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ISSUE #48 - May 2, 2007

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

                             ISSUE #48

            Edited by Jimmy Maher (maher SP@G grandecom.net)
                           May 2, 2007

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

    SPAG #48 is copyright (c) 2007 by Jimmy Maher.
    Authors of reviews and articles retain the rights to their contributions.

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

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

    Editorial
    IF News
    A History of Russian IF by Sergey Minin

    INTERVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE --------------------------------------------------

    Andrey Grankin
    Victor Koryanov
    Akela
    Eugene Tugolukov
    Evgeny Bychkov
    Yuri Pavlenko
    ZombX

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

    The Ebb and the Flow of the Tide
    The Elysium Enigma
    The Traveling Swordsman

    SPECIFICS
    =========
    The Elysium Enigma

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

    Late last year Scott Rettberg of the Electronic Literature Organization was kind
    enough to send me a CD containing the ELO's Collection #1.  I wanted to make a
    serious effort to explore the CD, but with the Competition then wrapping up
    followed by the holiday season, I didn't get to it until quite recently.  Having
    finally done so, I thought I would pass along a few thoughts here for those
    interested in branching out a bit to explore other forms of computer-based
    writing.

    IF fans will be happy to hear that our work gets considerable attention in the
    collection, to the tune of five complete games.  Represented are All Roads by
    Jon Ingold; Whom the Telling Changed by Aaron Reed; Savoir Faire and Galatea by
    Emily Short; and Bad Machine by Dan Shiovitz.  It's hard to take exception with
    any of these choices, and this exposure for IF alongside so many works of
    "serious" electronic literature certainly can't be a bad thing.

    But what of the rest of the collection?  Well, it's a bit overwhelming, to start
    with.  No fewer than 55 other works are present here, of widely varying
    approaches, and, perhaps inevitably, I found it a bit of a mixed bag.  Some of
    this displays the postmodern aesthetic in full flower, and that is just not my
    bag.

    Some of the more painful examples:

    Kenneth Goldsmith gives us "an unedited document of every word I spoke during
    the week of April 15-21, 1996," through which I learned that Kenneth drinks a
    lot of coffee and talks a lot in a way that often manages to be vapid and
    pretentious at the same time.  Textual voyeurs may be delighted, I suppose.  I'm
    not sure what the rest of us are supposed to get out of it.

    Then we have the inevitable Michael Joyce hypertext fiction.  The selection
    here, Twelve Blue, has come into my life several times in the past.  After
    literally years of study, I still can't figure out just how the interface is
    actually supposed to work.  Perhaps Joyce is the anti-Apple of the computer
    world, or maybe my feverish clicking around the screen in search of something
    that will lead to more lines of overwrought prose is some sort of commentary on
    the state of postmodern life.  Lines like this sound like extracts from one of
    the annual tortured emo-kid Competition entries: "Follow me?  What choice do we
    have but love, what season after?"

    There are a lot of even easier targets here, including several examples of texts
    that randomly recombine letters and words into sequences that usually result in
    gibberish but occasionally stumble into a recognizable word or two, thus
    illustrating... something.  The fundamental instability and subjectivity of
    meaning, I suppose, or something similarly high-flown.  It just looks like
    jumbles of random letters to me.

    So it's all pretentious claptrap, right?  Well, no, not at all.  As I said, it's
    a mixed bag, and there was much here that I liked quite a lot, stuff that got
    beyond this obsession with surface textuality to actually say something to me.

    One of my favorites was a modest little piece called Like Stars in a Clear Night
    Sky by Sharif Ezzat.  It opens with a voice speaking in Arabic -- subtitled in
    English -- introducing me to some of the stories it would like to tell me
    against a panorama of a night sky.  Then I can click on various stars to hear
    associated vignettes written in the style of the Arabian nights.  The stories it
    tells are surprisingly compelling, and the piece moved me for reasons I can't
    quite describe.  It also made me realize again what a lovely language Arabic can
    be to listen to.  The whole can't be reduced to a single descriptive sentence
    describing the author's clever gimmick... and that's the point, really. This one
    has soul.

    Another great one is Urbanalities by "babel and escha."  Garish animations fly
    by accompanied by some great tunes, and phrases appear that are (oh no!)
    randomly formed, but with enough reason to make superficial sense.  So you get
    things like, "I think the unemployed hatter, he has weapons of mass
    destruction," which I find unaccountably hilarious.  The whole thing reminded me
    of wandering amidst the bustle of a city, receiving snatches of dialogue out of
    context along with a kaleidoscope of colors, images, music.

    In Cruising by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnara a wonderful little poem about
    the time-worn small-town teenage American practice of cruising on a Saturday
    night is spoken aloud, and spoken in character at that, while a jumble of
    evocative images tumbles by.  I just wish there were more of it, as it starts to
    loop all too quickly.

    Maybe the funnest piece of the bunch is Nio by Jim Andrews, which lets the
    reader construct little musical pieces of her own by combining sound samples on
    the fly.  The program is clever enough to make it just about impossible to make
    anything that sounds really BAD, although I gave it my best try.  This one will
    put a smile on anyone's face.  Strange that its author elsewhere indulges in the
    dreaded random text combination game.

    And so, while much of this collection carries an aesthetic approach and
    worldview that does little for me, about a third of it made me sit up and take
    notice, and at least a few pieces I found delightful, even moving.  The curators
    of the collection said they wanted to capture the full range of electronic
    writing, and I think they have succeeded.  You can check it out for yourself at
    http://collection.eliterature.org/1.  Click the About link at the bottom of that
    page for information on requesting a hardcopy of the whole thing on CD-ROM.  I
    will be happy to accept commentaries on the collection as a whole or even
    reviews of individual pieces, if you care to write them and send them to me.

    Actually, I would like anything from you, folks.  The bulk of this issue is a
    the second part of an ongoing series about non-English IF.  It consists of a
    number of interviews conducted and translated by Valentine Kopteltsev with
    members of the Russian IF community, and I must say I think it's some very
    fascinating stuff.  Other than that, we've also got a great SPAG Specifics piece
    by Valentine, who has really gone above and beyond this time, and another review
    from the ever-reliable Mike Harris.  I wrote a couple of reviews for games that
    I've replayed recently and thought really deserved coverage, and... that's it.
    I don't want this to permanently become the Jimmy and Valentine show any more
    than you do.  So please, think about helping us out and getting next issue's
    review total back up to where it was for the last few issues before this one.
    SPAG is yours, after all.  I just put it together each month.  I received a lot
    of positive feedback about the larger size of recent issues.  It's up to all of
    you whether that trend continues.

    IF NEWS -------------------------------------------------------------------

    2006 XYZZY AWARDS
    The following games received recognition for representing the cream of the IF
    crop of 2006.
    Best Game: The Elysium Enigma by Eric Eve
    Best Writing: Delightful Wallpaper by Andrew Plotkin
    Best Story: The Traveling Swordsman by Mike Snyder
    Best Setting: Floatpoint by Emily Short
    Best Puzzles: Delightful Wallpaper by Andrew Plotkin
    Best NPCs: Floatpoint by Emily Short
    Best Individual Puzzle: navigating the mansion in Delightful Wallpaper
    Best Individual NPC: Leena in The Elysium Enigma
    Best PC: Delightful Wallpaper by Andrew Plotkin
    Best Use of Medium: The Baron by Victor Gijsbers
    I can't complain about any of these selections.  Congratulations to all the
    authors!.  The following is a link to a transcript of the awards ceremony which
    took place on the IF MUD.
    http://www.xyzzynews.com/2006xyzzyawards.txt

    SPRING THING 2007
    Greg Boettcher's annual contest for longer, hopefully more polished games than
    those usually seen in the fall Comp has come and gone.  There were four entries
    this year, with Fate by Victor Gijsbers winning top honors (and making it two
    Spring Thing wins in a row for Victor).  All of the games were quite well
    received, so see the contest website for the full standings and to download the
    entrants.
    http://www.springthing.net/2007

    IF ART SHOW 2007
    After a three-year hiatus, Marnie Parker will be running another Art Show this
    year.  Deadline for entries is May 18.  See the contest website for more rules
    and information.
    http://members.aol.com/iffyart

    GHOST TOWN REDUX
    Greg Boettcher is running a unique competition for games that are a "remake or
    adaptation" of the old Scott Adams game Ghost Town.  You should get your entries
    to Greg by July 30.
    http://www.gregboettcher.com/games/sagtr.htm

    INNOVATION COMP
    David Fisher is running a competition for transcripts illustrating things we
    can't do in IF today, but would like to be able to do.  Yes, I know, it sounds
    strange, but it's a neat idea actually.  You won't have time to prepare an entry
    if you are reading about it for the first time here, as the deadline is April
    30, but you can read the transcripts and judge.
    http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Innovation_Comp

    SECOND PERSON
    The MIT Press has recently released the best book on interactive narrative ever
    printed.  Really, seriously, it's that good.  IF gets quite a bit of attention,
    with articles from Steve Meretzky on Planetfall, Emily Short on Savoir Faire,
    and Nick Montfort on understanding the role of the PC in IF.  Also included are
    a nice little article on Andrew Plotkin's Shade and even a non-IF-related
    article from SPAG founder cum boardgame designer Kevin Wilson.  That's all good
    stuff, but I found the wealth of articles on tabletop role-playing, a form I had
    completely lost touch with since my days of playing Dungeons and Dragons in high
    school, even more stimulating.  It caused me to start looking at RPGs again and
    to realize some great work is being done in this area.  I think we could learn a
    lot from them.  And then there's great, extended articles on the inner workings
    of the groundbreaking Facade, and a nice article from Chris Crawford on his
    interactive storytelling system, and...  Just go buy this one, folks.  It may be
    published by MIT Press, but it's not a lifeless academic text at all.  (Trust
    me!  I'm a graduate student, so I know lifeless academic texts when I see them.)
    http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11000

    ZOOM 1.1.0
    Andrew Hunter has improved his Unix and Mac Z-Code interpreter to make it...
    more than just a Z-Code interpreter.  This version adds support for Glulx, TADS
    2 and 3, and Hugo games.  Wow!
    http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom

    GNOME INFORM 7
    Philip Chimento is working on a version of the shiny Inform 7 IDE for versions
    of Linux with the Gnome libraries installed.  See his development site for the
    latest beta.
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7

    QUEST 4.0
    Alex Warren has released a major update to his Quest IF authoring software,
    which plays in the "no programming required" arena of ADRIFT.  Also like ADRIFT,
    this is a shareware product.  The full version will set you back $39.95.
    http://www.axeuk.com/quest

    ONLINE QUEST GAMES
    Mr. Warren has also launched a website where one can play Quest text adventures
    online for free.
    http://www.textadventures.co.uk

    NEW Z-MACHINE INTERPRETER
    Mike Greger has authored a new Z-Machine interpreter in C# for Windows.  He
    calls it Grue.
    http://home.cinci.rr.com/grue

    INFORM 7 TUTORIAL
    Stephen Granade wrote an article for PC Plus recently on getting started with
    Inform 7.  He's now made it available on his Brass Lantern website as well.
    http://brasslantern.org/writers/howto/i7tutorial.html

    EMILY SHORT ON GAMASUTRA
    IF got some attention on the Gamasutra, a site which normally focuses on
    professional game development, in the form of an interview with Emily Short.
    Savoir Faire gets a lot of attention, as does Inform 7.
    http://gamasutra.com/features/20070410/munroe_01.shtml

    HOTEL DUSK
    Speaking of commercial products, Nintendo has released an "interactive novel"
    for the DS handheld console that looks very interesting.  I don't have a DS to
    play it on, unfortunately, but maybe some of you do.
    http://www.hoteldusk.com

    CIRCUMREALITY
    Mike Rozak has released a beta version of CircumReality, a development kit for
    multiplayer graphical adventures.  Windows only, and it requires quite a
    powerful machine to run, but looks very interesting.
    http://www.circumreality.com

    SPAG NEEDS YOU!
    I've already chided you about the lack of reviews I received for this issue.
    There are so many games out there deserving of reviews.  Please, won't you take
    an hour or two of your time to give something back to an author who has tried
    her best to entertain you?

    SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
    ========================
    1.  Remaining IF Comp 2006 Games (any or some)
    2.  Getfeldt's Treasure
    3.  1893: A World's Fair Mystery
    4.  Final Selection
    5.  The Retreat
    6.  When in Rome, parts 1 and/or 2
    7.  Bronze
    8.  Suprematism
    9.  Moments Out of Time Adventure Type
    10. Spring Thing 2007 games (any, some, or all)

    A HISTORY OF RUSSIAN IF by Sergey Minin -------------------------------------

    All Quiet on the Eastern Front?

    History of QUESTion

      In general, adventure games are rather popular in Russia. Of course, they have
    incomparably less fans than, say, Half Life or Diablo, but they can't complain
    about lack of attention, either. The genre made a name for itself in the 1990-
    ies, when the Quest-series by Sierra gained popularity in the CIS countries.
    Even people barely aware of the genre would know such serials as Quest for
    Glory, King Quest, and Police Quest. The expression "made a name" is to be taken
    literally, because the simply-to-pronounce term quest soon replaced the word
    adventure, which sounded more intricately (at least to a Russian ear), almost
    entirely. As a result, the following terminology has been spontaneously formed:
    a graphic 2D adventure is usually called a quest, a work of interactive fiction
     a text quest, and only 3D adventures with action elements are adventures as
    such for Russians. Occasionally, strange mutants would show up, defining their
    own genre as "Adventure/Quest", or even "Adventure/Quest/IF"!

    However, due to a number of reasons, the predecessor of graphic adventures,
    interactive fiction, isn't too well-known in the fatherland of Pushkin and
    Dostoevski. A few hundreds know the genre exists, several dozens at least
    attempt to play text adventures, and faithful fans can be counted on the
    fingers of one hand. One of the grounds for such a low popularity of IF in "the
    world's most-reading country" (one of the myths created by propagandus
    sovieticus) was undoubtedly the lack of appropriate material resources at the
    time the genre was on the height of its fame: in 1980-s, the term "personal
    computer" sounded like non-science fiction to USSR citizens. CYOA books, which
    were, in a way, forerunners of IF, also passed our country by somehow.
    Figuratively speaking, we didn't learn Adventure at our mothers' knee, didn't
    play Zork in our childhood, and weren't engaged in discussions about Trinity
    during breaks between the lectures we attended. To most of us, the legendary
    names of Steve Meretzky, Brian Moriarty, and Dave Lebling would convey nothing.

    The most real chance of gaining a firm footing in Russia cropped up for IF by
    the end of 1980-s, when the British star called Speccy just started crawling up
    the Soviet sky, and text-only games weren't considered a mossy anachronism yet.
    And while it probably was the most unfavorable period for the residents of the
    former "socialist camps"  inflation, dramatic impoverishment of people, and
    growth of the unemployment rate anything but stimulated the expansion of a
    relatively expensive "toy" en masse  the first Russian "adventurers" showed up
    just then. Sure, they weren't many  the specificity of the genre, as well as
    the need for at least rudimentary knowledge of English had their (negative)
    effect; still, early in the 1990-s, one of the first Russian magazines dedicated
    to computer games for the ZX Spectrum, ZX-Review, entered the scene. A great
    deal of its materials was devoted just to adventures. The editor of the magazine
    and simultaneously one of its authors, Sergey Simonovich, can by right be
    honorably entitled the first PR manager for gaming in Russia, because, thanks to
    his unexampled adventure promotional efforts, the circle of "initiates" of the
    genre became considerably wider, although (sigh) it still remained a club for a
    select company.

    In the 1990-s, the mass computerization of the ex-USSR by IBM PC-compatible
    machines began. By the time a personal computer had become a common thing at a
    Russian's home (middle to late 1990-s), graphic games already dominated our SVGA
    screens, and I'm afraid you couldn't find too many people who, instead of Zork
    Grand Inquisitor, would prefer to play its text-only predecessor. Thus, after a
    short blip of interest for the text genre, silence fell, which was complicated
    by the further graphical evolution of the IBM PC. Our old acquaintance, Mr.
    Simonovich, made an attempt to break this hush by introducing his new project,
    the online magazine PC-Review, now devoted to games for the PC, whose popularity
    soared up like a rocket.

    In 1996, this journal published a translation of the epochal work by Graham
    Nelson, The Craft of Adventure, and enclosed the immortal Curses by the same
    author. Among those who got caught in the meshes at that time was your most
    humble servant, but (I'd like to add gloatingly) he was not the only one. Later
    the magazine and its offline satellites -- PC-Express, PC-Forum, and PC-Help
    repeatedly addressed interactive fiction: the documentation for the adventure
    games development system OASYS was translated into Russian, an article about the
    legendary Infocom and games produced by this company was brought out, a joint
    brainstorm of Curses was announced, and So Far by Andrew Plotkin received its
    portion of attention, too. Unfortunately, the PC-Review project ceased to exist
    soon after that. After its demise, no other Russian media would launch such
    large-scale operations for promotion of "text quests".

    RussIFication

    As mentioned earlier, another reason for the lacking popularity of IF in Russia
    was the language barrier. Even if the novice had a "text adventuring" vein in
    her/his character, (s)he'd be confused by the many lines of foreign text, and
    scared away by the necessity of establishing a dialog with the game in a little
    known language. This made the newbie's choice quite obvious  graphic games,
    where the narrative was reduced to a minimum, and most puzzles could be solved
    by uncomplicated manipulations with the mouse. However, attempts of directing
    the genre on Russian rails are known even from the Spectrum epoch. Probably the
    most well-known piece of Russian IF of that period was The Stellar Legacy, a
    game released in 1995 for the Spectrum that was agonizing by then (its graphical
    remake has been released a short time ago by the companies Step Creative Group
    and 1S). The Stellar Legacy represented a graphical game with a textual input of
    suggested sentences by means of a menu system (or, to put it short, a CYOA).

      By 1999 A. D. the world-wide web even reached Russian backwaters. People in
    the provinces stopped making sacrifices to the mighty yet mysterious divinity
    called "Internet", and at last, the word "Dial-up" wasn't used for scaring
    babies in the villages anymore. Russian Internet-communities, forums and other
    forms of virtual gatherings started mushrooming out. The not too numerous IF
    fans didn't stay on the sidelines, either. About this time, several remarkable
    sites dedicated to interactive fiction were founded, and the idea of creating
    "native" Russian text adventures was discussed on the forums actively. IF
    theorists were joined by people who weren't acquainted with the genre before,
    but were attracted by the relative easiness of game creation  it's known that
    coding a video game is a very laborious enterprise, and at the current stage of
    development of the gaming industry, it's practically impossible to complete a
    project of decent quality on one's own. Yet, the experience of the foreign
    colleagues, as well as the success of such systems as Inform, TADS, Hugo, and
    Adrift, showed us -- nothing was impossible in the IF-genre. Still, the whole
    thing rested on that notorious "language barrier". The question was, how to
    overcome it. The solution seemed simple: either develop a parser-based game
    platform similar to the "western" ones that'd support Russian, or confine
    oneself to creation of CYOA-games akin to the aforementioned Stellar Legacy,
    that'd only allow the player to pick options from a menu.

    However, things that look easy in theory often conceal pitfalls when it comes to
    putting them into practice. The problem is, the structure of the Russian
    language differs from that of English significantly -- say, you can't get by
    with only one verb form. Add declinable substantives, and changeable endings to
    that. The general difficulty of creating a universal development system from
    scratch isn't to be underestimated, either. To put it short, there were more
    than enough pitfalls for breaking one's legs, so that most of the parser-based
    projects didn't survive till their delivery, many of them never getting any
    further than the pregnancy planning stage. Finally, only menu-based (in other
    words, CYOA) projects stayed alive, the most well-known of which were URQ
    (Universal Ripsoft Quest)  the most popular development system today; and QSP
    (Quest Soft Player). Both platforms still are fit and vigorous, and have been
    updated several times. About the same time, the IF-community split in two
    parties: "the parserers" and "the menuists". Although the parties were supposed
    to be friendly, their relationships varied between cold neutrality and open
    conflict.

    By 2001, after getting tired of the many duplicating posts on different forums,
    the Russian IFers decided to unite on a common place that should become a
    central point for the whole community. After the naming and hosting problems had
    been settled, the web site http://taplap.ru/ became such a point. The start was
    very vigorous and energetic, but later on, as it often happens, the site
    activity went downhill little by little. At the same time, an attempt was made
    to link together the two community parts  parser-lovers and menu-devotees
    under the aegis of this site. This attempt, however, remained unsuccessful: the
    menuists preferred to go their own way, and to create their own, separate
    communities (http://urq.allquests.ru/ and http://qsp.borda.ru/). And it must be
    said, they turned out to be much more active than their parser-addicted rivals
    games were released more often, "internal" competitions for CYOA games were
    carried out, and the community live in general was more intense; the parserers,
    on the other hand, as well as the site http://taplap.ru/ itself, remained in a
    coma-like state since the end of 2003.

    The 21st century set in, but the Russian IF-scene still didn't have a really
    working development system for parser-based games. This changed in 2002, as one
    of the enthusiasts of Russian text adventuring, Andrey Grankin aka GrAnd,
    started the venture of translating TADS into Russian, which was successfully
    completed in the same year. As a result of his titanic work, most of the
    "Russian national particularities" could be solved, and the ones that couldn't
    were evaded. The overall happiness was so close, it seemed, and Russian games
    about to start pouring out like from a cornucopia. However, it didn't happen. A
    few released games, oodles of unfulfilled promises, translation of Ditch Day
    Drifter and Deep Space Drifter  that's pretty much all game authors vouchsafed
    to create using Russian version of TADS called RTADS (http://www.rtads.org)
    between 2002 and 2005. It's difficult to say what the reasons for that were
    maybe the lost of interest in IF by most community members, maybe the overall
    stupor that befell the community just in this period of time, or maybe the
    relatively steep learning curve TADS is known for.

    We are the Champions!

    The idea of organizing contests analogical to the "main" IF-Competition was in
    the air probably from the very first post made by The Unknown Player at T?me
    Immemorial, and after the (partial) joining up, the community came to the
    conclusion of the necessity for such a contest. The first Russian Interactive
    Fiction Competion aka RussComp took place early in 2002, and was a brilliant...
    flop, since there was exactly one game participating. In the same year,
    literally a few months later, "attempt number 2" was made, with 5 participating
    games, and a successful completion. In spite of a lot of talking about the
    necessity of maintaining this great tradition, nothing happened until 2006. The
    previous year, the community site experienced a certain revival, and another try
    to organize the contest (this time called KRIL'06) was made. This time, six
    games participated (four parser-based, and two CYOAs), and it must be said that,
    in respect to game quality, this competition surpassed the previous one by far.
    This, of course, inspires certain hopes. As it turned out that, in spite of
    disappearing of the sonic radars' screens, the submarine called "Russian
    Interactive Fiction" didn't sink or go for a burton  it was just exploring the
    seabed for a while. Who knows  maybe it emerges to the surface once more. Not
    to dive back this time.

    RUSCOMP 2002 Results:
    1. Shadow of the Malice, author: Elf Dillm   (own parser)
    2. In the Deepness, author: Vovka Smert' (URQ)
    3. Desperation, author: Igor Savine   (own parser)
    4. Zombie IV, author: Eugene Sharov (own parser)
    5. Abyss, author:   Eugene Sharov (own parser)

    KRIL 2006 Results:
    1. Dreamour, author: Andrey "GrAnd" Grankin (RTADS).
    Although the game hardly can be considered a completed project  it's rather a
    prequel  its fantasy world full of caves, goblins, and golems was to the liking
    of the vast majority of the judges.

    2. Waiting for the Morning, author: Stas "Unreal" Starkov (RTADS).
    A short puzzle-based digression to the roof of a building, where your goal is to
    get down. The most polished game of the contest.

    3. Genie from the Machine, author: Korvin (URQ).
    Sci-fi story about an astronaut whose ship had an accident, and his brave
    girlfriend.

