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ISSUE #21 - June 15, 2000

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

                             ISSUE # 21

               Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
                           June 15, 2000

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

    SPAG #21 is copyright (c) 2000 by Paul O'Brian.
    Authors of reviews retain the rights to their contributions.

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

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

    The Boggit
    Break-In
    Corruption
    Deephome
    Foggywood Hijinx
    The Frenetic Five vs. Mr. Redundancy Man
    The Jim MacBrayne games (Frustration, Golden Fleece, Holy Grail, Mission)
    LASH
    Perilous Magic
    Sangraal
    Toonesia
    Worlds Apart

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

    Timing. I was all set to write this editorial about Bedouin, Inc. and
    their bid to make text adventures commercially viable again through a
    new distribution channel: cell phones, a.k.a. the "Wireless Web." Then,
    Stephen Granade posted a long, thoughtful article on that selfsame
    subject to his About.com IF website. [http://interactfiction.about.com]
    That article not only provides much more depth and detail than my
    editorial would have, the opinions it offers basically mirror my own. In
    short, it does everything I wanted to do and more -- I urge you to check
    it out at http://interactfiction.about.com/library/weekly/aa061200a.htm.

    So I won't be writing about Bedouin in this space. Instead, I'd like to
    offer a few words on something that means a great deal to me: community.
    Specifically, the IF community. The advent of Bedouin and the big-time
    commercial interests that may accompany it has gotten me thinking a lot
    aobut what defines the IF community, what its strengths are, and how it
    might respond to injections of money and popularity.

    First off, I think I should take a stab at defining what I mean by "the
    IF community." To my mind, a member of the IF community is someone who
    takes an active interest in the ongoing development of interactive
    fiction. If you read or contribute to SPAG, XYZZYNews, or the int-
    fiction newsgroups on Usenet, you're part of it. If you hang out on
    ifMUD, you're part of it. If you've written a game, voted for the XYZZY
    Awards, or been a judge in the annual IF competition, you're part of it.
    If you regularly download and play the games on the IF archive, you're
    part of it. Lots of people fall into most or all of these categories,
    but all it takes is one. I'm part of it, and if you're reading this,
    chances are you're a part of it too.

    We're a fairly loose agglomeration of people, and there are a lot of
    differences between us. We cover a wide range of geographical locations,
    including Canada, Sweden, the U.K., Germany, and all areas of the U.S.A.
    Our ages range from teenager to grandmother. We run the full gamut of
    religious beliefs (from PC to Mac to Unix :), and no doubt span the
    political spectrum as well. We are one of those highly touted "virtual
    communities" that the Internet is said to be creating everywhere, and
    because of our particular mode of communicating with each other,
    differences that might be an important factor in other communities
    (race, ethnicity, appearance, class, background) are mostly invisible
    and irrelelvant. We're a diverse group, but we're bound by one
    overriding factor: love of interactive fiction.

    That dedication has carried us to some rather amazing achievements.
    Community efforts have inspired and fed various IF development
    languages, including several that are more sophisticated and easier to
    use than anything Infocom had in its prime. In turn, these development
    tools have made possible some truly outstanding works of IF, most of
    which SPAG has reviewed in its six-year history. SPAG itself is an
    expression of that community spirit, and so are XYZZYNews, the XYZZY
    Awards, the annual IF competition, the IF Book Club, ifMUD, and all the
    other myriad undertakings that have advanced the cause of hobbyist IF
    since its demise from the commercial arena in the early '90s. In a
    sense, Bedouin's interest in modern IF is a tribute to the strength of
    the IF community, because the money wouldn't come sniffing if there
    weren't signs that something interesting is happening here.

    However, that interest could also pose a threat to the IF community. You
    may have seen it happen before with something obscure you've taken a deep
    interest in, perhaps a favorite musician or artist: the mainstream
    notices, popularity rushes in, and suddenly you're having to share your
    private passion with a bunch of trendies who don't care so much about
    the art as about doing what's hip and hyped at the moment, not to
    mention that skyrocketing economics can take your object of interest way
    out of your price range and put you in competition for resources which
    are suddenly scarce in relation to the demand for them. Let me hasten to
    add that with Bedouin, the signs look positive. They've shown every sign
    of being good guys, from their consultation with various community
    members to their scrupulous respect of authors' intellectual property.
    In addition, they're not interested in blocking the traditional channels
    of IF distribution, just in adding a new channel and attempting to
    profit (alongside the game authors) from those new users. Moreover, the
    average cell-phone IF player isn't about to seek out the int-fiction
    groups or start crowding into ifMUD. Nonetheless, if IF becomes popular
    and lucrative again, you can be sure that the IF community won't feel
    like a little club anymore. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- just a
    change. And like most changes, it won't last forever. As long as you
    still take an active interest in the ongoing development of IF, you'll
    still be a member of the IF community. And if we, collectively, remember
    that passion and keep it as our foremost priority, we won't go far wrong.

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR------------------------------------------------------

    From: Neil Bowers

    [Neil sent this letter just after SPAG #20 was released, and the quoted
    text is from Nick Montfort's Christminster review.]

    I'll probably not be the only person to point this out ...

    > FOOTNOTE 1. A major Christ-initial place name and character name
    > may sound contrived, but truth is at least as strange as fiction.
    > Rees's home page [at
    > http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/people/wgr2/home.htm] reveals
    > that he's a fellow of Christ's College at Cambridge, and his
    > wife is named Christine.

    Unfortunately that's not the right Gareth Rees.

    The Christminster Gareth did go to Cambridge, but is no longer there.

    [Editor's note: D'OH! Correspondence with the IF author Gareth reveals
    that the web page referenced above is for Dr. William Gareth Rees of
    Christ's College, Cambridge. According to Gareth, "When I was an
    undergraduate at Christ's, we used to get each others' mail fairly
    often! So it's not really a surprise to be confused with him again!"
    Apologies to both Messrs. Rees for the error. Unfortunately, the email
    address provided in Nick's Christminster review was also incorrect. The
    raif Gareth Rees' email address is . The error
    has been noted in the versions of SPAG 20 stored on the web page and at
    the IF Archive. --PO]

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

    THE BERLYN FALL
    As one IF moneymaking venture takes the stage, another gracefully exits.
    Cascade Mountain Publishing, the business venture run by former Infocom
    Implementor Michael Berlyn, has closed its doors. According to Berlyn, a
    big part of the reason for CMP's downfall is that it was a "Hydra: print
    books, eBooks, and IF." Encouragingly, he also assures us that "Next
    time, it'll be just IF. And there will be a next time."

    NEW GAMES
    Some fairly large games came out this Spring, along with some fun
    experiments and parodies.
       * Z-Snake by Zach Matley (yet another z-abuse)
       * LASH by Paul O'Brian
       * Life On Gue Street by Chris Charla
       * Augmented Fourth by Brian Uri
       * Chico And I Ran by J.D. Berry
       * Dangerous Curves by Irene Callaci
       * Above and Beyond by Mike Sousa
       * DragonLord by Mark Silcox and Okey Ikeako

    NOT-EXACTLY-NEW GAMES
    The Spring also saw a number of familiar games clothed in a different
    guise.
       * Ditch Day Drifter was ported to Inform by Neil Cerutti. The
         original (TADS) game by Mike Roberts was reviewed in SPAG #2.
       * John Kean released Downtown Tokyo. Present Day.: The Director's
         Cut, which apparently is an expanded version of his 1998 competition
         entry. The original version was reviewed in SPAG #17.
       * Polyadv by David Picton is the 350-, 550-, and 551-point versions of
         Adventure [a.k.a. Colossal Cave] all rolled into one
       * Mike and Muffy Berlyn's game Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I., formerly
         a commercial product of Cascade Mountain Publishing, has been
         released to the IF Archive as freeware since that company's demise.
       * Countdown to Doom, Return to Doom, and Last Days of Doom, were all
         released by Topologika games in the 80's. Now they've all been ported
         to Inform and uploaded to the IF Archive by their author, Peter
         Killworth.

    ALL THE NEWS NOW FIXED IN PRINT
    For those of us who wax nostalgic about Infocom, Gunther Schmidl has
    finally assembled a complete set of all the newsletters they ever
    published. The title of this newsletter was originally The New Zork
    Times, but the threat of a lawsuit from a major metropolitan newspaper
    forced them to shift the title to The Status Line. There were 24 issues
    in all, and they're now all available in .pdf format on the IF Archive.
    According to Schmidl, text versions are due in the Very Near Future.

    LITTLE GAMES ARE EVERYWHERE
    Ah Spring, the time of year when a young newsgroup's fancy turns to
    thoughts of mini-comps! There were two notable mini-comps since the last
    issue of SPAG, and for some reason they both involved big lizards. Adam
    Cadre sponsored the Dino-comp, for games featuring dinosaurs, in honor
    of Matthew Amster-Burton's long-ago musing about how cool such a game
    would be. David Cornelson ran the Dragon-comp, in his words, "to dispel
    the notion that a cool or funny game cannot be written with dragons."
    Both comps attracted an impresive number of entrants. Also enjoying
    success was Marnie Parker's IF Art Show, the winning entry of which
    spurred lots of excited conversation on the IF newsgroups. For unknown
    reasons, the most recent Art Show entries have not been uploaded to the
    IF Archive, but they're available in a zipped file from
    http://members.aol.com/iffyart/gallery.htm. The results of the Art Show
    were as follows:
       * Best of Show - Galatea by Emily Short
       * Best of Landscape - The Cove by Kathleen M. Fischer
       * Best of Still Life - Statuette by Ian Ball
       * Honorable Mention - Guitar of the Immortal Bard by Jason Burns

    DESPERATELY SEEKING REVIEWS
    It had to happen sometime: Duncan Stevens has graduated and gotten a
    full-time job. Consequently, his always-prodigious review output is
    bound to dip a bit, and I'm counting on the rest of you to pick up the
    slack! SPAG contributions have been a little down this spring, as you
    can see from the fact that this issue shows fewer reviews and fewer
    contributions to the scoreboard. Another example: the SPAG Specifics
    section, which I ballyhooed as hard as I could last issue, received no
    submissions. Reviewers, where are you? In case you're wondering what to
    review, here for your benefit is this issue's 10 Most Wanted list, all
    games that have never been reviewed in SPAG, but really should be:

    SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
    ========================
    1.  Above and Beyond
    2.  Augmented Fourth
    3.  Chico And I Ran
    4.  Countdown to Doom
    5.  Dangerous Curves
    6.  Dr. Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I.
    7.  DragonLord
    8.  Guilty Bastards
    9.  The IF Art Show entries (any, some or all!)
    10. Westfront PC

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

    Consider the following review header:

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

    When submitting reviews:  Try to fill in as much of this info as you can.
    If you choose, you may also provide scores for the games you review, as
    explained in the SPAG FAQ. The scores will be used in the ratings
    section.  Authors may not rate or review their own games.

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

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

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

    From: Christian Baker

    TITLE: The Boggit
    AUTHOR: Fergus McNeill and Judith Child (Delta 4)
    E-MAIL: ?
    DATE: 1986
    PARSER: Quill (a bit dodgy)
    SUPPORTS: Commodore 64, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC.
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: http://www.c64.com/search.php3?sok=boggit&kind=realname

    The Boggit is a parody of the original Melbourne House adventure "The
    Hobbit". It starts off in "your round tunnel like hall", although the
    only difference seems to be that there's a toilet at the end of it. Then
    things really start to change. Grandalf (or rather "Gandalf") crashes
    through your window to give you a card and some exploding chocolates,
    you find out the only reason the dwarves bring you with them is to be
    fed to Maug (Smaug), and that Thorny's (Thorin) father is in a mental
    home and thinks Grandalf is his son.

