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Game Reviews L

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

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

The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date.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

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    Table of Contents
    Labyrinth
    The Lady in Green
    The Land Beyond The Picket Fence
    LASH
    Last Resort
    Leather Goddesses of Phobos
    Leaves
    The Legend Lives!
    The Lesson of the Tortoise
    Lethe Flow Phoenix
    The Light: Shelby's Addendum
    Lists And Lists
    Little Blue Men
    Lock & Key
    Lomalow
    Losing Your Grip
    Lost
    Lost Kingdom, Brainf*ck Edition
    Lost New York
    The Lost Spellmaker
    Love's Fiery Imbroglio
    Luminous Horizon
    Lurking Horror

    Labyrinth
    From: DJ Hastings <dj.hastings SP@G wavecable.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #47 -- January 16, 2007

    TITLE: Labyrinth
    AUTHOR: Sami Preuninger
    EMAIL: samantha_casanova SP@G glic.com
    DATE: October 1, 2006
    PARSER: Inform 6
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF Archive
    URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2006/zcode/labyrinth/labyrinth.z8
    VERSION: Release 1

    Labyrinth consists of a series of puzzles set in a maze of sorts. Not a "twisty
    little passages" maze where the directions are non-reversible and the rooms are
    indistinguishable. No, this maze is logical enough; the main difficulty is
    figuring out how to get from room to room, and I think I would really have
    enjoyed it if it hadn't been for a small problem.

    That problem was the room descriptions: they completely confused me! Each wall
    in a room is of a different colour, as well as the floor and ceiling, and there
    are several doorways from each room, usually in strange positions like upside
    down against the ceiling. These doorways were my main problem; they are
    described as "archways," and when I first read about "an archway halfway up the
    south wall, extending from its western edge toward the middle of the wall," I
    imagined a stone arch sticking out into the room. The archway is really a
    doorway through the wall, with its base against the west wall instead of against
    the floor, but I didn't figure this out until I was quite a ways through the
    game using the walkthrough, and by that point I had already spoiled the rest of
    the puzzle.

    The other puzzles were mostly things like Nim or a cipher that would work just
    as well on paper. I didn't like the inclusion of the cipher. Ciphers essentially
    say to me, "pause the game while you go figure out this puzzle, and come back
    here when you're finished." And it was a keyword cipher, which I have no idea
    how to solve, so I never would have made it past this puzzle on my own. On the
    other hand, I did enjoy the "magic number" puzzle. It's another "go solve this
    and come back" puzzle, but the difference is that I enjoyed going and solving
    it. I probably wouldn't include it in an adventure game, because someone who
    didn't like that sort of thing would be just as irritated by it as I was by the
    cipher, but I still had fun with it.

    In the end, a game like Labyrinth stands or falls on its puzzles. Labyrinth's
    "maze" is creative and with a bit more clarity would make an excellent setting
    for a collection of unique and interesting puzzles. Unfortunately, most of
    Labyrinth's puzzles don't fit that description. There are a couple of
    exceptions, but they aren't enough to make the game worthwhile.

    From: David Jones <drj SP@G pobox.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #47 -- January 16, 2007

    A word of warning.  This game has a problem when played with the Zoom based
    interpreters (including Gargoyle and Spatterlight).  Play with Frotz.  As far as
    I know, Preuninger is working on a new version that presumably won't have these
    problems.

    Another word of warning: this game is almost pure puzzle.  Right from the very
    first description: "A Sweet-Smelling Room: The room is a perfect cube, about 30
    feet on a side.  The ceiling is yellow and the floor is purple.  The north wall
    is blue, and the eastern wall is green.  To the south, the wall is orange, and
    the western wall is red.  The walls are bare of ornament, and no furniture
    occupies the room." we can tell that we are entering into a world where certain
    things, like the colour of the walls, are going to important.  The fact that the
    floor and ceiling are described probably hints at the importance of the third
    dimension.  Our suspicions are immediately reinforced by the following
    paragraphs that describe in meticulous detail the doors in the room.  Most of
    which are not in their usual orientations and are situated in inaccessible
    portions of the walls and ceiling.  It all adds up to a strong reference to
    Escher and The Cube (the entertainingly low-budget movie).

    The game consists of a sequence of puzzles embedded into the framework of a text
    adventure.  Some would say that many of the puzzles would do better without the
    wrapper.  I'm not sure, I think what wrapper there is adds character to the
    game.  You're not merely pulling levers and pressing buttons in some abstract
    puzzle, you play the part of a trying-to-be-cool maths professor (we can tell
    because X ME reveals that the PC is into rock climbing and air guitar).  Each
    room has a distinctive smell, this is very handy for orienting yourself, but
    these are not mere scent markers on your map, they too add character: "The room
    smells rather strongly of wet dog.  You reaffirm your decision never to acquire
    a pet.".

    The help text says "I'll just say that drawing a map would be helpful".  Well,
    that _is_ true, and you definitely should draw a map.  I drew three.  It's one
    of those games where you realise, perhaps with horror, perhaps with glee, that
    your map drawing efforts are documenting completely the wrong thing and you'd be
    better of starting over with a different sort of map.  In actual fact the game
    isn't all that big, and the map isn't that complex, but much of game, the
    central puzzle as it were, is figuring out exactly what is going on.  This
    puzzle involves transforming the geography in quite a cool way (let's just say
    that NORTH doesn't always mean the same thing), and you'll probably have needed
    to paid attention in your algebra class to fully understand it.

    The puzzles are hard; as well as the main geometry puzzle there are the usual
    object composition puzzles and riddles, and the rather less traditional, at
    least in text adventures, game of nim and a cipher (actually I wouldn't be
    surprised if nim and ciphers cropped up in some very old school games, but
    they're not common now).  There's even an last lousy point puzzle (which I
    haven't got). Preuninger includes hints and a walkthrough (as separate HTML
    files); you may be able to finish using them, but they won't necessarily
    enlighten you.

    There are those who would say that the game is too puzzle-heavy, it lacks
    story (it doesn't actually, but the story _is_ more of a cliched veneer than
    anything else), the descriptions are too mechanical.  They miss the point.
    Labyrinth stands out like a lightning-rod for gaming, it deliberately and
    directly opposes the modern style of story led interactive fiction.  What it
    lacks in quality and finesse it more than makes up for in reviving freshness.
    In addition I suspect that the game has a little bit more heart in it than most
    of its detractors realise.  In how many games can you voluntarily FART ?  No, I
    don't really want an answer to that question.

    With my tongue in my cheek I would say that I found this game a refreshing
    change from all the diplomat-on-an-alien-planet and mutant-spider games in this
    year's comp.

    Z-code game file

    Hints (HTML format)

    Full walkthrough (HTML format)

    The Lady in Green
    From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G CompuServe.COM>
    Review appeared in SPAG #11 -- September 16, 1997

    NAME: The Lady in Green
    AUTHOR: D.F. Stone
    EMAIL: ?
    DATE: ?
    PARSER: AGT standard
    SUPPORTS: AGT ports
    AVAILABILITY: ftp.ifarchive.org
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/agt/lady.zip

    The Lady in Green is another from the Electrabot/Detective school of
    gaming, although it has more in the way of puzzles and story than
    either of those two.  Like them, gameplay consists primarily of
    following a more or less straightforward path through the game area
    until you reach the end, at which point you win.  Detective had no
    puzzles along the way and Electrabot only required you to match random
    weapons with the monsters that they killed.  The Lady in Green goes
    beyond this with some genuine puzzles, but they are still very easy
    and buggy.  A couple even solve themselves (literally).

    The story begins with you as a tired, bored businessman, returning
    home from a trip to your wife, kids, and unmowed lawn.  At your hotel,
    you are captivated by a mysterious portrait of a sad-looking woman in
    a green dress that seems to be reaching out towards you.  In true
    Twilight Zone fashion, you end up traveling through the portrait 200
    years into the past into the (empty) bedroom of the lady in green.

    At this point, it appeared that the story would be either a
    time-travelling love-at-first-sight story, or some kind of
    reincarnation affair.  It turns out to be neither.  When you find the
    Lady in Green, it turns out that she just wants you to find her
    13-year old son who didn't return home last night.  You search for
    him, and find that he has been press-ganged into the British Navy as a
    galley slave (!).  You must rescue him and return him home.

    The game is divided into several sections.  A minor puzzle is usually
    required to get from one section to the next, and it is impossible to
    return to an earlier section until the end of the game.  It is
    possible to get the game into an unwinnable state if you fail to
    obtain a necessary item in one section before leaving it.  The game is
    so short and easy though that this is not a major inconvenience.
    Furthermore, the game comes with both an ASCII walkthrough file and
    the AGT source code, so the chances of getting stuck are zero.

    The puzzles are extremely easy, and as I said, there are some that
    solve themselves.  In two instances, I merely entered the appropriate
    area while carrying the necessary item, and was automatically told
    that I had done the right thing with it.

    The game is still rather buggy.  For example, the horse is needed
    twice during the game, however you are only allowed to ride it in two
    certain areas.  Elsewhere you are simply told that you can't ride it
    at all.  Unfortunately, the horse CAN be picked up and carried around (!).
    Since the horse is a part of the room description in the stables,
    you can still see it there when it really isn't.  Of course, this
    could be fixed by changing one line in the source code.  You can also
    be blocked from entering an area by a dog that really isn't there when
    you examine it.  At one point there is a barrel that cannot be taken
    by saying TAKE BARREL.  You need to solve a puzzle to get it.  Or you
    could just say TAKE ALL, which will take everything including the
    barrel, obviating the puzzle.

    The characters are cyberphantoms; you're never sure whether they're
    really there or not, and not only the dog and the horse.  When you are
    returning with the Lady in Green's son, you get the same descriptions
    you got on the way out.  There is no creature (AGT's programming term
    for all entities other than yourself) accompanying you.  You once or
    twice get a message that indicates that he is with you, but usually
    have no indication of it at all, and can neither see nor interact with
    him.  The Lady in Green is similarly spectral (which may be
    appropriate).  One turn after you enter the room with her, she gives
    you your mission and leaves with no chance for interaction (Know what
    I mean?  Say no more.  Nudge, nudge.)  The game is over the next time
    you find her again.

    One interesting thing about the game is the ending, which gives you
    the option of staying in the past with the Lady in Green, or returning
    to your old life.  Providing genuinely different endings is a rarely
    seen touch (Plundered Hearts being the only other example I can think
    of).  However, in Plundered Hearts, one of the endings is described as
    being clearly superior to the others, where here, you are told that
    they are both valid, even though if you choose to stay, you are
    abandoning your wife and children in the present simply to run off and
    live in what the game calls a more exciting time.  It's plain to see
    that D.F. Stone isn't female if he calls this a valid choice.  I would
    have liked it much better if your character had been a bachelor
    returning home to a life of dirty laundry and ravioli eaten straight
    out of the can, who had no real ties to the present.

    This game won an honourable mention in the 6th AGT Game Writing
    Contest.

    { As far as I know, _all_ entrants in the AGT Game Writing Contest
      (that didn't win prizes) got honourable mentions. -- MO }

    AGT source code(.zip)

    The Land Beyond the Picket Fence
    From: C.E. Forman <ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997

    NAME: The Land Beyond the Picket Fence
    AUTHOR: Martin Oehm
    EMAIL: oehm SP@G diogenes.fb5.uni-siegen.de
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: Homebrew
    SUPPORTS: DOS runtime
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/picket
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    Here's an interesting twist on fantasy games.  Rather than making you,
    the protagonist, a denizen of a fantasy world, "Fence" casts you as an
    outsider from the "real" world, and sends you into the fantasy to
    accomplish a goal and escape.  To me, this lends more appeal to the
    atmosphere and makes the adventure decidedly charming.

    The world itself is far more Carroll than Tolkien, and the difference
    shines through (though there's nothing inherently wrong with traditional
    I-F fantasy as it currently stands).  The perfect length, nice prose, a
    couple of clever puzzles, and a surprisingly good parser and DOS-based
    game engine.  It doesn't break any new ground, and it's not "Uncle
    Zebulon's Will," but it carries the same spirit and it made me want to
    visit the land beyond the picket fence again soon.

    Directory With PC Files and executable

    Last Resort
    From: Jimmy Maher <maher SP@G grandecom.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #47 -- January 16, 2007

    TITLE: Last Resort
    AUTHOR: Jim Aikin
    EMAIL: editor SP@G musicwords.net
    DATE: December 2, 2006
    PARSER: Inform 6
    SUPPORTS: Glulx interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF Archive
    URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/LastResort.zip
    VERSION: Release 1

    In his newsgroup discussions of his new game and on his webpage devoted to it,
    Mr. Aikin set it up as something bold and fairly experimental.  "Last Resort,"
    he tells us, "is an attempt to use the medium of interactive fiction for a
    serious story with an actual plot."  I thus downloaded the game expecting to
    find something that, successful or not, would at least push the envelope of the
    possible.  I was surprised to find instead a well put-together, well-tested, and
    well-written work of IF... but one that does little or nothing really new with
    the form.  It's not that Mr. Aikin was being dishonest.  Last Resort IS a
    serious story with an actual plot.  It's just that there have been plenty of
    serious stories with actual plots before in IF, and Mr. Aikin's tone had somehow
    made me feel that he meant something new in using those words.

    Be that as it may, there is nothing here that advances the form in any new
    directions.  Luckily, though, there is a lot to like about this one.  In this
    age of bite-sized IF, a big, solidly designed effort like this is worthy of
    celebration on its own merits.

    The plot casts the player as a fourteen year old girl from New York who has been
    dragged off to the tumbledown resort camp of Eternal Springs in Mississippi by
    her spinster aunt.  Once there, she quickly begin to realize that things are not
    right.  Evil is afoot!  The resort is actually a front for a demon-worshipping
    cult, and in some four hours of game time she will be sacrificed... unless she
    can thwart the plans of the cult.

    Like much -- arguably too much -- IF before it, Last Resort settles itself
    firmly into the genre of Lovecraftian horror.  I find it surprising that so many
    IF authors continue to go down this road, as Anchorhead nailed the genre so well
    that it seems to me that virtually anything else -- including (retroactively)
    even Infocom's The Lurking Horror -- is likely to come up short in comparison.
    Anyway, I tend to find a more understated, psychological approach to horror
    infinitely more chilling than Lovecraft's wild ravings about unnamable horrors
    from other dimensions gibbering EVILY.  Even a bit of good old Satan worshipping
    would have gone down pretty well, and this was in fact the direction I initially
    thought the game was going in when I found, first, a Bible with particularly
    violent and disturbing passages marked, and then a rather creepy, thoroughly
    unholy priest.  I had decidedly mixed feelings when I realized what direction it
    was actually going in.

