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ISSUE #28 - March 20, 2002

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

                             ISSUE #28

               Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
                           March 20, 2002

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

    SPAG #28 is copyright (c) 2002 by Paul O'Brian.
    Authors of reviews and articles retain the rights to their contributions.

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

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

    The SPAG Interview with Dan Shiovitz

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

    Akron
    Depravity Bites
    Fallacy of Dawn
    Fine-Tuned
    Lock & Key
    The Mulldoon Murders
    Pytho's Mask
    Stranded
    Vacation Gone Awry

    SPECIFICS
    =========
    Lock & Key

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

    Something's been happening lately on the int-fiction newsgroups, and (to
    a lesser degree) on ifMUD -- there's been a sudden and sizable infusion
    of new blood. This happens from time to time in most communities, and
    the smaller and more insular the community is to begin with, the greater
    the shock when all those new voices start jumping into the fray.
    Newbies, as everybody knows, can be a real pain in the neck. They ask
    questions that have already been answered over and over again. They lack
    the shared history that makes for convenient shortcuts in conversation,
    and thus need to have those shortcuts (and their attendant history)
    explained all over again. Some even come in loudly proclaiming that
    they've got The Right Way to do things, and that all those old veterans
    are just so stuck in their ways that they can't hear The Truth.

    Still, newbies are also what keeps a community living, growing, and
    thriving. Everybody wants to bring new people into the fold, and having
    them there reinvigorates topics that still have more mileage in them. In
    fact, sometimes re-explaining community history and terminology can even
    help veterans see those things in a new light. Yeah, I know -- all of
    the above has been repeated so often that by now it's achieved platitude
    status. We all know it, and in general I've seen newbies get gentler,
    friendlier handling in r*if than most anywhere else on the Internet.

    This time, though, something else seems to be happening that has me a
    little concerned. Somehow, along with our jumbo shipment of newbies, we
    got a greater-than-usual ratio of trolls, kooks, and plain ol' jerks.
    The kooks and jerks happen to be new, but that doesn't make them any
    kookier or jerkier than the ones we already know. They do tend to draw
    us out more, though, because we haven't learned to blow them off yet.
    After that, two things tend to happen, both undesirable. The first is
    that we see massive threads that consist overwhelmingly of arguing,
    often escalating into a sort of Mutual Assured Destruction of nastiness.
    This sort of thing drives away newbies and veterans alike -- nobody
    (aside from trolls) enjoys taking in endless streams of vitriol.

    The other bad result is that because it's so easy to lump new voices in
    together (seeing as we don't know them well enough yet to
    differentiate), innocent and worthwhile newbies can get ignored, or
    worse yet, blasted with the emotion generated by one of the jerks. It's
    fairly self-evident how this is a bad thing -- not only does it create
    and perpetuate bad reputations of elitism and insularity, it also robs
    us of the contributions those new people might have made, had they not
    been so rebuffed.

    All this sounds like I'm winding up to pitch a lot of advice, but I
    hardly think that I'm the guy with the solution to all these problems.
    Instead, I'll just share my approach. First, for the trolls and jerks:
    ignore, ignore, ignore. I think unresponsiveness is like the antibiotic
    for a troll infection -- ignore for 30 days, and if symptoms persist,
    ignore for another 30 days. Second, for the rest of the new: I take a
    deep breath, and if (and only if) I have a productive response to their
    ideas, I post it in what I hope is a welcoming and gentle manner. More
    often than not, this means I don't post much, but that's OK -- I'd
    rather post nothing than get into a fight.

    All this gets a little stickier when it becomes difficult to tell the
    difference between a troll and a genuine newbie who may just be
    confused, a poor communicator, or have a genuinely new take on things. I
    cringe at some of my early postings, some of which were very clueless
    and may even have come across as unfriendly. I was given the benefit of
    the doubt, and I try to extend the same courtesy to the newbies of
    today. It's something we could all use a reminder on every now and then.
    Myself included.

