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Game Reviews U

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The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date.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
    Uncle Zebulon's Will
    Undertow
    Undo
    Unforgotten
    Unholy Grail
    Unnkulia Zero: The Search for Amanda
    Unnkulia One-Half: The Salesman Triumphant
    Unnkulian Underworld: The Unknown Unventure
    Unnkulian Unventure II: The Secret of Acme
    Unraveling God

    Uncle Zebulon's Will
    From: Gareth Rees <Gareth.Rees SP@G cl.cam.ac.uk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #8 -- February 5, 1996

      NAME: Uncle Zebulon's Will              PARSER: TADS's usual
      AUTHOR: Magnus Olsson                   PLOT: Linear
      EMAIL: mol SP@G df.lth.se                    ATMOSPHERE: Good
      AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive             WRITING: Competent but dull
      PUZZLES: One great, rest pedestrian     SUPPORTS: TADS ports
      CHARACTERS: OK (there's only one)       DIFFICULTY: Easy

    My third favourite of the competition games, after "The One that Got
    Away" and "A Change in the Weather".  I was reminded very strongly of
    Infocom's game "Hollywood Hijinx": there's a mysterious will, a hunt
    through a deserted house, and plenty of descriptions which are enlivened
    by references to my childhood memories of the place.  I almost expected
    to find Uncle Zebulon still alive at the end, menaced by my evil cousin
    Hector.  Perhaps the fabled city of "Cyr-Dhool" which I reach at the end
    of the game is some kind of reference to Liz Cyr-Jones, co-author of
    "Hollywood Hijinx"?

    The background to the game suggested a world in which magic takes the
    place of science and technology.  (The genre is known as "elfpunk" and
    is exemplified by the novel "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael
    Swanwick.)  This was very interesting, although it was perhaps too
    subtly done, and didn't seem as relevant to the game as it could have
    been.  I wondered if the "train strikes" mentioned in the opening text
    (rather than, say, "magic carpet strikes") were evidence that the
    background wasn't part of the original design.  Certainly the Greek
    mythology sits rather uneasily with either the elfpunk world in which
    the game starts or the generic-fantasy land in which it ends.

    I enjoy games where I have to sift through lots of information to find
    material that's relevant to the puzzle I'm working on, and "Uncle
    Zebulon's Will" was good in this respect: two letters, a torn note, a
    scroll and a poem on a bronze plate.  There was a point where I wondered
    if I was going to have to replicate Zebulon's alchemy experiments
    (shades of "Christminster" here).  But it quickly became apparent that
    most of the information was redundant, and from there on I found it
    an easy game to finish.

    The main impression I had of the game was that it was a very solid piece
    of work.  There were no bugs, all the pieces of the plot fitted together
    smoothly, the hook at the start was intriguing, and the ending was good,
    though not as much of a surprise as it should perhaps have been.

    There were various aspects that disappointed.  Apart from the one-object
    restriction, which was excellent despite needing a completely gratuitous
    demon to enforce it, the puzzles seemed a bit pedestrian.  There are
    four objects hidden in obvious places and *two* puzzles involving
    collecting a set of related objects.  The writing was very flat and
    lifeless, managing to be lengthy without being either vivid or
    humourous.  Half a dozen descriptions have some variation on "This room
    has been ransacked by your greedy relatives".  Magnus Olsson commented
    in rec.arts.int-fiction:

        I tried not to be too literary; the more flowery the prose, the more
        time one has to spend polishing it.

    I'm afraid that it shows; perhaps a bit more floweriness would have
    helped.  And I was hoping for at least some people in the land of Vhyl
    to welcome me.  Perhaps the sequel will reveal where they've all gone.

    TADS .gam file and description (.zip) (updated version)

    PC DOS Executable (.zip) (updated version)

    BinHexed Mac Executable (.hqx) (updated version)

    TADS source code (updated version)

    TADS .gam file and description (.zip) (competition version)

    Solution (Text)

    Undertow
    From: Gareth Rees <gdr11 SP@G cl.cam.ac.uk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #8 -- February 5, 1996

      NAME: Undertow                          PARSER: TADS's usual
      AUTHOR: Stephen Granade                 PLOT: Mystery
      EMAIL: sgranade SP@G phy.duke.edu            ATMOSPHERE: Good
      AVAILABILITY: $10 requestware, IF Archive      WRITING: So-so
      PUZZLES: Obscure                        SUPPORTS: TADS ports
      CHARACTERS: Don't convince              DIFFICULTY: Hard

    This is a very ambitious work unfortunately let down by its
    implementation.  Interactive fiction has to come to grips with
    characterisation and complex character interaction, but it has to do
    that while allowing suspension of disbelief and remaining interesting
    and playable.  This kind of material was something I considered doing
    for the competition, but rejected because I didn't have time, and
    because in any case I don't know how to do it!  So I think Stephen was
    very brave to tackle it.  It's just a shame that the result isn't very
    good.

    The characters in "Undertow" don't seem to have the knowledge that they
    should have, based on what they've seen me do.  For example, suppose I
    tell Carl that I have seen Thom's body in the water.  Later on, I still
    get the exchange

        "What is it?" you ask him [Carl] en route.
        "Thom. We've found him dead."

    which was clearly written for the case when I hadn't seen Thom's body at
    all.  The game lets me attack the other characters, but they don't seem
    to treat me any differently afterwards than they did before.  Then there
    are perfectly sensible actions that are prevented for arbitrary and
    stupid reasons.  The worst such problem I found was that I couldn't pick
    up Ashleigh's purse or get her gun!  Surely no-one in such a situation
    -- a murdered man just discovered -- would leave a gun lying around on
    the deck for anyone to pick up?  The game says that if I'm seen with a
    gun, then people will think I killed Thom.  Well then, let me pick up
    the gun, and implement the other characters' suspicions!

    "Undertow" seems not to have been play-tested much (if at all), when in
    fact the mystery genre demands extremely rigorous testing.  It's hard to
    be a detective when you get responses like

        > ask ashleigh about carl
        Carl is no longer here.

        > carl, tell me about ashleigh
        You can't reach that from the dinette bench.

    There are lots of little bugs, such as "The battery cover is closed,
    revealing a nine-volt battery," the consistent misspelling of "gauge" as
    "gague," and the way the "shape" in the water that looks like Thom's
    body is still present after Thom's body has been pulled out of the sea.
    There are also far too many objects: try typing "tell all about thom" in
    the Forecastle -- I counted 25 scenery objects in that one room alone!
    This clutter obscures rather than illuminates.

    There are basic problems with the way the story develops.  After an
    extremely hectic opening, suddenly nothing else seems to happen until
    the boat explodes (a situation which reminds me of "Plundered Hearts"),
    and the player is left with no idea of what to do.

