#
Game Reviews R

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The email addresses used are those submitted with the review, so naturally some of them may be out of date.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.

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

##

    Table of Contents
    Ralph
    Rameses
    Rans
    The Realm
    The Recruit
    Reefer Island
    The Reliques of Tolti-Aph
    Rematch
    Rent-a-Spy
    Research Dig
    Return to Ditch Day
    Return to Pirate's Island 2
    Reverberations
    Ribbons
    Richard Basehart Adventure
    Rippled Flesh
    Risorgimento Represso
    The Ritual of Purification
    Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots

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

    NAME: Ralph
    AUTHOR: Miron Schmidt
    EMAIL: s590501 SP@G tfh-berlin.de
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/ralph
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    "Ralph" was short (3 puzzles), not too difficult, and fun.  I found
    this one to be very cute, and it just oozes with charm (I smiled at
    Christopher Robin and Blamant the Teddy, felt a certain sadness at
    seeing Ralph's unkind owners, and laughed out loud at the fate of poor
    Benny the Fluff Duck).

    The writing is good, but sometimes seems geared toward a human's
    manner of thinking rather than a dog's.  The glass sheet puzzle, for
    instance, seemed slightly out of place in a game about a dog.
    Further, the descriptions of some objects lend a distinct air of
    anthropomorphism, rather than a pure dog's-eye view of the world.
    Would a dog really think of a sheet of glass, or a man's pipe, with
    the same words as a human?

    A different approach to vocabulary (perhaps adopting Richard Adams'
    technique of an animal language as seen in "Watership Down") might have
    made me feel a bit more like a real dog, but there are still plenty of
    doggy situations and doggy verbs to investigate.

    "Ralph" may not be "top dog" this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if
    it's one of the competition's most fondly remembered entries.  (Benny
    the Fluff Duck, we hardly knew ye.)

    From: Duncan Stevens  <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #25 -- June 20, 2001

    Latter-day IF has seen quite a few innovative experiments with point of
    view, so it's worth remembering the game that, as far as I know, started
    the trend, namely Miron Schmidt's Ralph, a 1996 competition entry. In
    Ralph, you play a dog, a thoroughly doggy dog at that-and while it's not
    a revolutionary exercise in PC characterization, it's a charming game
    that ably tackles the challenges of point-of-view experimentation.

    Your task is to find a lost bone that you've buried somewhere (belying
    the notion that dogs can always find bones, or other things, that
    they've buried). The puzzles are somewhat over the top--they involve a
    more subtle grasp of human and animal psychology than most dogs have,
    and they strain the limits of a dog's physique--but they're not bad
    puzzles, on the whole. On the other hand, the puzzles are probably the
    least doggy thing about the game, since they don't involve thinking like
    a dog as such, nor are the limitations of inhabiting a dog's body
    particularly limiting. (Compare A Bear's Night Out, where being a teddy
    bear was an obstacle to overcome on several fronts, and A Day for Soft
    Food, where puzzle solutions reflected housecat thinking in several
    instances.) They're perfectly good human puzzles, but they don't exactly
    fit here.

    What does fit, however, is the Easter eggs, of which there are many.
    Doggy verbs implemented include BARK, BITE, GROWL, SCRATCH, PEE ON,
    LICK, SMELL, SLOBBER, WAG--and when the verb is transitive, there are
    logical responses for most of the objects in the game. Particularly
    amusing in that respect is Christopher Robin, your family's
    two-year-old, with whom you can interact in a wide variety of levels;
    likewise, the cat offers amusement opportunities. Beyond that, the game
    does capture the single-minded psychology of a pet--you note humans'
    frustration or anger with you casually, but you really only care about
    that bone. The setting is less than vividly rendered--this is a suburban
    yard with basic suburban-yard objects--but you're afforded quite a
    variety of things to do in that suburban yard. Truth to tell, if Ralph
    had skipped the puzzles entirely and simply devoted itself entirely to
    Easter eggs, it would have been-well, a pretty aimless game, but
    possibly quite a lot of fun.

    Ralph illustrates nicely the challenge faced by concept games, games
    where the gimmick is the raison d'etre: while it's one thing to think of
    a good idea that translates well into the IF medium, as this undoubtedly
    does, it's another thing to convert it seamlessly into puzzle-based IF.
    This sort of thing can, of course, work both as concept and as puzzle
    game, as later attempts have shown, but Ralph doesn't really work on
    both levels (partly because it's so short). The concept, however, is
    great, and as implementation of the concept this is quite good, more
    than enough to make it worth playing. The lesson, perhaps, is that the
    best games are those that marry up high concept with a high level of
    interactivity (in the form of good puzzles, perhaps, or something else),
    and Ralph isn't quite on that level, pioneering as it was.

    At any rate, if you either like dogs or enjoy laughing at dogs' foibles,
    Ralph is worth a quick look-see; it's got enough funny lines and knowing
    references to doghood to make it enjoyable.

    Inform file (.z5) (updated version)

    Inform file (.z5) (competition version)

    Inform source code

    Rameses
    From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000

    TITLE: Rameses
    AUTHOR: Stephen Bond
    E-MAIL: stephenbond SP@G ireland.com
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/rameses.z5
    VERSION: Release 2

    If you'd asked me before this year's competition began to envision a
    game whose lack of interactivity was among its primary virtues, I'd have
    had trouble coming up with an example. My imagination is clearly
    lacking, however, because Stephen Bond's Rameses is just such a game,
    one that uses the player's inability to interact (in part) to tell its
    story. It's an interesting concept that's well implemented here.

    Rameses is a tale of adolescence, which, for those who remember last
    year's A Moment of Hope, isn't necessarily a good sign; making the
    trials of adolescence compelling to those of us who are no longer in
    that stage is not easy. But Rameses manages to find the balance between
    turning the trials in question into melodrama (by exaggerating them) and
    making them too trivial to be compelling. Specifically, you're a
    teenager at a boarding school, enduring your two unpleasant roommates
    and your own homesickness, or something akin to it--and the roommates
    aren't monsters, they're just obnoxious. Nor is your character a
    misunderstood saint--he's flawed in many respects. The protagonist
    manages to elicit the player's sympathy despite (or perhaps because of)
    the game's refusal to demand such sympathy.

    How? Several ways. First, much of Rameses consists of conversation (in a
    menu format)--and for long stretches of the conversation, your
    character's head is bursting with things to say (as evidenced by the
    menu), and yet he never says any of the things. There are always
    explanations, of course, some of them plausible--nasty insults are
    withdrawn with something akin to "You'd rather not start a fight right
    now"--but what emerges is a striking portrait of frustration, of a
    bottled-up character. It's not, exactly, that he's bottled up by
    circumstances, by the Awful Consequences Of His Oppressive Life; that
    would push it into melodrama, and this isn't melodramatic. It's more a
    picture of a highly inarticulate character whose fear of expressing
    himself borders on the neurotic, and drawing out that inarticulateness
    by trying a range of conversational options (from the polite to the
    highly antisocial), only to have the character reject all of them, is a
    nicely done depiction of the character. (It's not exactly
    inarticulateness--what's in your head is often quite well put--it's more
    a fear of expressing oneself, for which there's no concise term that I
    know. So I'm calling it inarticulateness.)

    There's more to the character than unwillingness to talk,
    though--there's also a healthy dollop of insecurity. A date of sorts is
    imminent, and your character is terrified and would like nothing more
    than to get out of it--he simply doesn't feel ready for that particular
    aspect of adolescence. Most of that particular hangup is captured in a
    monologue, but the date itself brings it alive as well: you're with two
    girls, and you're at a loss, for turn after turn, for anything to say to
    them. The few things you do manage to come up with only highlight the
    general futility of the exercise. If there's a better way to make an IF
    player feel frustrated and inarticulate than giving him TALK TO as a
    conversation option and consistently giving him no menu options, I can't
    imagine what it would be. In those respects, then, preventing the player
    from interacting is one of the story's greatest accomplishments.

    Equally effective for different reasons is the portrayal of the
    protagonist's relationship with a boyhood friend named Daniel, a
    relationship left behind in the trip to boarding school. The friendship
    seems to represent for the protagonist a more secure and less
    intimidating world. In particular, the protagonist appears to have been
    able to communicate with Daniel easily, naturally, and the interactions
    depicted (in the PC's memory) stand in contrast to the rest of his
    interactions, most of which amount to awkward mumbling. Naturally,
    however, one of the PC's main frustrations is that he's received a
    letter from Daniel, and he can't seem to put the words together to
    respond:

       God, I tried so often to write that letter. Practically every night I
       would stare at a page that was blank except for the words "Dear
       Daniel" at the top. I just couldn't think of anything to say. "Just
       be yourself," I kept thinking, "And write down whatever comes into
       your head." But nothing came into my head.

       A few weeks passed, and I still hadn't written a reply. And then I
       couldn't think of any excuses for my lateness. The longer it went on,
       the more ashamed I became about the delay, and the harder it was to
       write. I must have read and re- read Daniel's letter fifty times,
       looking for inspiration. I still have that letter. I still haven't
       replied.