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

    AND THE XYZZY GOES TO...
    This year's XYZZY Awards ceremony was punctuated by several hilarious
    moments, including Nick Montfort's reprise of the amazing alliterative
    abilities he displayed in last year's ceremony. However, in the end, the
    XYZZYs are all about the games, and as usual, the crop of winners is
    quite impressive. Six games and five authors were honored, and for the
    first time since the awards' 1996 inception, the comp winner and the
    XYZZY Best game are one and the same. Below is a full list of the
    winners:
       * Best game: All Roads, by Jon Ingold
       * Best writing: Fallacy of Dawn, by Robb Sherwin
       * Best story: All Roads, by Jon Ingold
       * Best setting: All Roads, by Jon Ingold
       * Best puzzles: First Things First, by J. Robinson Wheeler
       * Best NPCs: Pytho's Mask, by Emily Short
       * Best individual puzzle: The Gostak (deciphering the language), by
         Carl Muckenhoupt
       * Best individual NPC: Yahoweh Porn in Fallacy of Dawn, by Robb
         Sherwin
       * Best individual PC: Tale of the Kissing Bandit, by J. Robinson
         Wheeler
       * Best use of medium: The Gostak, by Carl Muckenhoupt

    NEW GAMES
    Probably the biggest news in this issue's crop of new games is The
    Mulldoon Murders, Jon Ingold's puzzly sequel to his really REALLY puzzly
    1999 game The Mulldoon Legacy. The game is well-timed, coming on the
    heels of Ingold's Comp and XYZZY wins, and it gets its SPAG reviews in
    this issue. There were lots of other nifty things as well, both small
    and... not so small.
       * Flamel (in Italian)
       * Photopia 2.0 (converted to Glulx, visual effects greatly enhanced)
       * Mulldoon II: The Mulldoon Murders by Jon Ingold
       * Scavenger Hunt by Gilles Duchesne
       * RomanceNovelComp games
       * There Was A Certain Man Named Bill by Dinky
       * House on Haunted Hill by James Wilkinson
       * IFLibrary Competition games by various authors
       * The Ritual by Kodrik

    HANDHELD HUGO -- HOORAY!
    For several years now, people have been able to enjoy IF on their Palm
    Pilots (and other handhelds that use the PalmOS.) The only problem has
    been that only z-code games were playable on a handheld. That situation
    has been officially remedied by Kent Tessman's release of a Hugo runtime
    for the Palm Pilot (Note: the program requires PalmOS 3.5); now you can
    hold games like Spur, Fallacy of Dawn, and Will The Real Marjorie
    Hopkirk Please Stand Up? in the Palm of your hand. The runtime is at
    http://www.plover.net/~hugo/palm/hugov30_palm.zip, and pre-converted
    games are at http://www.plover.net/~hugo/palm/pdb.zip. Now if only
    somebody would overcome that stack space limitation and create a TADS
    runtime for the Palm...

    DANCING ON THE JETTY
    Until then, however, we have an equally amazing thing: a Java applet
    that runs TADS games. This technological triumph is called Jetty, and
    has been created by Dan Shiovitz, the subject of this issue's SPAG
    Interview. Jetty is available, along with some snazzy demonstrations, at
    http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/jetty/, and will no doubt soon be
    showing up on the home pages of TADS authors far and wide.

    BEHIND THE PROMPTS
    Okay, so just who *were* Thorn's Companions, and what did they do? What
    happened to Thorn? What does the Dragon Gem have to do with all this? If
    these questions have been bothering you ever since playing Sean
    Barrett's excellent comp entry "Heroes", you're about to get your
    answers. Barrett has posted two documents on his website, one of which
    explains some of the backstory behind the game's fictional scenario,
    while the other is a design journal that provides some nifty insights
    into the author's creative process. The whole shebang is available at
    http://nothings.org/games/if/heroes/.