    The whole game is written in the past tense, and it's also written in a
    third person perspective. The games writers were about 17 when they
    wrote this. The room descriptions are fairly dull and below standard,
    but the rest of the writing is really funny, and will make you want to
    laugh out loud (Watch out for when Thorny or the dwarves start to sing.
    It's fantastic!). The game is littered with IF references (one of the
    puzzles involve the cleaning robots from Hitchhikers Guide), although
    some objects seem out of place (a credit card on a mountain?). The game
    has an 80's "home-made" style, which I say just adds to its charm.

    The characters are very basic, although they do say something funny if
    you're lucky, but nearly all the characters are just cardboard cut-outs
    put in there to fit in with the game's Tolkien roots. They may be very
    funny at times, but most of the time they don't want to talk at all. The
    best characters in the game have to be the three trolls: Andre, Bernard
    and Matthew (scary!). Bernard has the occasional slip of grammar (which
    Matthew promptly corrects), and Andre just grunts. Great fun.

    The parser is very simple, and if you say something like THROW ROPE at a
    time when that's not part of the puzzle, the game will give you the
    impression that you have a made an unfair suggestion. Some of the
    puzzles just require common sense (the exploding chocolate one, and the
    Gameshow one), some require knowledge of a subject (a big no-no for
    IF), and some are just plain weird. Overall, the game is simple, but
    highly entertaining. Oh, and just for you, here's the whole of the
    Dwarvish song:

       Being a merry sort of bunch, the dwarves began to sing:

       We're dwarves, we're dwarves, all doomed to die
       We'll probably finish in the dragon's pie
       So we'll take ol' Bimbo Faggins, a real cement head
       Hopefully ol' Daug will eat him instead.

       Sing: Hog the gold!
       Pass the buck!
       Split Bimbo's share between us!

       Across the Wiffy mountains, all through dark Berkwood
       We'll drag ol' lardball with us, he'll do as dragon food
       And afterwards we'll celebrate, in Thornys treasure hold.
       With ale and nosh and diamond rings and imitation gold

       Sing: Hog the gold!
       Pass the buck!
       Split Bimbo's share between us!

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Break-In
    AUTHOR: Jon Ingold
    E-MAIL: ji207 SP@G cam.ac.uk
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/break-in.z5
    VERSION: Release 7

    The line between entertainingly silly and annoyingly silly is a fine
    one, and Jon Ingold's Break-In doesn't always stay on the right side of
    it: the game strives so relentlessly to be goofy that the whimsy feels a
    bit forced, and some serious game design flaws don't help. Still, there
    are some funny moments and a few genuinely clever puzzles amid all the
    weirdness.

    It's not unknown for IF to pull a sort of bait-and-switch with its
    genre--i.e., giving the player an initial premise that fits into one
    genre, which suddenly gives way to an unexpected development that throws
    the story into a different genre entirely. Trinity did it, to some
    extent (well, tourism isn't really a genre, but stumbling into a surreal
    fantasyesque dimension was a shift), and Once and Future did something
    similar (with somewhat peculiar results due to the divergence between
    the feelies--which studiously avoided any implication that the game
    wasn't all about war--and the manual, which referred, among other
    things, to a sword suitable for summoning spirits). Break-In takes those
    precedents and runs with them: there are several genres all going on at
    once, with no Big Transitional Event to indicate that the initial
    premise has yielded to something else. (The end of the game returns to
    the original plotline, with no acknowledgment of the wacky stuff that's
    gone on.) As in, the game conflates your ostensible mission--as a
    freelance burglary artist, to break into a home and retrieve some
    plans--with silly surreal stuff--chicken-dragons and such--and also with
    conventional fantasy, casually mixing all three together. There are some
    explanations provided, but they're not particularly convincing, and
    they're largely provided after the fact--i.e., there are no warnings
    that the game is about to take a sharp turn. There's nothing inherently
    wrong with all this, I suppose, but it does sort of destroy the
    immersive aspect of the story--the player constantly saying "okay,
    what's going on NOW?" generally is not particularly immersed. Similarly,
    while pieces of the setting are well rendered, it's so
    incoherent--things are juxtaposed that can't really be logically
    juxtaposed--that the player tends to give up trying to picture the
    scene.

    The fluidity of the genre boundaries isn't the main problem here,
    though--it's the game design. It's not all that difficult to render the
    game unfinishable in unexpected ways--e.g., by failing to properly
    manage inventory before a change of scene, or by failing to pick up a
    hidden object before leaving an area that, it turns out, you won't be
    able to revisit. There's lots more of that than there needs to be, and
    it makes it difficult to enjoy the silliness of the game--inventory
    management is about a prosaic a task as IF offers. The hint system,
    which is helpful in some areas but completely neglects others, doesn't
    help much. Worse, there are quite a few bugs-- some fatal, others merely
    irritating. Break-In is not especially polished--there are writing
    errors here and there along with the bugs--and the rough-edges feel
    often distracts from the game. There are some clever puzzles-- oddly,
    the one nominated for an XYZZY is far from the game's best; there are
    others that are much more creative--but some rely on rather large
    logical leaps, and one in particular is hampered by a lack of
    alternative solutions.

    It's a shame because, taken the right way, the game is actually very
    funny--the implicit premise is that spies after the end of the Cold War
    are reduced to concocting ridiculous projects to keep themselves busy,
    and the notion of espionage artists dealing with things like giant
    chickens is, at bottom, pretty amusing. The game may not be particularly
    immersive, but it's got a fair measure of wit, as in the following:

       By the doormat lies a brown-paper parcel, tied up with a length of
       string. It's probably just one of the Prof's favourite things.

    Or this:

       >get shoot
       The shoot is attached to some kind of model or pendant, which appears
       to be of an orange alien in a green dress dancing wildly. What a
       weird thing to have buried in your garden! It has several 'arms' of
       different lengths all pointing upwards, and each with the same cone
       shape as the main 'body'. There's nothing in the way of a head, the
       cone just rounds to a blunt point. Maybe something fell off in the
       hole.

       >examine alien
       No, on second thoughts, its actually just a knobbly carrot. You were
       holding it upside down.

    Here, the burglar/spy persona of the PC comes across well--you ascribe
    suspicious or fantastic properties to everything--and it would benefit
    the game if that persona were more often in evidence. After all, the
    beginning of the story sees the PC pondering the course of his career in
    rather weighty terms--"Still, its not petty thieving. It's for national
    security, which is different"--and it seems like there's plenty of humor
    to be mined from the PC's reaction to all the silliness. E.g. (not from
    the game--just my suggestion): "You reflect sourly that none of your
    training at M5 prepared you for giant chickens. An oversight, clearly."
    As it is, if you don't find the chickens funny, you won't find the game
    funny (and those chickens do get tiresome pretty quickly).

    Break-In is a game with considerable potential but not entirely
    successful implementation, in other words. Had the author chosen to make
    more of the story and PC, and less of the goofiness, the result might
    have been both funny and intriguing; as it is, there are some nicely
    done bits (intelligent puzzles, well-described settings) and a lot of
    mistakes. Try it only if you're in a very peculiar mood.

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

    From: Walter Sandsquish

    NAME: Corruption
    AUTHOR: Robert Steggles and Hugh Steers
    DATE: 1988
    PARSER: Magnetic Scrolls
    SUPPORT: Magnetic
    AVAILABILITY: Secondhand Retail/Auction (Out of Print)
    URL: Possibly
    VERSION: Version 1.12

    Two schools of thought define adventure games. One school says, "an
    adventure game is a story whose conflicts have been translated into
    puzzles," while the second believes, "an adventure game is a puzzle
    described in terms of a story."

    The difference is significant.

    If you look at "Corruption" through the eyes of the first school, you
    will see a vastly unfair and agonizingly difficult work of interactive
    fiction. The game cannot be finished, or even understood, without
    experience gained through player-character "death." What's more, I can
    predict, a little smugly, that everyone will discover, just before he
    thinks he is about reach "Corruption's" climax, that he neglected to do
    something at the start of the story, and must replay the entire game.
    For instance, I found out that I should have thoroughly searched the
    toilet sometime before the 15th move.

    If that sounds absurd, this may not be a game for you. Much of the
    behavior required of the player character, like breaking into his
    partner's office, would seem unmotivated -- even paranoid -- in any
    other storytelling medium.

    On the other hand, members of the second school of thought will find a
    mesmerizing, Chinese-puzzle-box of a game. "Corruption" is a giant
    riddle, and to decipher its meaning, you must play, and replay, each of
    its parts. Once the player has mapped out the movements of the
    non-player characters, he will recognize a web of deceit and betrayal,
    and be able guide his character to paths that lead to a satisfying
    ending.

    In this way, "Corruption" is similar to Infocom's murder mysteries, but
    "Corruption" is an English game, published by Magnetic Scrolls, and it
    puts the same sort of twist on text-adventure mysteries that the English
    director Alfred Hitchcock put on filmed mysteries. Instead of a
    professional detective or reporter, the player character is a naive
    everyman who becomes caught up in a criminal conspiracy.

    Unfortunately, conspiracies are difficult to uncover, and while a
    reporter or detective has an assignment, the everyman in "Corruption"
    has no immediate goal and will, most likely, wander around aimlessly
    until the player figures out where and when to look for clues.

    Fortunately, Steers and Steggles' prose doesn't ramble. It efficiently
    paints effective portraits of characters, events and locations, making
    the illustrations redundant. I turned the graphics off when I played.
    It's not that there was anything wrong with the illustrations, it's just
    that characters like the brusque secretary, who really tries to be
    friendly, and the indifferent lawyer, who, nevertheless, offers
    comforting platitudes to the law's victims, are vivid and honest enough
    to trigger mental images on their own.

    In short, "Corruption" is a well-written, bug-free puzzle fest, and the
    puzzles are strongly related to an interesting suspense story. Remember
    to save early and save often.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Deephome
    AUTHOR: Joshua Wise
    DATE: 1999
    E-MAIL: yesuslave SP@G yahoo.com
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/deephome.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Joshua Wise's Deephome is a rather uneven effort: it's a well-built
    world with plenty of attention to detail, and the setting is nicely
    done. As a game, however, it doesn't work so well--there are far too
    many mimesis-breaking moments and unfair puzzles--and the result, sadly,
    is rather unsatisfying.

    The objective, as conveniently laid out in a handy letter, is relatively
    simple--reopen and bring back to life the lost city of Deephome, which
    involves practical things like restoring the power and water as well as
    getting rid of some spirits that seem to be hanging around. Herein lies
    the first problem, however: you're told that these spirits are terribly
    dangerous, but they stand where they are for the entirety of the game
    and don't act threatening in any way--or, even, impede you from doing
    anything. They seem about as dangerous as paperweights, and it's hard to
    get all worked up about getting rid of them. There's an obvious purpose
    to restoring the power and water--accomplishing those tasks serves your
    purpose in the game, in fact, apart from giving you points--but not the
    spirit-banishing stuff. Moreover, in that you get a vital part of the
    formula for getting rid of them from the spirits themselves, these don't
    seem like particularly savvy spirits.