    The writing, here and elsewhere, is unspectacular but effective--too
    elegant or too creative turns of phrase would cast the PC's professed
    inability to express himself in a strange light. One particularly well
    done passage conveys the PC's sudden mood swing:

       Quay
       Everything here is so peaceful, so beautiful - why have I never
       noticed it before? Raindrops dance on the river bay beneath my feet.
       Seagulls play in the air above me. Old fishing boats sway gently with
       the lapping of the water. And the air - I always thought the salt air
       was foul before, but now it seems so fresh, so clean, so pure!

       Quay
       The quay must be the most miserable place in the whole town,
       especially when the rain is pissing down like it is now. Beneath my
       feet, the rain-pelted river flows like sludge, which probably has
       something to do with all the raw effluent that's pumped into it. The
       smell, needless to say, is truly nauseating. A handful of rusty old
       boats lie abandoned against the quay wall, and seagulls scream
       overhead.

    The first passage might seem saccharine out of context, but it works as
    a contrast with the PC's generally gloomy outlook, and the second
    passage likewise works as a return to the status quo. The game is
    well-written enough that painful moments for the PC aren't painful to
    read, hardly a given.

    To add to the feeling of impotence, there's a scene in which two of his
    three roommates are picking on the third, and the PC (despite the
    player's urgings, of course) fails to step in, lamely explaining
    (internally) that "it's no use." Here, there's a variant on the
    nonconversational theme--your character will speak up, but only to say
    things that make things even worse (joining in the mockery of the third
    roommate, in other words)--and after the scene is over the PC addresses
    the player directly, explaining that the roommate's gratitude would have
    been too great a burden to bear. The scene brings out the ramifications
    of the PC's repressed nature--by not saying anything he hurts others as
    well as himself--and prevents the player from feeling too much sympathy
    for the PC. Nor does the player feel particularly complicit in the PC's
    cowardice, since the player can try all he or she wants to help out the
    hapless third roommate; the game trades complicity for imprisonment in
    the PC's neuroses. Whether it's a good trade is, of course, a matter of
    taste.

    Most of the action, such as it is, in Rameses is internal to the
    character, and even then very little of it actually constitutes
    action--in a sense, the player spends most of the game getting to know
    the PC, and the only significant thing that happens, as far as the PC is
    concerned, comes at the very end. Moreover, there's virtually no
    deviation possible in the course of the game; replays can provide more
    information, in the form of conversation (or non-conversation) options
    that weren't exercised before or people that weren't EXAMINEd, but not a
    tremendous amount, and the course of the story won't change at all. As
    mentioned, that usually indicates to me that the story would work better
    as static fiction--but the tension between player and PC sets up its own
    kind of interaction that makes this a surprisingly successful game.

    Rameses is certainly not to everyone's tastes; there are no puzzles, and
    the experience of playing it is more frustrating than fulfilling. But
    it's a sufficiently clever experiment that I gave it a 9 in this year's
    competition.

    From: Tina Sikorski <tina SP@G eniac.stanford.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #23 -- December 29, 2000

    Walkthrough?  No
    Genre: Slice-of-life

             +------------------------------------------+
             |Overall Rating        B |Submitted Vote  7|
             |Writing               B |Plot           B |
             |Puzzles              n/a|NPCs           B |
             |Technical             C+|Tilt           B-|
             +------------------------+-----------------+

    *** Initial Thoughts

    Puzzleless IF seems to be gaining in popularity at least insofar as the
    comp goes; CYOA and almost entirely conversational-driven works account
    for a fairly significant percentage of this year's crop. Alternate view
    styles (from the traditional 2nd person) are also gaining in popularity,
    although perhaps not to the same degree. Games with these styles tend to
    see a fairly wide range of scores, and often some hot debate.

    This game goes a step further: the protagonist is not only presented
    with a different viewpoint (first-person) in a puzzleless environment,
    but sometimes outright refuses to do what the player tells him to. This
    ended up producing some fairly interesting and diverse commentary
    amongst other reviewers and players.

    How well did it work? Well, applying the same standards to it I apply to
    other games, it rated a solid B from me, so perhaps well. But let's move
    on to some categorical comments...

    *** Writing (B)

    The writing is solid and has a lot of character -- in some places,
    possibly a wee bit too much character. Still, as in several other
    offerings this year, the style fit perfectly the mood and environs. It
    reads, to my mind, something like those TV shows where a character
    chooses to narrate the goings-on would were they in a written format, a
    trick that works with the right characters and situations... which this
    game has.

    The opening -- perhaps not in retrospect surprising -- reminds me highly
    of Trainspotting, a movie which I admit to having enjoyed a great deal.
    I say 'perhaps not surprising' because it has a similar regional feel
    throughout; not precisely the same, but certainly reminiscent.

    Much of the description contains interesting little editorials, a
    definite plus in a game written in first-person. "Here I see a blah" is
    a temptation that would probably be easy to succumb to in such a case;
    this game does not suffer from it. Instead, we have this lovely opener:

       "With horror I realise that I'll have to spend another day in St.
       Enda's college. A familiar fact I have to face each morning - but
       four years here have not made it any easier to face. St. Enda's - how
       I have come to despise this place. A decrepit old red-brick shagpile
       which has become the focal point of this filthy little town in the
       arse-end of nowhere. The cheapest boarding school in the country,
       probably, but also surely the most pompous and inflated. A haven for
       the worst kind of social climbers, parvenus, thick, ignorant farmers'
       sons..."

    And this is not the only room in which this happens. Descriptions are
    definitely colored throughout with commentary (although not always), and
    indeed, that's just how a first-person game should be done.

    *** Plot (B)

    On the surface, this is just another school game. In reality, it's a
    meandering through the mind of someone who does not like his life, his
    surroundings, the people he deals with, and, most especially, himself.
    It is something many works are not: it's realistic. Teens are like this.
    Not all teens, sure, and certainly not always to this extreme, but it is
    likewise certainly not unheard of.

    I don't end up with much sympathy for the schmoe in the game. He is, as
    he admits himself, an asshole, and a bit of a whiner to boot. Yet, it
    feels right for him to be this way.

    There is a holy-grail aspect to the game as well: The missing friend,
    Daniel. Was everything better when our protagonist was younger? Or does
    he just think that anything would be better than now? And, of course,
    there's a girl -- wouldn't there have to be?

    The ultimate ending (or, as someone hinted at, endingS) is not much of a
    resolution, when you come right down to it, but then, isn't that true of
    everyone's life? Not everyone lives happily ever after.

    *** Puzzles (n/a)

    Although I believe there are a few choices one can make that subtly or
    otherwise alter the game, there are no puzzles to speak of; I chose,
    therefore, to not rate what did not exist.

    *** NPCs (B)

    The conversational style is juvenile, which is not surprising in a game
    about, well, juveniles. If it were adult, it would be entirely too
    Dawson's Creek for me (a show I watched precisely once). But it never
    seems to be juvenile simply for the sake of being juvenile; rather, it
    is juvenile simply because it is.

    Are the characters believable? Yes, and no. I -have- seen such
    stereotypes wandering the landscape, particularly in that stage of life,
    but they do seem to acquire the level of 'caricature' at times. But
    perhaps this is simply because they're seen through the eyes of someone
    who is inclined to emphasize faults as one more away of painting his own
    life as shitty.

    Perhaps the only reason I did not end up giving this an even higher
    rating is simply because your interaction with them is so limited in
    many ways.

    *** Technical (C+)

    I enjoy alternate conversational styles, as I mention elsewhere in my
    reviews. Aside from that, there is nothing special to speak of.

    *** Tilt (B-) and Final Thoughts

    I think this stands on its own merits as a good game -- or at least, a
    good work of IF, if not a 'game' per se -- but let me revisit the
    complaint some people had about the refusal of the protagonist to
    perform certain actions. I do not feel that this is unique. I think this
    work is just more obvious about it.

    For instance, in most games there are dozens of actions closed off to
    the player by what the designer did and did not implement. Some of these
    are simply shortcuts to saying "that won't work". Some of them are
    deliberate choices to only implement a single solution to a puzzle (and
    some are less deliberate). If an author decides to say "this action
    won't work", how is that terribly different from the -protagonist-
    saying the same thing?

    I think it is not. I submit that particularly given the premise of this
    game, it makes perfect sense for these actions to be closed off not by
    author fiat but by the protagonist's own inability. If anything, I
    conclude that this is an additional bit of stylistic brilliance.

    I will admit to having in my notes the following:

    -Hah. "I can't believe I said that. Why did you make me say that?"

    -Well, because everything else I was trying to say you turned down the
    -chance to say?

    But that was, in the end, part of the game's appeal.

    Inform .z5 file (updated version)

    Inform .z5 file (competition version)

    Rans
    From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #22 -- September 15, 2000

    TITLE: Rans
    AUTHOR: Bob Reeves
    E-MAIL: rreeves SP@G unm.edu
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/rans.zip
    VERSION: Release 2

    The combination of good writing and good programming that IF requires
    doesn't simply mean that authors need to both be able to put sentences
    together and write and debug code; an author needs to be able to both
    tell a good story and design the game so that the story comes across to
    the player effectively. Rans, by Bob Reeves, illustrates how important
    both elements are: it's an interesting story that, suitably designed,
    might have been highly involving, but it's told in such a confusing way
    that the player has a hard time getting as involved as he or she might.