    There does seem to have been a lot of work put into this, but the task
    facing authors of this kind of game would seem to be greater still.
    "Undertow" was too ambitious for the competition, but I'd be intrigued
    to see what Stephen Granade could produce if he went back to the code
    without any deadlines or time constraints and tried to finish writing
    the game.  (If you need another play-tester, e-mail me).

    TADS .gam File (updated version)

    TADS .gam File and instructions (competition version)

    Undo
    From: Magnus Olsson <mol SP@G df.lth.se>
    Review appeared in SPAG #7 -- October 14, 1995

      Name: Undo                              Parser: TADS (hacked)
      Author: null dogmas (aka Neil DeMause)  Plot: What plot?
      Email: neild SP@G echonyc.com            Atmosphere: Weird
      Availability: F, IF Archive                    Writing: Adequate
      Puzzles: Very strange                   Supports: TADS ports
      Characters: Props                       Difficulty: Almost unplayable

    One pleasant fact about the competition entries is that several of the
    authors have not just aimed at writing "classic," Infocom-style games,
    but actually tried to renew the genre; to, despite the small format,
    produce something new and original.

    The author of this game has obviously tried very hard to come up with
    something original, and he or she has certainly succeeded, in the sense
    that this game is totally unlike any other piece of IF I've ever seen.
    In fact, I'm not even sure of what "Undo" really is - a game, an
    experiment in TADS programming, a parody of IF, a meta-game? Perhaps
    it's a little of each. Sometimes when playing it, I had the feeling
    of being the victim of a strange practical joke.

    In any case, the meta-game aspects are pretty obvious. This is a game
    about a game that has crashed just when you were about to win; only a
    few steps to your east, a "You have won" sign beckons enticingly.
    However, the way is blocked by a large hole that's just appeared in
    the ground, and as you explore this little world (just five rooms),
    you'll find that things have suddenly started to behave very strangely
    indeed.

    True to his (or her, but for simplicitly I'll be politically incorrect
    and use the masculine pronoun) pseudonym, the author has apparently
    tried to turn all the conventions of IF upside down. Doing this
    involves some wordplay, some self reference, and a lot of hacking of
    the TADS library.

    The results are of dubious quality. In turning everything upside down,
    the author seems to have totally dispensed with internal logic and
    consistency. The world consists of a number of locations and objects,
    only very weakly connected and all behaving in very odd ways. There is
    basically no way of deducing how things will work, which means that
    the only way of solving the game - at least the only way I found - is
    pure trial and error. Paradoxically, the fact that there are very few
    actions to try makes this process of trial and error more, rather than
    less, frustrating; trying to do a lot of things with no apparent
    effect and no sensible messages can be very irritating indeed.

    I played this game some time and got steadily more and more
    frustrated, getting nowhere, making some quite surprising discoveries
    about innoculous-looking objects, all of which turned out to be
    absolutely useless, and without getting a single point for my
    troubles. In desperation, I posted a plea for help on Usenet, and was
    kindly nudged in the correct direction; yet even with that help, some
    further trial and error was needed before I stumbled on a sequence of
    actions that actually won the game - but still without giving me any
    points.

    It seems as if there's only one real puzzle in the game. In retrospect,
    its solution has a certain weird logic to it, but you must probably
    have as twisted a mind as the author to be able to solve it by
    reasoning - sheer luck or trial and error seem far more likely
    methods. The solution only involves one room and two objects; all the
    rest has apprently been put in either just because they're neat ideas
    or as red herrings.

    The score (or rather, absence of score) seems to be a pure red herring;
    the game keeps telling you that you have zero points out of 86, but no
    action (not even winning the game) seems to increase it. All this is
    further aggravated by the fact that there seem to be a few genuine bugs
    in the program (for example, try taking the zero while carrying things,
    then putting it back in the swamp, or referring to it as "0" while
    carrying it) - but, of course, in this game you can never be sure whether
    the "bugs" are intentional or not.

    The author should certainly be credited for his creativity. Many of
    the items in the game are very neat ideas, when seen in isolation;
    perhaps they should be viewed as jokes. The recursive description of
    the writing in the self-referential room is clearly a logical joke
    (logic's equivalent of a word game?). There are also some quite
    conventional (I'm shocked!) verbal jokes: the bogus error messages in
    the dark room are very funny, while other jokes fall flat on the
    ground.

    However, when all these elements are just thrown together and
    presented as a game without any further explanation, the result is
    more frustrating than amusing. If there had been some hidden internal
    logic to be discovered it would have posed an intellectual challenge;
    but personally I don't find trying to solve puzzles that aren't there
    very challenging, especially when the only way forward seems to be
    trial and error; it just makes me feel like the author is pulling my
    leg.

    Had this been made into a "real" game (where there actually is a point
    to it all) it could have been a great success.  As it is, perhaps the
    most appropriate characterization would be to call it an anti-game. To
    the prepared and not-too-weak-of-heart player I suppose it can be
    quite a kick, but unleashing it on the unsuspecting contest judges without
    a warning is cruel.

    TADS .gam File

    Unforgotten
    From: Michael A Russo <mar2116 SP@G columbia.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #43 -- January 7, 2006

    TITLE: Unforgotten
    AUTHOR: Quintin Pan
    EMAIL: expiation SP@G devils.com
    DATE: October 1, 2005
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-Machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF Archive
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2005/zcode/
    unforgotten/unforgotten.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Clearly, I haven't sufficiently internalized the tropes of adventure gaming: I
    was stymied for quite a while in the opening of Unforgotten, because after
    being told that my friend really didn't want anyone to break into his
    belongings and read his diary, my reaction was to respect his privacy.  More
    the fool I.  For much of the game, Unforgotten seems primarily about sticking
    one's nose into other people's business - the primary action is in unraveling
    the secrets of the family of the player's friend.  Unfortunately, the contours
    of the central mystery - not its solution, simply the setup - are very unclear
    until relatively late in the game, and the author's penchant for twists make
    the story more confusing than it needs to be. Underneath the continual Big
    Reveals, there's an interesting story, but I felt like the thriller tropes
    wound up getting in the way of the interesting relationships.

    Unforgotten's beginning is probably its weakest section; after the rather
    forced searching of the friend's possessions, the player is thrust into a
    conversation which reveals some backstory, but leaves important concepts and
    facts unexplained.  Then without warning, the setting abruptly shifts, without
    the player being aware of what exactly has happened.  This middle section,
    which contains the meat of the game, is clearer, and the player has specific
    goals to work towards, but just when I felt like I had my bearings, an NPC -
    the aforementioned friend's sister - began launching into exposition whose
    relevance wasn't immediately clear.  Soon after, the player is thrust into two
    vignettes, widely separated in time and space, which are likewise fairly
    disorienting, and cast everything that's come before into doubt.  And then
    there's a final big twist at the end (albeit this last one is rather heavily
    choreographed).  I do enjoy games which are one big meta-puzzle - Jon Ingold's
    corpus comes to mind - but here, the twists just sort of pile up on each other,
    yanking the player one way then the other.  Eventually whiplash - and fatigue -
    set in.