    The puzzles range from humdrum to rather irritating. Notable is the
    adversary you're told is allergic to "certain plants." The one plant
    that's prominent in the game isn't effective, however (and the syntax
    problems make it far from immediately clear that you need a different
    plant rather than different syntax), and the right one is buried in
    scenery. It has a lot of company in that respect, in fact--plenty of
    vital objects are buried in room descriptions with no hint that they're
    takeable. Other problematic puzzles include a bizarre combat sequence in
    which the first several attacks elicit both a "cries out in pain"
    message and a "your enemy notices you" message. There's also a puzzle
    that turns on a property of your body that you don't know about, and has
    almost no motivation other than the fact that certain suggestive objects
    are in close proximity. Another is made more difficult than it needs to
    be by confusion between "on" and "in," and another requires that you go
    through a series of steps with no way of fathoming the final result
    (i.e., the motivation). The best puzzles are the most straightforward,
    the ones that rely entirely on common-sense judgments--the ones that try
    to be cleverer than that end up being painfully nonintuitive. (One
    strange touch is that you get a point for visiting every location, so
    you can finish with less than the optimal number of points merely
    because you don't get around to visiting all the nonessential rooms.)

    As suggested, part of the reason the puzzles don't work particularly
    well is that there are plenty of technical problems, enough that it
    usually isn't clear whether a given attempt at solving a puzzle is wrong
    or simply not worded properly. Among the problems are objects mentioned
    in both the room description and in a separate line, objects so
    inadequately described that some of their salient features need to be
    inferred, and objects that can be examined but not taken before a search
    of another object turns them up. The writing likewise doesn't do the
    game many favors: there are lots of misspellings and misused words, and
    while certain moments are described well, others are rather underdone.
    The following exemplifies the unevenness of the writing:

       The main hall is quite large, and is lit by magical torches that line
       the walls all around, in a pattern that spirals up the grandiose
       room. Elevators hang in mid air, no longer powered. To the northeast
       is a small opening that is usually covered over by a tapestry that
       has long since been removed, to the northwest is a staircase leading
       up to one of the villages where your people lived; to the west you
       see the railway station. A main street runs to the south.

    "Grandiose" room? How does this character know that the opening was
    usually covered by a tapestry that has long since removed, or that his
    people lived in one of the villages? On the other hand, though, there
    are well-done bits in this description--"elevators hang in mid-air, no
    longer powered" is vivid and concisely described, and the "pattern" of
    torches that "spirals up" the room is nicely conveyed. The writing is
    mostly good enough to set the scene, in other words, but shot through
    with enough mistakes to make the reading less than fully pleasurable.

    The above problems are particularly frustrating because the story is
    actually pretty good. For one thing, the plot is refreshingly
    small-scale for fantasy--you're not saving the world or acquiring vast
    stores of wealth, you're simply exploring one city and performing
    certain tasks. That, in itself, suggests restraint, and it helps the
    story feel more immediate and less implausible than it might be.
    Moreover, much more detail than was strictly necessary went into the
    game--there's an encyclopedia lying around that has information on all
    sorts of topics, for instance, and there are certain elements of the
    game that get developed seemingly just to round out the story, in
    particular your religion. There are even some red herrings that point
    toward a sequel, and while that's not usually a great design choice
    (insofar as it encourages the player to spend time on apparent puzzles
    that can't be solved) it does convey the sense that there's more to the
    setting than the bare bones required for the puzzles. Likewise, there
    are quite a few locations that are there only to make the city feel more
    complete--and while some of them feel a little gratuitous, most are well
    chosen. The main fly in the ointment is a maze that isn't especially
    creative or well-rendered--the game would be better if the maze had been
    left out--but on the whole the setting is competently done and serves
    the purposes of the story.

    Deephome, in short, is a mixed bag. Enough thought clearly went into its
    crafting that the setting feels real, and the story is well thought out.
    The game aspect, unfortunately, has serious problems, significant enough
    that getting through the puzzles can be a major hassle. If some of the
    writing and technical problems get resolved, a sequel or a revised
    release of Deephome would be worth checking out.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Foggywood Hijinx
    AUTHOR: Ivan Cockrum
    E-MAIL: ivan SP@G cockrumville.com
    DATE: 1998
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/mini-comps/mini-comp/foggy.gam
    VERSION: Release 2

    If the recently released Break-In is any indication, the effects of the
    1998 chicken comp may be with us for years to come, as games inspired by
    the chicken theme but not finished on time appear one by one, covering
    the landscape with feathers and...well, best not get into that. At any
    rate, Ivan Cockrum's Foggywood Hijinx was one of the first
    chicken-themed post-chicken-comp efforts (we also saw Downtown Tokyo,
    Present Day not long afterwards), and it's an amusing effort that's
    somewhere between a spoof of the inherit-your-uncle's-fortune genre and
    a Penn & Teller homage.

    Your uncle was fond of practical jokes, it seems, and his last and
    greatest joke, now that he's dead, is to turn the whole family into
    chickens when they show up to squabble over his estate. The challenge is
    to overcome your newfound limitations and find a way out of the problem,
    using your uncle's various wacky inventions that litter his study. The
    inventions themselves are at least as amusing as the premise, since they
    include things like the Hedge Helpers (a pair of hands to extend one's
    reach) or the Buffalo-on-a-Spring. There's really only one puzzle, but
    it's quite a puzzle--it involves all sorts of clever mechanical
    finagling, and the various peculiar devices are described well enough to
    make the puzzle solvable. (Well, mostly--there are a few slightly
    misleading responses.)

    The point of Foggywood Hijinx is the humor, obviously, and there's
    enough of it to keep the game going for a while. Notably, a TV features
    Julia Child raving dementedly about the joys of killing chickens, e.g.:
    "I once killed a chicken just to watch it die." Your various bickering
    relatives continue to bicker in chicken form, but in more amusing ways:
    "Uncle Orpington pulls a long strand of fiber from the carpet. Cousin
    Red jealously tries to snatch it away, and a tug-of-war ensues." This
    wouldn't be enough to sustain anything other than a very short game, of
    course--and it might not be enough, depending on how long it takes you
    to figure out the puzzle, to get through this one without the jokes
    getting stale. Still, there are a few chuckles here and there, which is
    all that can be asked of a chicken-comp game.

    In sum, it's funny enough to be worth the 10-15 minutes, and if you
    haven't already seen too much IF involving chickens, it's worth a shot.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: The Frenetic Five vs. Mr. Redundancy Man
    AUTHOR: Neil deMause
    E-MAIL: neil SP@G demause.net
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/fren5-2.zip
    VERSION: Release 1.2

    The first edition of Neil deMause's Frenetic Five, a 1997 competition
    entry, had its problems--the game didn't really have a good sense of
    what to do with all your fellow superheroes--but it was also quite
    funny; this episode works out the kinks inherent in giving the PC
    multiple sidekicks, and it's even funnier than the original. The result,
    while not a wildly ambitious effort, is well worth playing.

    You are Improv, a MacGyveresque hero with a talent for making tools out
    of common objects, and your team consists of Newsboy, who can instantly
    provide a news update on any topic, Lexicon, who always knows the right
    word, Clapper, who can find any missing object, and Pastiche, who has
    assorted random powers (among them the power to sing lines from Top 40
    songs relevant to almost any occasion). You can ask your sidekicks for
    help at any time; you won't always get a hint from each of them, but
    you'll usually get help in some form somewhere. Truth to tell, not
    getting anywhere is at least as rewarding as making progress, since your
    fellow superheroes have a wide range of amusing sarcastic responses.
    Moreover, the ending encounter with the Mr. Redundancy Man of the title
    is absolutely hilarious, mainly for the villain's dialogue: "Welcome to
    my hideaway lair, my dear friends of mine! Your arrival has come
    fortuitously just in time for you to witness the sight of my greatest
    and most triumphal achievement!" The way you deal with him is clever,
    but it's the premise itself that makes this worth playing--he has such a
    wealth of amusingly repetitive dialogue that it's more entertaining to
    find all the ways to interact with him than to set to work at solving
    the puzzle.

    Both the first and second Frenetic Five games draw much of their humor
    from humdrum settings and tasks--i.e., you have superheroes riding the
    bus and trying to operate a copy machine--and while it's amusing here,
    as in the first one, the frustration aspect of wrestling with boring
    objectives comes perilously close to being simply irritating.
    Contributing to that problem is an unfortunate fellow named the
    Validator, who comments on everything you do, as follows:

       >examine validator
       Some superheroes are blessed with a magnificent physique, like
       Backhoe Woman and The Human Hydraulic Press. Some have powers that
       are only dreamt of by regular humans, such as The Defenestrator and
       Microwave-Popcorn Boy. Some have neither, but are at least fun to be
       around and get invited to lots of parties. Then there's the
       Validator.

       The Validator says, "Outstanding! It never would have occurred to me
       to inspect the Validator!"

       >kick validator
       It's not clear how to kick the Validator.

       The Validator says, "Oh, kick the Validator, huh?  Great idea!"

    You get the idea. It's not a bad joke, but it's not especially funny for
    more than a few turns, and the typical player will end up spending more
    than a few turns around this particular irritant. At any rate, the
    Validator brings out the basic mundanity of the setting--there's nothing
    that makes a setting seem quite so mundane as an irritating person
    commenting on everything you do--as well as the ho-hum nature of your
    powers, and those of your sidekicks. It's not every writer who could
    make mundanity funny, but this one does. E.g.: "The clerk looks
    thoughtful, in a manner that makes it clear that thought is not a usual
    requirement of the job."

    The puzzles, by and large, are nothing special, with the exception of
    the endgame puzzle, whose solution is a real "aha" moment. There's one
    earlier puzzle that takes either a major logical leap or better
    visualization skills than I have, but it's a relatively minor flaw,
    particularly in a game this small. The second episode of this series
    corrects the main flaw of the first one, namely that there was no
    particular rhyme or reason to when your fellow superheroes would be able
    to help you, and no standard way to ask them to intervene; here, "ask x
    for help" elicits either action (solving a problem you couldn't solve on
    your own) or some sort of response. It's not a perfect solution-- it's
    still rarely obvious when you should be addressing a problem with your
    own wits, in the manner of standard IF, and when you should be relying
    on your team--but at least Episode Two doesn't require you to guess what
    the other members of the team would do, which was the major flaw of the
    first Frenetic Five. Having a standardized way to kick a puzzle out to
    the rest of the gang makes things much easier.

    There's not a lot to the second edition of Frenetic Five; it's solvable
    in half an hour or so, and it doesn't do anything all that surprising.
    But it has several laugh-out-loud moments, and fans of superheroes will
    no doubt grin knowingly at the absurdity of it all.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLES: The Mission; Holy Grail; Frustration; Golden Fleece
    AUTHOR: Jim MacBrayne
    E-MAIL: jmacb SP@G medusa.u-net.com
    DATES: 1996
    PARSER: TADS 1.0
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URLS: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/mission.zip
          ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/hgrail.zip
          ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/frust.zip
          ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/gfleece.zip
    VERSIONS: The Mission: Release 1.02
              Holy Grail: Release 1.01
              Frustration: Release 1.02
              Golden Fleece: Release 1.00

    Among the most obscure denizens of the IF Archive are four games by one
    Jim MacBrayne--all written in 1989 and 1990 (possibly in AGT--I'm not
    sure), and ported to TADS and uploaded sometime in 1996. And while there
    are technically four games--Holy Grail, The Mission, Golden Fleece, and
    Frustration--they're so similar that they're practically
    indistinguishable. For that matter, their merits and faults are all
    pretty much the same as well: they're quite well put together but not
    especially engaging.