    It seems you're an author trying to complete a novel, and as the writing
    progresses, you're repeatedly transported into the world of the novel
    for inspiration. That is, when you're in the novel, you act to propel
    events forward, and you later record the way those events happened. It's
    an interesting spin on the fantasy-coexists-with reality genre, and the
    novel itself, while conventional fantasy, is reasonably
    interesting-there's certainly enough to it that it doesn't feel generic.
    The problem is that there are so many characters that are never, how
    shall I say, formally introduced that it's awfully hard to follow what's
    going on in the novel's world, and readers are likely to end up
    consulting the hints a lot. Likewise, the game seems to assume that you
    understand the significance of various events and connections when you
    don't necessarily; at least, if there was some bit of text earlier on
    that would have explained them, it's all too possible to miss that bit
    of text. The problem, in other words, is not that it's a bad story--it's
    just not developed in a way that introduces the player to it at the
    proper pace.

    Exacerbating the confusion is the difficulty of the puzzles, which is
    extreme. Some of them simply involve major intuitive leaps, one calls
    for some highly tedious mapping and trial and error (along with more
    intuitive leaps), and a few are simply guess-the-verb puzzles. True,
    some of them are difficult simply because they require that you've been
    following along with the story, hardly a given, but many are just
    obscure or gratuitously annoying. (The first puzzle in the game--you're
    drunk, so you need to make coffee to sober yourself up--is particularly
    irritating and doesn't contribute much to the game.) They're not bad
    puzzles (with the exception of the guess-the-verb problems)--some of
    them are clever and use multiple objects in creative ways. There just
    isn't enough there to clue the player into what's going on.

    The way that fantasy and reality interact gives rise to another problem,
    namely that it's never really clear what you're supposed to be doing
    when you flip back to reality (besides adding to the story), so you're
    reduced to wandering around until you find whatever it is that will send
    you back to the novel, to which there's no apparent rhyme or reason.
    Whereas the plot in the novel segments sort of drives itself--at least,
    there are obvious challenges to face or problems to solve--the real-life
    portions just feel aimless, and the course of wandering hither and yon
    trying to figure out what to do next can be frustrating, to say the
    least.

    And yet Rans is still a very good story, assuming that you can find your
    way through it. The endgame ties together the loose ends in a
    surprisingly creative way (at least, it was more creative than I was
    expecting). The unfinished-novel conceit--often, when exploring the
    fantasy sequences, you're told that you haven't fully fleshed out some
    element of the book--is a brilliant device; in a sense, you see the
    story come together as you play the game, and you see what shaped the
    author's choices. There are some howlingly funny moments as well, this
    one in particular, when you encounter a lantern: "It's a battery-powered
    brass lantern. You can't conceive how it wound up in a fantasy story."
    In short, there are more than enough good ideas here to make a
    first-rate game-it's just that the game design details aren't all worked
    out as well as they should be. Were the game design at the same level as
    the writing and world-building, this would be a first-rate game.

    Rans is a little too uneven to be a truly successful game, sadly, though
    it certainly has its moments; if you can overlook the frustrating parts,
    it might be worth a try.

    Inform .z5 file and hints file

    The Realm
    From: Carolyn Magruder <carolynmagruder SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005

    TITLE: The Realm
    AUTHOR: Michael Sheldon
    EMAIL: mike SP@G mikeasoft.com
    DATE: October 2004
    PARSER: TADS2
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2004/tads2/realm/realm.gam
    VERSION: comp release

    Score: 3 out of 10.

    The writing in this game varied unreliably between quite good and quite
    questionable. One of my favorite lines was in the first room: "Sunlight
    filters in through the small window above your bed, casting an
    accusatory light on your dirty room." Regrettably, there were two run-on
    sentences in the introduction immediately before it, and I swiftly
    discovered that my inventory included "a shoes" and "a boots". As well,
    most of the rooms were little more than a simple listing of directions
    -- a pity, considering the brief flashes of brilliance.

    One of the first objects I encountered was a guide pamphlet that
    substituted for a HELP command. While the idea was well-meant, it seems
    to me that anyone who knows enough to open a chest, take out the
    pamphlet inside, and read the pamphlet would benefit much more from a
    HELP or ABOUT than from the pamphlet.

    The puzzles could have been solved on the brute-force technique of "find
    the object, give the object". Aside from using the brute-force
    technique, I was at a loss as to how two of the puzzles would have been
    solved -- despite solving them with the walkthrough, they simply did not
    make sense to me. One puzzle had a rather elegant alternate solution,
    but it didn't occur to me to try it. Another of the puzzles was outright
    disgusting -- I suppose it was meant to be funny, but I just found it
    gross.

    I wasn't wild about the setting, I wasn't wild about the puzzles, and
    most of the writing was dismaying. I only found one bug, but it was an
    odd one -- I could ask myself questions and always get back the response
    "I don't know much about that." Those issues aside, though, the ending
    was very funny. It's almost worth playing the game just to see the
    ending... but I would rather see a better version of the game, instead
    -- one where the journey is just as pleasing as the destination.

    Directory with .gam TADS2 file and walkthrough

    The Recruit
    From: Virginia Gretton <VGretton SP@G aol.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #35 -- December 31, 2003

    TITLE: The Recruit
    AUTHOR: Mike Sousa with J.D. Berry, Jon Ingold, and Robb Sherwin
    EMAIL: mjsousa SP@G comcast.net
    DATE: October 2003
    PARSER: TADS2
    SUPPORTS: TADS2 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2003/tads2/recruit
    VERSION: Release 1 (competition version)

    Now here is a game I could get to grips with. Playing immediately after
    my thoroughly vexing and bewildering experience with Slouching Towards
    Bedlam (I apologise to Star and Daniel for my ignorance but I didn't
    discover the story, didn't get the machines to work and was flummoxed by
    the weird text on certain screens), I spent some of the two hours
    thinking about the kind of IF player I must be. I finished the game in
    the allotted time but only because I took a managerial decision to
    deduct the personality assessment time and restart the clock (shush,
    don't tell anyone).

    The opening screen invites you to choose your gender and reminded me of
    menu-driven role playing games. Don't be put off -- the reason for
    gender choice is innocent fun and non-MUD in character.

    I found the game concept fresh but I may just have been in a
    logic-starved state. Puzzles are the entire point of the piece and a
    reasonable explanation is given for your presence in this world.

    The first scene is relatively gentle and (filled with confidence) I
    launched myself into the second sector. There I spent over 40 minutes in
    a state of refusing to be beaten. There are only so many things that can
    be touched or otherwise manipulated; how hard could it be?

    Later scenes of the game felt very American to this English girl but
    that is a comment, not a gripe. The purple room was so elegant in its
    complex simplicity that I found myself applauding mentally.

    I was slightly disappointed to discover a previously undeclared
    collaboration of authors. I hadn't noticed changes in writing style, so
    the final product must have been well edited. The concept is clever and
    the implementation rewards player effort, but still I felt let down.
    Surely all that brainpower (the names were of the famous variety) should
    have produced more game for my money. Is that is a backhanded
    compliment? I didn't want the game to end so I felt the collaboration
    could have produced more puzzles and extended the playing pleasure. The
    description of The Recruit's evolution (accessed at the end of the game)
    is entertaining in itself.

    TADS2 .gam file

    Reefer Island
    From: Eric Woods <ewoods SP@G cocenter.org>
    Review appeared in SPAG #40 -- April 12, 2005

    [NOTE: This review contains a spoiler, but what it spoils is an action
    that makes the game unwinnable without warning. I've left it in, but if
    you're strictly anti-spoiler, you should probably skip the second
    paragraph. --Paul]

    TITLE: Reefer Island
    AUTHOR: Steve Barrera
    EMAIL: stevebarrera SP@G capband.net
    DATE: April 21, 2004
    PARSER: TADS 2
    SUPPORTS: TADS Interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/ReeferIsland.gam
    VERSION: 1

    I downloaded Reefer Island on a whim. I prefer to play TADS games, and
    by the title I thought this one might be a short, pleasant and maybe
    funny, diversion for a little while. I was initially surprised to find
    out how involved and elaborate a game it turned out to be. Honestly,
    from the title I hadn't expected much. This game would have been a very
    good and fun game (probably a *** from Baf's rating), but it only turned
    out to be an exercise in frustration, wondering what to do next and
    finally quitting with a sense of time being wasted. After a short while
    I could only progress via email assistance from the author. He tells me
    he is planning to rework the game and design it so as to be more
    friendly to the player. I hope he does this because this effort is not
    without its merits.