    This is too bad, because the relationships between the three main characters -
    the player character, his friend, and the friend's sister - are interesting,
    and really drive most of the action. Foregrounding them a little more, keeping
    the friend around for a while longer so the player can form an attachment to
    him, and keeping the story more focused by more aggressively framing the
    problem which the player is attempting to solve, would have made for a stronger,
    sharper, more affecting game.  The wall-to-wall twists make the proceedings
    feel contrived, and the game doesn't allow sufficient space for the
    repercussions of each individual revelation to play out, which really reduces
    their impact.

    Unforgotten does do a good job of integrating puzzles into what's a fairly plot-
    heavy game.  The initial journal-stealing sequence, for all my grumbling, is
    actually well-put together; depending on how exactly the player goes about it,
    there are a number of possible outcomes. There's a lot of fairly intuitive
    sneaking around, and except for that first sequence, the player usually knows
    precisely what he's working towards.  I found one puzzle in particular to be
    shaky - lowering a doped pie to attack dogs on the end of a fishing rod feels
    far too slapsticky for the rest of the game, and LOWER PIE seemed a much more
    natural way of doing this than LOWER ROD - but otherwise the puzzles are well
    clued, even when the player doesn't necessarily know what he's meant to be
    doing.

    One sequence does remind me of a comment I made about Tough Beans, to the
    effect that too few games depict the player character reacting to events.
    There's a scene in Unforgotten where the player is controlling a little girl
    who, while hiding, overhears two soldiers talk about raping her mother - this
    strikes me as a rather traumatic event, but for all the game discloses, the
    girl reacts with stone-faced impassivity.  I'm not lobbying for histrionics
    here, but any human being would be really upset in this situation, and the
    tension of perhaps calling attention to yourself could make for a more
    dramatically interesting scene.

    Still, Unforgotten does pay more attention to questions of character than do
    most games, and its narrative shortcomings are real but not fatal.  Definitely
    worth a play.

    Zcode executable (.z5)

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

    NAME: Unholy Grail
    AUTHOR: Stuart Allen
    E-MAIL: sallen SP@G one.net.au
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: JACL standard
    SUPPORTS: JACL interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition97/jacl/grail
    VERSION: 1997 competition release

    Playing Unholy Grail puts me in mind of the old saw about the glass
    being half-full or half-empty. For each positive I can think of, a
    counterbalancing negative also comes to mind. While the prose creates
    sharp, clear, atmospheric images, it is also burdened with numerous
    grammar and spelling errors. While the game had an inventive plot,
    this same plot was punctuated with moments of tediousness,
    implausibility, and pure frustration. And while Grail is orders of
    magnitude better than Allen's 1996 entry "The Curse of Eldor," it
    still fails to realize both its own potential and that of its author.

    Allen has accomplished a noteworthy programming achievement: he has
    written his own IF engine, one which mimics much of the important
    functionality of the current front-runners Inform and
    TADS. Unfortunately, it still doesn't perform at the levels of either
    of these popular "standard" IF engines, and suffers greatly by
    comparison. Again, it's a yin and yang situation: a quality engine is
    written from scratch, but it's still a poor competitor to the dominant
    systems, marred by problems ranging from the complex (tortured
    disambiguation) to the amazingly simple (an inexplicably arbitrary
    pathname in the CONFIG file.)

    Still, Unholy Grail was the first 1997 competition game I played, and
    it wasn't an altogether inauspicious start. For one thing, it
    represents remarkable progress on the part of the author. Unholy Grail
    is not the fulfillment of Stuart Allen's promise, but it marks him as
    one to watch.  With the improvements he's already made to his JACL
    engine it seems entirely plausible that it could one day match the
    quality of the current state of the art. Also, this game is one of the
    few conceptually complete pieces of IF I've seen in the "thriller"
    genre, a field which is in many ways well-suited to IF, but whose only
    significant representative has been "Border Zone," a quality game but
    one whose gimmick of real-time has often overshadowed discussion of
    its generic groundbreaking. Unholy Grail was uneven; some things were
    really very good, other things really not very good at all. I hope
    it's a marker of better things to come.

    Prose: I found the prose in Unholy Grail fairly difficult to read.
    Sentences seemed to string endlessly, clause following clause until I
    thought perhaps the author had asked Henry James to
    ghost-write. However, I also think that the lack of a status line and
    room name threw me out of my ingrained IF reading habits, the
    disorientation of which probably contributed to my difficulty in
    following the author's long narrative strands. Or it could just be my
    own denseness -- that's always a possibility. Despite the game's
    verbosity, though, strong images floated up to me out of the sea of
    words. I have a very distinct picture in my mind of the swivel chair
    and radar screen in the control room, of the battered hut whose
    floorboards parted to show the ground below, and of the elegant,
    elaborate hotel. The author clearly had done his homework, and was
    able to create a very convincing picture of the character's
    environment. I just had to read some of the sentences a few times
    before I felt sure I knew what they were saying.

    Plot: The most ringing endorsement of the plot I can give is this:
    after the two-hour judging period had expired, and I was only 75%
    through with the game, I spent another half-hour on it because I
    *needed* to know how it ended. I found the plot difficult to get into
    at first (see Puzzles), and needed to refer often to the science
    encyclopedia so I could have a basic clue of what the game was talking
    about, but once I understood, I was inexorably drawn in by the
    skillfully dropped hints and slowly unfolding drama.

    On the other hand (and there's always another hand when it comes to
    Unholy Grail), I found some things in the plot pretty difficult to
    believe. Small points like the layout of the complex were jarring:
    would the military really have a female officer share a bathroom with
    a male civilian?  Certainly the PC's name ("Alex") is gendered
    ambiguously, but imagining the character as a male (as I did) drains
    the layout of some believability. Also, some larger points (such as
    the Rotenone) seemed only to serve as red herrings, but created major
    implausibilities in the plot: if I've determined that Rotenone is
    causing the fish deaths, how can it be true that they're being caused
    by something which in fact behaves entirely differently? For that
    matter, if my basic science encyclopedia tells me that Rotenone causes
    fish to drown, why do I blame it for cancer?

    Puzzles: For the first hour I played the game, I was absolutely
    stumped.  Finally, I resorted to the hint system and learned that
    because an extra-long sentence in the room description of the lab, I
    had neglected to examine the lab bench as closely as I ought. Once I
    found the global positioner, I was off and running. Consequently, I
    struggled with this game a lot more than its puzzles may have
    merited. Most of the puzzles were fairly easy, when they didn't
    involve guessing the verb (Can't turn the drum. Can't move the
    drum. Can't push the drum. Can't pull the drum.  Can't look under the
    drum. Oh, look *behind* the drum!), and some were quite satisfying
    (especially the filing cabinet.) However, one puzzle was amazingly
    tedious -- it basically involved typing "n" 20 times and "w" 20 times,
    then doing the opposite. Here's where a "swim to" verb would have been
    much appreciated!