    4. Stone of Shady Sands, author: Ivan "Zevs" Zykov (own menu-based engine).
    Multimedia-heavy, post-apocalyptic adventures evoked by the immortal piece by
    Interplay.

    5. Klara the Jam-Plunderer, author: Belial (6 days  an original parser-based
    development system).
    A charming little story about a naughty sweet tooth.

    6. Gad, author: Davarg and Nunhan (RTADS).
    A (rather unsuccessful) attempt to create a bleak medieval world, injecting
    fantasy in the process.

    And a few more links of interest not mentioned in the article (unfortunatel, all
    of them are in Russian):

    http://advantureclub.narod.ru/ - a site dedicated to making Russian adventures
    with Adrift.

    http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Fiction - Russian Wikipedia entry on
    interactive fiction.

    http://vixterm.narod.ru/IFRusFAQ.htm - a Russian IF FAQ; quite useful, although
    it hasn't been updated for a while.

    http://zerrr.livejournal.com/ - "Non-Russian Interactive Fiction", a site mostly
    dedicated to Russian reviews of English IF-games

    THE SPAG INTERVIEW (DEPARTMENT OF RUSSIAN STUDIES)-------------------------

    Longtime SPAG stalwart Valentine Kopteltsev has done me and you a huge favor
    this issue by translating interviews with several prominent members of the
    Russian IF community.  It's a world brand new to me.  I never even realized
    Russian IF existed until David Kinder sent me a Russian version of Adventure to
    test with my Z-Machine interpreter a couple of years ago.  These interviews
    provide an interesting glimpse into the way IF, computer games, and ergodic
    literature in general are received in a culture that is still just slightly
    remote and exotic to most of us in the West.

    I struggled with how to handle the Cyrillic names of people and games, and
    finally reluctantly decided to just publish the English translations.  Using
    Cyrillic would require using Unicode encoding, which would double the size of
    this issue of SPAG.  I was concerned about that, and concerned whether some
    folks' mail software -- or the Majordomo listserv, for that matter -- might
    garble it.

    We'll begin with an interview Valentine conducted with Andrey Grankin, whose
    game Suprematism was recently released in English; then we have an extended
    joint interview conducted by Jenny Waynest and translated by Valentine with six
    prominent members of the menu-based CYOA Russian IF community, which is far
    larger than its parser-based community.  Their games are developed in a system
    known as URQ.  Valentine's comments as translator are enclosed in square
    brackets [].

    Huge thank yous go out to Valentine and Jenny for conducting these interviews,
    and to all seven interviewees for participating, even at the expense of time
    spent on World of Warcraft.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Andrey Grankin
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

      VK: So, meet Andrey Grankin aka GrAnd, inhabitant of Moscow, an outstanding,
      if not legendary, figure in Russian IF. His most significant project up to
      this date is the RTADS system, a russified version of TADS 2. At that, the
      russification doesn't confine itself to the translation of the system
      libraries and a constant support for users in word and deed, but also includes
      the development of teaching demo-games for that platform, as well as
      documentation about creation techniques for Russian games and auxiliary
      instruments that make the author's life easier. By the end of the last year,
      Andrey's game, Dreamor, won the Russian IF-Competition KRIL-06. Besides, one
      can call him a popularizer of the genre in Russia, since he's the author of
      several analytical articles dedicated to IF.

      Andrey, would you like to add something to this introduction?

    AG: In addition, I can say that in real life, I'm 24 years old, have two dusty
    diplomas (in mathematics and economics), and can currently be found in my little
    office at the Third Transport Ring in the city of Beijing [Moscow also has a 3rd
    Transport Ring]. I'm here for more than one and a half years now due to family
    business.

      VK: For understandable reasons, interactive fiction is not the primary
      occupation for any of us as a matter of fact, well, not even the only hobby.
      Could you tell more about your other areas of interest, and their relations
      with IF (whether they help, intervene, etc.)?

    AG: My interests are manifold, but lie in the erudition widening sphere for the
    most part. Reading books, articles, news, well, whatever from the screen of my
    computer or mobile phone. This predilection took the place of awfully dipsomanic
    computer gaming. I hardly watch any TV, apart from occasional movies. I study
    Chinese: it's both needed for my work, and exciting. I'm not overfond of sports,
    but visit the fitness center regularly, and am pretty good at ice- and
    roller-skating (thus, don't think I'm a complete computer geek :)).

    Until recently, I've been keen on programming, but have given it up for quite a
    while, except for building websites with php. Now, if one day I return to this
    activity, then as a director I hope.

    All in all, IF is my only hobby I could more or less fully self-actualize in.
    Mainly thanks to the persistence that overwhelms me in situations when it
    becomes necessary to apply it to more important things. Banach spaces and
    deformation tensors were send to hell when I submerged into the depths of
    creation, and would then torment me in the most cruel way after my awakening by
    the end of the semester.

      VK: And where there situations when IF helped you in real life? Or, to put it
      another way, have you gained something from your IF studies?

    AG: At the very least, I used the Case Generation Utility for RTADS in my
    graduate work. Well, and all the training makes it easier for me now to write
    ads.

      VK: Now, let's come to the point. So, how people become IFers in this country,
      which isn't very suitable for that particular genre?

    AG: They play text games on ZX Spectrum, then give up them for years to run
    across them again one day and become moved to tears. That's exactly what
    happened to me. I found out about Russian text adventures in 2001. Not satisfied
    by their quality, I went on with my search, and finally discovered the classic
    games in English. And once you played long enough, it's hard not to get a
    burning desire to write something on one's own, especially if one has certain
    skills in this respect.

      VK: So, what games re-opened the world of IF for you?

    AG: Of the Russian ones, it was Zombies 4, and of the ones in English, I can't
    say exactly which was the very first, since I downloaded a collection. The ones
    I tried, completed and was delighted in: The Lurking Horror, and Theatre. I
    liked the Zorks as well, but I didn't get further than about a third-way through
    any of them; the same goes for Curses!, which scared me by its scale. Of more
    recent games, I'd like to mention Photopia. Other games didn't leave such a
    long-lasting impression, although they also were great. But generally, I'm only
    superficially acquainted with the life and works of the English-speaking
    IF-community. Especially the last couple of years, since I stopped following the
    discussions in r.a.i.f, and confined myself to glancing through the SPAG issues.

    By the way, my advice to all those who promote IF-games in non-English-speaking
    countries: don't advertise LARGE works. An enthusiastic mention of daylong
    gameplay is enough to eliminate the slightest wish of trying out the new game.
    English is the world's technical and economical language, but reading fiction is
    very tiresome for many people, even with an electronic dictionary at hand.
    Ideally, I'd like to see a "the best" list of shorter new releases, playing
    which would allow one to feel up to date with the current development and
    general tendencies of the "big" IF-community.

      VK: A question that is of great interest personally to me: Why TADS? Why not
      Inform or Hugo?

    AG: It could be Inform, as well, since it was the first development system I
    stumbled across. However, all translation attempts remained without success,
    since at that time, none of the interpreters supported Cyrillic letters.
    Somewhat later, David Kinder turned to that problem, and at least one
    interpreter (WinFrotz) is now usable by Russian players. Well, and as to Hugo --
    I didn't get to it, since TADS rewarded me with understanding after five minutes
    of experiments.

      VK: Although the RTADS platform exists for almost five years now, there are
      still not as many games for it as desired. What do you think, what are the
      reasons for such a situation, and how it could be changed?

    AG: I'm also puzzling over it for a long time, but still can just come out with
    my suggestions.

    First of all, too little people know about text adventures. I myself only was
    able to find the Russian IF-community after I understood what's the name of the
    thing I'm looking for. The situation can be changed, but only by united efforts
    -- by spreading games, articles and IF-related links over the Web. The KRIL-06
    Competition gave us a good chance in this respect, which should be used wisely.

    Then, there are the notorious difficulties learning TADS. Well, a lot has been
    done already for newbie support, and a few experienced authors always can help
    them with advices. I think this isn't the most crucial problem, especially
    considering the fact many people are so good programmers they constantly start
    writing their own IF development systems.

    Furthermore, questions of creativeness and problems of self-discipline come to
    mind. Personally for me, this is the most serious difficulty. I have about ten
    unfinished projects, and I shudder to think how many potential authors have also
    dropped their creations barely starting them. Our "menu-oriented" community part
    solves this problem by organizing competitions on regular basis (several times a
    year), which allow everybody to remain in shape and create a healthy creative
    atmosphere. However, parser-based games have a much longer average development
    period and much less authors, so that this experience can't be taken over
    directly. Unless we organize some sort of "warming-ups" -- mini-comps, say, for
    single-puzzle games, or for sketches on a given theme. I think it's time to
    start this tradition.

      VK: By the way, since you mentioned the "menuists". What do you think, our
      genres ("classic" IF and CYOA) are doomed to be each other's competitors, or
      there is some common ground allowing them to be mutually useful?

    AG: I'd say they supplement each other. CYOA is democratic and easy, classic IF
    is difficult both for the author and the player, but provides more possibilities
    and artistic means. The target audiences are very similar, but in the end, IFers
    are glad about any mentioning of their genre, while CYOA lives in every RPG and
    prospers as anime/manga games.

    Coming back to our situation: a part of the "menuists" would write parser-based
    games if our community life were as lively as theirs. Regular communication with
    the platform developer and other authors via an IRC chat is a very valuable
    possibility. Maybe that's the reason why they don't migrate to a more
    sophisticated CYOA platform, which also is available. Some of them have tried to
    write something in TADS and even succeeded, but finally they returned back to
    menu-driven games. I believe sooner or later they will write parser-based games,
    and be it just a test of skill.

      VK: Connected with that, a global question (while the answer can be partially
      found in your article, most SPAG readers haven't read it, I'm afraid): what do
      you think of prospects of IF in general, and of Russian IF, in particular?

    AG: I also expressed the main idea on r.a.i.f, but didn't raise any significant
    discussion. My claim has been, interactive fiction will gain mass popularity
    again and become commercially successful only in the form of a verbal dialog
    between the player and the computer. However, now I think that, when voice
    recognition technologies will reach the proper level for it, such an application
    of them will just be lost in the variety of other possibilities. Even now we can
    see new principles of player input and game control appearing, which introduce
    their own (and very effective) means of game immersion. To put it short, the
    gaming industry is on the verge of changes, and the IF community should be open
    towards novelty in order not to miss the opportunity to conceive a new
    interactive genre, since I can't imagine a prosperous future for IF within the
    existing technologies.

    As far as Russian IF is concerned, I reckon it will grow due to the increasing
    number of Internet users in Russia, if nothing else. Besides, every new
    high-quality game represents another brick in the fundament of the genre
    popularity, thanks to the wide promotion possibilities.

      VK: You really think that's the path of IF? As I see it, IF would mutate into
      an entirely different genre this way...

    AG: Exactly. Classic IF will still be there, but new genres will arise. IF will
    play in them the same part menu-driven CYOA-principles play in modern RPGs.
    Audio-IF is the most obvious trend, which could beget graphic adventures with
    voice input, as well as other genres one could only speculate about. An
    interactive movie, for instance, where the hero acts pretty independently, but
    the spectator influences the plot indirectly by mocking or invigorating the
    hero, "whispering" hints into his ears, or even by arguing with the narrator.

      VK: From the global to the "special cases". Please tell us a little about your
      game Dreamor that won the KRIL-06 competition.

    AG: Oh, I can speak about it a *very* long time, since it took me four years to
    write it. Contrary to some conjectures, its creation began not with the lengthy
    and redundant prologue but with the small room the PC wakes up. The only idea I
    had at that time, was "a malicious monster breaks loose and chops everybody down
    to sausages". I think the theme of unmotivated and ultimately gory violence is
    generally very popular among young writers and artists, but that's an entirely
    different story :).