    And so, perhaps inevitably and certainly not unexpectedly, the plot of Last
    Resort suffers in comparison with Anchorhead.  I think that much of the problem
    is down to a failure to maintain dramatic tension.  The game is indeed, as
    advertised by Aikin, non-linear, but I'm not sure that its story is the better
    for it.  Basically, the player can wander freely over its fairly extensive
    terrain -- for which Mr. Aikin has helpfully provided a PDF map -- right from
    the beginning, attempting to solve the variety of puzzles that block her from
    thwarting the cult's plans and effecting her escape from the resort.  There are
    a few timed and triggered events, but not enough to make the game feel like a
    satisfying story rather than just a collection of static obstacles to conquer.
    The plot has no real climax as all.  If she solves all of the puzzles in time,
    she leaves the island on which the resort is situated and it's game over,
    accompanied by a massive case of anti-climax.  If not, she is sacrificed and
    that's that.  Something more is definitely needed here.

    But if the plot is a bit thin, there is much else to appreciate.  The puzzles
    are sometimes difficult, but generally satisfying.  The writing is detailed and
    evocative, and the scenery is well-implemented throughout.  Eternal Springs in
    all its overheated, dilapidated splendor feels like a real place.

    Two things really set Last Resort off from games like it from five or ten years
    ago.  One is the aforementioned level of scenery implementation.  The other is
    the NPCs.  There are quite a few of them here, all vividly described and
    memorable, if sometimes a bit cliched.  They aren't terribly active -- most stay
    in the same place pretty much throughout the game -- but they have a surprising
    amount to say.  Almost any reasonable query that these people SHOULD know
    something about they DO.  Inform unfortunately does not (yet) have anything of
    quite the sophistication of the TADS 3 conversation model, but Mr. Aikin has
    made good use of the tools he does have.  This contributed greatly to my
    enjoyment of the game, and is I suspect the main reason that the it ballooned to
    a size too big for the Z-Machine to contain.  I hate to think of the amount of
    work that must have gone into Mr. Aikin's characters.

    Last Resort is not a terribly easy game.  As mentioned previously, there is a
    time limit, which is something I generally have mixed feelings about.  The game
    is quite generous as such things go, though, allowing plenty of time for
    exploration.  I actually never ran out of clock in my time with the game,
    although I was always aware of the time limit and thus occasionally restored to
    an earlier point after spending too much time going down some fruitless path or
    another.

    It is also quite possible to make the game unwinnable.  The game will not warn
    its player in any obvious way when this happens, but just continue merrily
    onward.  I think that the reasonably careful player will, however, generally be
    able to recognize these situations.  The key here is to approach Last Resort as
    a text adventure, not a piece of interactive literature, contrary as this may be
    to the expectations created by Mr. Aikin's own comments on his game.  Hint: If
    you find yourself asking why no one comments on the fact that you are carrying
    around several dozen bizarre, non-related items in a huge sack like a fourteen
    year old Santa Claus, or how this young girl is able to lift this much assorted
    junk in the first place, you are officially in the wrong frame of mind.

    Luckily, I like text adventures a lot, and this is, all things considered, a
    pretty darn good one.  Together with my girlfriend I was able to solve all but
    two of its puzzles.  At least one of those two -- the final step in clearing the
    dog away from the shed door -- I thought was a bit dodgy, but then every game
    seems to have at least one.  Overall, Last Resort is a fine piece of work that
    will likely consume several evenings of happy adventuring.  All but the most
    puzzle-averse should definitely give it a go.

    Glulx game file, PDF map, and author's notes

    Leather Goddesses of Phobos
    From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #4 -- March 2, 1995

      NAME:  Leather Goddesses of Phobos  GAMEPLAY:  Infocom Standard
      AUTHOR:  Steve Eric Meretzky        PLOT:  Excellent
      EMAIL:  ?                           ATMOSPHERE:  Excellent
      AVAILABILITY:  Mail Order (maybe)   WRITING:  Excellent
      PUZZLES:  Excellent                 SUPPORTS:  Infocom Ports
      CHARACTERS:  Very Good              DIFFICULTY:  Advanced

            In this risque imitation of 1930's pulp fiction, you are captured by
    the Leather Goddesses of Phobos.  For some reason, you escape, and with your
    trusted companion Trent/Tiffany, you tour the Solar System searching for a
    collection of incongruous objects, which when put together will form a
    super-duper-anti-Leather-Goddesses-of-Phobos-attack-machine.
            The game begins by patting itself on the back for the outraged
    reactions that it will likely induce in old fuddy-duddies, though truth be
    told it is not much dirtier than your average beer commercial (though it is
    much more clever).  The game has three naughtiness modes for dealing with sex
    scenes:

         TAME - No sex scenes
         SUGGESTIVE - You're told that the scene is happening, but no more
         LEWD - Level of description about equal to a Harlequin novel

            In addition, Lewd mode has one or two 4-letter words, seemingly
    thrown in out of some sense of obligation, as they don't mesh very well with
    Meretzky's humour at all.
            The game wonderfully recreates the feel of 30's pulp fiction, from
    the swordfight on the hull of the Space Battleship (without spacesuits,
    naturally), to the Sultan and other colourful characters you meet on Mars, to
    the delightfully contrived situation at the South Pole, to the marvelous
    running gag concerning the lucky escapes of your faithful companion.  The
    final scene where you try to assemble your machine while under attack by all
    of the Leather Goddesses minions is one of the greatest moments in
    interactive fiction, and one that would be utterly impossible to reproduce
    with graphics.
            I generally enjoy games like Spellbreaker that spread the action over
    a wide area, and Leather Goddesses has one of the widest areas of all, with
    the action ranging between Venus, Mars, Phobos, Earth, and Saturn orbit.
            Leather Goddesses has some of the best freebies of any Infocom game,
    including a 3-D comic book, 3-D glasses, and a scratch and sniff card.  It
    was one of the five games made into a Solid Gold edition.  The Solid Gold
    edition contains not only onscreen hints, but the ability to get through the
    difficult catacombs maze with a single special command.  The game also allows
    you to play as either a male or a female, depending on which restroom you
    enter at the beginning.
            Some early editions of the game had a Lost in the Desert maze in
    place of the Martian Desert room.  I have only heard of this edition, not
    seen it, and if anyone has a copy, I'd love to see it.  The non-Solid Gold
    editions of the game had a "Boss key," whereby you could bring a specially
    created text file onscreen by hitting Control-B.  The file included with the
    game was a sample screen of Infocom's Cornerstone database, the easy-to-use
    productivity software that almost [Well, did.  Let's be honest. -GKW]
    bankrupted the company.  Later Infocom games that used the same interpreter
    also had the Boss key feature, though it was never mentioned.
            A sequel is promised at the end of the game.  This was released as
    a graphic adventure in 1992 by Activision/Infocom, but this is already out of
    print, and probably getting difficult to find.  LGOP2 promised yet a third
    installment, but there is no word on this.
            All in all, Leather Goddesses of Phobos is one of Infocom's best
    efforts.

            [A few brief notes.  MINOR SPOILER, beware!  That boss key screen is
    a real chuckle, and if you have the version with it, definitely read it over
    once, just for yucks.  Here's the scoop on avoiding the catacombs.  As soon
    as you descend into them, type $CATACOMB.  If it works in your version, you
    will have skipped past one of the most insidious and evil puzzles in all of
    Infocom-dom.]

    Solution (Text)

    LASH
    From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #21 -- June 15, 2000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Inform .z8 file

    PC Executable

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

    NAME: Leaves
    AUTHOR: Mikko Vuorinen
    E-MAIL: mvuorine SP@G cc.helsinki.fi
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: ALAN, not great but good enough
    SUPPORTS: ALAN executables, available at IF Archive
    AVAILABIILTY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition97/alan/leaves/leaves.acd
    VERSION: Release 3

    I must say that there were plenty of things about Leaves that I did
    like, or at least didn't mind. The puzzles weren't extraordinarily
    clever, but they weren't dreadful either, the prose was largely
    competent, and the story reasonably compelling though
    minimalist. There were some plot holes, naturally, but they weren't
    too outrageous, and generally this was on course for perhaps a 4,
    perhaps a 5. And then, well, a certain moment happened, and I revised
    everything downward several notches.

    First, though: ALAN came off reasonably well here. One important
    object was hidden effectively--the game didn't recognize the noun
    until you'd actually found the object--and though some logical
    commands weren't coded and some verbs were a bit clumsy, I doubt that
    actually had much to do with ALAN. The most glaring flaw was the lack
    of a scripting command--there was no way, as far as I could tell, to
    keep a transcript, and no documentation either within or outside the
    game that provided advice about such things. (Meaning that all those
    ALAN advocates shouldn't bombard me with angry messages saying that,
    yes, there's a command, it's "transcriptify." I'm sure there is. No
    one actually mentioned it to me, though.) That aside, everything
    seemed fairly solid, though there weren't a lot of complicated things
    going on either.

    The author is a native of Finland, and I'm not sure what his
    familiarity with English is, but this is, by and large, well-written;
    there are some ungrammatical moments here and there (a tree is "no
    more different" from other trees, pointless actions are sometimes
    rewarded with "Now that would be the trick"), but on the whole the
    writing is competent, and sometimes even wryly funny. (If you try to
    chop up a tree with the wrong tool: "Cut a tree with a knife?
    Marvellous idea." And kicking most objects elicits "This is not a
    football game." ) Though plenty of familiar verbs weren't implemented,
    notably "touch" and "climb" and "move", the writing here is adequate
    for the purposes--the game isn't long enough, nor are actions complex
    enough, for it to feel deficient.

    The plot is sorta rudimentary. You're escaping from, er, something--a
    prison, a concentration camp? Dunno. But you get out--hence the
    "leave" aspect, which actually makes this one of the cleverest titles
    of the competition--and just keep going. Incongruities along the way
    include a _very_ dense guard, one rather bizarre character, and more
    cutting tools and puzzles in which to apply them than you can shake a
    proverbial stick at. Still, if you can live with a little absurdity,
    the story of Leaves isn't bad; in its own minimalist way, it works
    reasonably well. The puzzles are uneven--one conditions your finding
    an object on a completely unrelated (and fairly stupid) action, and
    one, a maze, is sheer guess-what-the-author's-thinking, but they don't
    make the game unplayable; they fit with the absurdist plot. Truth to
    tell, I had accepted the game's absurdities early on and wasn't
    particularly troubled when I hit on illogical solutions; one thing one
    doesn't do with Leaves is take it seriously. (One of the odder bits,
    actually, is that certain directions are given but the game prevents
    you from using them, sometimes for no obvious reason--e.g., "You
    really don't want to go there." It did give the game a certain
    tension--what's more frightening than the unknown and
    unmentionable?--but it was a strange touch.

    And then...for the uninitiated, there's a puzzle toward the end of the
    game that is possibly the most blatant instance on record of an author
    assuming that the player is a straight male. (Well, okay, I suspect
    that things like "Softporn Adventure" do more in that respect, but at
    least there the title is a warning.) Now, Mr. Vuorinen was 14 when he
    wrote that puzzle, or so he suggests in the notes, and 14-year-old
    boys are not known for their maturity regarding matters of sexuality,
    and though I doubt I'd look kindly on the 14-year-old Mr. Vuorinen
    submitting that puzzle, I might be less annoyed. But 10 years have
    passed since then, it seems, and including it in its current form goes
    well beyond bad taste. Quite apart from the sheer perversity of the
    concept--those are ROCKS you're so excited about--the author insists
    on putting everything in schoolboy language and on giving the player a
    sort of juvenile fascination about it all. (Plus, well, solving the
    puzzle in the first place requires entering the mind of a 14-year-old
    boy, since the solution doesn't really jump out at the rest of us.)
    This is not the place for a discussion of sex in IF, but I _know_ it
    can be done better than this. (The author's preoccupations don't only
    come out in this, actually; reading through the data file for this is
    not particularly edifying.) As I indicated, this little sequence
    brought down the game several notches in my estimation. Sex is one
    thing; sex handled in juvenile fashion is another.

    Most of Leaves is competently put together, I found, though not always
    with much of an ear for logic; there are few glaring flaws. If Mr.
    Vuorinen can refrain from severe lapses of judgment, he might help
    make ALAN a presence in the IF community; this effort, though, gets a
    3 from me.

    Directory with ALAN files and text files

    The Legend Lives!
    From: Molley the Mage <mollems SP@G pulsar.cs.wku.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #5 -- April 19, 1995

    NAME: The Legend Lives!                 PARSER: TADS + WorldClass
    AUTHOR: David M. Baggett                PLOT: Visionary
    EMAIL: dmb SP@G ai.mit.edu                   ATMOSPHERE: Incredibly rich
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive             WRITING: Extremely good
    PUZZLES: Creative                       SUPPORTS: TADS ports
    CHARACTERS: Unfulfilled potential       DIFFICULTY: Slightly above average

    _The Legend Lives!_ is probably one of the most highly anticipated text
    adventures since the demise of Infocom.  Written by David Baggett, author
    of the popular shareware game "Unnkulian Unventure II", _Legend_ takes
    the Unnkulian Universe far into the future.  However, it is a future
    where despite the soaring technological advancements of mankind (and
    creaturekind in general), the threat of the dread Unnkulians still
    lurks.  You, as student Gavin Kelly, stumble upon the most horrifying
    plot the Unnkulians have ever unleashed as a part of your thesis
    research.  Your quest will take you across the universe and even through
    time as you seek to once again penetrate the secrets of the Akmi
    corporation and uphold the tenets of Dudhism.

    However, _Legend_ was not so highly anticipated just because it's another
    game in the popular Unnkulian series.  It was billed as an experiment of
    sorts, an attempt to see if the interactive fiction medium can be used to
    do more than just provide entertaining puzzles -- to see if IF can be
    used to make a statement, convey a message, really get inside your head
    and make you think.  In this, _Legend_ succeeds admirably.  The emphasis
    here is clearly not on the puzzles (although there are plenty of those)
    but rather on the experience: the atmosphere, the writing, the message.

    To this end, there are a fair number of very long text sequences which
    are many pages and contain a great deal of conversation between the
    player (you) and certain NPCs.  These "vignettes" are the strongest
    point of the whole game.  They are very well written and loaded with all
    sorts of allegory and subtleties.  I was disappointed that there were not
    more of these "cut scenes," in fact, because they add a lot to the
    storytelling aspect.  I certainly don't mind reading 10 screens of text
    if it helps to advance the story and give me something to think about.
    And _Legend_ will definitely give you something to think about.

    I won't spoil the plot for you, but I should mention the overall "quest":
    the goal of the game is to thwart an unbelievably powerful computer virus
    unleashed by the Unnkulians which is self-aware, self-replicating, and
    taking over the entire universal computer network.  Once it has
    established control over the technology, it will have established control
    over the people, and the Unnkulians' dream will be fulfilled.  This of
    course would be a Very Bad Thing (tm) for the rest of creation, and you
    are the only person who is even aware that the virus exists.
    Unfortunately, Akmi (the corporation which runs basically everything and
    controls nearly all information) is on to you and they will attempt to
    foil you as you try to gain information about and eventually defeat the
    virus, thus saving all of creation from an Unnkul fate (sorry).