    Technical:
    writing -- In addition to the stylistic factors I mentioned in
    "Prose", Unholy Grail was also plagued with grammar and spelling
    errors.  Certainly there was some attention to proofreading, but one
    or two more passes were needed.

    coding -- Unfortunately this is where Grail stumbles the most. JACL
    does a good job of imitating mainstream systems (especially Inform) in
    many ways, but in other crucial areas it falls critically short. For
    example, the system lacks an "oops" verb. Also, its disambiguation is
    weak, a fact which caused a great deal of frustration for me as my
    reasonable answers to its reasonable questions kept getting the
    response "The sentence you typed was incomplete." The system also
    overuses Graham Nelson's famous "You can't see any such thing,"
    applying it to sentences whose nouns are examinable and manipulable in
    other contexts. In addition to these general systemic problems, Grail
    itself had a number of particular bugs which I've reported to the
    author in a separate email.

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

    I was unable to play Stuart Allen's Unholy Grail during the
    competition, because it wouldn't run on my computer and I didn't have
    game-playing access to another one until after the deadline. Such are
    the problems, I guess, with building a language and runtime from the
    ground up. At any rate, though I wasn't able to cast an official vote,
    I did find Unholy Grail, once I managed to play it, a reasonably solid
    entry.

    The JACL engine, for its part, was fairly good; I had read that it was
    slow in its past incarnations, but I had no problems with it. The
    major problem, to my mind, was that the game only allowed one save
    position, meaning that I had to consider my moves extra-carefully
    before saving the game. This is one feature which, I hope, will change
    in the future. The gameplay was otherwise solid, as far as I can tell;
    there were no crashes and no gameplay-complicating bugs. There was a
    disambiguation problem with the liquids and the slides--I don't recall
    the exact words right now--but TADS is just as vulnerable to those.

    The game itself is intriguing. You play a scientist who has been
    investigating disproportionate deaths of marine life, and your time is
    nearly up with no solution at hand. Your mission is to find out the
    truth before the military commanders at the nearby base send you
    home--and if you don't think the presence of the military is
    important, you clearly haven't been watching enough movies. It isn't
    clear why you haven't gotten around beforehand to doing what you
    do--your actions seem more common sense than a daring discovery--but
    once you get off the ground, as it were, the plot moves along
    nicely. It does take a while for that to happen, though, as the game
    is crammed with red herrings and it isn't initially apparent just
    where to start.

    There are a few problems with the playing quality of Unholy Grail. At
    one point, you must spend about 80 turns traveling to and from a
    place, which seems rather excessive; there must be a way to allow the
    player to travel there instantaneously while still requiring that the
    player have the requisite knowledge for the puzzle. It is even
    possible that the player will get to the right spot and realize he's
    forgotten an item, though that does require some stupidity on the
    player's part. The nature of the plot requires some suspensions of
    disbelief, and the ending fits oddly with the rest of the story. On
    the other hand, though, there are some nicely done touches, notably a
    chemistry experiment of sorts that you undertake: it's done with few
    needless complications and the actions are well coded. One stray
    detail you run across in the course of figuring out the mystery is
    particularly well done, and in general the game built the tension
    well.

    Though there are some glitches, they're blips on a generally sound
    story.  Even though it invokes lots of science-thriller cliches--
    isolated research team, a traitor trying to sabotage things, dramatic
    showdowns, hubristic villains--Unholy Grail remains consistently
    likeable. The puzzles are a large part of it; those in the endgame are
    particularly good, I think, and the microscope problem was rewarding
    to figure out.  Most of the puzzles weren't so hard that they slowed
    the story down, which was certainly welcome. And I didn't notice any
    problems with the writing--no grammar problems--and it built the story
    up reasonably well.

    The real problem with Unholy Grail in its current form is that it
    lacks a hook--the player can spend a long time wandering around
    picking up objects before he realizes what to do. Future releases
    might eliminate some of the useless objects and work in an
    interesting/mysterious/suspicious development early on that might lead
    the player in, rather than forcing him to make the first--somewhat
    obscure--discovery on his own. Further development on this game might
    also develop the character of your lab partner a bit more--as it is,
    we don't see much of her initially, and the nature of the player's
    relationship with her is unclear. (No, no, not that kind of
    relationship. Just how the partnership has worked, or not worked.)  On
    the whole, then, Unholy Grail is reasonably diverting, and certainly
    worth the download and playing time.

    Directory with game files

    Unnkulia Zero: The Search for Amanda
    From: Audrey A. DeLisle <rad SP@G crl.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

    NAME:  Unnkulian Unventure 0    PARSER: TADS
    AUTHOR: Adventions              PLOT: Excellent
    EMAIL:  ???                     ATMOSPHERE: Humorous
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive C25           WRITING: Excellent
    PUZZLES: -                      SUPPORTS: TADS Ports
    CHARACTERS: Fair                DIFFICULTY: -

    Unnkulian Zero is the latest in the Unnkulian series.  It is fairly
    long and not as easy as the earlier games.  The puzzles are logical
    and funny.  You can get diverted from the proper path.  You must
    search for 'The Lost Amanda', the King's daughter who was kidnapped.
    You will encounter a monk as in the other games.  I was 'stuck' in
    two places, but other players may not be.  I enjoyed playing it.

    From: Lars Jodal <joedal@inet.uni2.dk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #12 -- December 13, 1997

    Adventions has decided to make their games freeware. Since this should
    spur well-deserved interest in Unnkulia Zero (and since I just
    finished said game a few hours ago) a review seems due.

    The game once more brings us to the landscape known from Unnkulian
    Underworld, but this time back in the days of yore when the Valley
    King ruled. The king's betrothed Amanda has been kidnapped by the evil
    unnkulians, and you, the king's most trusted warrior, is given the
    task of finding her.

    Unnkulia Zero adds immensely to the universe set up in Unnkuliuan
    Underworld I and II, clarifying and expanding on old myths as well as
    providing new ones. Compared to most other adventure games Unnkulia
    Zero is very rich in text and has detailed descriptions of almost
    everything mentioned in the game. The plot may be a bit linear at
    points, but not more than should be expected when one wants a coherent
    plot. The puzzles in the game are generally tough but in most cases
    fair. A few of the puzzles cannot be said to be logical, though. At
    least they require the special unnkulian logic that in many cases
    turns things upside down. The player is adviced to read carefully,
    since the text contains many clues and subtleties.