    The genre is vaguely fantasy, though the settings go back and forth
    between modern-day and otherwise (within the same game-- medieval
    castles and mysterious machinery sit virtually side by side). The
    premise of Holy Grail involves medieval stuff, as you might imagine, but
    it hardly matters, since the plot is all but irrelevant to these games;
    the objective amounts to object- collecting. (True, in Frustration, the
    idea is to pull together items on your shopping list--but it doesn't
    really change the game significantly, since you don't find the relevant
    items in places you're looking for them, unless you look for honey by
    climbing trees in deserts.) All four games are out-and-out puzzlefests
    in the tradition of classic IF--the objective provides a vague excuse
    for your being there, and a nice ending message, but doesn't really
    affect what comes in between.

    The puzzles themselves are at once varied and oddly monotonous. Keys for
    doors play a very big part--all four games are simply littered with
    keys--and magic potions with various unforeseeable effects are also a
    recurring theme. All four of the games feature at least one math problem
    and at least one maze, and all of them revolve around singularly bizarre
    magical transportation systems which make it annoyingly easy to strand
    yourself somewhere and make the game unfinishable. Not many of the
    puzzles break out of the apply-object-X-to-obstacle-Y feel, and many of
    those that do rely on trial and error and weird intuitive leaps. One
    puzzle in Golden Fleece, for example, involves what amounts to a giant
    see- saw, and requires lots of tedious object-moving to balance the
    seesaw properly; another at the beginning of Holy Grail involves, in
    essence, a timing device to open and close a door. Creative puzzles
    both, but highly obscure--and the relevant descriptions don't help much.

    There are other, stranger similarities. All four games have at least a
    few "Broom Cupboard" locations--Jim has a fondness for the things,
    whether or not there are brooms around--and three of the four have at
    least one long hall that you traipse along, opening doors. All of them
    are inordinately fond of buttons or switches that trigger something else
    somewhere in the game, no longer a favored approach to IF design;
    likewise, all of them have lots and lots of useless rooms. In fact, the
    author sometimes gives the impression that someone's requiring him to
    have a certain minimum number of locations (perhaps he worked for
    Sycamora Tree), because he often seems to make fun of himself for
    throwing in useless rooms:

       Small Chamber
          The small chamber you have entered has but two features. One of
       these is the small doorway inset into the wall to your north, whilst
       the other is its total lack of interest.

    Or, even stranger:

       Almost-featureless Chamber
          An involuntary gasp of recognition issues from your throat as you
       pass into this dead-end chamber. Wonderingly your gaze travels over
       the walls, floor and ceiling, remarking on the total absence of mossy
       growths, damp patches, stalactites or any other remarkable features.
       You are about to come to the the apparently-inescapable conclusion
       that this is a featureless chamber, when your eye comes to rest on a
       knobbly little bit of rock with a texture and colour marginally but
       sufficiently different from that of the surrounding rocks as to make
       the chamber almost-featureless.

    Calm down, Jim. There's a balance to be struck, of course, in crafting a
    setting--not every location needs to be absolutely crucial--but when a
    room has so little purpose that the description consists of a comment
    about how useless the room is, it's time to rethink. It's especially odd
    because many of the settings are effectively described--granted, some of
    them throw too many diverse milieus into too little space, but most of
    the subsections and smaller areas within the game are well done. Those
    areas include numerous locations that are just there for the atmosphere,
    and they work very well. Unfortunately, as shown above, there are other
    locations that don't even play a role in providing atmosphere, unless
    the desired effect is dullness. Moreover, the volume of useless
    locations leads to a lot more traipsing around than seems strictly
    necessary.

    As games, all of MacBrayne's works are only somewhat successful.
    Certainly, if you're looking for an involving story, these don't have
    much to offer--but even on their terms, as collections of puzzles, these
    games have some problems. Too many of the puzzles rely on guesswork and
    on experimentation rather than on logic as such; it's hard to imagine
    that most players actually like pushing a button and then poking around
    the landscape to see what, if anything, happened. Much of the
    transportation involves going through one-way doors of sorts--and if you
    failed to bring something with you, or press a certain button that will
    end up opening a certain door, you're stuck. In other words, there's a
    lot of unfairness and player-unfriendliness going on. There's one puzzle
    in Frustration that turns on a rather silly pun, and another in the same
    game that amounts to a stubborn-parser trick, and another in Holy Grail
    that's the ultimate in knowledge- obtained-by-screwing-up. There are
    moments of creativity, but they're outnumbered by rather mindless
    give-object-to-obstacle puzzles.

    The shame of it is that Jim MacBrayne's games clearly reflect some real
    effort--there are lots and lots of objects in each one, for instance,
    and the objects all interact in more or less sensible ways. The writing
    is thorough, and though it's a bit overdone in places, it's usually good
    enough to convey the scene efficiently. There's some entertaining whimsy
    scattered here and there as well--there's a cut scene in Frustration
    involving a giant teddy bear (really), and there are numerous jokes of
    varying degrees of cleverness scattered through all four games. There's
    even a sense of dramatic progression at times-- particularly in The
    Mission, where your quest for the toothpick of Quetzlcoatl (really) is
    periodically interrupted by scenes out of some old boys' club, where the
    potentates who commissioned you with the quest speculate on the chances
    of your completing it. It's a cinematic device that I'd never seen in
    IF, and it's used to great effect here. The problem is that standards
    have changed since MacBrayne wrote these games, and even well-written
    puzzle- fests don't elicit much more than a yawn anymore--even when they
    don't have the game design flaws that these have. The year when these
    were released--1996--saw thoughtful efforts like So Far, Delusions and
    Tapestry that integrated story with puzzles in a way that little, if
    any, IF had done before; obsolescence, for old-style fantasy/puzzle IF
    like MacBrayne's games and Path to Fortune came suddenly. Works on the
    wrong side of that divide are treated more like museum pieces than works
    of actual interest now--and while the development is a healthy one is
    many respects, it left some games that were clearly the product of
    considerable labor out in the cold.

    It can't fairly be said that these are terrific examples of their kind;
    they're flawed in several respects on the design front. But they're
    solidly put together, and nostalgic old-style IF buffs just might enjoy
    one of them; Holy Grail is probably the best of the lot, but there's not
    much to distinguish them. For most of us, though, the main function of
    Jim MacBrayne's games is to offer some perspective on where IF has come.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: LASH
    AUTHOR: Paul O'Brian
    E-MAIL: obrian SP@G colorado.edu
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/LASH.z8
    VERSION: Release 10

    Paul O'Brian's LASH is a puzzler (and not in the sense that it's full of
    puzzles). It's an intriguing story, well told, and technically it all
    hangs together well. The writing is strong, and the exploration options
    wildly diverse--there are lots and lots of endings and different options
    to explore, and any given player is unlikely to see all the text the
    game has to offer without the aid of TXD. But for LASH to really work as
    interactive fiction, it has to resonate emotionally with the player, and
    unfortunately the nature of the story makes significant emotional impact
    somewhat unlikely.

    The backstory is complicated and intricately done, and the game sets it
    up nicely. The Second American Civil War has come and gone, and you're
    picking through the rubble, looking for valuables, via satellite link to
    your handy robot. The documentation leaves some ambiguity about whether
    your ostensible aim is historical knowledge rather than simple lucre,
    but the trajectory of the game tends to shape your character into a
    looter rather than a historian. (The SCORE function, for instance,
    tracks your earnings.) At any rate, you're searching through a mansion
    that dates to before the First American Civil War, and your robot acts
    as your eyes and ears, to some extent at least. The premise, therefore,
    is terrific--at least, I thought so. I love reconstructing stories from
    clues and bits of information, and LASH seemed initially to be taking
    that path.

    It turns out that it doesn't, really; you end up exploring the past, but
    not in the way I'd expected, and what does happen, for lack of a better
    way to put it, isn't quite as subtle as pure historical reconstruction
    might have been. To be sure, the other way might have been unsubtle too,
    but my main reaction to the way LASH told its story was, okay, I get it,
    don't yell at me. It's certainly not a bad story, nor is it badly told,
    and the subject has hardly even been touched on in IF; there's nothing
    inherently wrong with any of it. But the game throws you so suddenly
    into the scenes that should affect you that it's easy to become detached
    from it all--you don't have enough time to get to know the central
    character before the relevant events begin. It's also clear that the
    distancing is, to some extent, deliberate; it matches a similar
    distancing that is going on in the game (arguably, in fact, two of
    them)--but as well as it works from a theoretical standpoint, it
    undermines the game's effect on the player. Likewise, there's a sequence
    toward the end of the game that's cleverly done--subtly, even--and yet,
    even when the player recognizes what's going on, it's unlikely to pack
    much of an emotional punch. Appreciation of the author's craft, perhaps,
    but that's not quite the same.

    As noted, LASH offers the player lots to do; some of the puzzles and
    problems have a significant effect on the outcome, and some don't,
    though there's not really a single way to "win" as such. Solving certain
    problems gives your character more money, of course, but it's not really
    clear that that's an unequivocal good, or sufficiently so that you
    should be striving for it at the expense of other goals. There's an odd
    division going on, however, between items and events that are there
    purely for historical perspective and those that merely represent more
    money, and it isn't even always clear whether solving the few puzzles
    there are (most of which are optional) will lead to insight or to
    riches. The player who's interested in one more than the others may be
    disappointed, in other words, to find that solving a given puzzle won't
    advance his chosen goal. To the extent the bifurcation represents a
    split between the player and the character, it's an interesting
    division, but it also makes for some awkwardness.

    And yet LASH also has a lot going for it. It's thoroughly researched,
    for one thing; there isn't much IF that could be called historical, but
    if other authors put as much thought and effort into historical IF as
    this one did, there's plenty that can be done with the genre. The
    quality of the research is manifested not so much in the story or
    characters, which are a mite on the generic side, as in the details of
    the setting--objects, customs, map layout. When, as here, the reality of
    the historical scenes depicted is part of the point, it seems all the
    more important to get things right, and LASH cannot be faulted in that
    regard. It's also possible to screw up in a variety of interesting ways
    that shed light on the story; step outside the realistic constraints of
    your role and you're in trouble. (It's tempting at several moments to do
    rather unwise things, in other words, things that might seem perfectly
    appropriate to the generic IF adventurer, and the game reminds you quite
    forcefully that you're not the generic IF adventurer.) The writing is
    strong throughout, enough so that the historical setting comes across
    vividly and the Wishbringer doubled-landscape trick is believable (and
    highly atmospheric).