    Reefer Island is a large, sprawling island that you'll have to traverse
    numerous times in order to complete the goal. The goal is, of course, to
    find pot, a lighter, and something to smoke it with. This is made clear
    to you at the beginning of the adventure, when the ship that you and your
    comrades are on is shipwrecked and you get separated from everyone in a
    small lifeboat. You find yourself washing up on shore with nothing but a
    watch (which occasionally tells you how many hours it's been since your
    last bong hit) and an empty bag of Cheetos. Fair enough. The island is a
    very colorful place with a few characters with which to interact and
    numerous locations through the town, jungle, and dunes to explore.
    Unfortunately, it is quite simple to put the game in an unwinnable state
    very early without realizing it. I hope this next statement won't be
    considered too much of a spoiler, but when you get pot from a native,
    which is what I logically assumed I was supposed to do, you put the game
    in an incompletable state without knowing that you've done so. But don't
    worry about that. To initially interact with this guy you need to give
    him a lighter which you can find easily enough with some exploring. Give
    it to him and you put the game out of reach even before you ruin it by
    buying pot from him. He gives you the lighter back, will sell you a bag
    of dope for two shells (their currency) which you can find just lying
    around on the beach, and everything seems great, huh? But you can't give
    him the lighter since once he uses it there isn't enough fluid in it any
    longer to complete a task for which you'll need it later in the game. I
    had dope, and a lighter and thought I was well on my way to winning a
    fairly easy game. How was I to know?

    Other than the above-listed problems I found the puzzles to range from
    the easy and logical to the strange and unintuitive, especially the ones
    concerning a dais and a camera at the Mayor's house. Too much mind
    reading for me with these. I consider myself a pretty good puzzle solver
    but I wouldn't have come across the solutions to those in a hundred
    years.

    There is some good humor in this game and technically it is fairly
    sound. I did run across a bug that seemed to make the game unwinnable
    but I couldn't duplicate it afterwards, and the author tells me that it
    shouldn't have happened, so take that for what you will. The
    descriptions are good, colorful, and thorough, but I felt the fantasy
    and supernatural aspects of the game seemed a little forced and awkward.
    All the items were implemented well, though there was one location where
    I couldn't stand on something even though I needed to get on it. It
    seemed that the game would play very smoothly if only whoever was
    playing it could read the author's mind at several points through the
    journey.

    I haven't noticed a walkthrough for this game yet but, if you can find
    one, it's worth a play. If the frustrations could be removed it would
    be very enjoyable for those of us that like some puzzles in our games. I
    hope the author will consider making it more intuitive and follow a more
    logical progression of events in a revision.

    TADS2 .gam file

    Map

    The Reliques of Tolti-Aph
    From: Dark Star <darkstar SP@G infodarkness.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #47 -- January 16, 2007

    Title:  The Reliques of Tolti-Aph
    Author:  Graham Nelson
    Email:  graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk
    Date:  March 2, 2006
    Parser:  Inform 7
    Supports:  Z-code interpreters
    Availability: Freeware; Author's Website
    URL:  http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/rota
    Version:  1

    The Reliques of Tolti-Aph is the latest game by Graham Nelson, written to
    showcase some of the new features of Inform 7.  It is not traditional IF, rather
    an RPG with IF elements.  It implements a modified D&D engine referred to as
    Woodpulp & Wyverns (W&W).  The implementation of the engine is impressive, but
    the gameplay itself falls a little short: it fails to adhere to its own
    conventions and several of the puzzles have unconventional solutions.  (Thank
    goodness for David Welbourn's walkthrough!)  It's not balanced, it's not fair,
    and it can be very frustrating for the player.  Play at your own risk!

    The first thing that the game needs is a manual, and ideally a tutorial as well,
    covering concepts such as scroll creation, spells and how to create a sanctuary
    where you can go to retreat and rest.  Understanding the game is more than
    learning about combat, and I suspect many players will end up resorting to the
    walkthrough in order to get the hang of it.

    One good feature is the ability to retreat (i.e. run away) during a fight. If
    you get away, you can go back to your sanctuary, meditate (heal), and save.
    This is just as well, as meditating and saving can only be done in a sanctuary,
    and UNDO has been completely disabled.  While not allowing UNDO makes sense, I
    do not think it's a good idea to disable save, except perhaps during combat.
    Some other RPGs do this, but it usually doesn't work, and I've seen it corrected
    later by a patch.

    My biggest complaint is that your strength does not increase as your level
    increases.  This goes against one of the most basic rules of the RPG, and makes
    some of the creatures almost impossible to kill.  The wyvern, for example, can
    kill you in one shot, no matter what level you are on.  There is a spell to get
    past it, but this is a RPG and you earn experience by killing creatures and
    casting spells.  In a hard boss fight like this, you should earn more experience
    from killing the beast than casting a simple spell.  Overall, the game feels
    unbalanced: you face sudden death far too often.  Either the monsters need less
    bite or the player's defensive bonus needs to be brought up, or both. In a good
    RPG, you win most fights and only have to work harder on a small number of boss
    fights.

    Then there's the random maze.  That's bad enough, but the strength problem makes
    every fight feel like a boss fight.  Also, with spells needing components to be
    able to cast them, it becomes impossible to fight the monsters using your
    spells.  If you try, you face a real inventory management problem as you're
    always running around looking for scraps of metal so you can fire off your magic
    missiles.  This is a bit much, and I had to give up at this point.  I think it
    would be better to remove the component feature from the engine altogether; the
    mana cost is enough of a penalty.

    Another problem with the game is that many of the puzzles are under-clued, and
    don't follow any sort of pattern. For example, early on I had to write on a
    blank parchment with a metal feather to create a scroll.  "Ah," I thought, "this
    is how you make a scroll."  I never did it again.  Later on, I had to look up a
    saying in the diary and write it on a pyramid.  Why couldn't a monster have been
    protecting a blank parchment?  Then it would have been obvious that I should
    write on the parchment to create the scroll I needed.  Having established a
    convention, the game should carry it through.  In addition, when you learn a new
    spell this way, the game doesn't even tell you that you've learned it:  you have
    to look it up in your spell book.  The player should know when they've done
    something right.

    The game has an awkward dual personality, trying to combine conventional IF
    puzzles with the RPG elements, and doesn't quite pull it off.  There are some
    great puzzles here, but some of them are so hard that they disrupt the flow.  As
    an RPG, I feel it should have been more action-oriented, with IF puzzles that
    don't act as roadblocks.

    A pet peeve of mine is that the game is not always clear about which exits are
    available.  This was particularly noticeable in the maze, where there are no
    room descriptions for the tunnels, and some of the room names (e.g. NORTH-EAST
    BEND) are misleading.  More than once I had to resort to trying random
    directions.

    Technically, the game is very polished, and the only bug I found happened upon
    death when trying to cast a spell.  Once, when I tried to make a sanctuary the
    sand coming out of the door killed me, and the game responded with:

    Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game or QUIT?

    >restore

    That enchantment cannot be cast at anything.

    The game would not let me restore, and I had to restart before I could restore
    my saved game.

    Overall, I think the idea of an IF RPG offers some great possibilities.  Some
    things need to be changed within the engine, and a few things need to be worked
    out within the game itself, but this could definitely become a solid game engine
    for others to build on.

    Blorbed Z-code game file

    PDF feelies and documentation

    Inform 7 source code (HTML format)

    Rematch
    From: Duncan Stevens <dnrb SP@G starpower.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #22 -- September 15, 2000

    TITLE: Rematch
    AUTHOR: Andrew Pontious
    E-MAIL: [removed at author's request. See game for email address.]
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/Rematch.gam
    VERSION: Release 1.0.4

    Attention, attention, seasoned IFers, we have a new genre on our hands.
    Sam Barlow's Aisle was taken as an only-works-once experiment when it
    first appeared (at least, by me), but now we have a second entry in that
    category that expands considerably on what Aisle did. The category, of
    course, is one-move games, games whose exploration consists of figuring
    out the many and varied things you can do with your one move, rather
    than building on your explorations through a series of moves. You might
    think that would be limiting, since generally it wouldn't allow for
    multi-step tasks, but Andrew Pontious's technical wizardry in Rematch
    overcomes those limitations, and the result is memorable indeed.

    The primary difference between Aisle and Rematch is that, while the
    former was purely about exploration of the main character, the latter is
    really a puzzle: something happens after your move, and it will happen
    again and again unless you manage to avert it. What you do is not at all
    simple, and you're likely to spend several hundred moves figuring out
    how to do it--but it's a rewarding several hundred moves, and well worth
    the time. Part of the reason it's difficult is that there are several
    things to set it in motion, as it were, and figuring out what and where
    they are and how they interact takes some exploring (one move at a time,
    of course). As such, in one sense, it's the ultimate
    learn-by-screwing-up game--like Aisle, of course, since in Aisle you drew
    on the knowledge you accumulated to explore your character further, but
    here the game depends much more on your ability to draw on past lives.