    The weakest point of the game is that even the careful player can end
    up in a no-win situation without knowing it. Some objects may simply
    be overlooked until it is too late, others can too easily be lost
    during the game. In at least one situation you have to give up some
    objects at a time when you cannot be 100% sure of what will be needed
    later in the game.

    All in all Unnkulia Zero is a remarkable game that was fully worth the
    money when it was commercial and which is a must now that it is free!

    From: Lars Jodal <joedal SP@G inet.uni2.dk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998

    From time to time a review in SPAG has been followed by another review
    of the same game because the second reviewer disagreed with the first
    reviewer or felt that some aspects needed more comments.  This time
    not only the review is about the same game, also the reviewer is the
    same person (although I am sending this from another email address).

    The first review (in SPAG #12) was done a bit hastily in the middle of
    the night after I had finally finished Unnkulia Zero. The deadline for
    SPAG was passed, but I hoped to get it through to tell the IF world
    about the game, specifically that it had been released as
    freeware. The review did get through, but it was less thorough than
    the game deserved. So, I'll use the possibilites of IF and do a ...

    >RESTART

    Background: The unnkulian universe was created along with the first UU
    game, "Unnkulian Underworld: The Unknown Unventure" (UU1), by D.
    A. Leary. This was a game with tongue firmly planted in cheek, at the
    same time writing in the good-old-style of games like "Colossal Cave"
    and making fun of most of the traditional conventions. Leary's
    excellent writing abilities ensured that the game was not just a
    simple parody but instead a very funny game taking place in a universe
    of its own.

    UU1 was followed by David M. Baggett's "Unnkulian Underworld II: The
    Secret of Acme" (UU2), Leary's "Unnkulia Onehalf: The Salesman
    Triumphant" (Onehalf), and then Leary's "Unnkulia Zero: The Search for
    Amanda" (Zero). Finally Baggett wrote "The Legend Lives"
    (Legend). Originally UU1 and UU2 was released as shareware titles,
    Onehalf as freeware, Zero as a commercial game, and Legend as
    freeware. But few people bothered register the shareware games and
    even fewer people would spend money on actually _buying_ a game. Now
    Baggett & Leary (together known as Adventions) have done us all a
    favour we don't really deserve: They have given all their games out
    for free. The URL above points to a file containing the .gam files for
    _all_ games released by Adventions. This includes the above-mentioned
    games as well as Leary's "Horror of Rylvania" and Baggett's remake of
    the original Adventure: "Colossal Caves Revisited". The games are full
    versions, patched only to remove any mention of payment. What more
    could we ask for? Beware that the file is rather large, about 1.1 MB.

    This review is based on the commercial version 1.2 of Zero, which
    seems to be the same as the free version 1.0G contained in the file.

    The story: The Valley King is furious and desperate. The Unnkulians
    have kidnapped his beloved Amanda! He sends you, his most trusted
    warrior, out to find her. This won't be an easy task ...  During your
    search you will have to face a giant snake, the Valley Patrol, a
    salesman from Acme, and your fear of heights. To complete your task
    you will also have to travel in time, shut down a nuclear reactor, and
    possibly learn more about the ways of Duhda. Last but not least you
    must match wits with Wowsa Willy, the great magician of the old days!

    The game is rich in many ways. The writing is very good and
    imaginative. Spelling errors and typos are nonexistent. Each location
    has a description of typically 5-10 lines of text that gives a vivid
    impression of the place (in my mind I still have detailed pictures of
    very large parts of the Unnkulian world). Much attention has been paid
    to details. You can examine almost everything mentioned in the text,
    and the descriptions are not just run-of-the-mill "this looks like an
    ordinary <object> to me".

    Unnkulia Zero adds immensely to the world established in UU1 and UU2.
    UU1 and UU2 took place in different locations but with Zero these
    locations are linked together. The opening of Zero takes place in the
    same locations as UU1 (and Onehalf), and later the player may see a
    bit of the landscape from UU2. I am impressed at Leary's ability to
    use the same locations as starting point for several games and then
    let the stories evolve in different ways that makes it natural that
    some locations of one game cannot be accessed from another. Had I only
    played one of these games I probably wouldn't even notice that I was
    being restricted from some areas - every game has its boundaries and
    most of the boundaries in these games feel natural.

    But the landscape is far from the only thing that links the games
    together. Right from the beginning (i.e., UU1) hints of a greater
    scheme showed up from time to time, and Zero adds immensely to this
    game world. Taking place in the days of lore, when the Valley King
    ruled, it lets us know about the time that was the past in UU1 and
    UU2. Old myths are expanded on, ambiguities are resolved, and new
    myths are presented. Even the Amanda mentioned in the game's title is
    no newcomer: Her name was found on an old table in UU1 and in the bark
    of an oak tree in UU2.

    With a game world given such consideration it should come as no
    surprise that Leary has chosen to let the player's character be a
    fixed one. In the game's own words:

        You're a hulking Valley Warrior, one of the fittest of the Valley
        King's soldiers.

    This may annoy people who want to think themself directly into the
    story but it allows for more details in the description of the player
    character. For instance, the player character of Zero suffers from
    vertigo, a weakness the person playing the game may not share. In
    fact, Leary makes a vitue of necessity and lets the text comment on
    the player character from time to time:

        You're standing outside the Valley King's forest retreat.  It's a
        simple hut where His Regalness sheds the trappings of modern
        civilization and gets back to nature.  You don't entirely
        understand his thinking; you're a warrior, not a philosopher.  But
        he is, after all, the king.  Paths wind through the woods to the
        north, west, and northeast.  The hut is to the south.  Through the
        trees to the west, you can see sunlight glinting off the waters of
        Lake Draounheer.

    The game has several NPCs. Some are simply obstacles (e.g., the
    snake), others take active part in the fate of our hero (e.g., the
    nymph). None of the NPCs are pure cardboard, but they generally have
    their own things to do and aren't up to long talks or developed
    interaction. In a way the most interesting NPC is someone who strictly
    speaking is not a character in the game: Wowsa Willy. You never gets
    to meet or see Wowsa Willy, but you will visit Willy's tower, find a
    book written by Willy, and possibly hear from Willy himself. An
    example:

        You're deep in the heart of the swamp now, in a dismal clearing of
        quicksand and mire.  A gentle old willow tree hangs over the
        clearing, vine-covered branches dipping low.  The only safe path
        is back to the east.
        Without warning, your feet sink into the muck.  You try to move,
        but can't. You're sinking in the quicksand - and you don't have
        much time left!

        >examine wand
        The wand is a thin piece of wood, quite light and flexible.  You
        can barely make out tiny letters down the side that read 'Wowsa
        Willy's Wishing Wand - Works When Waved.'

        >wave wand
        "Cretin!" a voice booms.  "Bother me not with such petty wishes!
        Escape from the sand yourself!"