    LASH is a well-thought-out, polished work of IF that I wanted to like
    more than I did, sadly; I recognized its good intentions, but I didn't
    respond as viscerally as I suspect the game wanted me to, and ultimately
    my experience became more detached appreciation for the author's skill
    in crafting the technical aspects of the game (which is considerable)
    than real involvement in what the game was trying to do. In that it's
    difficult to say categorically that others will share my reactions, I
    recommend that all fans of good IF give it a shot, but I consider it
    only a partial success.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Perilous Magic
    AUTHOR: David Fillmore
    E-MAIL: Noslwop SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/permagic.z5
    VERSION: Release 4

    How great an influence do the games of Infocom still have on today's IF?
    Hard to say, but there must be some presence there if an offhand remark
    in one of Infocom's manuals can turn into a game in its own right, as is
    the case with David Fillmore's Perilous Magic. The joke in question was
    a reference to a great fire--which, the manual said, was caused by some
    bureaucrat meaning to cast the ZEMDOR spell ("turn original into
    triplicate") but slipping up and casting the ZIMBOR spell ("turn one
    really big city into lots of tiny, little ashes"). It's a cute joke, and
    as long as you know the source, Perilous Magic is a cute game.

    There isn't a lot more to it than that: you end up causing the spell
    switch, and the whole thing's over in 15 moves. It's not flawless--it's
    possible to render the main puzzle unsolvable by doing things in the
    wrong order-- but there's not much wrong with it, either. The main
    appeal of the game is in the humor: there are Infocom references
    sprinkled here and there, and the wonder-what-happens-if-I-try-this
    results are suitably amusing. There isn't really enough here to call
    this a full-blown homage, but it's enough to capture the feel.

    Perilous Magic is a short but reasonably entertaining effort that
    suggests that IF authors and players have ridiculously good memories for
    throwaway jokes in manuals published in 1984. As a game, it's nothing
    special, but it's not a bad way to spend five minutes.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Sangraal
    AUTHOR: Jonathan Partington, ported to Inform by Adam Atkinson and Graham
    Nelson
    E-MAIL: (Adam's) ghira SP@G mistral.co.uk
    DATE: 1987 (ported 1999)
    PARSER: Two-word
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/phoenix/games/zcode/Sangraal.z5
    VERSION: Release 1.18 of the original, release 1 of the port

    Sangraal is one of the three Topologika games recently ported to
    Inform--the others are Fyleet and Crobe--and it's an odd experience in
    several respects for present-day IFers. While it doesn't meet the
    fairness and friendliness standards that latter- day IF has developed,
    the overall level of literacy and wit is high enough to make it worth a
    look.

    The parser represents the biggest adjustment. It's a two-word parser
    that simply ignores anything after the first two words, so GIVE X TO Y
    will generally work, but PUT X IN Y will not. This requires some fairly
    tortured inferences at times--DROP is sometimes taken as the equivalent
    of PUT, improbably--and on the whole it's not a major highlight. EXAMINE
    is disabled--the "initial" description of each object has everything
    that's relevant--and other standbys like ENTER and WEAR aren't on the
    scene either, and nor are meta-commands like UNDO and OOPS. (On the
    other hand, lots of highly unusual verbs are recognized, and there's no
    way of guessing what the game does and doesn't allow as a verb.) There
    are other, smaller differences--abbrevations like I and L aren't
    provided for--but the parser is the biggest adjustment, and whether it
    drives the modern player completely insane depends in large part on
    whether the player grew up on Infocom (whose parser was never limited to
    two words) or discovered IF only recently (and therefore never
    encountered the earlier, cruder days of IF parsing).

    As you might guess from the above, the puzzles don't, by and large,
    involve particularly subtle object manipulation--i.e., discovering
    subtle hidden properties of objects generally isn't key to solving the
    puzzles. They do, however, involve some baffling logical leaps, and it's
    possible to solve some of them without figuring out the key, so to
    speak. Moreover, a few are simply infuriating--there's a maze that ranks
    with the most annoying in the history of IF, which is saying quite a
    bit, and an extended one-of-these-three-doors-is-telling-the-truth
    sequence. Some are more creative, admittedly--there's a "seven deadly
    sins" puzzle that would feel quite original if the idea hadn't been done
    several times in recent years (i.e., long after Sangraal was
    released)--but few are real highlights. Supposedly, Sangraal is the
    easiest of the three ported Topologika games; if so, that should give
    IFers pause, because in no sense are the puzzles in Sangraal easy, nor
    is the game design particularly forgiving. It's not at all hard to close
    off the game without realizing it, and some of the puzzles don't allow
    for trial and error. The game itself is fairly wide--lots of puzzles are
    available for most of the game--but many of the available puzzles aren't
    initially solvable, and solving them in the wrong order can render the
    thing unfinishable.

    Sangraal's saving grace is its literacy and cultural acumen. The game is
    littered with references to various authors--Keats, Poe, Shelley, Homer,
    the Bible several times over, and many, many more. Some of the digs are
    rather subtle--there's a Wailing Wall that, initially, you get driven
    away from because you don't belong there, and you (minor spoiler) evade
    getting driven away by changing your appearance so that you look the
    part, a barbed reference to the ongoing controversy in Jerusalem over
    Orthodox Jews refusing to allow Reform and Conservative Jews to pray at
    the Wailing Wall. Equally subtle is the following:

       There is a five-foot high pillar of salt here, which looks a bit like
       a running woman. But not a lot.

    Sangraal abounds with humor along these lines, and while not all the
    jokes work--one sequence involving the "Eleventh Commandment" and a
    bunch of computer programmers feels rather forced--most of them are
    funny enough to make the game consistently amusing. The drawback,
    however, is that much of the humor requires that the player think in the
    same bizarre and subversive way as the author does, and Sangraal is
    hence best played with the aid of a walkthrough or a helpful friend
    who's already finished it. Particularly difficult in this respect are
    the puzzles that draw on certain poems by Keats and Shelley--the logical
    progression is highly obscure.

    Sangraal occupies such an odd niche that it's hard to liken it to any
    recent work of IF. There's no plot, really--the initial premise
    (retrieving the Holy Grail) is entirely irrelevant, as with most fantasy
    quests--and neither is there anything binding the game's world together.
    (I.e., the world depicted feels less like a setting than an excuse for a
    lot of silly puzzles.) The puzzles have a way of disappearing once
    they're solved, and most of them either give the player a treasure-type
    object or simply award points; none, as far as I can recall, changed the
    game's landscape, and not many even opened up new territory to explore.
    No doubt this is a function of the memory limitations of the day, which
    made it difficult to code for both a solved and unsolved state of a
    puzzle, but the effect is to magnify the random-collection-of-puzzles
    feel.

    While it's an uneven work in several respects, there's plenty of wit in
    Sangraal, enough to overcome the clumsier bits, and if you enjoy rather
    obscure satire, you may well enjoy this.

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

    From: Walter Sandsquish

    NAME: Toonesia
    AUTHOR: Jacob Weinstein
    DATE: 1995
    PARSER: TADS Standard
    SUPPORT: TADS
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/toonesia.gam
    VERSION: Version 1.1

    Each storytelling medium has its own strengths and weaknesses. Animated
    films, for instance, are wonderful at presenting frantic, surreal
    absurdities. And text-adventure games are, unfortunately, poor at
    creating and maintaining the pace of action in a story.

    Now, why, exactly, would I choose to point out that particular strength
    of animation in the same paragraph as that particular weakness of IF?

    Because "Toonesia" is a light, pleasant hodgepodge of Warner Bros.
    cartoons. And, while it effectively recreates the environment of a toon,
    solving its puzzles will wreck the rabid tempo of the cartoons it's
    paying homage to.

    Not that the puzzles are difficult. On the contrary, once you catch on
    to their theme, which should be obvious from the game's title, the
    conflicts in "Toonesia" are fairly simple, and entertaining, to resolve.

    Unfortunately, "Toonesia's" other major flaw is not inherent in the
    medium the author chose. While Weinstein did capture the essence of the
    Warner Bros. characters, he failed to make any of them very interactive.
    In the Warner Bros. world of hyperactive, clever, sarcastic characters,
    this just doesn't work. The most interactive one, Dizzy Duck, is also
    the most frustrating one. Oddly, Dizzy will react to Elmo's actions, but
    to nothing that Elmo, the player character, says to him!

    "Toonesia" is too short to have as many settings as it has. Weinstein
    shoveled the desert of Wylie Coyote and the Roadrunner, the woodlands of
    Bugs Bunny, and an abandoned jewel mine into this game.

    One of the settings, the mine, complete with a greedy Dizzy Duck, isn't
    even directly related to Elmo's goal, which is to kill the rabbit! And
    the ending, lifted directly from the Bugs Bunny short with a Wagner
    theme, jars the player. While the Wagner episode worked for the toon,
    because it was an unusual setting and an odd story-telling method for a
    series of shorts that are a little too similar to each other, it only
    emphasizes the mismatched environment of this game.

    Although the programming is fairly transparent, you should beware of one
    nasty bug. The description of the cliff walls from the Mesa will kill
    your player character if you pay attention to it. The east-west
    directions are reversed.

    Despite these weaknesses, "Toonesia" is still an agreeable game. The
    writing is solid, and, although the author's voice rarely comes out,
    when it does, it's funny. Try referring to the characters by their
    Warner Bros. counterparts' names and you'll discover a mildly, and
    amusingly, paranoid author denying any involvement in copyright
    infringement.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Worlds Apart
    AUTHOR: Suzanne Britton
    E-MAIL: tril SP@G igs.net
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads/worlds.zip
    VERSION: Release 2

    A variety of adjectives could well be applied to Suzanne Britton's
    Worlds Apart, but the main one that comes to mind is "rich." Rich in
    story, rich in characterization, rich in description, and generally rich
    in details of every kind--there's nothing thin or underdone about Worlds
    Apart. Whether any given player enjoys the story depends on the player,
    of course, perhaps even more so than in most IF: the plot depends on
    abstractions to an unusual extent, and keeping up with it requires a
    certain openness to unusual ways of information processing. Still, this
    is one story that rewards persistence on the player's part, and those
    who don't make the effort are missing something special.

    What's going on is--well, figuring out what's going on is one of the
    game's few real puzzles, so it won't be revealed here, but suffice it to
    say that almost no information is given to you initially. The process of
    discovering who and where you are and what you're doing there is rather
    deliberate; there's a lot of information to glean over the course of the
    story, but very little of it is available initially, which makes the
    game somewhat less immediately accessible than it might be. Contributing
    to this problem is the world you inhabit, which may fairly be described
    as alien; there are plenty of unfamiliar names and terms scattered here
    and there, and while they all eventually either get explained or become
    obvious, a player could be forgiven for finding the learning curve a bit
    steep at first.

    There's an upside to all the strangeness, however, that comes as the
    story develops: the player's imagination is freed to an extent it might
    not be if all the quantities were initially known. The flora and fauna
    you discover, for example, are given primary characteristics, but mostly
    the details are left for the player's mind to fill in. Dan Schmidt's
    "For a Change" did something similar (though to a much greater extent,
    of course, since the level of abstraction there was much higher), and in
    many ways it's a liberating experience to be encouraged to fill in
    relevant sensory details for yourself. Paralleling this are the verbs
    that you use to interact with other characters and with the environment,
    verbs which either aren't standard-IF at all or are used in highly
    unusual ways; the player is forced to put together his or her own images
    of how those verbs work.

    The plot, for its own part, has its own logic, which, like everything
    else, may not be initially apparent; themes that seem quite sensible
    after they're encountered a few times may simply be baffling the first
    time or two they appear. There's an adaptive hint system that fills in
    most of the gaps (though not all), and while Worlds Apart is far from
    puzzle-oriented, it's likely that most players will end up using the
    hints at least once or twice. It's not so much that the puzzles are hard
    as that they require being on the author's wavelength. One that
    initially stumped me involved applying recently learned knowledge, and
    while I recognized immediately what to do, I didn't manage to supply the
    proper verb for quite a while. (It wasn't a verb that I, or anyone else,
    had ever encountered before, and while the game gave me an obvious clue,
    I tried to convey the action through more conventional verbs.) This
    isn't, I hasten to add, a bad thing. The world of Worlds Apart is all
    the more immersive for its strangeness. But it's not impossible that
    some might find it frustrating.