    The puzzle you solve is complicated, and as such the action that you
    perform to solve it is fairly complicated as well, and the author has
    accordingly hacked the TADS parser somewhat to accommodate more complex
    input lines than most IF can handle: by my count, the Rematch parser can
    handle five nouns in some syntaxes, whereas the Infocom parser (on which
    neither Inform nor TADS nor any other freely available authorship
    system--had improved, to my knowledge--at least, not in terms of
    complexity--until now) could generally only handle three (HIT THE DOG ON
    THE HEAD WITH THE HAMMER). The expanded parser isn't perfect, but it's
    generally good enough; the real challenge, for the experienced player,
    is realizing that the parser has abilities beyond the usual. Once that
    hurdle is overcome, however, it's a marvelously liberating feeling to
    enter highly complex commands and see them executed more or less
    faithfully (in much the same way, I suspect, as the first players of
    Zork felt when they realized that they were no longer living in a world
    of two-word parsers). It's an impressive technical feat, in short, and
    while such complicated inputs might not be necessary in most
    games--since games that last longer than one move generally allow the
    player to accomplish quite intricate things by spreading them over
    multiple inputs--a perfected parser of this scope might well push the IF
    experience ever closer to mimesis, always a worthy goal. Larger
    possibilities aside, that technical breakthrough greatly enhances the
    experience of playing Rematch; indeed, the one-move game as puzzle
    wouldn't work nearly as well without it. (At least, it would have to be
    a whole lot simpler.)

    The puzzle itself is well put together, though it's rendered more
    difficult by some enticing red herrings--i.e., there are some things
    that seem to be useful when they're not, and the game doesn't do much to
    suggest that they are, in fact, red herrings. Likewise, it's initially
    tempting to do directly what the game wants you to do indirectly, and
    there aren't many hints about the more indirect methods. There are a few
    in-game hints, but they're fairly general; if you spend a while trying
    to figure out the puzzle on your own, chances are you'll already have
    figured out what the hints have to say before you consult them. Not
    major sins, but they do increase the difficulty of the puzzle
    considerably, even if the solution ultimately proves logical; if you're
    not a puzzle maven, you may want to consult a friend or find a
    walkthrough.

    Rematch highlights the real strength of one-move games, in that they
    make it easy for the author to provide for absolutely everything the
    player could come up with (since the combinatorial factor--objects being
    combined in unexpected ways--is limited). In giving you multiple views
    and variations on the central event of the game (not revealed here,
    since the surprise of it is part of what gives Rematch its impact), the
    game enhances its mimetic qualities: you can try just about anything
    logical, and the parser will handle just about anything you type. The
    AMUSING section at the end is well populated, and in fact there are many
    things worth trying that don't, in fact, show up in that list. It may be
    objected that limiting the player's freedom to one move is a sort of
    backwards--looking way to achieve mimesis, but we take it where we find
    it, I guess, and Rematch is plenty immersive even in its one move.

    There's an odd disjunction in the playing experience, though. It can
    fairly be said without spoilers that the event at the heart of Rematch
    is rather grim--it's certainly not something to joke about, and indeed
    it's fairly shocking when read for the first time. Some of the various
    events that you harness to solve the puzzle, however, can only be
    considered absurd, and they would probably fit a little better in a more
    lighthearted game. The disjunction isn't as stark as it might be, I
    suppose, because the shock of the main event dissipates as it happens
    again and again and again, and after a while the player likely sees it
    as something to avert, not something grim or tragic. Still, there's a
    split personality there, and it's especially acute if the player happens
    upon the sillier aspects of the game early in the exploration process.

    That aside, though, Rematch is an absorbing experience that in some ways
    goes beyond what the seasoned IF veteran might be expecting. Though the
    PC's exploration of the the environment is limited to some extent, it's
    still a richly interactive game.

    TADS .gam file

    Rent-a-Spy
    From: Emily Short <emshort SP@G mindspring.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #31 -- January 3, 2003

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Rating: 5

    Directory with zcode .z5 file and walkthrough

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

    NAME: Research Dig
    AUTHOR: Chris Armitage
    E-MAIL: TheFarseer SP@G MailExcite.com
    DATE: September 1998
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/research
    VERSION: Release 1

    Research Dig has pieces of a good story, inexpertly handled so that
    they don't reach their full potential. In fact, the experience of the
    game was a bit like a real research dig -- you have to mine through
    some errors, cliches, and unclear writing, but you can come away with
    some pretty good pieces. So let me first focus on the positive. The
    game has an intriguing premise -- you are a beginning archaeology
    student, sent on a minor dig on behalf of your research center to an
    old abbey where the groundskeeper has uncovered "something old." When
    you arrive, you meet the groundskeeper's daughter, who whispers to you
    that the old piece belongs "to the Little People," who live
    underground. (Exactly how little these Little People are remains in
    question, but I'll get to that in a bit.) From this interesting start
    the game lays out a sensible map which delivers mystery and magic in
    reasonable proportions, never so much that it seems like a simple
    dungeon crawl or D&D knockoff. The writing can be rather atmospheric
    in several sections and some of the design contributes to this
    feeling, such as some important red herrings which lead nowhere but
    help to flesh out the game world. Overall, Research Dig feels like it
    was written by a beginner, but a beginner with good ideas and a
    passion for interactive fiction.

    That being said, it's also important to note that the game has a
    number of problems as well. Though the map was logical, it also felt
    quite a bit cliched, with underground tunnels, spooky crypts,
    mysterious rune-encarved stones, etc. There wasn't anything that felt
    very unique once the game got to this point, and it felt like a game
    with a lot of potential had devolved into another ho-hum underground
    excursion. In addition, the writing suffered at several points from
    basic proofreading errors. Spelling and grammar mistakes were not
    legion, but there were enough of them to be seriously distracting,
    especially since they sometimes turned up in places that would be read
    over and over again. For example, from the beginning of the game you
    find that you have a "referance book" in your inventory. After 10
    times reading the misspelled word, my patience started to wear thin.
    It's the kind of error that could have been avoided so easily, I have
    a hard time understanding why it's there. The same is true for some
    key coding errors, like the key whose short name is "a key labelled
    'Shed'."  The problem with a short name like this is that Inform
    already provides articles for objects, so in the inventory the key is
    listed as "an a key labelled 'Shed'." Compounding the problem, there
    are two keys with this same error. The glitch is all the more
    aggravating because it comes up almost every time the game tries to
    refer to the keys. My favorite example: "Which do you mean, the a key
    labelled 'Shed" or the a key labelled 'Conservatory'?"

    These mistakes were small, but sometimes small mistakes can make a big
    difference, and this game had the perfect example. However, before you
    read it, I should warn you that in order to explain my example, I have
    to spoil part of the endgame. Read on if you so choose. OK, so at one
    point you find an urn in the groundskeeper's house with a piece
    missing. Then later on you find a rune-encarved "slab of stone, about
    2' square." That's two feet square. That's way too big to be a piece
    of an urn. However, at the end of the game, you find out that it *is*
    in fact the missing piece of the urn.  Meanwhile, you see the
    groundskeeper defeated by "a small person, you guess at about 3"
    high." That's three inches high. That's mighty small! However, by this
    time you begin to suspect that the game confused its notations, and is
    using ' for inches and " for feet. This may seem like a minor error,
    but it changes the meaning of the things it affects so completely that
    it ruins any possibility of building the mystery. There's something to
    be learned here: in some ways writing (I mean creative writing) and
    programming aren't so far apart. Just as a missing semicolon can cause
    you no end of misery during compilation, so can a very small change
    completely deflate your story. Also, in both disciplines the semantic
    and syntactic errors are easiest to find, and your work is
    unacceptable until it is free of these.  Logic errors are more
    difficult to detect, and take much more sweat to ferret
    out. Unfortunately for would-be writers, there is no automatic
    proofreading service for fiction that provides the error-checking of a
    good compiler. You have to do it yourself.

    Rating: 6.2

    Directory with Inform .z5 file and walkthrough

    Return to Ditch Day
    From: Valentine Kopteltsev <uux SP@G mail.ru>
    Review appeared in SPAG #42 -- October 2, 2005

    NAME: Return to Ditch Day
    AUTHOR: Michael J. Roberts
    E-MAIL: mjr SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: June 12, 2004
    PARSER: TADS3
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/return-to-ditch-day.zip
    VERSION: Release 1

    Prepare for a nostalgic trip to Pasadena, California, back to your alma
    mater - the California Institute of Technology, which you once explored
    when playing Ditch Day Drifter.

    One of the problems with nostalgic trips is, the traveller risks going
    through a major disappointment in the end. Like, when getting to the place
    you used to live as a child, you suddenly find out that your wonderful
    playing area full of mysterious corners and secluded nooks turns out to be
    a rather dull patch squeezed between faceless blocks of flats, and the
    music school, the way to which you remember as quite a jorney, lies in fact
    within a five minutes' walk from your former house.

    The first good news is, you won't have such "shrinkage" troubles with
    Return to DD. There are several reasons for that. The first one has little
    to do with the skills of the game author: the thing is, the world
    perception difference between a student and an alum isn't as harsh as for
    children and adults;).

    But even if it was, I doubt you'd have noticed any decrease in size. That's
    because the game world itself has grown considerably bigger. I don't mean
    just the number of rooms, although Return to DD has about twice as many of
    them as DD Drifter (that is, if you don't count in the Behavior Lab maze in
    the latter); rather, I'm talking of the way the rooms are depicted.