    How our hero escapes the bog is another story...

    This brings us to the puzzles. From a puzzle-solving point the game is
    hard, in its own words "dam tuff (7 out of 10)". [*] I am not very
    good at solving adventure game puzzles myself and got stuck several
    times. The puzzles are generally logical and interesting.  They are
    integrated in the plot and not just added as an afterthought. Players
    that explore their surroundings are in many cases rewarded by small
    hints to the puzzles, especially if they can read between the
    lines. The puzzles range from find-the-key (although to find the key
    you will have to solve another, more interesting, puzzle) to
    complicated and original puzzles. In between are some variations over
    old puzzles, like how to deal with the monk (also met in UU1 and UU2)
    or how to cross the Stoll Bridge. Most of the variations include new
    twists, and none are direct lift-offs.

    [*] The spelling reflects the way Acme describes its products in the
    UU games. People who played UU1 and UU2 and grew tired of the "cheez"
    jokes can relax: Zero is almost cheez-free.

    In a few cases "logical" is not the right word for the puzzles. I
    cannot decide if this is to be considered bad or not. The world of the
    UU games has always had its own rules, and although not logical the
    puzzles are consistent with the game setting. The most "nonlogical"
    puzzle is related to the burial mound, and since I solved that puzzle
    without any help we see that nonlogical doesn't have to mean
    impossible or unfair.

    Unfair puzzles or not, the game is not without problems: Even the
    careful player may end up in a no-win situation without knowing it.
    Very few puzzles can be screwed up without giving the player proper
    notice, but some objects can be overlooked or lost. The most likely
    object to be overlooked is the jade figurine, which is to be found
    rather early in the game (and I ain't gonna tell you more!). Other
    objects are too easily lost. At one place in the game the player will
    have to give up some objects. There are lots of objects to spare in
    the game, but as an apparently useless object can turn out to be very
    handy it is impossible to be 100% sure _which_ objects can be spared.
    This is quite serious, especially since some objects can be lost a
    long time before the player realizes they were essential.

    The plot of the game is well developed, and the story unfolds without
    forcing itself on the player. Some puzzles have to be solved in a
    particular order, but that is only natural if we are to expect a
    coherent plot. In most parts of the story several independent puzzles
    can be considered at a time. Although non-linear on the way the
    adventure has one ending. One might think that the games title gives
    the ending away right from the start, but one is in for a surprise.
    The ending is satisfying but not in the way that is expected.

    To sum up, I consider Unnkulia Zero an ought-to-be classic. The game
    does have its faults but they are few and heavily outweighed by the
    positive things to be said. Getting hints may be a problem, because so
    few people have played it (yet!) and Adventions are not going to give
    hints any more. My advice to players in need of a hint: Try
    rec.games.int-fiction. There are quite a few people out there, and
    maybe one of them can help you. If that fails, mail me. I am not very
    good at giving subtle hints, but I do know the game well. In any case,
    don't rush for hints right away. The game is rich enough to reward
    those who take the time on it.

    The bottom line can be copied from my original review: All in all
    Unnkulia Zero is a remarkable game that was fully worth the money when
    it was commercial and which is a must now that is is free!

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

    As I played through more games in the Unnkulian series, I got the
    growing impression both of the major game authors, Mr. Leary and Mr.
    Baggett, influenced each other, so that their approaches to game
    design became closer (if you read the previous review, you'd know
    what I mean).

    Unnkulia 0, for instance, is much less "linear" than Unnkulia 1, the
    previous game by Mr. Leary -- although the central goal of the game
    still is defined at the very start, the sub-goals don't stand out as
    clearly.

    The plot was much deeper than in Unnkulia 1, though its main idea
    seemed somewhat moot to me. The atmosphere, however, remained as
    light-hearted as in Mr. Leary's previous work, including the
    recurring theme -- this time, those are references to the "powerful
    wizard" Wowsa Willy.

    Puzzlewise, the game left me with ambiguous feelings: on one hand,
    the author clearly made a serious effort to make it more challenging
    for the player; on the other hand, this effort partly resulted in a
    much larger possibility to make it unwinnable without warning than in
    any of the previous games of the series. Plus, a couple of puzzles
    seemed to be loaned directly from Unnkulia 2. Since I doubt Mr. Leary
    hadn't got enough fantasy and skill to create good puzzles (as he had
    proven the opposite too often), I considered this to be an in-joke I
    didn't understand. But it wasn't of a benefit to the game, anyway.
    And a note for maze-haters: Unnkulia 0 contains two pseudo-maze
    puzzles - mostly for the purposes of mocking the universal
    maze-abhorrence, it seems.

    All in all, I'd say this work organically fits into the Unnkulian
    universe, providing lots of background for it, but doesn't introduce
    (m)any groundbreaking ideas. Because of this, it probably would be
    wise to try out one of the previous games first; chances are high
    that, if you don't like them, you won't enjoy Unnkulia 0, either (and
    vice versa).

    SUMMARY:

    PLOT: Very solid
    ATMOSPHERE: (Sometimes inappropriately) light-hearted
    WRITING: Not very different from Unnkulia 1
    GAMEPLAY: Nothing unusual
    BONUSES: Provides lots of background, funny references to other Unnkulian
             games, as well as ADVENTURE
    CHARACTERS: See the comment for WRITING
    PUZZLES: Fine for the most part - the quibbles are listed in the review
    DIFFICULTY: The game's statement to be 7 out of 10 seems to be true

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

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

    Atari-ST (.arc)

    MacIntosh MacBinary (.sit.bin)

    IBM (.zip)

    TADS .gam File (.tar.Z)

    Solution (text)

    Unnkulia One-Half: The Salesman Triumphant
    From: Audrey A. DeLisle <rad SP@G crl.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

    NAME:  Unnkulia One-Half        PARSER: TADS
    AUTHOR: D.A. Leary              PLOT: Excellent
    EMAIL:  ???                     ATMOSPHERE: Humorous
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive Freeware      WRITING: Excellent
    PUZZLES: Logical & Not Hard     SUPPORTS: TADS Ports
    CHARACTERS: Good                DIFFICULTY: Easy

    This is a short game.  You find enough objects of value to please the
    Innkeeper.  The puzzles are logical and not hard.  There are some extra
    features that can be used to win, but are not necessary.  I enjoyed playing
    this game.

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

    This game, in which you play, for a change, on the "bad" side -- an
    Acme salesman -- has been created as sort of an "appetizer" for
    Unnkulia 0; thus, it isn't either hard or deep. It was like in a
    circus -- the spotlights went on, the main comedian entered the lit
    circle in the arena, and the performance began -- now, who wouldn't
    enjoy a clown's show?

    Well, *I* didn't.