    Of course, you can't do it alone; and _Legend_ provides a suitable cast
    of NPCs to help you (or hinder you).  There are computer programmers, a
    star musician, aliens of various sorts, and an artificial intelligence
    program, among others, who will appear along the way.  Sadly, this is
    where _Legend_ suffers the most.  The NPCs are not developed well
    enough.  In fact, some of them are not developed at all.  This is a real
    shame, because there is an awesome amount of potential in these
    characters.  I was really disappointed by this aspect of the game, but
    the quality of the writing goes a long way to make up for it, and the
    environment (the "Unnkulian" mythos) is top-notch.  Still, no story can
    be fully successful without effective, quality characterization.

    And there will be obstacles in your path; after all, defeating the
    nefarious schemes of the unnkulians will require you to be even more
    devious than they.  There are a good number of puzzles in the game,
    ranging from very easy to quite difficult.  However, David did not want
    players to get distracted from the story by being stuck on a puzzle, so
    he provides a remarkable "adaptive hint system"  which will give you
    intelligent hints based on your current situation.  There is no penalty
    for using the hints, or limit to how many you can use, but be warned that
    they do go right on up to the outright spoiler level after the first
    couple of hints.  Luckily, there is an encryption feature you can turn on
    to prevent yourself from reading all the hints too quickly.  The game is
    difficult; however, I was able to finish it in about a week without
    needing to resort to the hints.  Nice to have them if you want them,
    though, and the hint system is really a great piece of work.

    As for the quality of the puzzles themselves, they are by and large very
    good.  (And no mazes!).  Most of the puzzles are logical and fair, and
    I got a real sense of satisfaction out of solving them.  There are
    exceptions to this rule of course; but every game has a few bad spots.  I
    would imagine that most people will need a hint or three as they go
    through the game.  Then again, I didn't, so you might not either.  Some
    of the puzzles are very tricky, though.  Others, however, can be solved
    purely by dumb luck -- i.e., having the right item in your inventory when
    you speak to a particular character.  Puzzles like that irritate me.
    However, as I have said, the puzzles are not the emphasis in _Legend_.
    They are supposed to add to the story instead of distract from it, and
    for the most part this is fairly successful.

    Until you get to the end of the game.  This is my biggest complaint about
    _Legend_.  The ending is a tremendous disappointment.  Not because it's
    an emotional downer or anything like that; it's just totally unexpected
    and very unsatisfying.  I would say that the ending seems like an
    afterthought, except that it was obviously carefully written to make
    certain statements.  Unfortunately they fall flat and there is not a
    satisfactory resolution to the main plot themes.

    However, I cannot in good faith say anything *too* bad about the game,
    because it's one of the most visionary and daring works to come along
    since, well, A Mind Forever Voyaging from Infocom.  Honestly, AMFV is
    the better game, but _Legend_ is damn fine as well.  If you liked AMFV, I
    think you will not be disappointed by _Legend_.  If you like good
    puzzle-solving games, you won't be disappointed by _Legend_.  If you like
    good writing and lots of prose, you won't be disappointed by _Legend_.
    If you like a great atmosphere and enticing plot, you certainly won't be
    disappointed.  The only place _Legend_ fails is that it does not exploit
    the incredible amount of potential for characterization.  But you
    probably will forget that in the wake of all the other images _Legend_ is
    going to throw at you.

    Let me sum it up this way: _The Legend Lives!_ is not the best IF game I
    have ever played in my life.  It is, however, the best IF game I have
    *experienced* in a very long time.  That, perhaps, is the highest
    recommendation I can give.  Hats off to David Baggett for a fun game
    which is also a fine work of fiction.  Even though it doesn't completely
    succeed in getting the message across, _Legend_ really pushes the
    envelope and challenges our definitions of interactive fiction.  It also
    challenges a lot of other things, like our relationship with technology
    (a major theme of the work).  _Legend_ deserves to be played if for no
    other reason than to think about what David is trying to say.  I mean,
    when was the last time you played an IF game which *really* had a message
    and a vision?  Maybe never.  Well, now's your chance.

    And best of all, it's freeware, which means that after reading this review
    you have absolutely no excuse for not downloading it right now and playing it.

    You'll be glad you did.

    From: Valentine Kopteltsev <uux SP@G mailru.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #30 -- September 20, 2002 -- as part of a Review Package

    In previous reviews, I've been trying -- I know, with varying success
    -- to remain objective, and not to over-praise the reviewed games.
    But now we got to a game that can't be over-praised;). I think it's a
    true gem among other Unnkulian games (that doesn't mean the others
    are bad, mind you), and deserves to be called a classic not less
    than, say, Curses!, or Spider And Web.

    ...And now, I'm going to try digging up some grounds for this rather
    daring statement. ;)

    Let's start with the setting. The game is set in a rather far future,
    with space travelling, and matter moving, and stuff, and it must be
    said that the game world is very convincing. It seemed alive alright
    -- but at the same time, I got the feeling of being inside a somewhat
    buggy program. Well, it must be said that in the last few years, our
    *real* world often gives me the same feeling -- very much because of
    the steadily intensifying rhythm of life, and the growing amount of
    hack-work in all spheres. In this respect, Mr. Baggett's work turned
    out to be prophetical -- in 1994, the year when Legend was released,
    life wasn't quite like that, though the trends certainly were
    present. Let's add that the scenery in Legend is one of the richest
    in the whole IF-history -- one could spend a couple of hours just
    playing with the gadgets in the game, or watching EV (the Unnkulian
    analogue of our TV). The "create a world that'd be fun to explore"
    approach clearly rules here; the player is taken through a number of
    vastly different worlds -- from a computer centre to a rural
    backwater, from a crowded supermarket to jungle -- and yet, all of
    them feel like parts of a whole. Furthermore, the author cleverly
    uses the opportunities provided by the futuristic technologies (in
    particular, matter moving) to consequently continue the war against
    linearity he declared in Unnkulia 2. For instance, Legend can't be
    mapped out in principle -- only the separate areas of it, because you
    travel from one area to another via matter movers. And while the
    gameplay is somewhat more directed than in Unnkulia 2, because the
    goals stand out much better here, the player still has a lot of
    freedom. Yes, there is a prescribed set of puzzles you need to solve
    to win the game -- but you can, to a quite significant extent,
    determine the order for them to be solved.

    Which brings us to the puzzles as such.

    At the very start, Legend tries to scare players off by declaring its
    difficulty rating is 10 out of 10; but let me assure you -- it isn't
    that difficult. Yes, the puzzles are hard, but they are very logical,
    too. I'm not very good at puzzle-solving, but I managed to get
    through the game using the built-in hints only for three puzzles (of
    those three, one was a riddle, which traditionally represents a
    stumbling-block for me, and one I'd probably solve without help if I
    kept trying for a few more days -- as it turned out, I was working in
    the right direction) -- though it took me a few weeks. Take this as a
    hint -- I'm not the most persistent person, but I was perfectly
    willing to spend so much time on the puzzles. And remember me saying
    that most games reviewed here, with little exception, are packed with
    OGDs? Well, Legend is such an exception.

    Legend has been criticized for not having its NPCs developed enough.
    I'd disagree; to me, it rather seemed that Mr. Baggett was
    experimenting with animation techniques - probably because he had got
    disappointed in the traditional "ASK ABOUT/TELL ABOUT" method. Among
    other things, he used long "cut-scenes" of non-interactive text for
    those purposes -- but since references to such "cut-scenes" in
    reviews of Legend have become commonplace, I won't say anything else
    about them. I felt the characters were quite vivid; one of my
    favorite moments was asking a visitor at Terminal Velocity about
    something (though people with UNIX knowledge probably will appreciate
    the response much more).

    But the coolest thing about Legend is, it makes you THINK. Think
    about... er, well, an enumeration probably would spoil the fun for
    you. So, why not try to find out by yourself?

    SUMMARY:

    PLOT: "Unprecedentedly deep" isn't an exaggeration
    ATMOSPHERE: Plenty of it
    WRITING: Makes me envious
    GAMEPLAY: Thrilling
    BONUSES: Too many to be listed here
    CHARACTERS: Rather unconventionally designed
    PUZZLES: Great, just great
    DIFFICULTY: approx. 8 out of 10 (though it claims to be 10 out of 10)

    TADS .gam file, bundled with other Adventions games (.zip)

    TADS .gam file, bundled with other Adventions games (.tar.gz)

    TADS .gam version (.tar.Z)

    self-extracting MacBinary version (.bin)

    BinHex version (.bin)

    PC 386+ executable (.zip)

    Source Code (.tar.Z)

    Solution (Text)

    The Lesson of the Tortoise
    From: Bonnie Montgomery <bkm SP@G pobox.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998

    NAME: The Lesson of the Tortoise
    AUTHOR: Gerry Kevin Wilson (aka Whizzard)
    EMAIL: gkw SP@G pobox.com
    DATE: December 1997
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/tortoise.gam
    VERSION: Release 1

    You're an unlikely IF hero: Wang Lo, a small but persevering and
    prosperous Chinese farmer. Your adversaries: a serpent, your faithless
    wife, and a disloyal farm hand. Your allies: a tortoise, your strapping
    son, a trusting servant girl, and a ghostly ancestral apparition. Quite
    a story ahead of you, wouldn't you think? Would you believe that the
    game can be won in only 30 turns and contains only 9 locations? With the
    economical prose characteristic of a folk tale, Whizzard drops you into
    the Chinese folkloric past, sketches out characters and plot, and
    delivers a moral, all in a very satisfying 30 minutes or so of play.

    Whizzard has streamlined his game in several ways: One is to simplify
    interactions with NPCs; verbal interactions are limited to "talk to NPC"
    and giving them commands. Carryable objects are few, and ones that have
    served their purpose are tidily moved out of the player's reach.

    Even with these simplifications, the game does not feel sparsely
    inhabited. The game understands most nouns that appear in room
    descriptions. Default responses have been nicely handled, often changed
    to reflect a more Confucian approach ("That action seems unlikely to
    save you, wise one.") than the epistemologically challenged standard
    TADS parser responses ("I don't know how to X the Y.").

    The puzzles are sometimes a challenge, but Whizzard provides a
    progressively more explicit hint system. The game therefore appeals to
    puzzle fans and story fans. Puzzle fans can tough it out without the
    hints. Story fans can breeze through the puzzles using hints, which is a
    nice way to allow the story to flow easily, a great pleasure in this
    game.

    TADS file (.gam)

    Lethe Flow Phoenix
    From: Magnus Olsson <mol SP@G df.lth.se>
    Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    From: Gareth Rees <gdr11 SP@G cl.cam.ac.uk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    TADS .gam File

    Alternate TADS .gam File (lethe.txt details the difference)

    Step-by-step Solution (text)

    The Light: Shelby's Addendum
    From: Molley the Mage <mollems SP@G pulsar.cs.wku.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996

    NAME: The Light: Shelby's Addendum         PARSER: TADS 2.2
    AUTHOR: C. A. McCarthy                     PLOT: Darkish science fiction
    EMAIL: illusory SP@G execpc.com                 ATMOSPHERE: Excellent!
    AVAILABILITY: Shareware, IF Archive               WRITING: Highest quality
    PUZZLES: Obscure, not well done            SUPPORTS: TADS 2.2 ports
    CHARACTERS: Richly developed               DIFFICULTY: NP-Complete

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    From Gareth Rees <gdr11 SP@G cl.cam.ac.uk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    TADS .gam File

    MacBinary format (.bin)

    BinHex format (.hqx)

    PC executable (.zip)

    Stepwise Solution (Text)

    Lists and Lists
    From: C.E. Forman <ceforman SP@G worldnet.att.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #10 -- February 4, 1997

    NAME: Lists and Lists
    AUTHOR: Andrew Plotkin
    EMAIL: erkyrath SP@G netcom.com
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/lists
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    So THIS is what Andrew Plotkin meant when he announced that his entry
    this year wouldn't be interactive fiction.

    He wasn't kidding.  Aside from the genie who (sort of) guides you
    through, there is little prose, not much interaction with an
    artificial world, and even less storytelling.  Players expecting
    another "Change in the Weather" or "So Far" are bound to be
    disappointed.  Instead, the bulk of this "game" is a stripped-down
    interpreter for Scheme, a streamlined derivative of LISP.

    This makes for an intereating use of the Z-Machine, and a nice
    complement to the likes of "Robots," "Z-Life," and Andrew's own
    "Freefall," but it's really more for programmers, or persons at least
    interested in the subject.  I've heard from non-programmers who didn't
    get much out of it, some of whom became hopelessly confused.

    This is not to fault Plotkin's skills as a writer.  Indeed, he has a
    knack for making this sort of thing fun for players possessing the
    natural aptitude for it.  (Even "Inhumane," his attempt at I-F as a
    14-year-old, as its moments.)  Although "Lists" barely scratches the
    surface of Scheme's capabilities, I was surprised by how much
    functionality was crammed into such a small program, particularly with
    the ease-of-use features.  Even if you complete all of the sample
    exercises within the two-hour time limit, there's plenty more to come
    back and investigate afterwards.  I'm dying to see the Inform source
    code for this.

    Now if only Activision would give us Infocom's ZIL compiler and docs
    (ZIL being the LISP-like language used by Infocom's programmers), I
    might have a real-world application for this, and a motivation to
    learn more about the subjects presented here.

    Inform File (.z5) (updated version)

    Inform File (.z5) (competition version)

    Source code of updated version (.tar.Z)

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

    NAME: Little Blue Men
    AUTHOR: Michael Gentry
    E-MAIL: edromia SP@G concentric.net
    DATE: 1998
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/bluemen
    VERSION: Release 1

    Little Blue Men is, at bottom, a highly bizarre game. It begins in a
    ho-hum office setting and abruptly shifts into...well, it's hard to
    say.  Sci-fi/horror/dystopia/fantasy, maybe. The result, though uneven
    in spots, is certainly unique, and rather disturbing as well: familiar
    elements of the office environment are given a sinister cast, and the
    game is enlivened throughout by macabre humor.

    The game begins with you at your desk doing menial tasks, and it can
    end there very quickly as well unless you, the player, decide to put
    down your menial tasks at a certain point and go explore the rest of
    the office. In other words, the game gives you a quick "ending" after
    about five moves and doesn't emphasize that this ending is
    suboptimal. In an IF Competition rife with one-room or one-puzzle
    games, the size of the story file might be the only thing keeping the
    player from missing most of the game. This is an issue mainly because
    the game keeps you from wandering away at first, and provides minimal
    motivation for you to get up and wander around; it's not clear _why_
    you do what you do. The problem of unclear motivations recurs later,
    as the game transforms into, well, whatever it is: some of your
    actions have no obvious reasons. The author, to be fair, was trying to
    explore the idea of a protagonist motivated by evil ends--or, at
    least, ends with which the player cannot easily sympathize.  It's an
    underdeveloped area in IF, and this is an intriguing stab at it.  But
    without some flashes of intuition in that regard, the player is likely
    to discover what the character's goals are through the hints, which
    doesn't exactly have the same effect.