    Thus, after the more or less sophisticated battle system was finished, I started
    filling in the details and the game world. As to be expected, it changed many
    times and often came into contradiction with pieces written previously. The game
    was influenced by every new book delivered, every impressive film watched, every
    new thought or idea that came to my mind. At some moment, I decided the game
    should reflect the idea of ditheism I was interested in at that time: two
    deities, one of them representing the void (space, static matter), and the other
    -- the chaos (changes, entropy; strictly speaking, Dreamor is its name), form a
    world that is very similar to our own one, but the protagonist, who isn't an
    ordinary human, or, rather, no human at all, can see it under an entirely
    different angle. At the end of the day, the goal of the game is to explore this
    world. Unfortunately, the idea turned out to be too wide-scaled, and I'm
    inclined to getting into the tiniest detail and non-linearity. Thus, the game
    name turned out to be prophetical, and the divinity of chaos almost ruined the
    game. To bring some order to the game world, I wrote the not very interactive
    and somewhat autobiographic introduction. Several of the autobiographic aspects
    weren't resolved yet in real life at that time, and because of that, or maybe
    for other reasons, I did very little in terms of game development for more than
    two years.

    The situation was saved by the competition. I hoped sincerely and naively, I'd
    complete the game by the deadline, but in reality, the competition started only
    after I finished the game, because as it turned out I had finally to organize
    it. I had to finish my work at an accelerated tempo within a week.
    Unfortunately, a few nasty bugs turned up afterwards, and the game had been to
    be reduced to the first of two chapters of the first game in the series (which
    represented about one sixth of the initial conception), but I badly needed to
    finally show my "monster" to the audience. And it looks like it impressed them.

      VK: Did you think about writing a sequel? Also, tell us about your IF-related
      plans in general.

    AG: There are thoughts about a sequel, but no real desire. I hope to become an
    effective businessman, and in this case, there just won't be any time left for
    interactive fiction. If I write something as monumental again, it will mean that
    I either manage to canalize the creative energy needed for that once more, or
    reach such a level of effectiveness that I will have enough time for everything.

    All in all, I have an idea I want to implement especially badly. It's more worth
    to me than ten Dreamors. It's a short, but very emotion-loaded game. When this
    idea came to me, I chilled, and my hair bristled. Even a mere retelling of the
    plot makes people gloomy, although they don't know yet how it happened. The most
    dramatic thing is, the story is entirely real, and not even unique. It's the
    recent past of my country, which is so rich in tragic episodes...

      VK: Yeah, you managed to be quite intriguing :). Could you give at least a
      slight hint what the story is about?

    AG: Its working name is Mother. And it has nothing to do with the novel by Maxim
    Gorky of the same name.

      VK: English-speaking players mostly now you as the author of the experimental
      work Suprematism in IF, which has been uploaded to the Archive this February,
      and caused a rather vivid discussion in the rec.games.int-fiction group. Could
      you say a few words about it please?

    AG: Thanks, I think it isn't worth so many words, and I already got more
    feedback than I ever could expect.

      VK: Well, then, let me wish you to increase your efficiency, and finally
      complete The Game of Your Dream!

    AG: Thanks, I'll do my best.

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     Victor Koryanov, implementor of the major URQ runner (URQ DOS)
     Akela, implementor of an advanced URQ runner (AkURQ) and several games
     Eugene Tugolukov (nickname Korwin), a prolific author and promotor
     Evgeny Bychkov (brevno), implementor of URQ editor SMSQuest and contest guru
     Yuri Pavlenko (Goraph), prolific author, contest guru, and reviewer
     ZombX, who used to write games but now is just good company!
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

      Jenny:  My friends, I wonder when and how you found out about IF?

    Victor: In my childhood, when I found in a magazine (a paper one) the source
    code for an IF-game about a larceny from a gallery. I think it was the very
    beginning of the 1990-ies. There was no accessible Internet at that time, so it
    was very hard to find any new programs. Then, computer magazines often simply
    published the source code for useful utilities and games, so that a new issue
    often became a great event. There just hasn't been any other way to quickly get
    something new for one's computer.

    Goraph: At the age of about 11, I bought a computer gaming journal (I didn't
    have a computer at that time). There were lots of adventure reviews there, and
    at the end of the issue, there was a Russian translation of an adventure
    players' guide. After reading it, I blazed up with the desire to play
    adventures, and managed to make a reality of it with time:).

    Korwin: For me, it's a difficult question, which I can't give an unambiguously
    and concrete answer to. The thing is, I had a hobby of inventing fantastic
    stories for my friends at the age of about 9 to 11 years. I'd describe a
    situation (most often loaned from the books I read) to them, and they would tell
    me what they were going to do in the place of the main characters. The plot
    developed independent of the initial conditions. Our games sometimes went on for
    several years -- I remember a session based on The Lord Of The Rings that
    continued from 1981 till 1987! Of course, there were breaks for other games,
    studies, dancing and other private life. As far as "real" computer IF are
    concerned, it was 1995, ZX-Spectrum, a number of adventures (I remember Emerald
    Isle, Red Moon by Level 9, Kayleth by AdventureSoft, which was based on an Isaac
    Asimov's short story).

    brevno: That's an easy question I *can* give an unambiguously and concrete
    answer to. Even in my tender age I became acquainted with the delights of
    interactive fiction -- by means of the story about Ilya Muromets. You know, that
    stone at the crossroads with three paths leading in different directions: if you
    go right you'll lose your horse, left -- you find a wife, and if you go
    straight, you'll ride into the stone. [This is indeed a very common situation in
    Russian fairy tales, but I'm not sure there is a counterpart in English
    literature.  Oh, and you can read about Ilya Muromets in Wikipedia at
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Muromets.] Being a true gamer and explorer,
    Ilyusha [that's a diminutive for the name Ilya] checked out all options of this
    famous quest.

    Well, and after that, there were the great CYOA-books by Braslavsky: The
    Faithful Rapier Of The King, The Master Of The Endless Desert, where you had to
    browse the pages to find the location with the proper number, and even to roll
    the dice when fighting with brave chevaliers and other gremlins. My next stage
    of evolution was, finally, real computer IF -- menu-based quests for the Space
    Rangers game, which was in development at that time. Then, I got the burning
    longing to create something in that vein, but cooler. As it turned out, I
    couldn't make something cooler myself, but it looks like I was able to help
    others to accomplish that feat.

    ZombX: I found Orczero [that's one of the first Russian text adventures,
    inspired by Zork Zero] in a game collection, that's how everything started...

    Akela: ... (plays WoW, and gives no answer therefore.)

      Jenny: What's your first IF-game?

    Victor: I typed in the source code of the aforementioned game from the magazine.
    It was seemingly the first program in my life.

    Goraph: My first game was written in Basic for the ZX-Spectrum, its name was A
    Wizard Of Archipelago, and it was based on the book by Ursula Le Guin.

    Korwin: You mean the first one that has been completed? Well, that's of course
    Winnie-the-Pooh And Other Animals), developed in urq_dos in 2003-2004. It was
    intended to be a test game -- at that time, I just wished to familiarize myself
    with the features of this engine; besides, I wanted to boast about a bit, and to
    demonstrate my son who's been 7 years old then that his dad is a cool
    programmer, and also can write computer games. With such a motivation, I just
    couldn't fail to complete this not-so-big work. For me, it was a very conceptual
    effort. First of all, because I revised my attitude towards the character I was
    very fond of from little up after reading The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.
    Secondly, because in spite of the rather modest size of the game, I did my best
    to provide all four characters of the story with distinct personalities and
    certain behavior logic, and it looks like I succeeded. Finally, I kept this game
    fair, which is rather untypical for me. You can't lock yourself out of victory
    here; saving and restoring the game are retained only for the players' comfort.

    brevno: The acme of my creative work that sullied me with glory forevermore is
    the URQ-game White Bull-Calf. Amazingly, it isn't menu-based but uses keyboard
    input (in fact, this was the goal of its creation -- demonstrating how to handle
    that kind of input in URQ). The game is remarkable not just because of being the
    only annoyance tale in the whole Russian IF, but also because it's the only URQ
    game I know that managed to lock up someone's computer:). Needless to say, I'm
    proud beyond all measure. [The tale of the white bull-calf is a traditional
    Russian annoyance game. It goes like this: you ask the person you want to annoy,
    "Shall I tell you the tale of the white bull-calf?" He answers, "Yes, tell me."
    You say, "Yes, tell me. Shall I tell you the tale of the white bull-calf?" etc.,
    etc. The idea is, you repeat the answer, and add the everlasting phrase about
    the white bull-calf again and again. In a figurative sense, Russians say someone
    is telling stories about the white bull-calf if the said person avoids giving
    you a clear answer/decision, repeatedly digging up points that have been
    discussed over and settled a long time ago. It's a bit like the old "Who's on
    First?" comedy routine.]

    But what am I talking about? In fact, I'm only indirectly involved in game
    development. My main merit is, I programmed the sole (at that time, at least)
    specialized editor for writing URQ games. And, which is even more important, I
    played the role of an acres gatherer, which effectively means the centralization
    of URQ-related resources. The web site dedicated to my editor (both of which has
    almost sunk into oblivion since then -- the web site and the editor) contained
    the biggest collection of Russian menu-based URQ-games. It served as a powerful
    incentive for the further progress of that platform, as well as for the creation
    of new games. Previously, these games were scattered about minor web pages, the
    authors' hard disk drives, as well as other wondrous places. In the course of
    time and numerous migrations the site transformed into the main resource of the
    whole URQ-community, and its guest book -- into the forum where most of the
    URQ-related life is humming on. And the game catalog is continuously replenished
    with new works.

    Finally, I can proudly state that I'm one of the organizers and one of the
    stimulus of the Summer Adventure Contest (abbreviated as LOK or LOKa), a
    competition that takes places at our site annually. I call myself a "stimulus",
    because I award every game for participating with an illustration to that game,
    which I draw myself :). And there haven't even been complaints about that so
    far. Oh, and one more thing -- I'm the most popular co-author of URQ-adventures.
    It's rumored there's hardly anyone who screwed up as many mutual projects as I
    did.

    Well, considering all the aforesaid, I just have to wonder why they still
    haven't set up a monument, don't bow down, and, above all, haven't started
    sacrificing young virgins to me yet...

    ZombX: Oooh... it's been a long time ago... you mean a real GAME, or just
    creative experiments? As a matter of fact, it's been Dmitry Smetanin. But let's
    say Teletubbies, because I can't remember a thing about Dmitry Smetanin anymore.
    [Teletubbies is the brief name of a short but very interesting surrealistic
    adventure, the full name goes as follows: The Comeback Of The Teletubbies, Or
    The Revenge Of Freddy Krueger. One Of The Two. Part One, As Well As Six And
    Eighteen. "About The Harm Of The Drugs". However, even the author himself is too
    lazy to say the complete version.]

    Akela (tears himself away from WoW and remarks briefly): Fortunately for
    everyone, it remained on my HDD forever.

      Jenny: Evgeny, since you mentioned this subject yourself, could you give as
      some more details about LOKa and ZOKa?

    brevno: Even at the very early stages of organizing the big URQ-site, the
    objective was set to introduce competitive spirit to the game creation process
    in order to influence their quality and quantity positively. Thus, LOKa -- the
    Summer Adventure Contest (Letnyaya Olimpiada Kvestov in Russian) was started --
    an all-URQian game competition, which goes on over the whole summer. The
    competition is still a bit unripe, and we experiment with its rules and
    conventions all the time. For instance, in one of the first LOK contests the
    game authors had to write games that started with an excerpt chosen by the jury.
    Why, we tried just everything -- limiting the game size, setting a fixed set of
    words and noun phrases to be used in the game... To put it short, we did any
    perverse thing we could think of:). For instance, the last LOKa had a prescribed
    set of themes, ideas, one of which had to be treated by the participating games
    (not necessarily word for word): "mutual effort", "damnation of mastery",
    "fulfilling of a wish", "the necessary question", etc. I think one of the
    authors even tried to treat all themes simultaneously :)

    There also is a winter counterpart of LOKa -- ZOKa (Zimnyaya Olimpiada Kvestov
    -- The Winter Adventure Contest). It was established as an alternative contest,
    because during the first LOKa, doubts about the accuracy of the voice counting
    by the jury (by the way, those doubts were completely unfounded). The main
    difference is, ZOKa is organized by one or several enthusiasts who both invent
    the rules and choose the winner by themselves (in LOKa, public voting is used).
    Traditionally, the organizer of ZOKa writes reviews of all participating games,
    founding the ratings he's given them.