    As the story progressed, and the PC got his prescribed portion of
    kicks and socks, I noticed that, instead of laughing, I started to
    feel pity for the poor guy. Sure, an Acme salesman isn't the most
    pleasant person to deal with, and an intellectual giant he isn't,
    either -- but not giving him even a single chance just seemed unfair
    to me. To put it simply -- few things in IF are more terrible than a
    game author who doesn't like his own PC at all, no matter how bad
    this PC is. (Again, that's entirely my personal point of view --
    regarding both what's worst in IF, and whether the author of this
    game really doesn't like his PC).

    Fortunately for Unnkulia 1/2, Mr. Leary's sense of humour (which,
    admittedly, remains up to the mark) finds other outlets than derision
    of the PC, so that the game had its enjoyable moments, after all.
    (For example, try referring to the fabled Bicorn of Radeekal with
    "goat").

    And that's pretty much all I can say about the game -- in all other
    respects, it's not outstanding; if you like Unnkulia in general, and
    aren't as over-sensible as myself ;), you're probably going to enjoy
    it. One final warning, though: like in other Unnkulian games, you
    sometimes can get yourself killed without warning; however, *unlike*
    in other Unnkulian games, you can't undo your last action after doing
    that (I don't know the reason why this feature has been removed from
    Unnkulia 1/2, but I remember it being an unpleasant surprise when I
    played it); thus, "save early, save often".

    SUMMARY:

    PLOT: Boils down to a treasure hunt
    ATMOSPHERE: Clownery
    WRITING: Unnkulian standard
    GAMEPLAY: Doesn't differ much from ADVENTURE
    BONUSES: Clever embedding into the Unnkulian universe
    CHARACTERS: Unnkulian standard
    PUZZLES: Not very challenging, but some are nice
    DIFFICULTY: Modestly describes itself as being trivial (2 out of 10)

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

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

    TADS .gam file & associated files (.tar.Z)

    PC Executable (.zip)

    Macintosh MacBinary (.sit.bin)

    Atari-ST (.arc)

    Solution (Text)

    Unnkulian Underworld: The Unknown Unventure
    From: Audrey A. DeLisle <rad SP@G crl.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

    NAME:  Unnkulian Unventure 1    PARSER: TADS
    AUTHOR: D.A. Leary              PLOT: Excellent
    EMAIL:  ???                     ATMOSPHERE: Humorous
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive S10           WRITING: Excellent
    PUZZLES: Logical & Amusing      SUPPORTS: TADS Ports
    CHARACTERS: Good                DIFFICULTY: -

    Unnkulian Unventure starts you on the path to being a hero.  The
    Orb has been stolen and you must return it.  You journey through
    caverns, up mountains and into a chasm.  The puzzles are logical and
    usually amusing.  A monk is waiting to help you at one place.
    I enjoyed playing this game.

    From: Toni Cortes <toni SP@G ac.upc.es>
    Review appeared in SPAG #2 -- September 26, 1994

            Unnkulian Unventure starts you on the path to being a hero.  The
    Orb has been stolen and you must return it.  You journey through
    caverns, up mountains and into a chasm.  A monk is waiting to help you
    at one place. (Copied from SPAG1 rad SP@G crl.com)
            I enjoyed the game, especially the first 200 points (out of 400).
    In this first part the puzzles are very logical and well designed.  In
    the second part there are some puzzles in which I didn't find any logic at
    all.  The writing is quite well done and gives the reader a good
    description of what is going on.  The plot gives the player a lot of freedom
    and lots of things can be done in parallel.  The characters that appear are
    simple and don't allow much interaction with them, I wish they were a bit
    more active.  Lastly, there is lots of humour in this game.  It may get a bit
    repetitive, but humour is an important part of the game.

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

    Well, considering the aforesaid, we're dealing with a practically
    flawless game here;). Seriously, Unnkulia 1 has everything a text
    adventure needs to be successful: a nice setting, a memorable player
    character, good puzzles... Admitted, it's not as deep as most of its
    successors -- but for what it lacks in depth, it makes up in bright
    humour, and vividness of descriptions, with "all the recurring themes of
    the Unnkulian games established here, from Duhdhism and the obligatory
    fried egg puzzle to the Acme Corporation and its vastly inferior
    products" (sorry for the quotation from Carl Muckenhoupt's review in
    Baf's Guide, but you simply couldn't put it better -- except that funny
    reincarnations of the Bridge Troll from ADVENTURE, the obligatory
    presence of a bar/lounge, and a couple more things probably should be
    added to the list of recurring themes).

    One trick David Leary used to make his player character appear more
    realistic was especially amusing for me: you see, the game begins with
    the death of the man whose slave the PC has been. It must be said the
    hero doesn't like his late master, Kuulest, too much. On the other hand,
    Kuulest was the centre of his world for quite a long time. And thus,
    during the course of the game, the former slave keeps recalling his
    master on every appropriate, and sometimes less appropriate, occasion,
    referring to Kuulest with words derivative of "geeze" (as in, "The old
    geezebreath sure won't need it anymore, so it's yours now.") These
    reminiscences form yet another recurring theme -- this time, not for the
    whole series but for the game -- which helps the overall atmosphere a
    lot. Likewise, the NPCs are worthy of praise: they're probably not the
    most advanced ones, in that they don't carry out complex scripts, nor
    are they burdened by an AI; no, they've been implemented under the usage
    of but the basic animation techniques - which hasn't kept them from
    being vivid, and characterized nicely (the way one of them suddenly
    becomes interested in his fingernails when being asked for help still
    makes me smile when I think of it).

    The only thing one could complain about in Unnkulia 1 is, it's somewhat
    straightforward. Somewhere in the beginning of the game, you get your
    task -- to save the world by doing this and that -- then, you go and do
    it, and that's about it. The whole layout of the game, plot- and
    puzzle-wise, seems to insist on the principle formulated by Michael
    Roberts in his TADS Manual: "Filling in the details of the plot can
    proceed by 'working backwards' from the overall goal  to
    the major sub-goals, then backwards to the smaller goals that must be
    reached for each sub-goal, and so on." OK, that's not a bad thing in
    itself -- I'm aware it's to a very large extent a matter of personal
    taste whether you prefer more or less "goal-oriented" plots/puzzles/
    games; thus, I'm just expressing my own opinion here.

    And one final observation: you know, the whole time I've been playing
    Unnkulia 1 I had a funny feeling the game reminded me of something. This
    feeling remained latent until recently, as I was reading a book that was
    part of the Myth series by Robert Lynn Asprin, and came across a
    reference to ACME corporation. At this moment, everything suddenly slid
    into place: I realized that, coincidentally or not, the mood in Unnkulia
    1 was very reminiscent of the Asprin's humorous works' style (not that
    it's a rip-off, mind you). Again, it's entirely a matter of personal
    preferences whether to see it as a 'good' or a 'bad' thing; for me,
    however, it was as wonderful as meeting an old pal somewhere you didn't
    expect to see him.