    As the game progresses, though, and the genre/setting becomes more
    clear, the author delivers several excellent shock-twists in ways
    reminiscent of Delusions, and just as effective. Once the player
    accepts the premise (and figures out what it is), Little Blue Men is
    terrific sci-fi in a vaguely absurdist way. Some lengthy speeches by
    NPCs could have come straight out of schlocky movies or books, but
    that just adds to the overall effect here: the author's main satirical
    theme is the line between irritating office banality and sheer evil,
    and the game plays the dichotomy for all it's worth. The puzzles
    largely reinforce that: most involve putting conventional office
    objects to new, devious uses, or turning humdrum objects into weapons,
    or conquering perennial office irritations (like the blaring smoke
    detector or the fickle vending machine). The cross-genre nature of the
    game leaves a lot of unanswered questions, of course--more backstory
    would help--but the dystopia part is so thoroughly done that it works
    well nonetheless.

    One of the more interesting aspects of Little Blue Men is its
    separation between goal and motivation. The character's goals are not
    always clear; it is clear that the character does not anticipate the
    ending of the game before it happens. Instead, the goals are more
    personal, more centered on the self: your emotional balance is
    somewhere between "steamed" and "frosty," and your object at any given
    moment is to become more frosty and eliminate those things that make
    you steamed. Once the player accepts that premise--that your objective
    is to get rid of annoyances--it drives the game, yet the author never
    provides any goals larger than that. The result is, in a sense, a
    rather narcissistic game--the importance of everything around lies in
    how it makes you feel--which is, no doubt, just what the author
    intended. One of the questions that Little Blue Men poses is whether
    getting rid of those things that annoy you leads to anything better:
    the ambivalent nature of the ending suggests otherwise.

    In fact, one of the best, and most frustrating things, about the game
    is the ending: the effect is both surreal and disturbing. It is not
    clear that the player has "won" when he or she reaches the end of the
    game; there is good reason, in fact, for thinking that the end of the
    story is merely another ending, no better than the "deaths" you can
    die earlier on.  This is a Zarfian ending taken a step further:
    whereas other games have given a clear resolution without allowing the
    player to "win," in the sense of resolving the problem or riding into
    the sunset with the treasure, Blue Men raises the distinct possibility
    that it might have been better not to reach that ending at all. It's a
    unique feeling that, unfortunately, doesn't necessarily make for a
    satisfying game experience, assuming the player realizes what's going
    on at all.

    Indeed, Little Blue Men works somewhat better on the theoretical level
    than as a game, though it's still a good game. The author seems to
    have set out to demolish certain IF tropes, and, give him credit, he
    does. Many of his points are sufficiently subtle that they're easily
    missed--after all, not many games attempt such things. The game
    itself, though funny in spots, doesn't work as well as the theory
    behind it: the unclear or questionable motivations are part of it, but
    it's also that the cross-genre feel keeps the player off balance,
    wondering where the story will go next, for most of the game. Those
    not interested in the theory of game design might well get to the end,
    say "what was THAT all about?", and quit. Still, perfect marriages
    between entertainment and subversion/experimentation in IF are
    rare--Spider and Web comes close; not many others do--and Little Blue
    Men does well to get the player through the game and raise some
    intriguing questions.

    This is, in short, an interesting effort, perhaps best suited for
    those experienced in IF and willing to question its
    conventions. There's lots of intriguing stuff going on in Little Blue
    Men, enough that I gave it a 9 in this year's competition.

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

    WARNING: Because Little Blue Men uses obscenities in its text, that
    language will also appear in this review.

    Well, the first thing I have to say is that starting Little Blue Men
    right after finishing Human Resources Stories was quite
    mind-bending. The game starts with a character who is sitting at his
    desk thinking of his job as "another day in the trenches," looking at
    his corner as his "own little slice of the shit pie those sons of
    bitches call an office." I had this sudden vision of IF authors as
    angry loners, driven by their misanthropy and lack of social skills
    into highly solitary hobbies like writing and programming, friendless
    misfits who hate their jobs, hate their lives, and generally hate
    people, and who write supposedly entertaining games that are really
    about how much the world sucks. Luckily, the vision passed as the game
    underwent a curious transformation. First of all, the game's
    disclaimer assured me that "at its most fundamental level, this game
    is about learning to love yourself." OK, maybe we're not loving
    anybody else yet, but loving yourself is at least a little
    positive. Next, I entered a few commands, the first ones that came to
    mind, really, and... won the game. Or did I? My final message said
    "*** You have learned to love yourself ***", which is what I was told
    the game was about. So I won, right? In 10 moves? I wondered how in
    the heck a game whose .z5 file was 171K could end up being so short. I
    wondered, in the game's words, "What the hell...?!"

    It turns out that although LBM may be about learning to love yourself,
    if you do the things that help you reach that goal too quickly you end
    up missing the entire story. That story consists of scheming ways to
    kill or otherwise waylay your co-workers, destroy the things that
    aggravate you, discover the secrets hidden behind the bland office
    walls, and figure out just who or *what* your boss, "that bastard
    Biedermeyer", really is. In short, it consists of getting an
    unpleasant character to do unsavory things, in service of a plot that
    grows more and more metaphorical and surreal as you progress through
    it. When I finally got to the end, I wasn't sure that I was any more
    satisfied with the "real" ending than the one I got to in 10 moves. In
    his postscript, the author tells us that he wants the story's
    structure to help us question to help us analyze some of our
    assumptions about IF. For one thing, we should think about what really
    is the most "optimal" ending of the game, and whether it's worth it to
    actually play through a game if it's possible to reach a positive
    ending at the beginning, and/or if the motivations of the character
    are twisted and repugnant? Now, these are not new ideas. Andrew
    Plotkin's A Change In The Weather offers a similar situation at its
    outset -- if you rejoin the picnic, you end up having fun after all,
    but you also miss the story. To go back earlier, Michael Berlyn used a
    related technique in Infidel by making the main character a shallow,
    exploitive greedhead who probably deserves a desert demise, then
    asking you to solve puzzles and find treasure on his behalf. Little
    Blue Men, though, makes these propositions starker than ever before by
    making its main character thoroughly repulsive and an optimal ending
    immediately reachable.

    Now, my answer to this question in its abstract form is that responses
    will vary depending on the player. Some people probably have no
    interest in playing a repulsive character, and so will just delete the
    game. Others might be driven by curiosity to complete the game even
    though they find the experience unpleasant. Still others will view it
    as a chance to get a glimpse into abnormal psychology, or to have some
    fun playing a villainous character. In this way, playing such a game
    is akin to watching a movie like Natural Born Killers, or reading a
    book like In Cold Blood -- it may be very well-done, but it's not
    everybody's cup of tea, and that's fine.  Consequently, I guess I
    don't view the question as all that interesting, maybe because any
    assumption I might have had about IF characters having to be good was
    eliminated as soon as I finished Infidel (in 1986). But even though I
    feel this way, LBM still didn't work for me, not because of its main
    character but because of its choices of setting, imagery, and
    metaphor. The game invokes the movie Jacob's Ladder a couple of times,
    which is a movie I loved. That film was by turns profound, chilling,
    and inspiring. LBM only achieves glimpses of these things, and I think
    the reason is because I found its imagery muddled and incoherent. The
    game is obviously taking place on some metaphorical level, but it was
    never at all clear to me what the metaphors were supposed to be
    representing, and as they stack up it only becomes more confusing. In
    addition, there was basically no connection with reality, which left
    the game's symbols floating unanchored. Some flashback scenes, some
    glimpses of reality, *some* type of explanation for the heaven/hell
    dichotomy the game presents would have gone a long way toward
    connecting its symbolism with something more meaningful than just
    other symbols. There's a lot to like about this game. It is written
    well, and although it doesn't achieve an overall arc, it does contain
    moments which can be quite moving or frightening.  Technically I could
    find very little for which to fault it, both in its writing and its
    coding. Its puzzles may have had some unpleasant content, but they
    were clever and engaging, and generally quite well integrated with the
    storyline. But for me, it did not succeed as a work of art.
    Nonetheless, I respect it for being an ambitious but flawed experiment
    -- I'll take that over competent repetition any day.

    Rating: 6.3

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

    I quite enjoyed this game, although it was a bit vulgar, but not too
    vulgar. Basically it's about a guy in an office, trying to get though
    the day, with out getting too stressed, by the job, and his
    colleagues, and failing miserably. I would probably have given this
    game first place. I got about half way through the game before I felt
    the need for hints, and then went into hint-o-matic mode and totally
    ruined the game, and gave up. I really don't think it's a very good
    idea including on line hints, they're too tempting. Maybe people just
    want to show off their programming skills. It's much better to have
    easier puzzles that you can solve yourself, then you get the
    satisfaction of completing the game, and if you do have complicated
    puzzles make it difficult for people to obtain hints, so they give
    them a go.

    Inform file (.z5)

    Lock & Key
    From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #28 --March 20, 2002

    TITLE: Lock and Key
    AUTHOR: Adam Cadre
    E-MAIL: ac SP@G adamcadre.ac
    DATE: 2002
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Glulx interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF archive)
    URL: ftp://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/lock-key.blb
    VERSION: 1.12

    Say this for Adam Cadre: he doesn't repeat himself. There are darn few
    substantive themes that tie any two of his games together, and even
    those are pretty abstract (a dash of misanthropy and cruelty here, a
    smidgen of mental instability there, etc.). Lock and Key, Adam's latest,
    is very much a case in point: the gonzo humor and the queasy feeling
    that you're not entirely aligned with the forces of light are familiar,
    but the context, namely One Big Puzzle, is new in the Adam oeuvre. It
    works quite well, though, particularly if you like that sort of thing
    but even, to some extent, if you don't.

    You're head of a security company hired to build a better dungeon for a
    fairly unpleasant king -- the king's portrayal is largely comic with a
    dash of brutality tossed in now and again. You arrange a series of traps
    in the dungeon, then stand by and watch as an adventurer overcomes all
    of them and lose your job and your head as he escapes. So you try it
    again, and again, and again, eventually noting that different traps have
    different effects, and at long last, after several dozen repetitions at
    least, the adventurer's escape is foiled and you brag to the king that
    no one escapes your dungeon (reminiscent of Varicella, of course, where
    similar massive repetition was necessary; your character makes a comment
    at the end about no one having the chance to go back and try it over
    again).

    Adam made a comment in his competition reviews this past year about
    "participatory comedy" in Fine Tuned, and Lock and Key strives for some
    of the same thing. That is, some of the humor here derives from the
    player's cluelesness, meaning unfamiliarity with the logistics of the
    game. It turns out, for example, that you need to make a path into and
    out of the dungeon in a specific way, but you have no way of knowing
    what the game has in mind beforehand. Rather than dropping a message in
    brackets along the lines of "[You need more doors, dummy.]," the puzzle
    does its correcting through the game itself -- sometimes via a trusty
    assistant who helpfully points out when you're being stupid, and
    sometimes by actually letting you try out your defective dungeon (from
    which the adventurer promptly escapes, of course). This is all very
    well, and often it is funny, so I shouldn't complain too much -- but I'm
    not sure I think it's a great concept (particularly when the mistakes
    are beyond the reach of UNDO). It's actually not intrinsically different
    from rooms-of-instant-death in Detective and such -- i.e., stumble into
    comical suboptimal ending because you have no idea what the game has
    around the corner -- and while the writing here is good enough to make
    the suboptimal endings amusing rather than simply a drag, not everyone
    writes as well as Adam does. This is an idea, in short, that worked okay
    for Adam because he actually got me to laugh along at my own/my
    character's stupidity (and likewise for Dennis G. Jerz in Fine Tuned)
    but the chances aren't that good that the next person to try it will
    carry it off with the same flair. (And even so the
    figure-out-how-the-world-works section of Lock and Key was not the
    highlight.)

    The puzzle -- hmmm. It works well, I suppose; there's a certain element
    of "why does this work and not that? and why doesn't this affect that?,"
    but some degree of that is inevitable and my logical objections were
    few. What makes it hard is that the relevant hints are often dropped
    relatively unobtrusively into the text, so it's easy to miss them -- all
    the more so when you appear to be getting the same old failure message.
    This is participatory comedy of another sort, I guess -- you've seen the
    adventurer escape from your dungeon so many times that you no longer pay
    attention to the details -- but it's not all that howlingly funny.
    Still, it's a good puzzle on a lot of levels; it combines resource
    allocation, logic, and detail-spotting in a way that goes well beyond
    most IF. There are also a lot of technical tricks that serve the game
    well -- there's a diagram of the puzzle that helps keep track of what's
    where, and a record/replay command that lessens the tedium somewhat.

    There are a lot of good puzzles on the IF archive, though, and I'm not
    sure I would have kept this one on my hard drive if it hadn't been
    written by Adam. There are lots of funny snippets, and some priceless
    ones -- the sequence involving the gladiator whom you install in one of
    the dungeon rooms to kill the adventurer, and who turns out to be a
    long-lost friend, is funny enough in itself, but the adventurer's rage
    at the king ("YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS!") when the gladiator meets an
    untimely demise is hilarious. A significant chunk of the gameplay is
    there solely for humor value; for instance, you need to order each trap
    individually, which means calling the trap's vendor (in a manner of
    speaking). Think about the comic possibilities of deathtrap vendors
    (each specializing in a particular kind of deathtrap) -- okay, humor
    potential, but trust me, Adam appears to have thought about those
    possibilities a LOT. Lots of familiar fantasy tropes -- evil king, mean
    guards, etc. -- come in for their share of mockery, of course (vain and
    impulsive king, bumbling guards), which isn't new in itself, but Adam
    has given the mockery such breadth -- so many ways the guards can
    bumble, so many funny lines for the king -- that it goes well beyond the
    usual fantasy-parody tropes. As in Varicella (along with other Adam
    efforts, but that one in particular), there's an element of misanthropy
    to the humor; it's not gentle stuff. And here, as there, your character
    is hardly an unequivocal force for good -- getting into the game means
    acclimating to the role of aider-and-abetter of evil tyrant, though it's
    an evil tyrant with funny one-liners. But for those who can wrap their
    minds around the game's worldview, there's fun to be had outside the
    puzzle-solving.

    Lock and Key works well, in short -- it's not revolutionary, and those
    who profess themselves unable to solve puzzles may find themselves
    stumped -- but as a puzzle and as another line in Adam's list of
    achievements, it's worth experiencing.

    From: Øyvind Thorsby <jthorsby SP@G online.no>
    Review appeared in SPAG #28 --March 20, 2002

    Score:
       Atmosphere  1.0
       Gameplay    1.7
       Writing     1.7
       Plot        1.2
       Wildcard    1.0
          Total:   6.6
       Characters  1.0
       Puzzles     1.5

    Lock & Key is set in a standard comedy fantasy world. You start out
    without much back-story locked in a cell.

    However, for the main part of this rather short game you are trying to
    design a dungeon. You get a generous budget to buy traps and critters
    with, and a map of the dungeon to place your deadly surprises on. This
    is pretty cool. You also decide where the door in the dungeon shall be.