    What passed for room descriptions in DD Drifter, were essentially lists of
    exits. That's entirely different in Return to DD: even locations in the
    area leaving the least space for being elaborate, the steam tunnels, can be
    distinguished between not just by the directions they lead; other rooms
    have yet more detailed and vivid descriptions, with practically all the
    objects mentioned there implemented. You can bet this makes the whole thing
    seem  more real.

    Still, with all those changes, the place remains quite recognizable. There
    are topographical resemblances -- in particular, the room you have to solve
    the "stack" (a challenge you need to overcome to get into a senior's room)
    for is the very same as in DD Drifter, and its nearest surroundings have a
    similar structure. Some other major sections, like the aforementioned steam
    tunnels, don't retain the layout but maintain the overall atmosphere, the
    "feel" of the rooms. Another thing "inherited" by Return to DD from its
    predecessor is the humour, which, however, has become more brilliant yet
    much less harmless; in fact, it gets rather spiteful at times -- for
    example, read the brochures in the Carreer Center Office. This is quite
    understandable -- our player character clearly has rid himself of most of
    the illusions he had during the years that have passed since he graduated.

    This brings us to the characters. The very generalized, "about the same as
    always"-looking drifter has developed to a man with a well-defined
    personality. The folks he has to deal with also aren't the sparingly
    animated cardboard puppets they used to be anymore; it was amazing to find
    out they have streaks I previously encountered in real people (for
    instance, I myself recently baited one of my workmates with getting a huge
    project done in the couple of days remaining till her vacation pretty much
    the same way the workers in Return to DD tormented their colleague).

    With all the praise the "troupe" deserves, one design choice concerning
    character animation seemed somewhat odd to me: namely, the way conversation
    was organized. I think it's best described with the term "implicit menu-
    based system". In most cases, when you initiate a dialogue with someone,
    the game comes up with topic/action suggestions, like this:

      >TALK TO TIFFANY
      As you open your mouth, Tiffany suddenly starts to cry.
      (You could try to comfort her, or pummel her into silence.)

    These suggestions really work like menu choices: they only are used to
    advance the conversation, and the parser doesn't understand them if they're
    typed somewhere else in the game. The only difference is, instead of
    selecting the options by number, the player has to re-type them, which is
    somewhat tedious (in spite of the fact they can be abbreviated). As far as
    I see it, the theoretical benefit of such a system is more freedom for the
    player, since, in addition to the options suggested, (s)he can enter some
    other command. In practice, however, I didn't encounter any situations
    where this extra freedom was needed, so that a "normal" menu-based
    conversation seemed more appropriate. Well, maybe it's just a matter of
    getting used to; anyway, making the suggested options clickable wouldn't do
    any harm.

    Having such great characters in one's game, it'd be rather stupid to stick
    to the old trusted treasure hunt, instead of providing them with a decent
    story. Without getting into much detail, let me assure you -- there is a
    good plot, and, which is even better, an optional semi-mystery by-plot. The
    puzzles needed to be solved in order to complete the main story line are
    kept on the easy side. The player never remains without guideance, as the
    "tactical subgoals" always are formulated clearly. One of the puzzles was
    of the "refer to data source one to find out about data source two, then
    refer to data source two to find out about data source three, then [put the
    necessary number of iterations here]" type, which I'm personally not so
    fond of, yet it was just an episode, and anyway short enough to avoid
    becoming annoying. Also, a couple of puzzles required some random
    exploration of the surroundings, but it seemed quite logical under the
    given context, and was, because of the splendid game world, more of a
    pleasure than of an issue. The puzzles for the by-plot were more
    challenging, but still manageable. Since we're talking about puzzles -
    unlike its predecessor, Return to DD features an adaptive hint system of
    top quality that keeps track of the player's progress in the game.

    To put it short - the sequel, quite unsurprisingly, turned out to be
    superior to the original game in almost every respect. The only point where
    DD Drifter probably beats its offspring is, encouraging new authors to
    write in TADS. I mean, after completing DDD, a novice author probably is
    going to feel a fit of energy and enthusiasm, because the game really is
    very simple from the technical point of view; Return to DD, on the other
    hand, is more likely to put him in a state of depression ("Bah, I'll never
    be able to write THAT good!"). Still, if I had to choose between the game's
    overall quality and its promotional value, I'd undoubtedly opt for the
    first one.

    TADS3 game file (hints included in-game)

    Return to Pirate's Island 2
    From: Joe Barlow <seagull2525 SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #22 -- September 15, 2000

    NAME: Return to Pirate's Island II
    AUTHOR: Scott Adams
    EMAIL: msadams SP@G msadams.com
    DATE: August 2000
    PARSER: S.A.G.A. (full sentence)
    SUPPORTS: Windows 95/98/NT/2000  (Mac/Unix ports being considered)
    AVAILABILITY: Commercial (US $19.95)
    URL: http://www.msadams.com

    Unlike many text adventure fanatics, I didn't grow up with the games of
    Scott Adams. By the time I discovered interactive fiction, Infocom had
    already established itself as the undisputed king of the genre, with
    detailed room descriptions and state-of-the-art parsers the norm rather
    than the exception. As such, the idea of playing "simpler" works did not
    appeal to me -- two-word inputs were far too limiting after years of
    using Infocom's elegant full-sentence engine, and I gave a wide berth to
    these (perceived) lesser offerings.

    I'd heard of Mr. Adams, of course: ads for his games lined the pages of
    every available computer magazine, and I knew that he had produced some
    of the genre's most commercially successful offerings, including
    "Adventureland" and "The Count." I acknowledged and respected him as a
    computer game pioneer, but to actually *play* a Scott Adams adventure
    was, for me, an exercise in frustration: the terse room descriptions and
    the minimalistic parser -- which at times verged on "sadistic" -- were
    not enough to overcome the admittedly brilliant puzzles and intriguing
    story lines ("Voodoo Castle" was the lone exception; to this day, it
    remains the only Scott Adams game I have ever solved). What a pity, I
    thought, that these clever games were mired in such a poor play system.

    Well, Mr. Adams seems to have read my mind: with his first new text
    adventure in over fifteen years, the just-released "Return to Pirate's
    Island II," he has gone to great lengths to correct many of these
    problems. "Pirate's II" contains a number of Scott Adams firsts,
    including digitized sound effects, lengthy (and occasionally quite
    eloquent) room descriptions, and, best of all, a full-sentence parser.
    Will long-time fans be delighted or dismayed at these changes? To a
    large extent this still remains to be seen, although the game has
    generated positive buzz from many of its early players.

    The story's enjoyment does not stem from the plot, which is so thin that
    it borders on non-existent: the player's mission is to collect treasures
    and deposit them in a safe place. It's a tried and true formula, having
    been used in the original Crowther/Woods "Adventure," Infocom's "Zork
    I," and many of Mr. Adams' own previous offerings. This game, like the
    ones just mentioned, is strictly a puzzle-fest: there are no NPCs to
    speak of, nor any character development... nothing but good old-
    fashioned treasure hunting. In that respect, "Pirate's II" feels like a
    homecoming: many interactive fiction fans have bemoaned the recent trend
    toward experimental "literary" games (like Adam Cadre's "Photopia"), and
    these players will no doubt welcome the nostalgic feeling which
    permeates this work.

    It's clear that a lot of time and effort has gone into "Pirate's II":
    Mr. Adams has injected his famous sense of humor into the story at every
    opportunity (the opening puzzle appears to be a sly jab at Infocom's
    "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," for example), but the resulting game
    is nonetheless a mixed bag. While the puzzles are quite clever, and
    although the work contains the richest text descriptions ever to appear
    in a Scott Adams adventure, the negative traits are unfortunately strong
    enough to offset the positive.

    One significant drawback to "Pirate's II" is the text. For a game that
    had such a large group of beta testers (sixteen, according to the
    website!), the work contains a surprisingly large number of typos and
    grammatical errors (the use of "to" instead of "too," incorrect use of
    ellipsis, etc). It's not that big a deal, but considering the game's
    $19.95 purchase price -- and its creator's status as a text adventure
    brand name -- I expected a little more attention to detail. It's
    particularly frustrating since many of the room descriptions are
    otherwise quite lovely.

    Another major obstacle is the program's troublesome installation
    routine, which is just as difficult to "solve" as many of the game's
    puzzles. (I had to install "Pirate's II" three times before I was
    actually able to run it. The documentation admits that the user may
    encounter error messages, and that he or she should simply ignore these
    warnings if they appear). A little more attention to detail would really
    have helped the professionalism of this package, but I suppose I should
    be thankful that I can play the game at all: "Pirate's II" runs on Mr.
    Adams' own Windows-based engine, the S.A.G.A. (Scott Adams Grand
    Adventure) system, which leaves a lot of non-Windows users out in the
    cold. Mac and Unix ports of the S.A.G.A. interpreter are reportedly in
    the planning stages, however, so non-Microsoft adventurers may be able
    to play the game in the near future.

    My remaining quibble is more the fault of the S.A.G.A. engine than the
    game itself: boy, is it ever *slow!* On my 486dx/100, the machine I use
    for all my text adventure excursions, there is a pause of approximately
    three seconds after I hit the ENTER key before the game prints the
    results of my actions; I was reminded of my days playing "Zork I" on my
    trusty Commodore 64 back in the late '80s. I refuse to believe that
    *any* text adventure needs a Pentium processor to run optimally, and I
    hope that Mr. Adams will tweak/optimize the S.A.G.A. engine for slower
    systems when and if he releases another game which employs it.