      Jenny: Thanks, Evgeny. Now, a question to the developers of URQ: when and how
      did you come to the idea of creating a program for Russian IF-games?

    Victor: When I stumbled upon Ripurka [a familiar name for RipURQ -- the ancestor
    of all modern URQ versions] somewhere by the end of 2000. At that time, I had a
    computer almost unsuitable for Windows, among other things, because of an awful
    EGA monitor. I "lived" under monochrome DOS that wouldn't allow to start Ripurka
    in an even remotely decent way, but there already had been an interesting
    adventure for that platform, The Ancient Dagger. The first versions of urq_dos
    aka Dosurka were created literally for playing through that game.

    Akela: ... [apparently, he has a difficult situation in his game, so that he has
    no time for us; that's a pity, since AkURQ is the URQ interpreter with the most
    powerful capabilities for the time being].

      Jenny: Victor, please tell us, what's the difference between URQ and other
      adventure games authoring tools, what stipulated such a wide popularity of it
      (it's no secret that in Russia, about as many games have been developed for
      this platform as for all the others taken together)? And how do you decipher
      this mysterious abbreviation URQ?

    Victor: About the popularity: there were several factors. Historically, URQ was
    the first successful text adventure development tool written in Russian
    (projects that had been preceding it, for instance, OrcZero, hadn't found a wide
    distribution). For it, two very important games have been written almost
    immediately -- the very interesting Ancient Dagger (by Kaschey) and the
    "didactic" Pilgrim -- The Case Of The Kidnapped Girlfriend (by Devil). In
    Pilgrim, the author demonstrated how to describe typical gaming situations, so
    that for a certain period of time, this game became a programming language
    manual de facto. An important role also played the gentle learning curve,
    combined with the feature allowing code modification during its execution. The
    main idea, as I saw it at that time, consisted in drawing the source code as
    close to common book-like text as possible. In other words, the author just had
    to insert instructions and branching conditions into his (static) story to make
    an adventure game of it. Although this concept was pretty early diverged from
    towards introducing a gradually increasing number of elements of a general
    programming language, the possibility of writing an adventure as a CYOA book has
    been retained till now. The code modification possibility means that you can
    insert a renewable expression value at any place in the code line, and the final
    execution of this line by the interpreter will only take place after all values
    have been calculated and substituted. The important thing is, the location of
    these renewable expressions isn't restricted by any means, so that this way,
    instructions, variable names and parts of data structures can be generated. Not
    only allows this feature the automatic creation of some standard language
    structures (like arrays), but also provides opportunities the limits of which
    aren't quite clear yet.

    As to the name, it's been invented by the initial designer of the language and
    the first interpreter for it, RipOs (Timofey Basanov). URQ means Universal
    Ripsoft Quest, where RipSoft is the designation of the fictional "company" in
    whose name RipOs released his programs. When there was only one interpreter, the
    name URQ was applied both to it and the language. After RipOs withdrew from IF
    and stopped the development of his related project, they began calling the
    language URQL to avoid confusion, and new interpreters by other authors received
    names derivative from URQ with additions of prefixes and suffixes -- just the
    way as is customary in the TeX world. The original interpreter by RipOs is
    sometimes referred to as RipURQ or Ripurka in modern articles, manuals, etc., to
    avoid confusion with the URQL-language.

      Jenny: Why did you choose a menu-based interface for your game?

    Victor: Ripurka was menu-based.

    Goraph: Since I wasn't very well-acquainted with BASIC at that time, I chose a
    menu interface, because it was easier to implement. Besides, it must be said my
    game was in Russian, which is one of the world's most difficult languages
    (almost like Japanese). To write an adequate parser was far beyond my abilities
    at that time.

    Korwin: In most likelihood, it was the fact that I'm rather an author than a
    programmer. The URQL language was exceptionally easy to use, yet provided pretty
    decent possibilities, and I was just delighted by the idea to write a game using
    only the Notepad editor. In other words, the menu interface allowed creating an
    adventure with approximately the same plot, but with significantly less efforts
    on my part.

    ZombX: I hate parsers...

    Akela: Just because!

      Jenny: Who helped designing and testing your program?

    Victor: As far as the first versions are concerned -- nobody. [Victor means the
    development of Dosurka.]

    Goraph: My friend Alexey helped me testing my game. It must be said he never
    could complete it -- its puzzles probably were too difficult. For instance, you
    had to guess the name of a dragon that was hidden in the lyrics of a song taking
    up two screens of text. He just didn't read it!

    Korwin: In first place, it's been the creator of urq_dos Victor Koryanov, who
    not only gave very clear explanations on using his game engine, but integrated a
    number of useful functions in it at my request, even those used very rarely now
    (at that time, I wanted to write a parser-based game in Dosurka). Secondly, it's
    my best beta-tester Stas Starkov, who found a heap of mistakes -- not just
    programming ones, but also (to my shame) misspellings. Some of them ignited
    heated discussions, during which Internet search, examples from the world's
    literature and consultations with professional teachers of the Russian language
    were called in. Finally, my friends, relatives and Internet acquaintances.

    brevno: If you mean my notorious adventure games editor -- there were huge lots
    of people, mainly our wonderful game authors, who tested on themselves all ruts
    and grooves of this program, which I started writing barely knowing how to
    program, only inspired by the bright idea of URQ-domination on our planet... I'd
    like to thank them all. I'm sincere about it. I've always said the most
    important thing isn't the language, the development platform, the choice between
    a menu- or parser-based interface, but the author of the game, its text, its
    plot. That's the salt of the earth -- the creator.

    ZombX: Well, I did all the writing part myself, and the testing was done by
    those in front of whom I wanted to show off.

    Akela: What's this question about? As far as AkURQ is concerned -- everybody
    helped. However, mostly by criticizing it.

      Jenny: How did you see the prospects of the Russian IF movement at that time
      (when you were first introduced to IF)?

    Victor: Then, there wasn't any "movement" I knew of, the first Dosurka versions
    were distributed to as little as four addresses.

    Goraph: At that time, I didn't think of the prospects of the Russian IF movement
    at all, I just did what I liked. The very process of game creation was fun for
    me, I had no concerns about whether someone would actually play it (and if he
    would be able to play it at all); admitted, this influenced the quality of my
    game unfavorably.

    Korwin: In 2003, I was very optimistic about it, wrote articles, was working on
    two games simultaneously, tried playing English text adventures again -- it
    seemed to me the only problem of the genre was the lack of publicity, and that
    in our "world's most-reading country" IF was just doomed to be successful.

    What have I not done to shake the Russian interactive fiction out of its
    slumber:

    - wrote help for URQ and QSP -- the two most advanced Russian menu-based
    adventure development platforms; actively communicated in forums and via e-mail
    with every person who, as I thought, could help the genre to expand; among them,
    there were the developers of all Russian adventure authoring tools I knew of
    (including GrAnd -- the author of RTADS; Byte -- the creator of QSP; Victor
    Koryanov and Akela, both present here; Overlord, who tries porting URQ to Java;
    Sonic, who intends to develop the YaRIL/IFML -- Interactive Fiction Markup
    Language) adventure-oriented programming language, which should be completely in
    Russian, including instructions and operators; several other developers);
    - entered games in contests organized on the URQ forum (urq.fastbb.ru), often
    using different nicknames to give the impression of a more vivid activity,
    winning several competitions (sometimes beating myself).

    As I see it, these efforts were fruitful, and I'm proud there is my humble
    contribution to the development of Russian IF.

    brevno: I was at an age when one doesn't care a jot about the future, only
    living by the present day. A new program version every week -- bang. Manually
    rearranging the adventure games catalog growing out of size (the non-kosher PHP
    was out of question) -- no problem! Playing a game or discussing it on the forum
    instead of preparing for an important test -- well, you really didn't need to
    ask!

    ZombX: Well, I expected the new URQ for Windows by RipOs and the SMSQuest by
    Evgeny to finally be released...

    Akela: I haven't been there.

      Jenny: How do you see it (the future of IF) now?

    Victor: First of all, the URQ-community has no official structure. Sure, the
    opinion of the "old-timers" is often weighty when routine problems are
    discussed, well, and people related to the support of the main site and forum
    have some technical privileges. However, all this is rather nominal. It's a very
    common situation that a newcomer showing up with fresh and reasonable ideas, or
    a new author who strikes everybody with a game setting a new quality standard,
    enters the community life as an active full member from the very first days.
    Considering such organization principles, it's not quite right to speak about a
    "movement". The veterans' only organizational initiative are the annually
    contests that pull up the games' overall quality and creativity little by
    little. Under such conditions, it's just not possible to have a clear "vision of
    the future". There is hope that we will put into practice the technical ideas we
    have, which, in its turn, will give the authors and the whole community a new
    motivation, that the oncoming contests will become even more interesting, but
    that kind of predictions don't change with time, I could tell you exactly the
    same things two years ago.

    Goraph: Russian IF-authors are notable (compared to the Western ones) for their
    incredible laziness, and incredible lack of time. Therefore, although there are
    enough adequate authoring tools available, there aren't too many quality and
    finished games. The Russian IF-community will exist for a long time as a
    subculture, but I don't think it will ever result in a large number of
    high-quality games being released.

    Korwin: At present time, there are at least three almost perfect IF-development
    systems for Russian games: the parser-based RTADS, and the menu-based URQ and
    QSP. Besides, there are at least a dozen of other systems, which are also quite
    usable (ADRIFT, RINFORM, TGE, TKR2, GTI, QTech and a few more.) The stumbling
    block isn't the lack of a development platform, but rather the lack of authors.
    Maybe writing adventures for palmtops and mobile phones could spur interactive
    fiction in general -- if there are (paying) players and, consequently, money,
    serious authors probably will get attracted.

    brevno: It's easy to say there's a lull. However, there's always a place for
    dreams and hopes.

    ZombX: To tell you the truth, somewhat puny, the initial enthusiasm faded away.
    Everybody ponders why it peters out little by little, but no one does anything
    in order not to let it kick the bucket.

    Akela: To be honest, I don't see it.

      Jenny: What are the main problems of Russian IF as you see them?

    Victor: There are still too few really big games. Games with a world one would
    be pleased to dive into, without concerns about hitting the bottom too fast;
    with characters one would remember even half a year later. Such games have
    already started to be released, but not as many as I'd like to see.

    Korwin: First of all, it's the absence of massive IF traditions in Russia,
    which, in its turn, has its roots in the fact a computer was a too expensive
    "toy" for most Russians over a long period of time, so that the IF-heyday of the
    1980s passed our country by.

    Then, there is the difficulty of the Russian language with its variety of
    wordforms, which represents a serious obstacle for writing a decent parser. This
    problem was solved only by 2002-2003 thanks to the efforts of GrAnd; another way
    for solving it was using of a menu-based interface in such interpreters as URQ,
    QSP, TGE and others.

    Thirdly, the best authors usually prefer to write books, since they bring their
    creators more profit than computer games. My opinion is, to create a good text
    adventure, a cooperation between a good programmer and a good author is
    required; at that, none of them needs to have outstanding skills in their
    respective field of activity. The thing is, good programming skills and the
    ability to express one's thoughts coherently and aesthetically are very rarely
    combined in one person -- and that's one of the most serious problems of Russian
    IF. [Not only of the Russian one, it seems ;)].

    brevno: Our (URQ) authors are young and rash people for the most part. That's
    great of course. Sometimes, however, they're full of ideas and eagerness, but
    just can't properly express their feelings and concepts. You hardly can expect
    an impeccable plot and language from a jolly teenager. Persistence is also an
    important factor here, since, if you work too long on one thing at that age,
    your interest tends to fade away. Yet, on the other hand, our unfinished, even
    homely gamies occasionally conceal such little gems one doesn't find so easy in
    professional works (and I don't mean just IF).

    Sure, there are also mature authors (casts a glance at Korwin) writing solid,
    polished adventures. If only they loaned that little spark from our young
    people... ;)

    Finally, there's a lack of motivation. Authors write for self-entertainment for
    the most part, the target audience isn't too big: once you don't find means to
    make yourself glad, you run about as if you've been shi... spit upon.