    Designing a dungeon could have been very complicated, but quite some
    effort has been made to make it easy, like the aforementioned map. There
    are some problems; after the first time I tried it I found out there are
    strict rules as to where the doors must be placed, so I had to start
    over again. Also, some of the functions put into the game to make it
    easier did not work as they should. So it is not perfect, but it is
    pretty good.

    Making the perfect dungeon is difficult, and one is clearly intended to
    play the game many times and learn from one's mistakes. Playing through
    the game is lots of fun at first, but gets a bit tedious after a while.
    There are many hints that you are on the right track, but I think there
    could have been more of them, or they could have been clearer, otherwise
    you just have to guess what to do.

    When a player is supposed to play through a part of a game many times,
    it might be a good idea to make this part as short as possible. There
    are parts in Lock & Key where one can not do much, and I think most
    players would have to play through these parts at least 10 times to
    complete the game. The parts are not horribly long, and it is not a
    terrible problem; you can just type z a lot, but still.

    The game makes fun of clichés of fantasy in general, and specifically
    fantasy computer games. The humour is OK.

    All in all this is an original and good, but not great, game.

    Blorb resource file (.blb) with Glulx gamefile and graphics

    Game, Windows interpreter, and batch file for one-click execution

    Lomalow
    From: Suzanne Britton <tril SP@G host.ott.igs.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #19 -- January 14, 2000

    TITLE: Lomalow
    AUTHOR: Brendan Barnwell
    E-MAIL: BrenBarn SP@G aol.com
    DATE: November 1999
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition99/inform/lomalow/lomalow.z5
    VERSION: Release 0

    Errrrgh.

    I really, really wanted to like this game more than I did. It has a
    fascinating storyline, evocative writing, and an uplifting theme. If the
    author had turned the concept into a short story instead of an IF work,
    it probably would have done very well. But despite all this, the best I
    could give it was a 5: 10 for imagination, 0 for implementation. And
    that was generous of me--I loved Lomalow's imagery so much that I
    intentionally placed it a step above the other games that were crippled
    by bad programming.

    Technically, Lomalow is poorly done--it abounds with sparsely
    implemented objects (to the author's credit, there are few "you can't
    see any such thing"'s), overuse of aliasing (where a bunch of related
    objects point to the same game-object), one-syntax-only situations (one
    of many examples: you can go "in" when you're by the cabin, but you
    can't "enter cabin", "enter door", or "open door"), lack of synonyms,
    and a few glaring bugs (particularly in the hint system--there's a
    problem with object names showing up as numbers, making certain hints
    distinctly unhelpful). Mimesis is shallow at best. Despite the many
    conversational topics on the two NPC's, they ultimately feel like
    cardboard, and this is a much more serious matter than it would be for a
    puzzle-based game. Why don't they make any reaction when I just waltz
    into their house ("hello"? "who are you"? "you look like you just fell
    down a cliff"? :-])? Why are they missing some of the most obvious
    conversation topics? (most grievously, "lomalow", "phoenix", "man", and
    "woman") Why don't they respond when I give or show various important
    objects to them (the book, the board, etc.), even though they respond
    when I ask about the objects? And so forth.

    The gameworld overall feels sparse and thinly implemented--it takes more
    than long, detailed room descriptions to bring an environment to life. I
    can't interact with much of anything. I especially wanted to interact
    with the strange forces/feelings in the pit, but couldn't find any way
    to do so (I know it's not standard practice to implement "intangibles",
    but I feel it's an extremely good idea in a game of this sort). Many of
    the Inform default responses could use overriding (e.g., "So-and-so is
    unimpressed" is almost never a good response to "show" in a story-based
    game).

    The end result of all these little oversights, and the resulting
    cardboardlike feeling of the npc's and the landscape, is that when I
    reached the end of the game, my response was a resounding "huh?". Until
    then, the characters had behaved almost robotically--reacting to nothing
    but the magic word ASK, and occasionally moving around after I asked a
    particular (predetermined) question. Then they suddenly came to life and
    everything happened at once. The man accused me of thinking him crazy,
    but I never did--there was never anything, other than a single
    conversation response, to indicate that he was any more or less normal
    than the woman. Except for the fact that the man moved around more and
    the woman said "honey" a lot, they didn't seem all that different. Both
    spoke in fragments, spoke only when prompted, and didn't do much of
    anything else. Neither of them seemed very responsive or human until the
    end.

    I know IF npc's are robots at base, but it's possible to create a very
    convincing illusion that they are more. I've done it and I've seen it
    done! It just takes a lot of work. Gamefile size is one reliable
    indicator--if it's 80k, you've almost definitely not put in enough code
    to create humanlike npc's. These are things that are only learned with
    time and experience, and I understand that a lot of the competition
    authors are novices (and should be encouraged!)--but it's hard for me
    not to be demanding when a game aims this high and has such a neat
    premise.

    The whole concept of using ASK--almost exclusively--to advance the
    story, is questionable. The game doesn't need to have more puzzles, but
    it needs more things to do. Photopia is an excellent example of how to
    immerse the player in a story without a single puzzle. And it needs a
    better reason for why everything comes together when it does--one more
    meaningful than "because you finished asking repeatedly about every
    topic the author thought to implement". Ideally, it should be the player
    who initiates those final scenes--as it is, it feels quite jarring and
    unfair to be shouted at for something the game forced me to do!

    One final beef: When I read the introductory text from the author
    (claiming that the only puzzle in the game was to "read all the text
    that you possibly can"), and saw that the game had no scoring system, I
    wondered whether it had a formal end. As it turns out, it did (an ending
    well-worth reaching, despite the above criticism), but I got stymied for
    a while when I reached a hint that said "if you can see this message,
    you have already won". It gave no indication that I needed to go back to
    the cabin, and since I had asked about all the topics I could possibly
    think of, there was no impetus to do so. I didn't realize something huge
    was going to happen as soon as I walked in the door! So I presumed that
    was indeed the end, and I quit. Nagging uncertainty led me to dump all
    the gametext via Ztools, at which point I discovered that I was wrong. I
    would strongly recommend: 1. revising the introductory text to make
    clear that the game has a goal and an end, and 2. adding a final hint,
    unless you choose to follow the advice above and make the ending more
    logical.

    I wouldn't be writing this long a review for "Lomalow" if I didn't have
    such high hopes for it and its author, so I hope the criticism isn't too
    disheartening. I would love to see a more fleshed-out version of this
    game after the comp ends.

    Inform .z5 file

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

    NAME: Losing Your Grip
    AUTHOR: Stephen Granade
    E-MAIL: sgranade SP@G phy.duke.edu
    DATE: 1998
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Shareware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/grip.gam
    VERSION: Release 3

    PLOT: Intricate (1.7)         ATMOSPHERE: Complex, well done (1.6)
    WRITING: Solid (1.5)          GAMEPLAY: Mostly good (1.3)
    CHARACTERS: A little sketchy (1.0) PUZZLES: Some excellent (1.3)
    MISC: Very rich in symbolism, thought-provoking (1.7)
    OVERALL: 7.8

    Stephen Granade's Losing Your Grip is an ambitious effort: the plot
    draws heavily on symbolism and attempts to sustain it over the course
    of a full-length game. The result, though the symbolic elements are
    often a bit obscure, is consistently entertaining and
    thought-provoking. Merely figuring out what's going on is, truth to
    tell, challenge enough.

    You play Terry, in rehab for nicotine addiction, and the game switches
    back and forth between Terry's conscious mind in the rehab ward
    and--well, it's hard to say, really. You move through a series of five
    "fits" that deal with one aspect or another of Terry's mind or
    experiences, both discovering and setting right (in some cases) the
    neuroses and repressions of his life. This duality sometimes makes
    things rather complicated: when the fits delve into Terry's past, the
    game wants to present (in heavily symbolic terms) the events that have
    stunted or altered Terry's development, but also provide you, the
    player, a means of undoing those events (also in symbolic terms),
    leading to some fairly tortured plot sequences. One fit depicts your
    run-in with some "faeries," a reasonably obvious stand-in for your
    imaginative/creative side (at least, I thought so), and, in rapid
    succession, the maturation of that imaginative self, its
    disruption/negation by an outside force that threatens Terry's
    freedom, and the overcoming of that outside force and reliberation of
    the imagination. Whew. Bring a scorecard if you want to keep track of
    the plot, because there's lots of it and it happens on several levels.

    As a game, Deeper Meanings aside, Losing Your Grip is reasonably
    successful--there are many challenging puzzles, and they make sense,
    for the most part, in terms of the plot. There are, however, many and
    varied ways to close off the game, including some "planning ahead"
    measures that require considerable foresight. Notably, the way you
    transport objects between fits, though clever and even logical on the
    game's terms, requires that the player anticipate what the game is
    trying to do--not at all likely within the first fit, when the
    structure of the game still hasn't become clear. On two occasions,
    choices you make send the game down one of two entirely separate paths
    (which rejoin later), which enhances the game's replayability --and at
    other times, there are multiple independent solutions to problems or
    reactions to stimuli that shape what you make of your
    character. Generally, these choices aren't between right and wrong as
    such, though some have certain moral dimensions; they don't decide
    whether the plot will continue, merely the nature of what
    ensues. There is one section that devolves into sheer mathematical
    puzzle-fest, not inconsistently with the plot but frustrating
    nonetheless.

    Perhaps the most successful part of Grip is the first fit, in which
    Terry explores his own mind, thinly veiled as a majestic marble
    building. Terry confronts his memories, allegorized into a pile of
    spheres that a fellow named Frankie--Terry's powers of introspection,
    perhaps--is engaged in counting and categorizing; the parallel to the
    process that Terry is undergoing is clear and intriguing. Terry then
    reactivates, reopens for examination, various areas of his life that
    he had neglected, and deals with the resulting tide of guilt and anger
    (in a way that violates the allegory a bit, but let's not get
    picky)--and also manages to avert the complete breakdown (or death,
    perhaps?) that had been expected. But the author is not so concerned
    with hurling symbolism at us that he neglects to make sense of the
    ostensible action, fortunately, and the individual scenes in Grip are
    enjoyable simply for their playability and writing. But the depth of
    the insight that Terry achieves--in realizing how the negative
    emotions have tainted and darkened his memories, and how he needs to
    open up long-closed areas of his mind--give the first fit remarkable
    power. In that light, the limitedness of its effects on the remainder
    of the plot--whether you succeed or fail at a certain task, most
    importantly--feels analytically wrong; it seems like failing to get
    Terry's emotional house in order should preclude further
    introspection.  (As in, the plot continues on the same course and you
    reach the same ending, which doesn't feel right.)

    The ending of Grip, while logical enough, brings up a certain point,
    not confined to this particular game but certainly relevant:
    increasingly, rather than giving the player the magic McGuffin or
    letting him ride into the sunset, authors end games on an ambiguous
    note: there's a conclusion of sorts, but it's not an unmitigated
    triumph, and there's no satisfying "You have won." The Zarfian ending,
    for want of a better term, is a welcome innovation, certainly--it
    makes us think about what we've done--but please, all you Zarfians,
    signify somehow that the player's _finished_ the thing, done all he or
    she is supposed to do.(An "afterword" from the author, or an "amusing"
    section, or something like that.)  Particularly in games like Grip,
    where it's not at all hard to finish the game without earning all the
    points, reading an ambiguous ending just convinced me that I'd missed
    something and sent me back to solve puzzles that weren't meant to be
    solved. Enhancing replay value is one thing, but confusing the player
    about when enough is enough is another. (I should note, of course,
    that Grip does have substantial replay value, in the separate paths
    and in the intrigue of figuring out what everything means.  I just
    wanted to know when I was done.)

    Where was I? Oh, right. One of the nicest things about Grip is simply
    that it hangs together well: the reappearances of the dark side that
    you struggle with, the veiled conflict with Terry's father, and the
    ways you drift back and forth between reality and memory/introspection
    make a remarkably coherent whole, or so I found it. Once the player
    picks up on the structure of the game (which takes a while) and the
    significance of the recurring parts, the seemingly unrelated sequences
    start to come together. Once I understood that the point of revisiting
    past periods of Terry's life was to overcome the negative associations
    he had attached to them, figuring out how to do it felt more
    rewarding, though it's certainly possible to finish the scene without
    thinking in those terms. Perhaps it was just that I appreciated and
    agreed with the underlying message (or at least the philosophy behind
    it), that Terry's anger at his father is misplaced and ultimately
    destructive, but I found that, certain blips aside, the plot both made
    sense and rewarded careful analysis--a rare combination. To that end,
    though, I was a bit puzzled that an apparent choice between giving up
    that anger and acting on it didn't affect the overall course of the
    game--again, you end up in the same place with the same text.

    I certainly don't claim to understand everything that the author was
    driving at in Grip; there are many parts of the game whose
    significance isn't clear to me, and may well remain that way. But I
    enjoyed the parts of it that I thought I understood, and it kept me
    interested enough to play through and think about in order to make
    sense of the rest, no small feat for a full-length game. As both game
    and story by symbolism, Losing Your Grip deserves praise.

    TADS file (.gam)

    Stepwise solution (Text)

    Lost
    From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #26 -- September 26, 2001

    TITLE: Lost
    AUTHOR: Eric Mayer
    E-MAIL: emayer00 SP@G epix.net
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: ADRIFT
    SUPPORTS: ADRIFT runtimes
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/adrift/lost.zip
    VERSION: First release

    Making emotional content plausible in IF ain't easy. Getting a player to
    feel what the protagonist is supposed to be feeling requires subtlety
    (more than "you're feeling angry now"), good writing (at least, good
    enough that the player doesn't notice it and get pulled out of the
    flow), and, most of all, time -- a story that's long enough for the
    player to settle into the protagonist's skin before any serious
    emotion-imputing begins. Eric Mayer's Lost is a highly emotional game,
    and while it does passably well on the first two counts, it's simply not
    long enough, in my book, to achieve the desired effect.

    It seems that the protagonist is upset about all manner of things,
    primarily the decaying states of his marriage and his job, and he heads
    for a walk in the woods. As he wanders and examines things, thoughts run
    through his mind (in different colored text lest he miss their
    significance), and the forest setting, while nicely rendered, is of
    course merely a backdrop for the stuff going on in his head. He solves
    one fairly simple puzzle (rendered more complicated only by the
    unfriendliness of the ADRIFT parser), and a few sounds and apparitions
    later, the protagonist has a choice of sorts. One of two different
    endings ensues.

    Not to belabor the point, but it must be belabored: the protagonist can
    reach this ending point inside of 30 moves if he's pretty direct about
    it, and isn't likely to take more than 60-70 even if he stops to smell
    all the roses he can find. His ruminations about his past, however,
    start right away and come relatively thick and fast. If you, the player,
    don't decide to identify with the protagonist right away, you may just
    miss your chance entirely. Now, there may be some for whom losing a
    marriage and a job simultaneously strikes an instant chord of
    recognition, and if you're one of those, I sympathize and recommend Lost
    -- but the rest of us need some more prompting before we can identify
    with the protagonist. Perhaps, with more exploration of his personality,
    we might see ourselves, or someone we know, in this character. But the
    protagonist's personality is almost wholly absent from Lost: we know
    what he feels, but not who he is. As such, he had my sympathy, but I was
    a spectator.