    One of the greatest strengths of Worlds Apart is its cast of characters.
    True, you don't interact with them in especially complex ways; many of
    the interactions amount to cut-scenes, and much of the rest of it is
    ASK/TELL--but these are impressively complex characters. There isn't a
    thoroughgoing hero or villain among them; all have their faults and
    virtues, and while some are more likeable than others, none are there
    merely to be loved or loathed. Better still, their various personalities
    aren't merely identifying features ("here comes X, and he's going to
    display his character trait so that we don't confuse him with Y")--the
    plot depends on those personalities, and understanding the characters
    mean understanding why the plot unfolds the way it does. They also have
    some fairly complex relationships with each other, and much of what you
    learn about them you pick up secondhand, adding to the complexity.
    Better still, there's one character whose motivations and true nature
    are almost entirely open to interpretation (or so it seemed to me), and
    how the player chooses to perceive that character's actions may, or may
    not, shape how he or she views the rest of the story. There's no special
    technical wizardry that I could discern behind the character
    development--just good writing and lots and lots of ASK/TELL topics--but
    they come alive, arguably more so than in any work of IF in memory. And
    if some remain a bit opaque at the end of the story, well, it adds to
    the aura of mystery.

    The writing is uniformly excellent: it's full of details, as noted, but
    generally the descriptions aren't so long that they become ponderous.
    Typical of this economical approach is this passage:

       You have come to a secluded glade, half-sheltered from the elements
       by the many trees extending their branches out over the clearing. One
       of these in particular catches your eye, a gentle giant of a ch'nuka
       whose boughs stretch wide in every direction. Once, it might have
       shaded this place on its own, but now it shows signs of failing
       health--some of the branches are almost bare, and decaying leaves
       surround the trunk in piles and litter the clearing, although it
       feels like summer, and the other vegetation here is thriving.

    All the details necessary to set the scene are here--tree, leaves,
    vegetation--but the author also manages to convey the feel of the
    setting, and the tree that dominates the glade also dominates your
    impression of the place. The decay of the ch'nuka is more important than
    the continued vitality of the surrounding vegetation, and so it
    dominates the description; had the author chosen to give the other
    vegetation more attention, the extent to which this particular tree
    affects your perception of the scene would be lost. Moreover, the
    contrast between the dying tree and the thriving vegetation wouldn't
    work as well if it were explicitly pointed out; leaving the reader to
    draw the contrast and wonder about it works much better. Here, and
    elsewhere, the author eschews a camcorder approach for a more
    subjective, intuitive account--the aspect of the scene that draws your
    attention not only is described in more detail, but also colors your
    overall view of the setting. The author's writing skills are
    particularly apparent late in the game, when there's a Wishbringeresque
    transformation of your surroundings; not only are the changed features
    of the landscape vividly rendered, but every scene is emotionally
    charged in ways similar to the above.

    Worlds Apart is not a flawless effort (as opposed, of course, to all
    those flawless works of IF out there). There are some questionable game
    design choices--at one point, for instance, you happen across a book
    with a great deal of information that becomes pertinent to a certain
    task, or series of tasks. Unfortunately, you can't take the book with
    you when you're carrying out the tasks (logically, given the nature of
    the assignment), and you may end up having to retrace your steps to
    consult the book that you couldn't take with you. The worldbuilding that
    the inclusion of the book accomplishes is outstanding--thorough and
    plausible--but the frustration aspect threatens to yank the player out
    of an otherwise immersive scene. The progress of the story sometimes
    depends too much on wandering around and eventually noticing that
    something has changed in an unforeseeable way, and while that encourages
    frequent re-exploration, it may prove frustrating to the player who
    wants the story to keep moving. The hint system fills in the gaps most
    of the time, but there are a few gaps. And the end is a bit abrupt;
    there's a reference to a possible sequel, but it's disappointing to
    leave the game's world with so much unresolved.

    There is much to like about Worlds Apart, in the end--in quantity and
    quality, the detail that went into the worldbuilding is unmatched in any
    work of IF in recent memory, and it's unlikely that any player will
    catch all, or even most, of the story on the first try. If it's a little
    inaccessible at first, that comes with the territory--i.e., introducing
    the player into a highly complex and well-developed world--and it's
    hardly a fatal flaw. In its interactivity and in the quality of its
    storytelling, Worlds Apart is a remarkable accomplishment.

    READERS' SCOREBOARD -------------------------------------------------------

    The Readers' Scoreboard is an ongoing feature of SPAG. It charts the
    scores that SPAG readers and reviewers have given to various IF games
    since SPAG started up. The codes in the Notes column give information as
    to a game's availability and the platforms on which it runs. For a
    translation of these codes and for more detailed information on the
    scoreboard's format, see the SPAG FAQ. This FAQ is available at the
    ftp.gmd.de IF-archive or on the SPAG web page at
    http://www.sparkynet.com/spag.