    But I don't wish to sound overly harsh. "Return to Pirate's Island II"
    is not a bad puzzle game, and marks a welcome return from one of
    interactive fiction's founding fathers. The gameplay and interface will
    feel familiar to anyone who enjoyed earlier Scott Adams adventures, with
    many of the game's features (the lovely room descriptions, the
    full-sentence parser, the "Lurking Horror"-style sound effects, and the
    built-in hints system) being impressive achievements indeed. But such
    innovations should not come at the cost of performance -- the agonizing
    slowness of the S.A.G.A. engine, coupled with the alarming number of
    typos in the text, may ruin the fun for many questers. Die-hard puzzle
    fans will find much to like, but casual admirers of Mr. Adams' work will
    have to decide if the game is worth its $19.95 asking price.

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

    NAME: Reverberations
    AUTHOR: Russell Wain Glasser
    EMAIL: rglasser SP@G ix.netcom.com
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/reverb
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    Say what you want, but I LIKED this one!  The plot - pizza guy gets
    caught up in battle with mafia and causes earthquake threatening to
    destroy city while simultaneously building friendship with cute female
    lawyer - has the look and feel of one of those really bad "Up All Night"
    movies they show on Fridays and Saturdays on the USA network.  At 11:00
    and 10:00, respectively.  Not that I actually WATCH those awful things.
    Well, not usually.  Oh, okay, you caught me!  Happy?!

    The puzzles in "Reverberations" are full of very text-adventure-like
    situations, and the room descriptions consist largely of lists of exits,
    but the rest of the text is just plain fun, and the answerable
    rhetorical questions and southern-California dictionary provided with
    the game provide many a laugh.  A couple of minor bugs (some of the
    "amusing" commands don't seem to work properly), but nothing major to
    gripe at.

    A really fun way to kill half an hour or so.

    Inform file (.z5) (updated version)

    Inform File (.z5) (competition version)

    Solution (Text)

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

    TITLE: Ribbons
    AUTHOR: J.D. Berry
    E-MAIL: berryx SP@G earthlink.net
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/ribbons.z5
    VERSION: Release 2

    A counterpart of sorts to Ian Finley's Exhibition, a 1999 competition
    entry, J.D. Berry's Ribbons, the winning entry in Marnie Parker's 2001
    IF Art Show, takes the "art show" premise and runs with it. It doesn't
    run extremely far, truth be told, but it's a nice concept.

    As in Exhibition, you're in an art gallery, checking out a series of
    exhibits, and as in Exhibition, you get a series of different
    perspectives on each exhibit. Rather than playing the critics, you read
    their critiques, which are posted by each exhibit, but the effect is
    similar -- you learn something new about each work, and about the
    critics, from each critique of it. (At least, that's the hope.) There
    aren't as many exhibits here -- only four, whereas Exhibition had twelve
    -- so there isn't as much room for development of the critics; their
    voices don't develop in the same way that those of Exhibition did.

    The twist is that the works themselves have a better chance of coming
    across because (a) the critics are a little less obsessed with
    themselves than Exhibition's critics were and (b) the works are, to some
    extent, interactive. (It also helps that one of the critics' opinions is
    that of the artist himself/herself.) You can alter certain aspects of
    the works, and the critics' opinions will change (though not their
    ultimate judgments) to reflect the alterations. The results in this
    respect are sometimes amusing: the same critic praises the same work for
    both the presence and absence of an element, or slams an artist's binary
    decision no matter which way it goes. As a jab at criticism itself --
    portraying critics as applying preconceived opinions regardless of what
    they actually find -- this works pretty well.

    Unfortunately, not enough of the game leads to those moments; Ribbons is
    more interactive than Exhibition, but that's not saying a lot.
    Interaction with one exhibit (other than passive interaction like SMELL)
    is precluded entirely because someone else has vandalized the work and
    you don't want to be held responsible. Another exhibit allows for
    interaction, but not in a way that changes any text (of the descriptions
    or of the critics' reactions) -- you're told that you're altering
    things, but that's about it. The other exhibits allow for a little more
    interplay, but I left the game feeling like the most interesting aspect
    was barely there. (Perhaps the author and I differ about what the most
    interesting aspect was.)

    Credit where credit is due, though -- the artworks themselves are well
    rendered and intriguing, and the variety of perspectives you get (the
    descriptions change slightly after you've read each critic's take) is
    impressive. It's pretty clear (at least, to me) that they occupy four
    distinct categories -- one strictly aesthetic, one literally
    representational, one metaphor/symbol, and one simply abstract -- and I
    enjoyed seeing the extent to which each critic managed or failed to
    grapple with each work on its own terms; in each case, some of the
    reaction amounted to "I don't like this because of the category it's
    in." (Sorry, no points for complaining that this critic has been known
    to do the same thing.) It's also fun to see the artists gently mocking
    the whole critical enterprise. For example, one critic notes that part
    of his work wasn't originally planned, but "[t]he curator's (Hi, Mrs.
    Washington!) little boy wanted to be part of the show, so he brought me
    that part from his trainset. Congratulations, Daniel, you are officially
    [sic] an ARTISTE!" The works themselves also bear scrutiny -- in some
    cases second- and third-level nouns are available (as in, objects
    mentioned in the room description are first-level, objects mentioned in
    the descriptions of first-level objects are second-level, etc.),
    deepening the level of detail available considerably.

    Ribbons is a fifteen-minute game at most, but it's a worthwhile fifteen
    minutes. As with Exhibition, reading the critics' thoughts is far and
    away the meat of the game, but those thoughts are good enough that
    that's not faint praise.

    Inform (.z5) game file

    Richard Basehart Adventure
    From: Bonnie Montgomery <bkm SP@G pobox.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #14 -- May 17, 1998

    NAME: Richard Basehart Adventure
    AUTHOR: Matthew Garrett
    EMAIL: cavan SP@G enterprise.net
    DATE: January 1997
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Inform ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: http://homepages.enterprise.net/cavan/rba/rba.z5.bin
    VERSION: Release 1

    When I contacted Matthew Garrett for his input on this review, his
    reactions were roughly shock, surprise, and worry. He wrote, "I'm
    probably guilty of wasting several people's time with a fairly simple
    joke."

    The joke of Richard Basehart Adventure is "steal whatever original
    creative content exists in an IF game that is itself derivative of a
    another game." The game whose creative content is being ransacked is
    Detective: An Interactive MiSTing by C. E. Forman, in which the
    characters of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" heckle their way through
    Matthew Barringer's Detective.

    To find a walkthrough of Richard Basehart Adventure, read Forman's
    introduction to his MiSTing. MST3K character Gypsy creates a simple game
    about her idol, which Garrett brings to life, capturing every nuance.
    However, since there are only about three nuances total, actual playing
    of Richard Basehart Adventure is, in my opinion, optional.

    Is Matthew Garrett guilty of wasting my time? I think not. He pointed me
    back to Forman's MiSTing of Detective, a game I had not played since the
    1995 competition. A year later Forman released a Silver Screen Edition,
    which included an interview with Matthew Barringer (15 years old and
    "much cooler" than the 12-year-old self that had written Detective) and
    snippets from an abandoned but hilarious second MiSTing, The Caverns of
    Chaos.

    The worst crime for which Garrett can be accused is not properly using
    his Web site as a vehicle for self-promotion. (He might have learned a
    trick or two from Forman, who, by his own admission, shamelessly
    promotes The Path to Fortune throughout the Silver Screen Edition.) The
    page from which Richard Basehart Adventure is available does not offer
    any links back to Garrett's home page. If it did, Garrett could have
    drawn attention to his other projects, including his "proper" IF work in
    progress, which he is offering for download in return for feedback.

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

    NAME: Rippled Flesh
    AUTHOR: Rybread M. Celsius
    EMAIL: rybread SP@G cshore.com
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/ripflesh
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    Another horror story that doesn't succeed at being creepy, although it
    comes close once or twice if you let your imagination fill in the gaps
    that the less-than-convincing text leaves.

    There are a lot of puzzles that require guessing the author's manner of
    thinking, and, though a couple were kind of neat, the game has the same
    feel of "Punkirita," by the same author, with lots of incongruous ideas
    slapped together, peppered with pop-culture references that don't seem
    to fit.  (To the author: The first "Alien" movie was good, too.  It's
    only the third one that sucked.  And the fourth, if they make it.)

    The text file with the game explains that the author didn't know how to
    implement some features, so I have a brief word for potential authors:
    Don't be afraid to post requests for help on rec.arts.int-fiction.  We
    were all new to Inform at some point.  (Even Graham Nelson, sort of.)

    Finally, let me just urge players to stick with this game to the end.
    Please, PLEASE don't deprive yourselves of the attempt at an explanation
    for everything that happened during the course of the game.  It's a
    major (unintentional) hoot, and I loved it so much I gave the game an
    extra point!