    The backdrop, for what it's worth, is fine -- the woods are well
    rendered, with attention to detail. There are some glitches in the
    writing (e.g., "A few tough, spikes which used to be limbs, protrude"),
    and the style tends toward the choppy ("Here and there grassy hillocks
    are interspersed with dead trees. At the edge, cattails rattle in the
    breeze. There is a wooden post here. The swamp is impassable."), but
    there are some nice spots as well: "The lingering twilight floods the
    top of the reentrant with a rusty glow." There are occasional fuzzy
    pictures (which feel the need to reappear, necessitating window-closing,
    every time you return to the location in question), which don't enhance
    things much, but as a walk-in-the-woods game this is okay. (There are
    occasional sidelights about orienteering, which could have used some
    more explanation -- not everyone knows about orienteering, or even that
    the term refers to a sport, if that's the right thing to call it -- but
    as with publicity, there's almost no such thing as bad background
    detail.)

    When it comes to the internal strife, Lost isn't awful, but the game
    doesn't exactly have the lightest touch. The principle of "show, don't
    tell" is observed only haphazardly; one example, when examining a pine
    tree:

       You're reminded of the fragrant, prickly needled Christmas trees you
       used to bring home. How long since you switched to the plastic one?
       You just snap the limbs on and spray it with pine scent. From a
       distance it looks alive. Not unlike you marriage.

    Even aside from the "you marriage," the last sentence ruins what was, up
    to then, a nice little aside -- it conveys the protagonist's
    associations, and that's all it really has to do. The player can draw
    the contrasts, given that much: it's not hard to put the "those were
    happy times, unlike now" pieces together, nor are the
    plastic-instead-of-real-tree dots difficult to connect. The paragraph
    could easily have been stopped after four sentences, or three, or
    (perhaps best of all) two. As it is, the last sentence seems to assume
    the player isn't bright enough to draw any conclusions -- not wholly
    unfair, as the player may be no more than five moves into the game at
    that point (and no more than 25 moves from the end), but the answer to
    that is more game, not signal-flare writing. Similar is this passage:

       Everything here seems still, sheltered from the wind, quiet. It seems
       to you a soothing place, beyond the reach of the world. Ridiculous of
       course, since the highway is a few minutes walk.

    The first sentence is really all that's needed -- the second sentence,
    setting out what the protagonist feels, can just as well be inferred,
    and the player should know that the highway is within a few minutes'
    walk if he or she's been paying attention. The author can clearly write
    -- the writing here is always passable (typos and such aside) and
    sometimes good. It's just that he often seems to write one or two
    sentences too many.

    Picky and grumpy, that's me, but I'd like to think there's a good reason
    here. Writing IF whose success hinges on evoking emotion is a
    hit-or-miss matter; if you don't succeed, you're likely to end up
    sounding kind of mawkish. The player is tempted to snicker, which is
    never a good thing. (A puzzle game that doesn't work may leave the
    player frustrated or baffled, but usually not condescendingly amused.)
    No one likes feeling manipulated, and the nature of the string-pulling
    in Lost is such that it's easy to feel that way. And yet it seems to me
    that all that really needs to change here (aside from some writing
    stuff) is that the ratio of scenery/exploration to emotionalizing needs
    to increase substantially -- there needs to be more going on, such that
    the setting feels like a part of the game rather than an stimulus to get
    the protagonist's mental wheels turning. Give me enough of it so that it
    gets *my* mental wheels turning -- sufficiently so that you can tell the
    story without spelling everything out so, er, blatantly -- and you'll
    really have something.

    Lost has its heart in the right place, but it's trying to accomplish
    something very difficult while devoting minimal resources to the job.
    Good try, say I, but not quite.

    ADRIFT game file, readme, and walkthrough

    Lost Kingdom, Brainf*ck Edition
    From: Greg Boettcher <greg SP@G gregboettcher.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #43 -- January 7, 2006

    TITLE: The Lost Kingdom, Brainf*ck Edition
    AUTHOR: Jon Ripley
    EMAIL: jon SP@G jonripley.com
    DATE: June 12, 2005
    PARSER: extremely crude
    SUPPORTS: brainf*ck
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; Author's site
    URL: http://jonripley.com/i-fiction/games/LostKingdomBF.html

    VERSION: 0.11

    I'm not sure why I like The Lost Kingdom, Brainfuck Edition. Its parser is
    crude in the extreme, and when you play it, you spend a lot of time mapping out
    mazes. That's not exactly a recipe for success. However, within the modest
    constraints of what this game tries to do, it is very well polished and
    playable. It's also rather amazing from a technical point of view, and it comes
    with an interesting backstory. For all of the above reasons, I think it's worth
    a play.

    The Lost Kingdom was originally entered into the 1st Annual 1 to 2K Classic
    Text Adventure Competition, back in 2004. It took first place out of six games,
    and the competition organizer, Paul Panks, called it "head and shoulders above
    any game thus far!" This new edition of the game is not just a new port of the
    game, but a considerable expansion of it. The new version has new features,
    better descriptions, and one or two new puzzles, in addition to the distinction
    of being written in an esoteric programming language.

    Jon Ripley claims that this game is "probably the first ever piece of
    interactive fiction written in an esoteric programming language and probably
    one of the largest non-trivial Brainfuck programs ever written." Indeed, the
    game is written in brainfuck, which does make it rather remarkable. Brainfuck
    is an esoteric programming language, a fully functional language, but one that
    is not at all designed to be practical, instead aiming only to be amusing to
    programmers due to its extreme minimalism. In Brainfuck programs, there are a
    maximum of eight commands, each of which are represented by a single character.
    (For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
    .) Thus, the
    first line of the source code of The Lost Kingdom BFe looks like this...

       [-][.]>+<+[>[>[-]+<-]>[<+>>[-]>>>>>>>[-]+>>>>[-]<<<<[>>>>+<<<<-]<<<<<<<[

    ...and the remaining 29,000+ lines of code look rather similar. The code is
    thus nearly inscrutable, and so it is not hard to figure out how brainfuck got
    its name. Obviously, Jon Ripley found a way of machine-generating all this code,
    but the game is still quite a piece of work from a technical point of view.

    The parser in this game is more crude than any I've ever seen. In the game's
    documentation, that author claims that a full-blown two-word parser might have
    made the program run too slow on some computers, given the very sub-optimal
    efficiency of brainfuck. As a result, Jon Ripley has set up a system where all
    nouns are referred to not by a word, but by a number. Thus:

       You can see:
         a small wooden box of matches sitting on the table. (2)

    To pick up the matches, type "take 2". At first this seems awkward and annoying,
    but there is an advantage here. Every verb has a one-letter abbreviation, and
    you can issue commands of no more than two characters. "t2" is an easier way of
    picking up the matches. Once you get used to the verb abbreviations, the system
    has a kind of simple elegance. Nobody will extol the game for giving you a
    feeling of complete freedom -- you can't use more than 22 verbs -- but within
    its constraints, it works well. By the way, it is worth noting that this
    brainfuck edition of this game allows you to save, making it much preferable to
    the version in the 2K Comp.

    Likewise, the game's help menus are well-designed, as are the menus that
    provide the backstory. Speaking of which, the backstory is another of the game'
    s great virtues, one that is shared with the original version of The Lost
    Kingdom. Although the game itself is very simple, even crude, it is surrounded
    by a very interesting backstory that gives the story more depth. (And you
    should definitely read the entire backstory if you want to win.) You can read
    all this at Jon Ripley's web page for the game's 2K Comp version --
    http://jonripley.com/i-fiction/games/LostKingdom.html -- or within the game itself,
    by using the "!" command.

    There is one other technically interesting aspect of The Lost Kingdom BFe. It
    is actually two games in one. When you begin the game, you get a chance to play
    it with either "short descriptions" or "long descriptions." The "short
    descriptions" version closely resembles the original 2K Comp version of the
    game, while the "long descriptions" version has much longer and more
    atmospheric room descriptions, as well as one or two different puzzles.

    That just leaves the game itself. Well, what can I say. You pick stuff up, you
    manipulate the stuff with the 22 verbs, you wander into a cave, you map out a
    couple of mazes, you defeat the bad guy (albeit a bad guy who is unusually well-
    characterized in the game's backstory), that sort of thing. The game itself
    says, "This game is intentionally written as a classic model text adventure
    game." Either you can get into that, or you can't.

    Anyway, in short, this game is pretty bad in some ways. In other ways, however,
    it's very impressive. I recommend reading the backstory, and if that sounds
    interesting, then this game is probably worth a play.

    Author's web site, with the game and information on it

    Lost New York
    From: J.D. Berry <berryx SP@G earthlink.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #20 -- March 15, 2000

    NAME: Lost New York
    AUTHOR: Neil DeMause
    EMAIL: neild SP@G echonyc.com  (Not sure how current this is)
    DATE: 1996-1997
    PARSER: TADS   (Also available in PC format)
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Shareware ($12) (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/lostny14.gam
    VERSION: 1.4

    Start spreading the news
    Download this today
    You'll want to be a part of it
    It's "Lost New York"
    These time-traveling shoes
    Are longing to stray
    Right though the very heart of it
    It's "Lost New York"

    Sports aficionados say the mark of a good referee is that you never
    notice him. He quietly and efficiently does his job controlling the game
    without seeming to control the players. Lost New York (LNY) is that
    referee. There's a definite air of professionalism throughout the work,
    but you may not realize it until after the game. "You know, I don't
    think the ref blew any major calls."

    Interactive fiction players think one mark of a good game is when they
    become absorbed by it. For this to happen, the world not only must feel
    real but it must be engaging. Now, if you've ever been to New York City
    (NYC), you know the smell isn't always a pleasant one. But, not only its
    smells but by its whole atmosphere (good and bad), you KNOW where you
    are. You're in New York, *&^%$! Remember, though, a game must do more
    than capture the effect. It must do so in an interesting way. LNY
    succeeds here too. You never get the feeling you're just walking down
    each street for the sole purpose of realism. You never get the feeling
    you are just a tourist. You are part of an unfolding story as well.

    I love the rich history that permeates the game, often seeping into
    strange but satisfying places. Your score is compared to a mayor of NYC
    complete with a small biography. Excellent! This also ties in nicely to
    the game in general. Even the better mayors were not without their flaws
    and not without the sense that the city was so much bigger than they
    were. You, the player, are thrust into the same situation. You control
    some things, but the city largely has its own say, its own destiny.

    I must point out that I am neither a patient person nor a master game
    solver. Thus the complaints I do have about the game may be more
    accurately pointed at my own flaws as a player. As a reader of the
    newsgroups, though, I feel some of you may be in the same dock. With
    this in mind, I think you'll get an idea of how to approach this game
    based on your strengths and weaknesses.

    The game can become unwinnable quite easily. For instance, I didn't
    bring along a certain object because I had already taken the "important"
    thing from it. Later on of course I needed to use that object for
    something else. Restoring back so far was quite annoying. If you're the
    sort of player who has an intuitive feel rather than an expert gamer
    feel, you may find yourself in these kinds of traps too.

    Near the end of the game I resorted to the walkthrough. I'm glad I did,
    because I don't think I would have put everything together no matter how
    long I had played. But I was able to solve 5/6 of the game on my own.
    The puzzles and situations were generally very fair, although at one
    point you will perform an action of questionable morals which is a
    little out of character for the "average joe" player you are. (The rich
    man in the park.)

    Let me quickly finish the remaining other little nits. I had trouble
    figuring out how to use the future subway. Also, the timing of a subway
    encounter in another situation frustrated me. Every now and then I had
    difficulty in communicating what I wanted to do. None of these remotely
    resembled downright aggravation.

    If you love detailed and responsive NPCs, you won't find them here.
    However, this does not take anything away from the game. In the first
    place, NYC is not the most congenial of places. There are no kindly but
    knowledgeable grandmothers or entertaining yet clue-revealing minstrels
    here. The thieves are definitely not gentlemanly. Also, LNY is a history
    piece. You are dealing with the city as an evolving entity. The NPCs are
    like little cogs in a bulky, inefficient, black box machine. They may or
    may not have a minuscule role in city's existence and evolution. They
    are important only to the degree that they can help you. This attitude
    may hurt most games, but it works perfectly here. It fits.

    Lost New York is an engaging work of interactive fiction and even a
    standard on which all historical pieces should be judged. Bear in mind
    that its whole is definitely greater than its parts. Each element taken
    by itself is merely good. The overall effect is very pleasing.
    Experience it for yourself!

    From: Adam Cadre <ac SP@G adamcadre.ac>
    Review appeared in SPAG #26 -- September 26, 2001

    [Note: This review first appeared on the IF-Review website, at
    http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-review/. --Paul]

    NAME: Lost New York
    AUTHOR: Neil DeMause
    EMAIL: neild SP@G echonyc.com
    DATE: 1996-1997
    PARSER: TADS   (Also available in PC format)
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Shareware ($12) (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/lostny14.gam
    VERSION: 1.4

    LOST NEW YORK by Neil deMause sends the player character bouncing around
    in time, from 1880 to 1905 to 1954 to 1780 to 2040. But none of these
    dates has anywhere near as much effect on the shape of the game as its
    year of publication: 1996.

    For in 1996, the conventional wisdom asserted that the remaining
    audience for text adventures was after just that: text adventures. Games
    were essentially just series of puzzles, with the story as a backdrop,
    the model world as set decoration. Yes, that backdrop and set decoration
    could be and often was masterfully designed, but the idea that one could
    create valid IF simply by building a model world for the player to poke
    around in, or telling a story in which the player could participate,
    only gained widespread acceptance over the subsequent five years, as
    increasingly daring games placed less and less emphasis on puzzles and
    were rewarded with plaudits from an audience that found it rather liked
    that sort of thing. But in 1996, how the audience might respond was an
    open question. Given the amount of effort that goes into a full-length
    work of IF, most authors elected to go with the proven approach. LOST
    NEW YORK is no exception. But while it follows the crowd, it does so
    with obvious reluctance.

    In the spirit of time travel, let's jump back about 400 years, to the
    time of Shakespeare. But not our Shakespeare -- this Shakespeare lives
    in an England where theater audiences are mad about juggling acts. Day
    after day, the Globe is witness to trio after trio of balls, pins and
    torches being flung into the air. But the audiences didn't want to see
    *just* juggling; they wanted the juggling folded into a little story.
    Enter Shakespeare, who soars to fame on the strength of "Romeo and
    Juliet", in which a pair of young people fall in love at a masked ball
    (the chief entertainment there: juggling), but then the boy's friend and
    the girl's cousin get into a ill-fated juggling contest and it all goes
    downhill from there. Now Shakespeare decides he might like to try
    writing a history, perhaps something involving King Henry V... yes, a
    piece tracing his evolution from carousing prince to the inspirational
    leader of his countrymen in a great victory over the French. But he
    can't just tell that story -- where's the juggling? If there's no
    juggling, it's not a real play! So the first act ends up foregrounding a
    bunch of jugglers at the bar while Falstaff and Prince Hal talk in the
    background, and proceeds to the point where the jugglers accompanying
    the army are told that the English have won the battle... and the
    audience response is tepid because while the historical stuff is
    interesting, the juggling isn't as accomplished as that in in RITO AND
    IMITA. Shakespeare is left to mutter to himself about the constraints of
    the medium.