    Name                  Avg Sc     Chr     Puz # Sc   Issue Notes:
    ====                  ======     ===     === ====   ===== ======
    9:05                      4.9     0.4     0.6    2     20 F_INF_GMD
    Aayela                    7.4     1.2     1.5    5     10 F_TAD_GMD
    Acid Whiplash             5.3     0.6     0.2    3     17 F_INF_GMD
    Acorn Court               6.1     0.5     1.5    2     12 F_INF_GMD
    Adv. of Elizabeth Hig     3.1     0.5     0.3    2      5 F_AGT_GMD
    Adventure (all varian     6.2     0.6     1.0   10      8 F_INF_TAD_ETC_GMD
    Adventureland             3.9     0.5     1.4    3        F_INF_GMD
    Adventures of Helpful     9.1     1.6     1.0    1        F_TAD_GMD
    Afternoon Visit           4.1     1.0     0.8    1        F_AGT
    Aisle                     6.6     1.4     0.2    7     18 F_INF_GMD
    Alien Abduction?          7.5     1.3     1.4    5     10 F_TAD_GMD
    All Quiet...Library       5.0     0.9     0.9    6      7 F_INF_GMD
    Amnesia                   6.9     1.5     1.3    4      9 C_AP_I_64
    Anchorhead                8.6     1.7     1.5   18     18 F_INF_GMD
    Another...No Beer         2.4     0.2     0.8    2      4 S10_I_GMD
    Arrival                   8.1     1.3     1.5    4     17 F_TAD_GMD
    Arthur: Excalibur         8.0     1.3     1.6    4  4, 14 C_INF
    Augmented Fourth          7.6     1.2     1.4    1        F_INF_GMD
    Aunt Nancy's House        1.3     0.1     0.0    2        F_INF_GMD
    Awakened                  7.7     1.7     1.6    1
    Awakening                 5.6     0.9     1.1    2 15, 18 F_INF_GMD
    Awe-Chasm                 3.0     0.7     0.7    2      8 S_I_ST_GMD
    Babel                     8.5     1.8     1.3    7     13 F_INF_GMD
    Balances                  6.6     0.7     1.2    8      6 F_INF_GMD
    Ballyhoo                  7.3     1.5     1.5    6      4 C_INF
    Bear's Night Out          7.1     1.2     1.3    5     13 F_INF_GMD
    Beat The Devil            6.0     1.2     1.1    3     19 F_INF_GMD
    Beyond the Tesseract      3.7     0.1     0.6    1      6 F_I_GMD
    Beyond Zork               8.1     1.5     1.8    7  5, 14 C_INF
    BJ Drifter                7.3     1.3     1.2    3     15 F_INF_GMD
    Bliss                     5.7     1.2     0.6    3     20 F_TAD_GMD
    Bloodline                 7.2     1.7     1.2    1     15 F_INF_GMD
    Border Zone               7.2     1.4     1.4    7      4 C_INF
    Break-In                  6.1     1.1     1.4    3        F_INF_GMD
    Broken String             3.9     0.7     0.4    4        F_TADS_GMD
    BSE                       5.7     0.9     1.0    3        F_INF_GMD
    Bureaucracy               7.0     1.5     1.4   10      5 C_INF
    Busted                    5.2     1.0     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
    Calliope                  4.7     0.9     0.8    3        F_INF_GMD
    Cask                      1.5     0.0     0.5    2        F_INF_GMD
    Castaway                  1.1     0.0     0.4    1      5 F_I_GMD
    Castle Elsinore           4.3     0.7     1.0    2        I_GMD
    CC                        4.2     0.4     1.0    1        F_ALAN_GMD
    Change in the Weather     7.6     1.0     1.4   11 7,8,14 F_INF_GMD
    Chaos                     5.6     1.3     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Chicken under Window      6.9     0.6     0.0    3        F_INF_GMD
    Chicks Dig Jerks          5.6     1.2     0.6    6     19 F_INF_GMD
    Christminster             8.3     1.7     1.6   14     20 F_INF_GMD
    City                      6.1     0.6     1.3    2     17 F_INF_GMD
    Coke Is It!               6.2     1.0     1.0    2        F_INF_GMD
    Coming Home               0.6     0.1     0.1    1        F_INF_GMD
    Common Ground             7.4     1.8     0.8    1     20 F_TAD_GMD
    Commute                   1.3     0.2     0.1    1        F_I_GMD
    Congratulations!          2.6     0.7     0.3    1        F_INF_GMD
    Corruption                7.2     1.6     1.0    4     14 C_MAG
    Cosmoserve                7.8     1.4     1.4    5      5 F_AGT_GMD
    Crypt v2.0                5.0     1.0     1.5    1      3 S12_IBM_GMD
    Curses                    8.2     1.2     1.7   16      2 F_INF_GMD
    Cutthroats                5.7     1.3     1.1    9      1 C_INF
    Dampcamp                  5.0     0.8     1.1    3        F_TAD_GMD
    Day For Soft Food         7.1     1.0     1.4    4     19 F_INF_GMD
    Deadline                  6.8     1.3     1.3    8     20 C_INF
    Death To My Enemies       4.7     1.1     0.7    3        F_INF_GMD
    Deep Space Drifter        5.6     0.4     1.1    3      3 S15_TAD_GMD
    Deephome                  5.9     0.7     0.9    1        F_INF_GMD
    Delusions                 7.9     1.5     1.5    5      14F_INF_GMD
    Demon's Tomb              7.4     1.2     1.1    2      9 C_I
    Detective                 1.0     0.0     0.0    9 4,5,18 F_AGT_INF_GMD
    Detective-MST3K           5.7     1.0     0.1    8 7,8,18 F_INF_GMD
    Ditch Day Drifter         6.7     0.9     1.7    4      2 F_TAD_GMD
    Down                      6.0     1.0     1.2    1     14 F_HUG_GMD
    Downtown Tokyo            5.7     0.8     0.9    4     17 F_INF_GMD
    Dungeon                   7.4     1.5     1.6    1        F_GMD
    Dungeon Adventure         6.8     1.3     1.6    1      4 F_ETC
    Dungeon of Dunjin         6.0     0.7     1.5    5  3, 14 S20_IBM_MAC_GMD
    Edifice                   8.1     1.5     1.8    7     13 F_INF_GMD
    Electrabot                0.7     0.0     0.0    1      5 F_AGT_GMD
    E-Mailbox                 3.1     0.1     0.2    2        F_AGT_GMD
    Emy Discovers Life        4.6     1.1     0.7    2        F_AGT
    Enchanter                 7.3     1.0     1.4    9   2,15 C_INF
    Enhanced                  5.0     1.0     1.3    2      2 S10_TAD_GMD
    Enlightenment             7.1     1.3     1.6    2     17 F_INF_GMD
    Erehwon                   6.1     1.1     1.4    3     19 F_TAD_GMD
    Eric the Unready          7.8     1.5     1.6    4        C_I
    Everybody Loves a Par     7.0     1.2     1.2    3     12 F_TAD_GMD
    Exhibition                5.6     1.1     0.4    3     19 F_TAD_GMD
    Fable                     2.0     0.1     0.1    3      6 F_AGT_GMD
    Fable-MST3K               4.1     0.7     0.1    2        F_AGT_INF_GMD
    Fear                      6.3     1.2     1.3    3     10 F_INF_GMD
    Fifteen                   1.5     0.5     0.4    1     17 F_INF_GMD
    Firebird                  7.2     1.6     1.2    3     15 F_TAD_GMD
    Fish                      7.5     1.3     1.7    4 12, 14 C_MAG
    Foggywood Hijinx          6.2     1.2     1.3    3        F_TAD_GMD
    Foom                      6.6     1.0     1.0    1        F_TAD_GMD
    For A Change              7.8     1.0     1.5    4     19 F_INF_GMD
    Forbidden Castle          4.8     0.6     0.5    1        C_AP
    Four In One               4.4     1.2     0.5    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Four Seconds              6.0     1.2     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Frenetic Five             5.3     1.4     0.5    3     13 F_TAD_GMD
    Frenetic Five 2           6.6     1.5     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Friday Afternoon          6.3     1.4     1.2    1     13 F_INF_GMD
    Frobozz Magic Support     7.2     1.2     1.5    3        F_TAD_GMD
    Frozen                    5.5     0.7     1.3    1        F_INF_GMD
    Frustration               5.7     1.1     0.9    1        F_TAD_GMD
    Gateway                   8.3     1.3     1.7    5     11 C_I
    Gateway 2: Homeworld      9.0     1.7     1.9    2        C_I
    Glowgrass                 6.9     1.4     1.4    4     13 F_INF_GMD
    Gnome Ranger              5.8     1.2     1.6    1        C_I
    Golden Fleece             6.0     1.0     1.1    1        F_TAD_GMD
    Golden Wombat of Dest     6.3     0.7     1.1    1     18 F_I_GMD
    Good Breakfast            4.9     0.9     1.2    2     14 F_INF_GMD
    Great Archeolog. Race     6.5     1.0     1.5    1      3 S20_TAD_GMD
    Guardians of Infinity     8.5             1.3    1      9 C_I
    Guild of Thieves          6.9     1.2     1.5    4     14 C_MAG
    Guilty Bastards           6.9     1.4     1.2    5        F_HUG_GMD
    Gumshoe                   6.2     1.0     1.1    7      9 F_INF_GMD
    Halothane                 6.9     1.3     1.3    3     19 F_INF_GMD
    HeBGB Horror              5.7     0.9     1.1    2        F_ALAN_GMD
    Heist                     6.7     1.4     1.5    2        F_INF_GMD
    Hero, Inc.                6.8     1.0     1.5    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Hitchhiker's Guide        7.2     1.3     1.5   13      5 C_INF
    Hollywood Hijinx          6.5     0.9     1.6   11        C_INF
    Holy Grail                6.2     0.9     1.2    1        F_TAD_GMD
    Horror of Rylvania        7.2     1.4     1.4    5      1 F_TAD_GMD
    Horror30.zip              3.7     0.3     0.7    2      3 S20_I_GMD
    Human Resources Stori     0.9     0.0     0.1    2     17 F_INF_GMD
    Humbug                    6.9     1.6     1.4    3     11 F_I_GMD
    Hunter, In Darkness       8.1     1.0     1.5    4     19 F_INF_GMD
    I didn't know...yodel     4.0     0.7     1.0    5     17 F_I_GMD
    I-0: Jailbait on Inte     7.6     1.5     1.3   12     20 F_INF_GMD
    Ice Princess              7.5     1.4     1.6    2        A_INF_GMD
    In The End                4.9     0.6     0.0    2     10 F_INF_GMD
    In The Spotlight          3.2     0.2     1.0    2     17 F_INF_GMD
    Infidel                   6.9     0.2     1.4   13      1 C_INF
    Informatory               5.5     0.5     1.3    1     17 F_INF_GMD
    Ingrid's Back             5.6     1.6     1.2    1        C_I
    Inheritance               5.2     0.5     1.0    2     20 F_TAD_GMD
    Inhumane                  4.4     0.4     1.0    3  9, 20 F_INF_GMD
    Intruder                  6.7     1.3     1.1    4     20 F_INF_GMD
    Jacaranda Jim             7.9     0.9     1.0    2        F_GMD
    Jacks...Aces To Win       7.6     1.6     1.3    2     19 F_INF_GMD
    Jewel of Knowledge        6.3     1.2     1.1    3     18 F_INF_GMD
    Jeweled Arena             7.0     1.4     1.3    2        AGT_GMD
    Jigsaw                    8.2     1.5     1.6   14    8,9 F_INF_GMD
    Jinxter                   6.1     0.9     1.3    3        C_MAG
    John's Fire Witch         6.5     1.0     1.5    9  4, 12 S6_TADS_GMD
    Jouney Into Xanth         5.0     1.3     1.2    1      8 F_AGT_GMD
    Journey                   7.2     1.5     1.3    5      5 C_INF
    King Arthur's Night O     5.6     1.0     0.9    3     19 F_ALAN_GMD
    Kissing the Buddha's      8.0     1.8     1.4    5     10 F_TAD_GMD
    Klaustrophobia            6.4     1.1     1.3    6      1 S15_AGT_GMD
    Knight Orc                7.2     1.4     1.1    2     15 C_I
    L.U.D.I.T.E.              1.9     0.2     0.0    3        F_INF_GMD
    Lancelot                  6.9     1.4     1.2    1        C_I
    Land Beyond Picket Fe     4.8     1.2     1.2    1     10 F_I_GMD
    Leather Goddesses         6.9     1.3     1.5   10      4 C_INF
    Leaves                    3.4     0.2     0.8    1     14 F_ALAN_GMD
    Legend Lives!             8.2     1.2     1.4    4      5 F_TAD_GMD
    Lesson of the Tortois     7.1     1.4     1.4    4     14 F_TAD_GMD
    Lethe Flow Phoenix        6.9     1.4     1.5    5      9 F_TAD_GMD
    Life on Beal Street       4.7     1.2     0.0    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Light: Shelby's Adden     7.5     1.5     1.3    6      9 S_TAD_GMD
    Lightiania                1.9     0.2     0.4    1        F_INF_GMD
    Lists and Lists           6.3     1.3     1.1    3     10 F_INF_GMD
    Little Blue Men           8.2     1.4     1.5    8     17 F_INF_GMD
    Lomalow                   4.8     1.2     0.5    2     19 F_INF_GMD
    Losing Your Grip          8.5     1.4     1.4    6      14S20_TAD_GMD
    Lost New York             7.9     1.4     1.4    4     20 S12_TAD_GMD
    Lost Spellmaker           6.9     1.5     1.3    3     13 F_INF_GMD
    Lunatix: Insanity Cir     5.6     1.2     1.0    3        F_I_GMD
    Lurking Horror            7.2     1.3     1.3   15    1,3 C_INF
    MacWesleyan / PC Univ     4.9     0.6     1.2    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Madame L'Estrange...      5.1     1.2     0.7    1     13 F_INF_GMD
    Magic Toyshop             5.2     1.1     1.1    5      7 F_INF_GMD
    Magic.zip                 4.5     0.5     0.5    1      3 S20_IBM_GMD
    Maiden of the Moonlig     6.4     1.3     1.5    2     10 F_TAD_GMD
    Matter of Time            1.4     0.3     1.4    1      14F_ALAN_GMD
    Mercy                     7.3     1.4     1.2    6     12 F_INF_GMD
    Meteor...Sherbet          7.9     1.5     1.6    5 10, 12 F_INF_GMD
    Mind Electric             5.2     0.6     0.9    4    7,8 F_INF_GMD
    Mind Forever Voyaging     8.2     1.3     0.9   12   5,15 C_INF
    Mindwheel                 8.5     1.6     1.5    1        C_I
    Mission                   6.0     1.2     1.4    1        F_TAD_GMD
    Moist                     6.8     1.4     1.2    4        F_TAD_GMD
    Moment of Hope            5.0     1.3     0.3    3     19 F_TAD_GMD
    Moonmist                  5.9     1.2     1.0   14      1 C_INF
    Mop & Murder              5.0     0.9     1.0    2      5 F_AGT_GMD
    Mother Loose              7.0     1.5     1.3    2     17 F_INF_GMD
    Mulldoon Legacy           7.4     1.2     1.8    1        F_INF_GMD
    Multidimen. Thief         5.6     0.5     1.3    6    2,9 S15_AGT_GMD
    Muse                      7.5     1.5     1.1    3     17 F_INF_GMD
    Music Education           3.7     1.0     0.7    3        F_INF_GMD
    Myopia                    6.1     1.3     0.6    2        F_AGT_GMD
    Mystery House             4.1     0.3     0.7    1        F_AP_GMD
    New Day                   6.6     1.4     1.1    4     13 F_INF_GMD
    Night At Computer Cen     5.2     1.0     1.0    2        F_INF_GMD
    Night at Museum Forev     4.2     0.3     1.0    4    7,8 F_TAD_GMD
    Night of... Bunnies       6.6     1.0     1.4    1        I_INF_GMD
    Nord and Bert             5.9     0.6     1.1    8      4 C_INF
    Not Just A Game           6.9     1.0     1.3    1     20 F_INF_GMD
    Not Just... Ballerina     6.3     1.0     1.1    2     20 F_INF_GMD
    Obscene...Aardvarkbar     3.2     0.6     0.6    1        F_TAD_GMD
    Odieus...Flingshot        3.3     0.4     0.7    2      5 F_INF_GMD
    Of Forms Unknown          4.5     0.7     0.5    1     10 F_INF_GMD
    Offensive Probing         4.2     0.6     0.9    1        F_INF_GMD
    On The Farm               6.5     1.6     1.2    2     19 F_TAD_GMD
    Once and Future           6.9     1.6     1.5    2     16 C30_TAD_CMP
    One That Got Away         6.4     1.4     1.1    7    7,8 F_TAD_GMD
    Only After Dark           4.6     0.8     0.7    3        F_INF_GMD
    Oo-Topos                  5.7     0.2     1.0    1      9 C_AP_I_64
    Outsided                  2.5     0.7     0.2    2        F_INF_GMD
    Pass the Banana           2.9     0.8     0.5    3     19 F_INF_GMD
    Path to Fortune           6.6     1.5     0.9    3      9 S_INF_GMD
    Pawn                      6.3     1.1     1.3    2     12 C_MAG
    Perilous Magic            4.9     0.9     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
    Perseus & Andromeda       3.4     0.3     1.0    1        64_INF_GMD
    Persistence of Memory     6.2     1.2     1.1    1     17 F_HUG_GMD
    Phlegm                    5.2     1.2     1.0    2     10 F_INF_GMD
    Photopia                  7.3     1.5     0.7   15     17 F_INF_GMD
    Phred Phontious...Piz     5.2     0.9     1.3    2     13 F_INF_GMD
    Piece of Mind             6.3     1.3     1.4    1     10 F_INF_GMD
    Pintown                   1.3     0.3     0.2    1        F_INF_GMD
    Planetfall                7.2     1.6     1.4   11      4 C_INF
    Plant                     7.3     1.2     1.5    4     17 F_TAD_GMD
    Plundered Hearts          7.3     1.4     1.2    8      4 C_INF
    Poor Zefron's Almanac     5.6     1.0     1.3    3     13 F_TAD_GMD
    Portal                    7.0     1.8     0.0    2        C_I_A_AP_64
    Purple                    5.6     0.9     1.0    1     17 F_INF_GMD
    Pyramids of Mars          6.0     1.2     1.2    1        AGT_GMD
    Quarterstaff              6.1     1.3     0.6    1      9 C_M
    Ralph                     7.1     1.6     1.2    3     10 F_INF_GMD
    Remembrance               2.8     1.0     0.1    2        F_GMD
    Reruns                    5.2     1.2     1.2    1        AGT_GMD
    Research Dig              4.8     1.1     0.8    2     17 F_INF_GMD
    Reverberations            5.6     1.3     1.1    1     10 F_INF_GMD
    Ritual of Purificatio     7.0     1.6     1.1    4     17 F_GMD
    Sanity Claus              7.5     0.3     0.6    2      1 S10_AGT_GMD
    Save Princeton            5.8     1.1     1.3    4      8 S10_TAD_GMD
    Scapeghost                8.1     1.7     1.5    1      6 C_I
    Sea Of Night              5.7     1.3     1.1    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Seastalker                5.1     1.1     0.8   10      4 C_INF
    Shades of Grey            7.8     1.3     1.3    6   2, 8 F_AGT_GMD
    Sherlock                  7.0     1.3     1.4    5      4 C_INF
    She's Got a Thing...S     7.0     1.7     1.6    3     13 F_INF_GMD
    Shogun                    7.0     1.2     0.6    2      4 C_INF
    Shrapnel                  8.3     1.5     0.5    2     20 F_INF_GMD
    Simple Theft              5.8     1.3     0.8    1     20 F_TAD_GMD
    Sins against Mimesis      5.5     1.0     1.2    3     13 F_INF_GMD
    Sir Ramic... Gorilla      5.0     1.0     1.5    1      6 F_AGT_GMD
    Six Stories               6.2     0.9     1.1    2     19 F_TAD_GMD
    Skyranch                  2.8     0.5     0.7    1     20 F_I_GMD
    Small World               6.2     1.3     1.1    3     10 F_TAD_GMD
    So Far                    8.0     1.2     1.5   11     12 F_INF_GMD
    Sorcerer                  7.2     0.6     1.6    7   2,15 C_INF
    Sound of... Clapping      7.0     1.2     1.3    7      5 F_ADVSYS_GMD
    South American Trek       0.9     0.2     0.5    1      5 F_IBM_GMD
    Space Aliens...Cardig     1.5     0.4     0.3    6   3, 4 S60_AGT_GMD
    Space under Window        7.2     0.8     0.4    5     12 F_INF_GMD
    Spacestation              5.6     0.7     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
    Spellbreaker              8.5     1.2     1.8    8   2,15 C_INF
    Spellcasting 101          6.7     1.0     1.3    2        C_I
    Spellcasting 201          7.8     1.6     1.7    2        C_I
    Spellcasting 301          6.0     1.2     1.2    2        C_I
    Spider and Web            8.7     1.6     1.7   13      14F_INF_GMD
    SpiritWrak                7.1     1.3     1.3    5        F_INF_GMD
    Spodgeville...Wossnam     4.3     0.7     1.2    2        F_INF_GMD
    Spur                      7.1     1.3     1.1    2      9 F_HUG_GMD
    Spyder and Jeb            6.2     1.1     1.4    1        F_TAD_GMD
    Starcross                 6.6     1.0     1.2    7      1 C_INF
    Stargazer                 5.4     1.1     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
    Stationfall               7.7     1.7     1.6    6      5 C_INF
    Stiffy                    0.6     0.0     0.0    1        F_INF_GMD
    Stiffy - MiSTing          4.5     1.0     0.4    4        F_INF_GMD
    Stone Cell                6.7     1.3     1.4    2     19 F_TAD_GMD
    Strangers In The Nigh     3.2     0.7     0.6    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Sunset Over Savannah      8.7     1.7     1.4    6     13 F_TAD_GMD
    Suspect                   6.0     1.2     1.1    7      4 C_INF
    Suspended                 7.5     1.5     1.4    7      8 C_INF
    Sylenius Mysterium        4.7     1.2     1.1    1     13 F_INF_GMD
    Symetry                   1.1     0.1     0.1    2        F_INF_GMD
    Tapestry                  7.1     1.4     0.9    5 10, 14 F_INF_GMD
    Tempest                   5.3     1.4     0.6    3     13 F_INF_GMD
    Temple of the Orc Mag     4.5     0.1     0.8    2        F_TAD_GMD
    Theatre                   7.0     1.1     1.4   11      6 F_INF_GMD
    Thorfinn's Realm          3.5     0.5     0.7    2        F_INF_GMD
    Time: All Things...       3.9     1.2     0.9    2 11, 12 F_INF_GMD
    TimeQuest                 8.1     1.2     1.7    3        C_I
    TimeSquared               4.3     1.1     1.1    1        F_AGT_GMD
    Toonesia                  5.8     1.1     1.1    6      7 F_TAD_GMD
    Tossed into Space         3.9     0.2     0.6    1      4 F_AGT_GMD
    Town Dragon               3.9     0.8     0.3    2     14 F_INF_GMD
    Trapped...Dilly           5.1     0.1     1.1    2     17 F_INF_GMD
    Travels in Land of Er     6.1     1.2     1.5    2     14 F_INF_GMD
    Trinity                   8.7     1.4     1.7   16    1,2 C_INF
    Tryst of Fate             7.1     1.4     1.3    1     11 F_INF_GMD
    Tube Trouble              4.2     0.8     0.7    2      8 F_INF_GMD
    Tyler's Great Cube Ga     5.8     0.0     1.7    1        S_TAD_GMD
    Uncle Zebulon's Will      7.3     1.0     1.5   12      8 F_TAD_GMD
    Underoos That Ate NY      4.5     0.6     0.8    2        F_TAD_INF_GMD
    Undertow                  5.4     1.3     0.9    3      8 F_TAD_GMD
    Undo                      2.9     0.5     0.7    4      7 F_TAD_GMD
    Unholy Grail              6.0     1.2     1.2    1     13 F_I_GMD
    Unnkulian One-Half        6.7     1.2     1.5    9      1 F_TAD_GMD
    Unnkulian Unventure 1     6.9     1.2     1.5    8    1,2 F_TAD_GMD
    Unnkulian Unventure 2     7.2     1.2     1.5    5      1 F_TAD_GMD
    Unnkulian Zero            8.4     0.7     0.8    21,12,14 F_TAD_GMD
    Varicella                 8.5     1.6     1.5    8     18 F_INF_GMD
    Veritas                   6.9     1.3     1.4    3        S10_TAD_GMD
    Vindaloo                  2.9     0.0     0.4    1        F_INF_GMD
    VirtuaTech                6.1     0.0     1.2    1        F_INF_GMD
    Waystation                5.6     0.6     1.0    3      9 F_TAD_GMD
    Wearing the Claw          6.6     1.2     1.2    5 10, 18 F_INF_GMD
    Wedding                   7.4     1.6     1.3    3     12 F_INF_GMD
    Where Evil Dwells         5.1     0.8     1.1    1        F_INF_GMD
    Winter Wonderland         7.9     1.3     1.2    5     19 F_INF_GMD
    Wishbringer               7.4     1.3     1.3   13    5,6 C_INF
    Witness                   6.5     1.5     1.1    9  1,3,9 C_INF
    Wonderland                5.4     1.3     0.9    2        C_MAG
    World                     6.5     0.6     1.3    2      4 F_I_ETC_GMD
    Worlds Apart              8.3     1.6     1.4    6        F_TAD_GMD
    Zanfar                    2.6     0.2     0.4    1      8 F_AGT_GMD
    Zero Sum Game             7.2     1.5     1.5    3     13 F_INF_GMD
    Zombie!                   5.2     1.2     1.1    2     13 F_TAD_GMD
    Zork 0                    6.3     1.1     1.4    9      14C_INF
    Zork 1                    6.1     0.8     1.5   19  1, 12 C_INF
    Zork 2                    6.5     1.0     1.5   11  1, 12 C_INF
    Zork 3                    6.5     0.9     1.4    8  1, 12 C_INF
    Zork Undisc. Undergr.     6.5     1.0     1.2    1      14F_INF_GMD
    Zork: A Troll's Eye V     4.6     0.9     0.1    2     14 F_INF_GMD
    Zuni Doll                 4.0     0.6     0.9    2     14 F_INF_GMD