    SUMMARY:

    PLOT: Rather straightforward "save the world"
    ATMOSPHERE: Wonderfully Asprinish
    WRITING: Vivid and humorous
    GAMEPLAY: Goal-oriented, a bit linear
    BONUSES: Rich setting with many Easter eggs, references to "old geezer
    Kuulest"
    CHARACTERS: Non-exceptional, but nice
    PUZZLES: Not that hard, but fun to solve
    DIFFICULTY: Claims to be (and probably is) handleable (5 out of 10)

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

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

    TADS .gam File (.tar.Z)

    PC Executable (.zip)

    Macintosh MacBinary (.sit.bin)

    Atari-ST (.arc)

    Solution (text)

    Unnkulian Unventure II: The Secret of Acme
    From: Audrey A. DeLisle <rad SP@G crl.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #1 -- May 15, 1994

    NAME:  Unnkulian Unventure 2    PARSER: TADS
    AUTHOR: Dave Baggett            PLOT: Good
    EMAIL:  ???                     ATMOSPHERE: Humorous
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive S10           WRITING: Excellent
    PUZZLES: -                      SUPPORTS: TADS Ports
    CHARACTERS: Fair                DIFFICULTY: -

    This is the continuation of your life as a hero.  I would rate it higher,
    but the plot is a bit jerky and there is one 'fatal' error.  There is a
    computer and you must know the password before the game tells you.  That
    means you must have someone or a walk-through tell you.  In general, it
    is still amusing, but not as good as UU1 and not as involved.  I won't
    say what the object is because that is part of the plot.

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

    When I started playing Unnkulia 2, my first impression was, I was dipped
    into the world of Unnkulia 1 again -- which surely wasn't much of a
    surprise. However, this was the case of the first impression that's
    deceptive: the longer I played it, the more I got the feeling Unnkulia 1
    and 2 were quite different. I admit I had to mull over a lot before I
    could get at the roots of this difference, but I think I found the
    answer.

    The thing is, David Leary's goal seemed to be the creation of a *game*
    that'd be fun to play; by contrast, David Baggett seemed to be trying to
    create a *world* that'd be fun to explore. Thus, in Unnkulia 1, you're
    given a goal to work towards practically at the very start; in
    Unnkulia 2, you are set out into your yard without any particular goal.
    Well, closer to the end you'll receive some sort of hint what to do, but
    you still won't know what's *really* going on until you make the final
    move. Hence, your stimulus not to give up and to keep playing here is
    the exploration of the game world. This might appear like a rather
    meagre motivation, but the author put enough effort into the setting to
    make such "exploring for the sake of exploring" an entertaining pastime.
    The game impresses by plentiful, maybe even excessive scenery, lots of
    interesting things to do, and loads of... OK, looks like we're in for
    another diversion. ;)

    It's been said Unnkulia 2 contains loads of red herrings; to me,
    however, that doesn't seem true. You see, a red herring is something the
    author puts into his game for the sole purpose of misleading the player.
    For instance, let's think of a game taking place in an underground
    station. Say, a locked trophy case containing a magic wand, that stands
    amidst the platform, and for which no key exists in the game, clearly is
    a red herring. However, a fully functional control gate is not -- it's
    rather a well-implemented scenery object, and remains such one even if
    there is no need for the player to ever pass through it. Similarly, all
    the "red herrings" (maybe with very few exceptions) in Unnkulia 2 turn
    out to be scenery objects, which give the setting even more depth.

    And one more difference between the two Unnkulias, which probably also
    results from the dissimilar approaches used by their authors: Unnkulia 1
    can be mapped out much easier than Unnkulia 2. The latter resembles Zork
    a bit, in that it sometimes provides a sudden shortcut between locations
    that seemed to be on the opposite ends of the map. Such a layout makes
    the place appear more "tight" -- the single locations hang together much
    better.

    The humorous aspect of the game isn't as obvious as in Unnkulia 1, where
    the jokes virtually are hurled at the player; here, they are hidden in
    object descriptions and responses. Unnkulia 2 presents a more restrained
    style than its predecessor - which doesn't mean it's any less funny. One
    of my favorite moments: somewhere in the game, you arrive...

       On Top of Dawg Rock, West of the River

       Here you are, on top of Dawg Rock. This would sure impress the
       climbers, you think to yourself. Too bad no one's around to notice.
       But no matter. The striking beauty of Dawg Rock and the landscape
       below make standing up here alone a great joy.

       <SKIPPED>

       The rocks become trickier here, and consequently the only ways to go
       are east, back to the bridge, and down, which I would highly advise
       against.

       >

    (Naturally, the first thing I tried was...)

       > DOWN

       I told you, I advise against it.  Must I always nag?

    The puzzles in Unnkulia 2 were very hard for me -- to a large degree
    because the game wouldn't offer a direction to go; even the built-in
    "hint machine" didn't always help. Also, there were three rather
    large mazes. Since, as mentioned above, I've got nothing against
    mazes as such, and because I'm so fond of Unnkulian games, I'd say
    Mr. Baggett was on the verge of overdoing it in Unnkulia 2; someone
    less (or more ;) biased probably would say he passed this verge by
    far. Still, the puzzles were well-designed and satisfying to solve.

    But with all these nice features, the game would fall apart because
    of its rather loose construction -- if it wasn't for the plot. At
    first, you probably wouldn't see much of it, for the reasons
    described above. You'd keep playing because of that feeling there's
    something interesting waiting for you around the corner. Gosh, I've
    played enough games (and read enough books, for that matter) that
    used exactly this device -- and many of them turned out to be a
    let-down. But not Unnkulia 2 -- the final twist of the plot nicely
    tied up all the loose ends that cropped up during the game, and
    secured the whole structure, like a keystone of an arch. Great it
    was, just great.

    SUMMARY:

    PLOT: Probably appears to give more freedom to the player than it does
          in reality
    ATMOSPHERE: Certainly present
    WRITING: More restrained than in Unnkulia 1, but not less humorous
    GAMEPLAY: Almost totally undirected
    BONUSES: Generous setting with LOTS of Easter eggs
    CHARACTERS: Not as vivid as in Unnkulia 1
    PUZZLES: Well-designed, but a bit illogical sometimes
    DIFFICULTY: Claims to be 7 out of 10 (to me, it seemed more like
                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 File (.tar.Z)

    PC Executable(.zip)

    Macintosh MacBinary (.sit.bin)

    Atari-ST (.arc)

    Solution (text)

    Unraveling God
    From: Edward Lacey <edwardalacey SP@G hotmail.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #31 -- January 3, 2003

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

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

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

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

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

    My Rating: 4

    Directory with ADRIFT .taf file and walkthrough

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