    Similarly, it's clear that in LOST NEW YORK, deMause's heart is in the
    geographical and historical material. Virtually all the prose is
    extremely deft, but never is the writing more alive, more joyous, than
    when you die and the author gets to tell you another wacky story about a
    long-dead mayor; never are the quips funnier than when they're playing
    off the geography of the city (try going east from the City Hall area in
    1880, or north into Hell's Kitchen later on.) The fact that the game
    begins with a slideshow and ends with a bibliography is another
    indication of where the author's interests lie. Hint: it's not in
    fiddling around with hairpins and stopwatches.

    But because this was written in 1996, the author felt obliged to fill it
    with juggl-- I mean, puzzles. And these are mostly not very good, being
    chiefly of the type where you're wandering around and find a fishing
    pole, which you take because, well, it's implemented; later on you find
    a stream, and go fishing because, well, that must be what the pole's
    for; you catch a fish and, when you cut it open to cook it, a key falls
    out. What was the key doing in the fish? Well, one of the conventions of
    the genre at the time was that you weren't supposed to ask questions
    like that. That's not actually a puzzle from LOST NEW YORK, but many
    similar ones abound.

    Of course, while the "take everything that's not nailed down, look under
    and behind and inside everything that is" ethic works fine in a dungeon,
    it gets to be a little absurd when transplanted to the island of
    Manhattan. In LOST NEW YORK, Manhattan has like twelve things. And
    that's too many. (Bet you thought I was going to go a different way with
    that, huh?) Again, to avoid spoilers, I'll disguise the details a bit.
    Let's say that the Upper West Side, circa 1965, has been reduced to a
    single location with a mailbox in it. Now, the problem is *not* that
    each street corner should be a separate location, nor that every item in
    every store and every apartment should be implemented. As it stands, the
    location works just fine as a representative area of the Upper West
    Side, and the mailbox works just fine as a representative mailbox. BUT!
    As soon as you fish around in the mailbox and pull out a live monkey
    (which you then stuff into your knapsack) you are no longer dealing with
    the Platonic Mailbox -- you're dealing with a specific, highly unusual
    mailbox. And by extension, this is no longer just a representative
    street corner: it's the particular street corner with the strange
    monkey-containing mailbox. And once players lose the sense that the
    locations they're visiting are representative, they're no longer
    wandering around Manhattan; they're navigating a diorama of Manhattan
    with twelve things in it.

    But it didn't have to be this way. LOST NEW YORK is as much about the
    New Yorks that might have been as the ones that actually have, and in
    that spirit, I can't help but muse about what might have happened had
    Neil deMause had his notes stolen one day in 1995. Disheartened, he puts
    off the project for a few years, till his enthusiasm revives -- only now
    the IF landscape is different. A MIND FOREVER VOYAGING is no longer a
    low-selling oddball; *lots* of games now revolve around exploration
    instead of dinking around with inventory. And so this alternate,
    post-'96 version of LOST NEW YORK takes on a different shape. Instead of
    players getting little more than a glimpse of New York's evolution,
    whatever gets mentioned in passing as they're messing around with goats
    and baseballs in curiously limited regions of the city, they can now
    roam the entirety of the city freely, watching the different
    neighborhoods evolve. Perhaps the interaction with figures who clearly
    fascinate the author -- Robert Moses, Emma Goldman, the various mayors
    -- is more substantial... leading to more New Yorks that might have
    been, perhaps? A fully implemented Moses-free New York, say, or one
    where Goldman's ideals took root... perhaps even a modern-day New
    Amsterdam, if you diverge early enough. And hey, TADS has multimedia
    now: why not throw some pictures into the mix?... oh, and...

    ...and at this point I've got the blueprints for a 21st-century
    skyscraper and am waving them at the base of the Empire State Building.
    The game has been written, and if deMause is anything like me, the idea
    of revisiting a project that was long ago declared done is hardly an
    appealing one...

    ...but hey, it's New York. If it were ever really finished, we wouldn't
    have that old story about the visitor from Nebraska.

    TADS .gam file

    MacIntosh Version

    TADS .gam file bundled with DOS TADS runtime and instructions

    Solution

    Listing of game Easter Eggs from an expired contest

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

    NAME: Lost Spellmaker
    AUTHOR: Neil Brown
    E-MAIL: neil SP@G highmount.demon.co.uk
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition97/inform/lost/lost.z5
    VERSION: Release 2

    PLOT: Reasonably amusing (1.2)    ATMOSPHERE: Not much (0.9)
    WRITING: Mostly strong (1.3)     GAMEPLAY: Weak in spots (0.8)
    CHARACTERS: One very funny one (1.2)  PUZZLES: Not great (0.8)
    MISC: Some good ideas, didn't do enough with them (1.2)
    OVERALL: 5.4

    Uneven but reasonably enjoyable nonetheless, Neil Brown's Lost
    Spellmaker pushes the boundaries of the genre somewhat. The setting is
    ostensibly fantasy -- your mission is to rescue a wizard of sorts,
    after all -- but Spellmaker is more comedy than fantasy; the game
    spends more time subverting or mocking fantasy conventions than
    abiding by them -- and to the extent that it succeeds, it does so
    mostly because of the comedic factor.

    You are a dwarf (an element almost entirely neglected by the story; it
    isn't clear whether you're in a land of dwarves or are unique in that
    respect) assigned by the Secret Service to hunt down a Magic Weaver
    who has disappeared. (Some hint of the tone of the game comes in the
    prologue, when you're instructed to retrieve the missing magician "so
    that he may entertain us further with his joyful sparkly spells.") You
    have no hint of his whereabouts until you stumble across him; the
    plot, typically, requires that you go out and solve puzzles, not
    actually track the guy down. Still, there is more than enough whimsy
    to keep the player entertained; among the better elements is a
    sarcastic talking cow and a reverend who speaks entirely in
    malapropisms. ("I never did heard such inscruciating nonsenseness in
    my whole lovely liveliness!") There is also some unintentional humor
    -- one character's ability to parse input is limited enough to produce
    this exchange:

         >mrs wisher, hello

         "Oh I'm sorry, dear," apologises Mrs Wisher. "I can't do
         that. The Reverend wouldn't approve."

    At least, I assume it was unintentional. The predominance of
    silliness, as opposed to coherent plot, is occasionally irritating,
    though -- one character must be given an object simply because it's
    nonsensical, and your final action is more than a bit contrived.

    The gameplay is slightly uneven; there are some actions whose syntax
    might defeat the less persistent, notably the problem of a certain
    well. At another point, in a dangerous situation, an escape route
    opens up for a turn or so -- but the game gives you no hints to that
    effect. More generally, you steal a jar from a sweet shop (well, you
    take it in plain sight of a dimwitted salesman), and, as noted,
    several actions are more than a bit illogical. There are several
    well-coded features, though, notably characters who manage to move
    around without obvious bugs (at least, not very many), a series of
    candies that can be regenerated, and a hint system in the form of a
    magical door that leads you back to the central office. Though the
    game revolves around magic, your contact with it is limited -- one
    instance -- and the story depends more on the silly characters in the
    village than on the ostensible plot.

    The central distinguishing feature of Lost Spellmaker is that you play
    a lesbian; you are attracted to the cute librarian Tilly, and the game
    tries -- not very successfully -- to resolve that along with the
    finding-the-lost-magician bit. The author has said that the game was
    underway before the argument this fall on gay characters in IF -- in
    which his position was that a gay or lesbian main character, even if
    made obvious, did not have to be a political statement. As far as that
    goes, Lost Spellmaker demonstrates the truth of it; unless your biases
    are such that you see the inclusion itself as political, this game
    does not come across as trying to Make An Important Point or any such
    thing. But nor does it do much with the relationship; your
    interactions with Tilly are so limited that it would be hard to call
    this a lesbian romance, somewhat improbable ending aside.

    It is worth wondering whether such a game would feel like a political
    statement if the game encouraged you to act in a way expressing your
    attraction -- along the lines of, say, Plundered Hearts. As it is,
    it's easy enough to forget that you're a lesbian -- for that matter,
    to forget that you're female -- for most of the game. This is
    certainly an interesting foray, but I'm not sure it answers many of
    the questions that the argument brought up -- not that it was required
    to, of course. With more development in the romance area, this might
    be genuinely groundbreaking.

    Lost Spellmaker is very short -- six puzzles, by my count -- and not
    all that remarkable, but it does manage to entertain (me, anyway,
    which is more than I can say for many humor games). As a demonstration
    of the viability of having a gay or lesbian main character, it's not
    particularly successful; it sends up the convention that the hero or
    heroine must be a strapping young thing, but that's a different
    problem. But it works well enough as a whimsical romp that I rated it
    a 7 on the competition scale.

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

    It's not often that you see a thread from one of the newsgroups
    translate so directly into an actual piece of IF, but that's what's
    happened with The Lost Spellmaker. This summer, the discussion raged
    (and I do think that's a fair characterization) in rgif about "Gay
    characters in IF." Some people held that if a piece of IF were to
    feature a gay character, that piece would need to have homosexuality
    as its primary concern. Others, including Neil James Brown, contended
    that a character's sexual orientation can function simply as a vector
    to deepen characterization, of no more central concern to the game's
    theme than her gender, her height, or what food she likes to eat. The
    Lost Spellmaker proves Brown's point quite handily.

    The game's protagonist is Mattie, a dwarf Secret Service agent
    dispatched to discover the whereabouts of Drew Tungshinach, last in a
    long line of local spellmakers who have disappeared mysteriously. The
    fact that Mattie is both a dwarf and a Secret Service agent is an
    indication of the clever world that Brown has created, which consists
    of equal parts Ian Fleming and Brothers Grimm. The fact that Mattie
    loves candy comes in handy in a couple of puzzles, and helps explain
    why she lives in the town Sweet Shop.  And finally, the fact that
    Mattie is a lesbian has a bearing on the love-interest subplot with
    the local librarian. Yet none of these incidental facts impinge on the
    game's central concern, the rescue of its eponymous Lost
    Spellmaker. Instead, they enrich our understanding of the characters,
    for which purpose Mattie's status as a lesbian is no more or less
    important than, for example, her status as a dwarf.

    After the competition ended, Brown posted to RGIF that he didn't write
    The Lost Spellmaker to prove his point -- the game was half-finished
    when the debate began, and in fact he wrote "It was unfortunate in
    some ways that Lost was a competition entry, as I was unable to use it
    as an example during the debate." No matter: The Lost Spellmaker
    stands as an example now, proving Brown's point handily. It's also a
    fun piece of IF apart from any political or identity
    considerations. The quest for Drew brings Mattie in contact with a
    number of amusing characters, and the milieu is small enough to make
    most of the puzzles fairly easy. Of course, I can't deny that I
    personally find it quite refreshing to play a game where
    heterosexuality isn't the implied norm, but The Lost Spellmaker has
    more than that to recommend it. It's a snappy quest in a creatively
    conceived world, a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

    Prose: The prose in The Lost Spellmaker never jarred me out of the
    story, and I often quite enjoyed reading it. The village wasn't
    particularly vividly rendered, but the characters often were, and some
    of the game's lighter touches were hilarious. Dialogue was, as a rule,
    quite well-written, especially the Reverend's constant malapropisms,
    which made me laugh out loud over and over, even when seeing them for
    the second and third times.

    Plot: Considering the weird, mutant setting Brown has achieved by
    breeding traditional fantasy elements (magic, dwarves, talking
    animals) with James Bond derivations (the Secret Service, a one-letter
    superior, his secretary "Mr. Cashpound"), the plot walks a fine line,
    and does it well. The plot is not simply a fantasy, though it does
    involve using magic to halt the decline of magic, and manipulating
    fantasy characters to solve puzzles.  Nor was it simply espionage,
    though it did involve a heroic spy facing off against the obligatory
    Femme Fatale. Instead, it swerved back and forth between the two,
    making for a merry ride.

    Puzzles: I only had to consult the walkthrough one time, for a puzzle
    which was logical, but could have used an alternate solution. The
    puzzles weren't the focus of the story, so they served the basic
    purpose of small goals to help advance the plot. In this role, they
    worked admirably well.  There were no particularly witty or clever
    puzzles, but by the same token there were no unfair or
    "guess-the-verb" puzzles either.

    Technical:
    writing -- I only noticed one proofing error in the game. The vast
    majority of the prose was competently and correctly written.

    coding -- There were a few bugs in the game, one of which may be more
    of a library issue than a lack of attention on the part of the author.
    Also, there were a few places where a response beyond the default
    would have been appreciated. Overall, the code was relatively bug
    free. Kudos must go here to the title page, which employed a really
    nifty z-machine special effect.

    Inform file (.z5) (updated version)

    Inform file (.z5) (competition version)

    Love's Fiery Imbroglio
    From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #11 -- September 16, 1997

    NAME:          Love's Fiery Imbroglio
    AUTHOR:        Natasha Mirage
    EMAIL:         ?
    DATE:          1988
    PARSER:        Multiple Choice
    SUPPORTS:      PC and all AGT Ports
    AVAILABILITY:  Freeware
    URL:           ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/pc/bigdate.zip
                   ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/agt/rapture.zip

    Natasha Mirage definitely has the best nom de plume in Interactive
    Fiction, but judging her game, Love's Fiery Imbroglio, by normal
    standards is not entirely fair.  Although it is a "text game", it is
    not interactive fiction as we know it at all.  It is a computerized
    version of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, and as a result, things
    that would be considered to be bad form in a true I-F game (such as
    choices that kill you or end the game without warning), may be
    entirely appropriate here.

    If you've played a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, you already know
    what this game is.  You get about a screen full story at which point
    you are prompted to choose an action from a multiple choice list in
    order to get to the next screen.  The story is primarily linear, with
    a few side diversions, and has some choices which can end the game
    completely, though you never actually die.

    For example, early in the game when you are called for the date and
    asked if 6:00 is okay, you can say that it is, say that it is too
    early, or say that it is too late.  If you say that it is too early,
    then the caller will get distracted, forget about you until it is too
    late, and then spend the rest of his life in a monastary to atone for
    his behavior, thus ending the game.  However, these are not nearly as
    irritating as the "Rooms of Instant Death" in games like Detective and
    Electrabot however because a) they are not entirely without warning;
    common sense and textual clues may help you avoid many of them, and b)
    the game has keys letting you back up any number of screens, meaning
    that you don't need to restart the game or save first to get back to
    where you were.  Just as in a real book, you can simply turn back to
    the page where you were (and unlike a real book, you don't have to
    remember what page number it was!)