    Also, if you don't mind my asking: What's the DEAL with disco this year?
    Both "Rippled Flesh" and "Phlegm" make use of it.  Is disco, as those
    annoying music commercials claim, really "back and hotter than ever"?

    Directory With Inform .z5 File and walkthrough

    Inform source code

    Risorgimento Represso
    From: Mike Russo <russo SP@G caffeinedreams.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #35 -- December 31, 2003

    TITLE: Risorgimento Represso
    AUTHOR: Michael Coyne
    EMAIL: coyne SP@G mts.net
    DATE: October 2003
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2003/zcode/risorg
    VERSION: Release 1 (competition version)

    This game initially threw me for a loop; given the intimidating title
    and the scholastic setting of the opening, I was expecting a much more
    historical take than the one I was presented. My initial notes involved
    a fair amount of griping about such anachronisms as the use of
    Mendeleev's periodic table, but once I grasped what kind of game I was
    in for, I had a much more pleasant time. Risorgimento is a whimsical,
    well-coded adventure in the Infocom tradition, distinguished by some
    very entertaining puzzles. The plot is nothing terribly involving -- the
    player character is a student desperately trying to make his (her?) way
    back to the modern day -- but that's not really the focus of this
    offering. Instead, it's the series of challenges facing the player that
    are responsible for keeping the interest level high, and fortunately,
    they succeed at this task quite admirably.

    The author should be congratulated for removing much of the annoyance
    often associated with IF: doors automatically open and unlock, for
    example, which makes exploration stress-free. The environment unfolds
    gradually, with new areas opening up in a logical, manageable fashion;
    although there are quite a few locations, I never felt lost or unsure of
    what I should be working on. Although an inventory limit is implemented,
    the bottomless satchel greatly ameliorates the irritation. Really, the
    only complaint I had was that reading the notebook cycled through three
    different passages, only one of which was useful for a particular puzzle
    (although while writing this review, I discovered that READ CHEM jumps
    directly to the appropriate section, a thoughtful convenience.)

    NPC interaction is slim, but what there is works fairly well; one
    doesn't expect the absent-minded wizard or the bored gate-guard to be
    very interested in chit-chat, after all. The writing is workmanlike and
    seemed almost completely error-free. I did run into one coding oddity --
    attempting to pick up the iron key Ninario dropped after his abduction
    sometimes returned a complaint about the difficulty of taking it home
    with me. Just about every object I thought to examine was implemented,
    and the overall attention to detail was satisfying; the author indicates
    that he spent almost three months testing and revising, and the effort
    shows.

    The meat of the game really comes in the puzzles, and the quality is
    again consistently high. The second I read the chemistry notes, I knew
    that I would need to make some gunpowder, but the in-game clues were
    robust enough that I didn't even need to look up atomic numbers to
    complete this section -- it was deep enough to be interesting but not
    complicated to the point of frustration. The misadventures at the farm
    are another high point -- when you're standing at the top of a tree,
    wearing welding-goggles, a helmet, and a bear rug, and holding a
    cannonball, and every step along the way made perfect sense, that's good
    puzzle design, right there. While some obstacles were a bit hard, some
    judicious tyromancy was usually good for a nudge in the right direction,
    and many problems had more than one solution. I might quibble with some
    of the implementations (a few seem rather difficult without some outside
    knowledge -- the Greek meaning of arktos, the presence of methane in
    human waste, etc. -- and it took me a long time to figure out that AIM
    CANNON AT DOORS was the proper syntax), but overall the puzzles were
    fair and well-clued.

    The only thing holding Risorgimento back from a higher rating is the
    fact that I do tend to prefer my games a bit more plot-heavy, but
    really, that's merely a minor issue of personal taste. The level of care
    and conscientiousness that went into this game is impressively high
    (look at the list of AMUSING actions if you need any more proof!), and I
    hope we'll have a sequel to look forward to next year!

    Zcode .z8 file (updated version)

    Zcode .z8 file (competition version)

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

    NAME: The Ritual of Purification
    AUTHOR: Jarek Sobolewski
    E-MAIL: sable SP@G polbox.com
    DATE: September 1998
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/ritual
    VERSION: Release 1

    The feeling I got while playing Ritual reminded me of nothing so much
    as those old Dr. Strange comics from the 60's, back when the master of
    mysticism was drawn by Steve Ditko, himself a master of the
    bizarre. The game is full of strange, hallucinatory images: a road
    that melts into nothing, an arch with marble carvings on one side and
    black decay on the other side, exploding and melting universes. The
    whole thing made me feel like I was immersed in a Ditko landscape, and
    the fact that the main character is a spellcaster on an astral voyage
    didn't hurt either. Of course, some of the scenes in Ritual could
    never have taken place in a 60's comic -- at least, not one that
    adhered to the Comics Code Authority.  There's nothing really
    outrageous, but there are scenes of sexuality, drug use, and gore that
    you'd never see Dr. Strange experiencing. I'm not suggesting that the
    game is some sort of Dr. Strange rip-off, or that Ditko was an
    inspiration for Ritual -- that's just what it reminded me of.
    However, one source of inspiration for the game was clearly some of
    the more obscure poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. At the completion of
    almost every puzzle, the game throws a box quote from Poe, usually one
    which has some relation to the obstacle just overcome. These quotes
    are well-chosen, digging deep into the Poe archives and highlighting
    how much he inherited from William Blake, as well as how much he
    prefigured H.P. Lovecraft. At its best, most deranged or sublime
    moments, the game evokes the weird, dark mysticism shared by all these
    creators. On the whole, the effect is very trippy, and a fair amount
    of fun.

    Unfortunately, there are some false notes as well. From time to time a
    character will say or do something fairly anachronistic, which tends
    to break the spell pretty thoroughly. In fact, at one point you can
    get a character to whip out a bong and start taking hits from it,
    which brings the whole elevated plane of symbolism and wonder
    dive-bombing back to earth. The effect is not so much of Alice in
    Wonderland's "hookah-smoking caterpillar", but more of Jeff Spicoli in
    Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It just doesn't fit. There are also a
    few times when the game seems to slip into cliches or "AD&Disms" --
    one beast is described as "biting easily through a set of plate mail",
    and some of the spells feel suspiciously close to ones I remember from
    7th grade basement role-playing sessions. In addition, the game has a
    number of grammar and spelling errors, usually minor problems like
    missing punctuation or vowel mistakes, but again they break the
    spell. Finally, and worst of all, there's a bug in the game which
    causes it to not respond at all if a certain action is taken sooner
    than the game expects it. There's nothing that ruins immersion quite
    so much as when a game just doesn't respond to a command in any
    way. Well, maybe not *nothing* -- crashing the interpreter would
    probably ruin immersion more, but because of the lack of response
    problem I ended up turning to the hints, only to find that I had in
    fact given the right command to solve the puzzle -- I just gave it a
    little too soon.

    The game suffers a bit from the "unconnected symbols" syndrome --
    sometimes it feels like all of these dreamlike images are just images,
    with no meaning or substance attached to them. However, the game
    manages to pull them together somewhat through its title, intro, and
    ending -- the bizarre symbols with which the game is littered are all
    loosely connected through a theme of purification, of facing inner
    demons and the pain & joy of life in order to become a better
    person. It didn't entirely work for me -- some of the symbolism seemed
    arbitrary or cliched to my mind -- but I think it was a good
    beginning. I would really like to play a game with this kind of tone
    which had freed itself from shopworn images and RPG
    leftovers. Something with imagery like the more arresting parts of
    Ritual, but which really cohered to make a powerful statement on some
    aspect of the human condition, could really take advantage of IF's
    immersive capability to create a remarkable work of art. Ritual isn't
    it, but I hope it becomes the jumping-off point for someone (the
    author perhaps?) to create something like it but better: no writing
    errors, no cliches, no anachronisms, no bugs -- just the Ditko
    universes exploding and melting all around us, with meaning.

    Rating: 6.9

    Directory with Inform .z5 file and walkthrough

    Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
    From: Paul Lee <bainespal SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #41 -- July 15, 2005

    TITLE: Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
    AUTHOR: Benjamin Mullins
    EMAIL: benmullins SP@G gmail.com
    DATE: February 2005
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/reser.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    This is a cute little game in which you play the blue "rock 'em
    sock 'em" robot and are determined to defeat your eternal adversary,
    Red. The obvious goal comes very easily; it is the bells and easter-eggs
    that make this game worth your five or ten minutes. Many actions give
    funny responses, and there are several humorous ways to end the game.
    Although the game will draw its laughs, there are not really enough
    things to do to make it a serious endeavor. Still, it accomplishes its
    goal well enough for what it is.

    Neither the coding nor the writing are very spectacular, but they both
    pass. The game has been tested and is not terribly buggy, although the
    Inform debugging commands are still present. Most everything works the
    way it obviously should. The only thing that disappointed me was one
    object that when used suggested something that the game did not
    incorporate. The writing similarly is fine. In fact, in places the prose
    is pleasantly witty. At any rate, the small amount of time that you put
    into this little work should be fun.

    Zcode .z5 file

Go to the previous page of reviews (Q)

Go to the next page of reviews (S)