. to eddie
       >answer 4 pm to eddie
       >answer "4 pm" to eddie
       >answer "4" to eddie
       >answer 4 to eddie
       >eddie, 4
       >say 4
       >say "4"
       >say "4 P.M."

    My final gripe is that once the puzzle about Fred the bowling cat has
    been "solved," you shouldn't have to sit through all ten frames of a
    simulated bowling game. There really is no entertainment value to it,
    especially when it's padded out with [More] prompts for some kind of
    attempt at suspense. I can understand why coding this up was fun for the
    author, but the effect on the player is, unfortunately, tedium.

       >BOWL
       >G
       >G
       [repeat 7 more times]

    There is enthusiasm and energy to spare here, and some neat ideas. In
    the endgame, your "performance" is assessed, which I thought was
    amusing. Because I finished it after restarting, I took a few shortcuts
    (such as grabbing the key ring directly), and was marked off for this.
    Once again, I look forward to this brand-new author's next works, now
    that they've gotten this initial batch of IF ideas out of their system,
    and will have to dig a little deeper the next time.

    Also, "TOOKiE'S SONG"? What song? And why the lowercase i in "TOOKiE"?

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

    From: Edward Lacey

    TITLE: Unraveling God
    AUTHOR: Todd Watson
    EMAIL: jillandtodd SP@G earthlink.net
    DATE: September 2002
    PARSER: ADRIFT
    SUPPORTS: ADRIFT runtime
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/adrift/unravel/unravel.taf
    VERSION: 1.0

    Like a number of the other competition entries, Unraveling God is
    heavily story-based; in fact it contains essentially no puzzles at all.
    This is more than compensated for by an original plot and a generally
    high quality of writing that depicts the game's characters very
    effectively. The author also deserves credit for attempting to discuss
    the science behind the plot; while this isn't done totally convincingly,
    it places the scientific aspects of the game well above the "this works
    this way because I say so" style of explanation that characterises some
    science-fiction.

    The narrative jumps back and forth through time in a manner apparently
    inspired by Photopia, although the player controls a single character
    throughout and most of the game takes place in a single set of
    locations. The first of these differences was, for me, welcome, and I
    found it easy to empathise with the character, but the second difference
    is the cause of a couple of problems. While I didn't notice any
    inconsistencies in the text for the different time periods, the shifts
    aren't quite handled perfectly; for example, it's possible to get a
    phone call in one time period that should have been received in another.
    I would also note that the ADRIFT parser used by the game is not the
    best.

    However, these relatively minor criticisms would not on their own have
    prevented me giving the game more than the four points I awarded it. My
    real problem was with the game's endings. It was obvious that there was
    a right choice and there was a wrong choice. First, I tried the right
    choice, and got more or less the ending I'd expected. But the ending
    that followed the wrong choice was really quite shocking -- not because,
    as I'd expected, my decision would cause great harm, but because its
    final sentences as I read them seemed to suggest that my decision had
    essentially been irrelevant. This seemed both to undermine the key idea
    of the plot and made me feel angry that I was expected to regard what
    now seemed a needless sacrifice as the "right choice". Arousing strong
    feelings in the player would generally not be a bad thing, but in this
    case it felt that the game was trying to promote a particular
    moral/theological argument, and this left a bitter taste in my mouth
    that was reflected in my score.

    The author afterwards explained to me that my interpretation of the
    ending wasn't what he'd intended at all, and perhaps the lesson can be
    drawn from this that the reader of any text shouldn't attach too much
    weight to its final sentences. Looking back, I may note that I would not
    have reacted as I did if the game had not been so successful at making
    me sympathise with my character. Indeed, that the game appeared to me to
    support a worldview that, it turned out, was actually very different
    from that of the author is testament to his creativity. I look forward
    to playing any of the author's future offerings.

    My Rating: 4

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

    From: Cedric Knight

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