    Generally, I think URQ is rather a therapeutic product. One has to ponder hard
    to find an easier and better way of self-actualization through a game for a
    beginner. To make a game using a sophisticated, well thought-out programming
    language, especially a parser-based one, one needs to read manuals, studying
    examples, etc. And here -- zap, zap, you smash your thought into the Notepad
    editor, and the game -- albeit small and simple, yet alive -- is ready. And it's
    yours -- your brainchild. You feel happy. The player does, too (well, maybe:) ).

    Goraph: Because of the difficulty of the Russian language, it's not easy to
    develop a good parser; however, a passable parser-based authoring tool exists
    already (I mean RTADS). Besides, there are no obstacles for writing high-quality
    menu-based games, as they do it in Japan (they seem to have much more problems
    with parsers than we).

    This leaves us but one problem -- the lack of interest and time on the authors'
    part.

    Akela: No one writes anything -- that's the problem!

      Jenny: Goraph, what do you think of the "evolution" of IF into hybrid games
      through melting with other genres? Is there any place for menu-based games in
      your vision of future?

    Goraph: It depends on what you mean by evolution into hybrid games. If you
    include illustrations in your work of IF without harming the quality of the
    text, it'll still remain an IF game. However, if the amount of text gradually
    decreases, it finally isn't IF anymore. "The best visualization is your
    imagination" -- that's the criterion I distinguish interactive fiction from any
    other genres by. Menu-driven games have existed and will always exist in future
    for languages where it's difficult to write a good parser.

    Besides, such games may have success on devices with limited input capabilities
    (mobile phones, palmtops). On the other hand, they already begin playing DOOM on
    cellular phones. I believe IF games will exist as long as literature will. It's
    possible they become extinct together with literature in the future, to be
    replaced by another sphere of creative work.

      Jenny (now to all): What games did stick to your memory?

    Victor: I've made up such lists -- both brief and more detailed versions -- on
    the forum several times. I think it's not very useful to enumerate them here
    once more, since the names won't mean anything to an uninitiated person; as to
    explaining from scratch why I liked this or that game -- it alone would provide
    material for a large article, or even a series of reviews.

    Goraph: As far as Russian IF is concerned, it's Waiting for the Morning by Stas
    Starkov, 40000 Years B. C. by Vampire, Winnie-the-Pooh And Other Animals by
    Korwin. Of old commercial western text adventures, it's Hunchback by Ocean;
    among the amateur "modern" IF, All Roads by Jon Ingold takes a clear lead
    (actually, it's my favorite adventure altogether).

    brevno: I'm a big fan of Goraph (who's going to become the best writer of
    Ukraine one day), especially of his notorious Ottar (How Ottar, Hetchhock And
    Koyot Shook the Tail of Whitesquirrelwolf) -- an absolutely unique game written
    in a language barely corresponding to Russian;). No, it isn't mat, it even isn't
    Albanian. One has to see it. One has to dig it. ["Mat" (pronounced as "mutt") is
    the famous Russian obscenity jargon, which is considered a unique phenomenon of
    linguistics: the thing is, one can express oneself using this jargon only
    without any loss of sense or expressiveness. I don't know whether the term "mat"
    is known in the USA, if not, it can be translated as "obscenities". Albanian
    means the deliberately grammatically distorted language (you know, in which you
    say "kull" instead of "cool") that has become so popular in some Internet forums
    and blogs recently. Again, the only term that seems to be a more or less
    adequate translation is, well, "Akmi-speak"; however, I'm sure there must be a
    word for that phenomenon in English that is known not only to fans of the
    Unnkulian series;).]

    Other games that come to mind immediately: the frolic The Golden Key, Or... How
    It Happened In Reality by Akela; [The Golden Key (the full name is The Golden
    Key, Or The Adventures Of Buratino) is a rather loose Russian adaptation of the
    Pinochhio fairy tale. Until very recently, it was practically the only version
    of the story inhabitants of the former USSR/Russia had access to; it's still
    much more well-known and popular in Russia than the original story by Carlo
    Collodi.] the historical Pyramid by Korwin; the monumental yet incomplete Trion
    by D. Mazayev; games by VovkaSmert' aka Vegeta The Hero, In The Deep, both of
    which are notable for their good writing; fun yet crazy game series by Larry
    Baggins -- I'm tempted to go on enumerating :). I'd rather like to mention a
    couple of mini-games not much talked about or just fallen into oblivion --
    PARISH 1313 that almost jazzed me out of my mind by the author's logic and
    bizarre plot turns; The Co(s)mic Odyssey, the author of which remained unknown
    due to a tragic mishap.

    Korwin: Among the western adventures Eric the Viking, Zork I, So Far.

    Among the Russian ones:
    - Dreamour (GrAnd, RTADS),
    - Waiting for the Morning (Stas Starkov, RTADS)
    - In The Deep (VovkaSmert' aka Vegeta, URQ),
    - Agent-D (Aracon, URQ),
    - Hope For Life (Phobos, URQ),
    - Door Into The Summer (Demon, URQ),
    - Chronicles Of Captain Bloud: The Secret Of The Left Buttock (Goraph, URQ),
    - Hill Of The Fairies (Belial, URQ),
    - Little Red Riding Hood (Yegorka Bestalanny, URQ),
    - Ukouzya (Tanya, QSP),
    - Zork Legends: Through the Dragon (Zorn, QSP);
    - Klara the Jam-Plunderer (Belial, 6days)

    However, I didn't play every game existing, and there're certainly a lot of
    interesting ones beyond this list. I think Russian games currently are
    noticeably inferior to western masterpieces.

      Jenny: Korwin, you are considered one of the most prolific URQ authors. What
      other games did you write?

    Korwin: First of all, I'm not the most prolific author: there also is Larry
    Baggins who seems to have been the creator of even more games. In addition to
    Winnie-the-Pooh, I most actively participated in designing of a number of
    adventures; only in the contests from 2004 to winter of 2007, there were eleven
    games entered I had a hand in (I even can't enumerate them all):

    Pyramid (historical adventure about the ancient Egypt);
    The Wings (a modern-time story about a young man dating a girl on a rock music
    festival);
    Rendezvous (a tiny game consisting of two locations, about an encounter of a
    space traveler with an unfriendly spaceship of an alien civilization);
    In Spite Of Winds And Waves (the PC is to be rescued from a yacht going down);
    Genie Ex Machine/Genie From The Machine (the heroine rescues her beloved (who's
    an astronaut), confronting state institutions and an AI);
    Q-Quest (the adventures of a student in the forest and on a foreign planet)...

    Sadly, I have to admit there are very little fully finished games in this list
    -- I feel like getting my hands on it again and give it more polish about
    practically any of them. Rendezvous, for instance, is a wee fragment of a big
    game, the conception of which is haunting me since 1996. However, this haunting
    hasn't been very fruitful till now.

      Jenny: Which of the authoring tools and interpreters for Russian text
      adventures you think is the best one? Why do you think so?

    Victor: As to authoring tools, it's a simple question to answer: for URQ, only
    one specialized editor exists, so that you just have to choose between SMSQuest
    and any common text editor. I prefer the second option, but I'm not indicative
    here, since I've never tried to write a longer adventure. As to the
    interpreters, I barely keep track of other Russian IF systems. I just look at
    them, say, once in a year to see what new features have become available over
    this period. Thus, I can't judge which system is "better", and which is "worse".

    Goraph: RTADS by Andrey Grankin. A very good platform for parser-based games in
    Russian. Its disadvantage is the rather steep learning curve, but for me, it
    doesn't represent a problem (I'm working as a programmer for a living).

    Korwin: I won't answer, for one simple reason: I consider all the authors of the
    development systems I've mentioned before to be my friends; to some extent, I
    was involved in the creation process for all of those platforms (to a smaller
    degree in respect of RTADS, to a larger degree regarding URQ). All of them are
    perfectly suitable for writing text adventures; of course, each one has its
    characteristics and advantages, but one can perform great work with any of them.

    brevno: I haven't seen any that'd make me say -- yeah, this one is definitely
    the best! One has to work with the tools available. Go ahead, not a step back!

    ZombX: WinURQ v. 1.4, since it's the only platform I can work with.

      Jenny: What programming languages do you prefer to work with?

    Victor: C99 with a few extensions.

    Goraph: I'm a web-programmer and only work in PHP and JavaScript. Besides, I
    like Python. As to text adventures, I mostly work in urq_dos, because it's so
    simple to use. It allows me to put aside all the programming aspects and
    concentrate on the plot (this is important to me, since I usually don't make a
    layout of the game on paper). This platform is perfectly suited for developing
    games in English too -- if you're not put off by built-in system messages in
    Russian and the absence of English documentation, that is.

    Korwin: Hmmm... Since I program games for the most part, it seems to me this is
    another form of the previous question. However, I'll give you the following
    answer: because of historical reasons, I've written most of my games using URQ,
    but now I intend to make up for this lack of attention to other platforms (QSP,
    RTADS).

    brevno: I like PowerBASIC. I also program in C.

    ZombX: URQL of course.

    Akela: I prefer not to work at all, and play WoW instead.

      Jenny: Your work and your hobby -- are they related to each other in some way?
      [Apparently, there's been a misunderstanding between the interviewer and some
      of the interviewees: Jenny obviously implied the guys' hobby is interactive
      fiction, but a number of them told about their other hobbies].

    Victor: Very remotely. I'm a scientific associate in a research institute and do
    a lot of programming at work, but the main themes, the development environments,
    etc. are entirely different.

    Goraph: I'm a web-programmer, I like my work, which also represents my hobby at
    the same time.

    Korwin: In no way at all. I'm a business trainer. However, the communication
    with my clients often puts me in situations more challenging than any adventure
    game puzzles.

    brevno: I'm an engineer who programs microcontrollers, and develops/produces
    devices based on them. Many people think I'm making infernal humanlike robots.
    Unfounded speculations! This is what Victor Koryanov does!

    ZombX: They're somewhat related, if you mean my study. I like cinematography
    (its technical aspects), and we have a lecture about TV broadcasting.

    Akela: My hobby is computer gaming.

      Jenny: What do you gain from contacts with other members of the Russian IF
      community?

    Victor: It happened several times already that such contacts directly urged me
    to implementing new features, fixing bugs, thinking over ideas not yet realized.
    That's an especially common thing when an author writes an adventure, the code
    of which could be made a lot more elaborate and compact if this or that feature
    were present. Or, if a reasonable plot idea can't be implemented at all without
    this feature.

    Goraph: Russian IFers are great beta-testers capable of introducing constructive
    critics that makes my games better, and the target audience for these games at
    the same time (unfortunately, at the current stage players and authors are
    practically the same for us).

    Korwin: Probably a certain feeling of being free. We're all from childhood by
    origin, and IF allows me to come back there.

    brevno: I met many great guys.

    ZombX: Much fresh and useful information about cinematographic news.

    Akela: Yeah.

      Jenny: How old are you? What's the average age of Russian IFers in general,
      and how many are they?

    Victor: 1979 YOB. No one could tell you the average, but the fact is the age
    spectrum began growing broader recently. As to the number of community members,
    there are over 100 authors registered in the URQ games catalogue, but it must be
    taken into account that a "generation change" goes on steadily. Some authors
    drop out of sight after uploading several games, others come anew, and some
    return after keeping silent for a long time. The approximate number of
    simultaneously active authors is about 10, maybe 20.

    Goraph: Personally, I'm 26 years old; I can't tell you anything about the
    average age, and it doesn't make any sense anyway, since some of the community
    members are old enough to be the others' fathers or even grandfathers. I think a
    realistic estimation of the number of members is over fifty, but the absolute
    majority of them are passive; the number of those who are active is slightly
    over ten.

    Korwin: I'm 37 years old now, but that won't last long. It's difficult for me to
    judge about the age of other IF enthusiasts, but my impression is they're
    younger than me. By my estimation, the number of those who write their own games
    is about twenty to thirty... if they don't write (like myself) under several
    nicks, that is.

    brevno: I'm 23, have no pernicious habits (apart from URQ), but a bad character,
    and I'm single. I think 13 to 19 years is the most accurate estimation of the
    average age of community members. Judging by the number of adventures sent in
    and nicknames registered, they are about eighty, regular rotation kept in mind
    of course. But I can't say about other development platforms.