    The puzzles, such as they are, are primarily diplomatic ones.  For
    example, at the restaurant, your gourmet date mentions being puzzled
    by the secret ingredient of his favourite dish.  Suggesting that it
    may be salt, will hurt his feelings by implying that he couldn't
    identify something so simple.

    As for the plot...well, the title tells you all you need to know.  It
    is probably the only romance novel game apart from Plundered
    Hearts. You are a lonely female, sitting around your apartment, trying
    not to think about your accumulating laundry pile when a friend of a
    friend calls and asks you for a date.  The game consists of getting
    ready for the big evening, and handling yourself well during dinner
    (no bad puns, please!)  A lot of the (supposedly) usual Romance novel
    elements are in there; i.e. date has a secret pain which you must find
    out about and help deal with.  Yes, the Schlock Factor does ride quite
    high.

    However, the writing is where this game really shines.  The repartee
    between author and player is quite entertaining.  The game's
    atmosphere seems to repeatedly switch between "real" reality, Romance
    Novel reality, and fantasy in a very entertaining way.  The tone
    manages to remain bouncy (ah ah ah, no jokes!  I'm not having things
    getting silly!) and lighthearted at the appropriate times without
    slipping into pure comedy.

    Overall, this is a very polished and enjoyable product.  The simple
    multiple-choice interface makes the parser completely trouble-free.
    The writing (the core of any product like this) is first class.
    Though I've never felt moved to read a Romance novel (and still
    don't), I found the writing and interactivity, coupled with the
    games's very reasonable length, to be adequate compensation for any
    schlockiness, and considered the game to be well worth the time spent
    playing it.

    It's also not a bad introductory game.  I've always felt that intro
    games should be much more heavily weighted towards story than puzzles
    (as anyone who has played my own Tossed Into Space game can attest).
    Furthermore, these days a good introductory game should not do things
    merely better than graphics, but do things that graphic games cannot
    do at all.  For example, imagine the climax of Leather Goddesses of
    Phobos (okay, you can make a joke about that).  That isn't an
    introductory game, but you get the idea.  That scene would be flatly
    impossible to reproduce in a graphics game.  The same goes for this
    game.  A person can't play it and say "that was good, but I wish it
    had been graphical rather than textual."  (Superfluous) graphics could
    conceivably be added to this game, but could not possibly substitute
    for the text.

    The game was written with a system called Pinntale, which seems to be
    specially designed for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games, however I
    don't know of any other games written with it.  I uploaded this one to
    GMD myself about a year ago, and GMD has no others, nor does the
    person that I got it from.

    Recently the game was ported to AGT by Mike Ryan, where its title was
    changed to "Love's Fiery Rapture" (to which I object, as "Imbroglio"
    is a much cooler word and doesn't mean the same thing as rapture).
    The source code for this version does exist at GMD.  The AGT version
    is inferior to the original in that it does not let you customize the
    character names, and does not seem to permit backwards page flipping
    (although both of these things could be implemented using AGT).  It's
    primary value is as a programming model for others wishing to create
    this same type of adventure.

    On the face of it, Love's Fiery Imbroglio is a game written
    specifically for women.  In fact, you have to claim to be a woman at
    the beginning or the game will tell you that you don't really want to
    play it, and that it's all about knitting anyway.  But really it's
    done well enough to be of interest to people of all sexes.

    PC Executable (.zip)

    Source code of AGT version (.zip)

    Luminous Horizon
    From: Adam Myrow <amyrow SP@G midsouth.rr.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005

    TITLE: Luminous Horizon
    AUTHOR: Paul O'Brian
    EMAIL: obrian SP@G colorado.edu
    DATE: September 2004
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Glulxe interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF-Archive, freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2004/glulx/eas3
    Directory contains game file, readme, and another directory containing a
    virtual comic feelie which summarizes parts one and two.

    When Paul O'Brian announced that he wouldn't be finishing his third
    episode of Earth And Sky in time for the 2003 competition, I was
    slightly disappointed. Still, I knew that he would eventually finish.
    Well, he did, and once again, won the competition. In short, that extra
    year paid off. I said that part two was great, but part three is even
    better!

    One of the things that I wanted to see in part 3 was more team work.
    Well, that wish was fulfilled beyond my wildest dreams. In this, the
    final part of the story, you play both Emily and Austin Colborn. You can
    freely switch between controlling one or the other at any time. In fact,
    it is critical to do this in order to figure out which of them will have
    the needed super-power to get past whatever is blocking the path. This
    game is much more tightly timed than parts one or two. This is
    especially true of the final battle, which is a desperate race against
    the clock with little room for error. While the game has been designed
    so that it can't be put into an unsolvable state, that doesn't mean you
    won't meet a grisly end or fail to stop the bad guys. Most of the time,
    learning by dying annoys me, but not in this game. It helped to build
    the tension, and made me feel really proud of myself when I figured out
    what to do to survive.

    This final chapter in the story will bring the player face-to-face with
    the enemies they learned about in part two, and there will be a few
    surprises in store as well. Winning was a very satisfying experience
    indeed.

    More impressive than the battles and such, was the way Luminous Horizon
    handles the switching between the two characters. Both Austin and Emily
    are very well-developed in parts one and two, and the switches between
    them help to reinforce the attitudes of each. For example, Austin is a
    bit more level-headed than Emily, and there is both a little sibling
    rivalry and affection between them. Austin calls Emily "Em" for short,
    and she is occasionally annoyed at how Austin is somehow able to figure
    out things that go right over her head. Here are a few examples of room
    and object descriptions from each character's viewpoint. I've preceded
    each with either "as Austin:" or "as Emily:" to denote which character
    the player is in control of at the time of this description.

    As Emily:

       High Plains
       You've never been much of a fan of Westerns, but this area just seems
       to cry out for some cowboy to mosey through it. Everything's here --
       the scrappy little bushes, the rocky ground, the mountains in the
       eastern distance, and the sense of barren desolation. All that's
       missing is a lonely ghost town and a tumbleweed slowly bouncing
       across the frame. The air seems unusually still here, as if the
       landscape were holding its breath in anticipation.

       A damaged road sign lies at your feet.

       Austin is nearby, apparently lost in thought.

    As Austin:

       High Plains
       Scrub bushes and sparse grasses provide a little ground cover for the
       otherwise rocky, sandy soil of this area. Other than the jagged
       mountains looming a few miles to the east, this spot seems entirely
       barren.

       Emily is here, watching you.

       A damaged road sign lies at your feet.

    As Emily:

       >x vehicle
       The vehicle (assuming Austin has guessed right about its function) is
       large and sleek, roughly rectangular in shape but tapering a bit at
       one end. Its entire surface is covered in a mazy tangle of pipes.
       Pipes wind around each other and down every side and edge, some
       terminating in a flare at the ground and others opening dark holes at
       the ship's untapered end. Except for the fact that its color scheme
       is muted greys and blacks, it looks rather like something that might
       have appeared in Yellow Submarine. No entrance is apparent anywhere.

    As Austin:

       >x vehicle
       The vehicle is large and sleek, roughly rectangular in shape but
       tapering a bit at one end. Its entire surface is covered in a mazy
       tangle of pipes. Pipes wind around each other and down every side and
       edge, some terminating in a flare at the ground and others opening
       dark holes at the ship's untapered end. The whole thing looks a bit
       like an unfortunate collision between a shoebox and a French horn. No
       entrance is apparent anywhere.

    As these examples make clear, I really enjoyed switching back and forth,
    just to examine objects and rooms as each character.

    Yet one more feature of this piece of IF is that it actually can show
    the player one of several different introductions. At the beginning, you
    can optionally answer some questions about how previous sessions with
    the other two games in the series turned out, and the introduction will
    be customized to reflect your answers. In short, nearly everything has
    been thought of already and taken care of.

    Lastly, like the previous two Earth And Sky games, this one is broken up
    into sections. Each game has used a slightly different method of
    dividing itself up. Part one used titles like "Suit Yourself," at the
    start of each section. Part 2 used quotes from Emily Dickinson which
    were chosen to fit the situation. Part 3 gives the player a peek at what
    the villain is up to at the start of each section. This is yet another
    way of building the suspense up. Even before the game starts becoming
    tightly timed, I felt like I had to hurry to stop the villain.

    So, in short, I can't say enough good things about this game. It closes
    out the trilogy in style, and shows that taking the extra time to polish
    a game is well worth the effort.

    From: Jennifer Maddox <kyria79 SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005

    There are two types of games in Interactive Fiction: those that are
    puzzle-driven, and those that are story-driven. Luminous Horizon
    definitely falls under the latter category, and if you're the kind of
    player who enjoys that type I highly recommend this game. It is the
    third and final episode of the Colborn siblings' attempt to find their
    parents, a mission that has taken them from a quaint University town, to
    the Sierra Nevadas, to outer space, and finally strands them in the
    middle of nowhere, New Mexico.

    There are a number of good things about this game, one of which is that
    you really don't need to have played the prior two installments of the
    series in order to play and finish this game. But if you're going into
    this game and want a good recap of the story so far, the web comic
    feelie that accompanied the game does a great job of bringing you up to
    speed without giving away any spoilers whatsoever. It's well written and
    quite entertaining, two attributes that are prevalent throughout
    O'Brian's works. I'd also like to give kudos to J. Robinson Wheeler for
    his artwork. I'd recommend that you read the feelie even if you have
    played the previous games - it just ties in so well with the style and
    feel of the games.

    The included comic feels especially appropriate, as the characters in
    this game could have come straight out of a graphic novel. The banter
    and conversation that comes forth when Austin and Emily talk really make
    one believe they are brother and sister. I might like to have seen a
    little more sibling rivalry between the two, but considering that their
    parents are missing I guess this pair of super heroes have had to put
    other differences aside and learn to work together. While playing EAS3
    you can choose to inhabit either sibling, a great feature and addition
    from the previous games. This gives the player different perspectives on
    the events taking place, and really allows one to combine the powers of
    both the suits to defeat the forces of evil. Speaking of evil, I must
    say that the villains are equally well written and nicely wicked.
    Throughout the game the player is given glimpses of the pair, giving you
    not only a nice feel of what you're up against but also clues at what
    this devious duo is up to. This works well for the story; the occasional
    clues keep the tension going and leads the player towards the inevitable
    climax.

    Unfortunately, the competition release of EAS3 did contain a few
    noticeable bugs. It's good to note though, that none of them render the
    game into an unwinnable state and I hope the next release of the game
    fixes some of the more obvious bugs. As for the puzzles within the game,
    well... I did say before that this game falls under the heading of
    story-driven IF. The puzzles are simplistic and are in the "find key,
    unlock door" format. That is to say, they are not compounded or
    intricate, and the author is clearly more focused on the storyline and
    characters. And as for the previously mentioned climax, I must confess
    and say I was disappointed when I reached it. I had hoped for more, and
    found it easily overcome.

    The hint system in this game is in the format of talking to your sibling
    in order to get the help needed to overcome the obstacle. An intuitive
    move on the part of the author, but quite a leap from the previous
    game's hint system which was a web-based series of questions. It makes
    sense, if you think about it, to have your partner-in-crime-solving help
    you out as you try to get past the puzzles. I must say though, compared
    to the excellent hints from second game in the series I was dissatisfied
    by the hints received from the finale. They aren't as helpful -- being
    location based it's sometimes hard to know where you need to be focusing
    your attention on -- and once you have heard the final hint from your
    sibling there's no way to get them repeat themselves. It is therefore
    possible to have yourself stuck somewhere, unsure of what to do, and
    when you consult your hint source receive only "You've said all you can
    think of to say at the moment". It can be quite frustrating at times. I
    just felt that the format and quality of the hints from the second
    installment were superior, and would hope that O'Brian would continue in
    that fashion in his future games.

    Overall Luminous Horizon is a great way to pass the time and nice
    conclusion to the saga started by Earth and Sky. While it might not be
    the most challenging text adventure you're likely to come across, it is
    still amusing and certainly has made its mark in the annals of
    interactive fiction. If you're looking for a good challenge, however,
    might I recommend that you bypass this game and move onto the runners-up
    in the 2004 IF Comp: Blue Chairs and All Things Devours.

    Directory with .blb Glulx file, readme, and comic feelie subdirectory

    The Lurking Horror
    From: Stephen Granade <sgranade SP@G phy.duke.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

    NAME:  Lurking Horror           PARSER:  Infocom Standard
    AUTHOR:  Dave Lebling           PLOT: Nice elements, but unconnected
    EMAIL:  ???                     ATMOSPHERE: Captures the genre well
    AVAILABILITY: LTOI 1            WRITING: Excellent
    PUZZLES: Clever to puzzling     SUPPORTS:  Infocom Ports
    CHARACTERS: Lack Flair          DIFFICULTY: Medium

            Late one night, you, a student at G.U.E. Tech, have braved a blizzard
    to get to the Computer Center to finish work on a paper.  However, the
    simple assignment takes you to the horrific underside of the school.
    Lurking Horror's parser is, as expected, up to snuff.  The writing is
    excellent; the game is firmly rooted in the Gothic horror used by Lovecraft
    and Poe.  Dave Lebling has captured the essence of the genre well.  The
    plot, however, is not as well developed.  It contains some nice elements,
    but at times the disparate plot elements felt unconnected.  The characters
    also lack flair.  The best of the NPCs are the different slimy creatures you
    encounter, from a winged something to a slimy something.  Both the NPCs and
    the plot could have been helped had the NPCs been obviously working
    together.  The puzzles ranged from clever to puzzling.  There were a few
    puzzles I didn't understand until I finished the game and looked in the hint
    book.  My wildcard points were awarded on the basis of the game's atmosphere.
            The Lurking Horror is available in Activision's Lost Treasures of
    Infocom 1 package.  While a worthy attempt to bring back the old Infocom
    games, the repackaging removes much of Infocom's clever presentation.  The
    Lurking Horror is mediumly difficult, and is especially good if you're a fan
    of Gothic horror.

    From: Brian Reilly <reillyb SP@G gusun.georgetown.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #3 -- October 26, 1994

            In Lurking Horror, you assume the role of a college student
    who starts out trying to complete an assignment, and is caught up in an
    adventure of missing students, demonic Alchemy professors, and a showdown
    with the ultimate evil.  As you wonder about the tunnels and corridors of
    GUE Tech, you must deal with everything from sticky-fingered urchins to
    fierce rats.  The main strength of this game is the sense of atmosphere
    created.  The writing creates a sense of suspense and terror, and the
    player is enveloped in a frightening world of the macabre.  The only
    weakness that I found with Lurking Horror was the NPCs.  I feel that they
    could have been developed to a greater extent, especially the hacker.  I
    was also disappointed with the ending; it was a climactic let-down from
    what had been built up during the game.
            Besides this, though, it was a very good game.  The puzzles are
    interesting and not too difficult, and there is enough humor to keep the
    player interested.  Lurking Horror can be found in LTOI 1.

    Solution (Text)

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