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

    The Top Ten:

    A game is not eligible for the Top Ten unless it has received at least
    three ratings from different readers. This is to ensure a more
    democratic and accurate depiction of the best games.

    Well, I'm sad to say I've only received a measly 34 votes in the three
    months that have passed since the last issue of SPAG. Thus, predictably,
    the Top Ten hasn't changed much. The only significant movement is that
    Worlds Apart has finally broken into the top 10 after hovering just
    below it for months. Suzanne Britton's speculative epic bumps Little
    Blue Men out of the number 9 spot.

    1.  Sunset over Savannah  8.7   6 votes
    2.  Trinity               8.7   16 votes
    3.  Spider and Web        8.7   13 votes
    4.  Anchorhead            8.6   18 votes
    5.  Varicella             8.5   8 votes
    6.  Babel                 8.5   7 votes
    6.  Losing Your Grip      8.5   6 votes
    8.  Spellbreaker          8.5   8 votes
    9.  Worlds Apart          8.3   6 votes
    10. Christminster         8.3   14 votes

    As always, please remember that the scoreboard is only as good as the
    contributions it receives. I'm not sure why voting has taken such a dive
    in recent months, but it's a trend I'm really hoping to reverse. I
    strongly encourage all SPAG readers to submit votes for all the IF games
    they play... and I know that the group of you has played more than 34
    games in the last three months! To make your mark on this vast morass of
    statistics, rate some games on our website
    (http://www.sparkynet.com/spag). You can also, if you like, send ratings
    directly to me at obrian SP@G colorado.edu. Instructions for how the rating
    system works are in the SPAG FAQ, available from GMD and our website.
    Please read the FAQ before submitting scores, so that you understand how
    the scoring system works. After that, submit away!

    SUBMISSION POLICY ---------------------------------------------------------

    SPAG is a non-paying fanzine specializing in reviews of text adventure
    games, a.k.a. Interactive Fiction. This includes the classic Infocom
    games and similar games, but also some graphic adventures where the
    primary player-game communication is text based.

    Authors retain the rights to use their reviews in other contexts. We
    accept submissions that have been previously published elsewhere,
    although original reviews are preferred.

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