    ZombX: I'm 19. The average age is 17 to 30. Yeah, the interval is like this.
    Other ages are a rarity.

    Akela: I'd be glad to tell about myself as well, but unfortunately I can't
    reveal the coordinates of my home planet...

      Jenny: What would you like to tell the readers about yourself?

    Goraph: [In English...] Hello, Dear Readers, my name is Yura, I'm living in
    Chernigov, Ukraine, a small beautiful town 140 km east of Chernobyl. I never pay
    taxes, and love interactive fiction for the most part of my life. :)

    Korwin: I have a house, a much-loved wife, a job I like, a son and a daughter. I
    also have a number of minor everyday problems life probably would be impossible
    without, solving of which gives one the feeling of a full-blooded life. And lots
    of problems at work they wouldn't pay me my wage without.

    brevno: My nickname is brevno (translated from Russian as "a log" or "a
    numskull"). Are you sure you want to know anything about someone who has chosen
    such a nick of his own accord, and is using it over several years?:)

    ZombX: Well, I was born in a small town of the Nizhni Novgorod Region, I'm
    unmarried, am fond of horror movies; I had a hard childhood, didn't go to school
    until the age of 7, was afraid of anybody. When I was beaten up, I cried.

    Akela: (Inarticulate mumbling.)

      Jenny: Your favorite books? Writers? Films? Song?

    Goraph:  Book - The Hobbit by Tolkien (I reread it about fifteen times)
    Writer - China Miιville and Neal Stephenson
    Films -- all Hong Kong films by John Woo, True Romance by Tarantino, as well as
    Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
    Song: The Young One by Yefrem Amiramov

    Korwin: As far as books are concerned -- it's a difficult question. There are
    too many of them, since reading is my favorite way to spend my spare time. I'll
    list some of the books I've reread several times.

    Among foreign authors: Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, Ender's Game by Orson
    Scott Card, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, The
    Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Illusions and Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard
    Bach.

    Among Russian authors, I like the books by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Sergey
    Lukianenko, Pavel Shoumil, Lev Vershinin.

    brevno: I like reading SciFi and historical literature. I hope the names won't
    be totally unfamiliar to you... Among ours, the first ones who come to mind are,
    say, Loukin, Belyanin, and Kaganov. Of the foreign ones - Longyear, Adams,
    Harrison, Asprin, well, and Pratchett is going to join this list soon.

    Films... Recently, I started watching movies way too much. Therefore, now, I
    don't like cinema at all. Well, the only exception may be good old Russian
    (Soviet) films, like the Midshipmen. [Midshipmen, Go Ahead! is a series of
    semi-historical full-length films made in the late 1980-ies, which is very
    popular in the SU/Russia. The plot is in the vein of Three Musketeers AFAIK].

    Songs -- depend on my mood. Generally, I have a weakness for merry Irish music,
    frantic revolutionary and military songs, simple and sunny songs from the Soviet
    time, sometimes bardic song and folk. In a sad mood, I listen to classical music
    or punk rock.

    ZombX: Book: The Autumn Carnival Of Death. Authors: Ron'shin, Kharms. Films --
    Cigarette Burns by Carpenter, then Man Bites Dog. Song She Loves So Much by
    Secret.

    Akela: Books -- there're lots of. Author - Lukianenko. Films -- are very many
    too, anime for the most part. Songs -- a whole lot too, by The Mill, The Rowan
    Tower, The King And The Fool, etc.

      Jenny: A forgivable weakness in a person?

    Goraph: I have difficulties answering this question, I only can talk about a
    specific person and a specific weakness:).

    Korwin: Telling lies -- in order to put oneself in a better light. But not
    slandering.

    brevno: IF.

    Akela: A weakness for computer games... that's mine.

    ZombX: Probably smoking. By the way, I'm a non-smoker.

      Jenny: What do you think, which merit deserves the most respect in a person?

    Goraph: All in all, you shouldn't ask me about that, rather the government and
    the sociologists. But the desire to write interactive fiction is undoubtedly
    worthy of all kinds of respect.

    Korwin: Perseverance, diligence.

    brevno: Adequacy, understanding, cordiality, fervor.

    ZombX: Well, the ability to carry an undertaking through.

    Akela (reluctantly tearing himself away from the screen): Honesty, decency.

      Jenny: The worst streak of the Russian mentality.

    Goraph: I don't know any.

    Korwin: Unreliability. I'm a historian by education, thus, I understand where it
    comes from, and hope very much modern conditions will form other habits. In me,
    too.

    brevno: A generous nature.

    ZombX: The way everything is put off till the last minute.

    Akela: How can you measure all Russians by one yardstick?

      Jenny: The best streak of Russians.

    Goraph: The best streak of the Russian mentality is their "unconventional" way
    of thinking (that doesn't resemble either the Western or the Eastern one, and is
    a sort of a mixture between them), which sometimes leads to interesting results.

    Korwin: Optimism.

    brevno: A generous nature.

    ZombX: A generous nature.

    Akela (is immersed in the game again):...

      Jenny: A traditional question: your plans for the future.

    Victor: urq_dos is a text-only (command-prompt only) application originally
    developed for DOS16. After the machines that only had "pure" DOS installed
    became completely obsolete, it was ported to DOS32 and WCL (Windows Command
    Line). The last update goes back to 2004, and of course a huge number of new
    ideas and features not yet implemented are pending. This includes a version with
    a suitable graphic interface, porting to new environments and operating systems,
    several new key features of the URQL language suggested by adventure authors, as
    well as a lot of other things I can't remember straight off. In other words,
    there's no lack of new plans and prospects, the question is just, where to find
    spare time, a motivation and opportunities for implementing all this. When I
    started working on Dosurka I was a student, and while there isn't ever enough
    spare time, in that period, I had the wish to just get a look at various aspects
    of programming, to try my strength at solving interesting problems; well, and
    the burden of reality hasn't been as heavy as it is now -- many of the problems
    I've been confronting at that time seem rather trifling to me now. Currently,
    I've already graduated from the university and upheld my thesis, I have an
    intense work full of responsibilities, as well as a number of problems that
    somehow never get fewer. As time goes by, it becomes more and more difficult to
    simply throw everything out of mind and return to one's hobby.

    Goraph: Currently, I have no plans related to IF, I'm interested in sim-racing
    now, but sooner or later I'll have the desire to write a text adventure again,
    as it happened many times over the last fifteen years :).

    Korwin: My most intimate dream is to write a masterpiece of a game, a game of
    the same level as the best Western text adventures. There're a lot of plans: to
    write a menu-based game in j2me for a cellular phone, two projects to be
    implemented in RTADS, one -- in QSP, and half a dozen -- in URQ. To be honest,
    I'd prefer if there was only one project -- I'd had better chances to complete
    it this year then.

    brevno: I'd be glad to say that I'm planning to do something really useful: to
    improve my editor, to program a GUI for URQ, or to write a stunning adventure...
    But instead, I'll just say that I'm going to take a firm hold on my line --
    continue organizing the LOKa contests and second our authors' efforts. Sure
    enough, as much as I can, yeah.

    ZombX: I'm planning to shoot my low-budget horror film within the next three
    years.

    Akela (tearing himself away from the game one last time): To finally boost
    myself to the 60th level and solve all quests to get t3.

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

    Consider the following review header:

    TITLE: Cutthroats
    AUTHOR: Infocom
    EMAIL: ???
    DATE: September 1984
    PARSER: Infocom Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2
    URL: Not available.
    VERSION: Release 23

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

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

    From: Mike Harris (harriswillys SP@G grandecom.net)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    From: Jimmy Maher (maher SP@G grandecom.net)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    From: Jimmy Maher (maher SP@G grandecom.net)

    TITLE: Tales of the Traveling Swordsman
    AUTHOR: Mike Snyder
    E-MAIL:  wyndo SP@G prowler-pro.com
    DATE: October 1, 2006
    PARSER: Hugo
    SUPPORTS: Hugo interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF-Archive
    URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2006/hugo/tales_ts

    Tales of the Traveling Swordsman is one of several games from the 2006
    Competition that I returned to recently for another look.  I enjoyed my second
    play-through just as much as my first, even though the game is not the sort that
    generally most excites me.  You see, Tales very much wants to tell you a story
    -- one particular story.  It is very linear, and implemented just deeply enough
    to get you through that story.  And it is a fantasy game, not my favorite genre
    of IF or literature.  The fact that someone like me, who is generally interested
    by more simulation-oriented, open-ended IF set anywhere BUT a world of magic and
    fantasy, finds the game so appealing is a testimony I think to just how well it
    operates within its chosen restrictions.

    The game casts you as the eponymous swordsman, an adventurer who roams the land
    in search of villains to vanquish and fair maidens to rescue.  It proceeds
    through three linear episodes to a suitably exciting climax; then comes a
    wonderful little denouement that casts everything that happened before in an
    entirely different light and really makes the game for me.  The writing fairly
    charges along with lots of swashbuckling vigor right from the opening lines:
    "Thick blades of grass at hip level part and bend with your long strides. Onward
    you go, one hand on your broadsword's sheath, the other clutching a scrap of
    parchment, and your water flask dangling from the opposite hip. The town of
    Homesdale is now a morning's journey behind you."  Mr. Snyder also takes modest
    advantage of Hugo's multimedia capabilities to display some nicely-done
    scrollwork chapter titles that add to the atmosphere.  I hate to always refer to
    games by name-dropping books and other games, but in this case I can't resist.
    In the book department, this reminds me of a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser story
    with a rather less roguish protagonist; in the game department, of a less
    aggressively silly Eric the Unready.

    It does have plenty of puzzles, but they are quite straightforward and likely to
    stump you just long enough to make them satisfying.  You won't find any
    brain-twisters here to derail the story, and that's a good thing.  In fact, you
    won't find any of the things you might be used to seeing in next-generation
    titles by the likes of Emily Short and Eric Eve, or even the author's own 2005
    Competition entry Distress.

    So why do I want to give this one such an excellent review?  In short, because
    the atmosphere is just so darn innocent and fun... and because at the end, when
    you realize what you have really been experiencing, it manages to be both very
    funny (especially the bit about the cat!), and poignant, a reminder -- for me,
    anyway -- of childhood summers that seemed to go on forever.  Without the
    epilogue, it would be a competent but unexceptional little piece of lightweight
    fantasy.  With it, though, it rises to mingle with the cream of the 2006 crop.
    I can't think of a better choice for the 2006 XYZZY award for best story.

    I could happily go on for several more paragraphs, but to do that I would have
    to spoil the central surprise about which I've possibly already said too much.
    I have to say, though, that a huge source of confusion for me as I was playing
    the first time, the fact that I couldn't seem to TALK to anyone, gets explained.
     In fact, I realized on my second play-through that there was no sound at all in
    the story, and, again, when you get to the end yourself you will understand why.
     I'm not sure if I'm quite happy with the point of view switch that happens
    inside the epilogue, as it felt a bit jarring to suddenly be somebody else after
    going all through the game through behind another set of eyes, but I'm also not
    sure if the real situation could have been communicated quite so economically if
    this hadn't been done.

    The overall level of polish is excellent, bugs seem well-nigh nonexistent, and a
    play-through will take no more than a couple of hours at the outside.  So go to
    it, and if you have any heart at all prepare to laugh and even be a little bit
    moved.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     ___. .___    _    ___.     ___.
    /  _| |   \  / \  / ._|    /  _|
    \  \  | o_/ |   | | |_.    \  \
    .\  \ | |   | o | | | |    .\  \
    |___/ |_|   |_|_| \___|    |___/ PECIFICS

    SPAG Specifics is a small section of SPAG dedicated to providing in-
    depth critical analysis of IF games, spoilers most emphatically
    included.

    WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE FOLLOWING GAME:

    The Elysium Enigima

    PROCEED NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE PLAYED THIS GAME!

    THIS IS NOT A TEST! GENUINE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

    LAST CHANCE TO AVOID SPOILAGE!

    From: Valentine Kopteltsev (uux SP@G mail.ru)

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

    Five Things A Spy Should Never Do

    Since the publication of my IF-Comp rant in SPAG issue #47, I've been
    restless. (And that's not as much an exaggeration as you might have thought).
    The reason for that were the rather unkind words I applied to Mr. Eve's work,
    Elysium Enigma. To be more precise, it weren't exactly the words
    themselves -- rather, the way I left them without any grounding or
    explanation. "The behavior principles of the most important NPC are
    fundamentally wrong", "I'm confronting dummies" -- those certainly aren't
    accusations to be thrown about without rhyme and reason! Yes, the requirement
    of not being spoilery can sometimes have strange (and clearly unintended)
    effects on a review; in this particular case, for instance, it probably
    provided the author of the reviewed work with the unique opportunity to slip
    on the shoes of a theatre producer whose play is pelted with rotten tomatoes
    by the audience for no apparent reason. Well, at least this non-spoilery
    requirement is fair in respect of its effects working bothway: to me, it gave
    the genuine feeling of being one of such a tomato-throwing rowdies paid by
    the competitors, who play their mean tricks out from the safety of the
    spectators' hall. Not a very pleasant sensation, by golly!

    That's when one starts to appreciate the SPAG Specifics section. God bless
    Paul O'Brian who introduced it! God bless Duncan Stevens, too, who was the
    first to write a Specifics review!

    What follows is a list of a few key behavior aspects of the most important
    NPC in Elysium Enigma, Leela the spy, which I found totally unrealistic,
    accompanied by an explanation why exactly they didn't convince me. Please be
    aware that my analysis is based not on deep insider knowledge of the spy
    trade, but mostly on plain common sense (with only sporadic insertion of
    information I gained from the few spy movies/novels I watched/read).

    So, the first of the DON'Ts for a spy would be

    1. NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS (unless you really have to)

    In fact, questions start to crop up immediately after the spectacular
    apparition of Leela. So, shortly after you start the game, she comes up to
    you, telling her tear-jerking story about being expelled by the other
    dwellers, and begging you to find her some food and clothing. Now, keeping in
    mind Leela turns up to be an enemy spy by the end of the game, we just can do
    nothing but ask: why would she do it? Let's assume she only has professional
    interest in our PC, so that several motives quite natural for a "young woman
    of about twenty standard Earth years of age", like feeling lonely or the need
    for men's attention, can't be applied here.

    Well, a spy's main goals usually are sabotage and gaining information. Let's
    start with the former.

    Damaging the already troubled relations between the Empire and the Elysium
    people certainly would be an enticing objective for Leela. Say, something
    like obtaining the Empire officer's ID card, then penetrating the Legion
    office, decoying one of the local Elders by hoisting up the flag, killing
    him, and framing the Empire for the murder. She then could depart, taking the
    captured Empire officer with her, or, alternatively, kill him too, leaving
    his body somewhere not far away from the landing site of the Empire shuttle.
    Granted, the departure part might turn out somewhat problematic, but even if
    she failed to split -- the damage to the Empire probably would more than
    justify the loss of an agent for the Federation. (I know, it sounds pretty
    cynical, but so is the spy trade.)

    The problem is, Leela wouldn't have to contact our PC to achieve that. In
    fact, she'd just have to wait for him in ambush (which wouldn't represent a
    problem, since she clearly knew the path he'd take, as well as the
    approximate time of his arrival), then kill or stun him using a long-range
    weapon. She then would have at least a couple of hours to arrange everything
    the way she wanted... But I'm digressing from the subject. The main point is,
    if Leela was planning to inflict damage the way described above, the less the
    PC would become aware of her presence, the better it'd be for her.

    What other goals could she be after, then? Seduce the PC in order to win him
    over? More than doubtful, considering how little time is at her disposal, and
    what a low-value target a "hoist-up" officer probably represents. Start small
    talk with the PC in the hope to worm a few crucial secrets out of him? The
    very idea is ridiculous -- considering, again, the humble time resources she
    has, and the way how utterly suspicious any questions about the Empire
    (except maybe for the most general ones) would sound in her lips ("They say
    this year, the crops are gonna be good... By the way, darlin', what's the
    numeric strength of the Empire's most important starship fleets in the Sirius
    system?") Maybe just undermine his morale and arouse doubts about the
    correctness of the Empire's politics on Elysium by demonstrating how cruel
    the people he's going to talk to are? Again -- this means high risks (see
    more on that below), unclear (and probably pretty weak) effect to the benefit
    of the Federation, and low probability of success.

    And now, what are the dangers Leela is taking upon herself by contacting the
    PC? Well, a pretty severe risk of exposure -- no more, no less. Elysium
    Enigma's optimal path suggests the PC does all the work by himself, but he
    really didn't need to. Even if he was a narrow-minded martinet only capable
    of directly following the instructions he received, anybody "with a deeper
    understanding of the situation" would reveal Leela's legend as a fake one,
    and know, on reading the PC's report, something foul is going on there. The
    result most likely would be a special de-spying mission to Elysium...

    Finally, a passage from a mystery by Agatha Christie comes to my mind (the
    highlight is mine, and I'd like to apologize for the quotation being not very
    accurate -- I've read the novel several years ago, and not in the original):
    "If he stayed quiet, we'd probably let him be, but *the idiot* kept getting
    underfoot and putting his nose in our affairs, so that finally, we started
    suspecting him."

    I think certain similarities between the way the criminal referred to in the
    previous section acted, and the behavior of Leela the super-spy haven't
    eluded the reader's attention. Also note the characterization the said
    criminal received -- no, not from a high-skilled spy-catcher, but from a mere
    police detective.

    2. DON'T LET YOUR KEYS LYING AROUND

    What's the optimal distance between a spy's hideaway, and a representative of
    the opposing party, from the spy's point of view? Correct answer: as far as
    possible.

    Leela doesn't just draw the PC to her shelter: after all, that might have
    been required for her plan (whatever it was -- see DON'T #1 on that). In
    addition, she conveniently drops the key to it in the next vicinity. That's
    the acme of negligence for a spy: she could as well just put a WELCOME mat on
    the "secret" trapdoor, hiding the key for it underneath!

    Well, if I were the spy, I'd probably carry the key somewhere on my body --
    say, on my neck, disguised as a locket, or concealed in my hair -- regardless
    of whether any enemy officers were around or not, but especially in the
    former case. At the very least, I'd hide it somewhere I truly could rely on
    nobody being able to find it (like, burying it in the forest, that kind of
    thing). Sure, that'd be less handy -- but the elimination of unauthorized
    access risks clearly outweighs any inconvenience in this situation.

    3. DON'T FORGET TO TRAIN YOUR MEMORY

    A short digression: it's amazing in itself both opposing forces, The Empire
    and The Federation, use compatible data storage systems. In this regard, I
    remember the semi-fable about how the Soviet engineers cloned the IBM PC, yet
    the clone turned out to be incompatible with the original device, because all
    imperial dimensions were converted to metric ones.

    But that's not the subject I initially intended to talk about. I've really
    been stunned to find the passwords to the datatabs scattered around here and
    there. I'm more than unsure spies are allowed to write down such information
    at all! Leela also seems to have even more serious problems with her memory,
    since she had to jot the passwords down on like-colored objects to match them
    to the proper datatabs...

    Well, I probably even could buy this whole business as a relatively minor
    plausibility break. The thing that clearly went over the top was, having a
    password written down on Leela's shuttle! Were there not a single other,
    more suitable black object around? It's practically as if I scribbled the
    password to my office computer on the wall in the entrance hall of the house
    I'm living in! The Federation really must be suffering from lack of qualified
    personnel.

    4. DON'T NEGLECT YOUR SURROUNDING LANDSCAPE

    At a couple of occasions during the game, Leela semi-actively tries to get
    into the PC's way -- say, by preventing him from moving the cabinet to reveal
    the trapdoor, or not letting him cross the river in her presence. Now, what
    would be a suitable tactics to encumber him not just at one occasion, but
    permanently? I'd see two ways: a) find a vantage point I could watch the
    whole surroundings from, and run to intercept the PC as soon as I see him
    make his way to the spot he was trying to do something I didn't let him to,
    or b) occupy a key location the PC couldn't pass without meeting me. None of
    those plans are ideal, but at least they're consequent.

    What does Leela instead? She follows the PC to the edge of the forest and
    remains there sheepishly, giving him the opportunity to do what he's
    initially intended to unnoticed. Someone could point out to me the courses of
    action I suggested above aren't the solution under the given topographic
    circumstances. That's a strong argument I fully agree with; but then,
    wouldn't it be *much* wiser for Leela to just refrain from those attempts of
    hindering the PC, since they were doomed for failure from the very start? I
    mean, she had plenty of time to study the area to find out there's no easy
    way to intercept someone who's trying to slip by secretly, and any person
    with an IQ of at least a three-year-old child would know trying to talk
    someone out of doing something with a motivation like "you'd kill yourself"
    (while he obviously wouldn't) just couldn't be successful. If anything,
    such an attempt would just stir up the curiosity of the person it's directed
    against, and make the one trying to get in the way look extremely suspicious.
    (By the way, the part about making Leela look suspicious worked perfectly for
    me).

    5. DON'T TURN AWAY FROM PROBLEMS (because they tend to come back to you)

    As the game was going on and I was getting past its puzzles, I tried hard to
    provoke a sensible reaction from Leela. I got down into her hideaway,
    accompanied by her; I asked her questions that should have make it obvious
    for her I discovered the shuttle, the listening device, etc. To put it short,
    I did everything to make a person with even a trace of intellect understand
    she's in for trouble.

    What kind of reaction did I expect? Well, there were three options. Leela
    could try to take the PC by surprise and shoot him (oh, and don't tell me a
    decent spy wouldn't have a suitable weapon hidden somewhere!); alternatively,
    she could return to the role of a degraded, half-nutty girl she was playing
    at the very beginning, and flee (for instance, accompanying her retreat with
    shouting at the PC, "You're a monster! Don't touch me!") The third option
    might have been a combination of the other two (Leela would run away, then
    eventually return and try shooting the PC).

    What happened in the game instead? Nothing, actually. Leela kept following me
    around, playing the innocent, until a point where the situation became
    absolutely hopeless for her. We know how to call such a way of action:
    ostrich policy, a behavior pattern very typical for a bureaucrat who's pretty
    sure it's not him who's going to sort out the consequences of the problems
    he's trying to ignore; but certainly not for a spy knowing that her mission,
    her career, well, even her freedom and life are at stake.

    EPILOGUE

    There are a few other inconsistencies in the game, including a couple of plot
    branches dangling in the air (for instance, I don't think we ever get an
    explanation how it came to the flag/pillowcase confusion, which, in its turn,
    resulted in the listening device being revealed), but they are relatively
    minor compared to the ones listed above.

    Now, I can't say it often enough: I don't think The Elysium Enigma is a bad
    game -- on the contrary, it's great, especially once you stop creating
    illusions about it being a spy mystery, and perceive it as a puzzle-fest.

    Leela, too, is a nicely done character -- in her own way. I had the
    impression Mr. Eve designed a set of reactions that'd be plausible for an
    innocent village girl, but for some reason, didn't go a step further and
    check whether they'd be logical for a spy *pretending* to be an innocent
    village girl. Also, a few inconsistencies in her behavior can be explained by
    the game author's desire to keep his puzzles fair. Which, in its turn, quite
    unambiguously hints at Leela's primary predestination: she's not here to be
    your opponent -- rather, to provide puzzles for you. This is perfectly fine,
    but I radically disagree with the opinion EE in general and Leela in
    particular represents a breakthrough in character interaction.

    Finally, I'd like to remind you that I'm just expressing my personal opinion
    here, and that my words aren't intended to be taken as a gospel. I might very
    well have overlooked something. Thus, I've always open for a discussion via
    e-mail or R*IF in case you find a mistake in my reasoning, or just disagree
    with my views.

    P.S. My work on this review was in full play when the news came
    The Elysium Enigma won the XYZZY Awards for best game, and best individual
    NPC. The only thing I can do here is, to congratulate Mr. Eve sincerely with
    but one comment: we have a worthy winner here;).

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