    UNCLE SPAG WANTS YOU
    I'm very pleased to see several reviewers making their SPAG debuts in
    this issue, with some old standbys chipping in too, but it's not the
    sort of thing that's as reliable as death, taxes, copyright threads, and
    so forth. If you've enjoyed what SPAG has given you, I urge you to give
    something back by contributing a review of your own. As always, I've got
    a list of 10 suggestions ready to spur you on:

    SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
    ========================
    1.  Bad Machine
    2.  First Things First
    3.  Heroine's Mantle
    4.  Hollywood Hijinx
    5.  IFLibraryComp games (any, some, or all!)
    6.  Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle
    7.  The Ritual
    8.  RomanceNovelComp games (any, some, or all!)
    9.  Tale of the Kissing Bandit
    10. Voices

    THE SPAG INTERVIEW---------------------------------------------------------

    The subject of this issue's SPAG Interview has been a fixture in the IF
    community for many years now, and his contributions have been many and
    varied. In addition to providing consistent insight and humor on the
    newsgroups and ifMUD, he's also authored Lethe Flow Phoenix (reviewed in
    SPAG #9), Bad Machine, and a number of SpeedIF games, including "You Are
    A CHEF!", the only SpeedIF game ever to be nominated for an XYZZY Award.
    On top of this, he's written excellent reviews, contributed TADS library
    modules, and now has achieved the monumental: a Java TADS applet that
    also happens to be the first TADS interpreter created from the ground up
    by someone *other* than Mike Roberts. I'm proud to present The SPAG
    Interview with Dan Shiovitz.

                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

       SPAG: First off, the usual opening question: Could you tell us a
       little about yourself? Who are you, what do you do for a living, and
       so forth?

    DS: I'm probably a typical r*if person in that I'm in my mid-twenties and
    work as a programmer. In specific, I live in Seattle and work for
    Infospace in the search group, which covers metacrawler.com,
    dogpile.com, and various other search/directory things people may even
    have heard of (e.g., the AOL white pages). I have been doing IF related
    things since '92, I blush to admit. Digging around on google, it looks
    like my first post is here:
     http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1992Nov18.020500.15752%40u.washington.edu
    which says "hey, where can I find ALAN?"

       SPAG: Looking at some of those early posts, I'm reminded that you
       used to have "The Grim Reaper" in your .sig. What's the story behind
       that?

    DS: Well, the reason I'm no longer using it is partly because I kept
    getting email saying "Are you the famous phreaker of the same nym?" and
    I had to embarassedly write back "Uh, no, sorry, I'm just this guy," but
    mostly because I am no longer cool enough to carry it off.

    Anyway, I poked around with ALAN for a while and then switched to TADS
    as the result of a bet with a friend of mine, and a couple years later
    wrote an actual game.

       SPAG: Right, "Lethe Flow Phoenix". That game's almost seven years old
       now. How do you feel about it today?

    DS: It's not bad. I mean, it's no Galatea, but I'm not unhappy with it.
    If I had it all to do over again I'd probably make the credits page
    shorter.

    And some other things happened after I wrote that and eventually I wrote
    the thing we are technically talking about.

       SPAG: I was just getting to that. Okay, so let's talk about Jetty.
       Why did you decide to undertake such a daunting project? Any
       anecdotes to share about the adventure of writing a TADS interpreter
       from scratch?

    DS: For years when people had said "I see there's txd -- is there a TADS
    disassembler?" I had always said "no, the source is out there but it's
    impossible to actually understand it and there's no other spec or
    documentation of the VM format". So a year ago I was saying that to
    someone for the umpteenth time, and then later it occurred to me that it
    was just *practically* impossible, not *theoretically* impossible. And
    of course from there to doing it is a short step (shades of the
    invention of the Heart of Gold, I guess).

    And after I wrote the decompiler, well, that was the undocumented part,
    and there was plenty of documentation for the parser and so on, and I
    wanted an applet and if I didn't write it who would? So there you go.

    I don't have any amusing stories as such, since mostly it was just, you
    know, coding. The main lesson learned is something I should have known
    already: no matter how well you think it works, when you actually start
    testing on real data (or games, in this case) you will discover it is
    totally broken. Losing Your Grip was the bane of my existence for a
    couple tense weeks, but without the source code that Stephen
    thoughtfully uploaded, Jetty would be even farther from being bug-free.

       SPAG: Speaking of "tt" (that decompiler), there are some TADS games
       I'd love to crack open, but I don't see tt in the IF Archive. Are you
       planning to make it available, and if not, why not?

    DS: Yeah, um, this is one of those things that I've been going back and
    forth on. Obviously some TADS authors have a certain amount invested in
    not having a decompiler out there, or at least it's a somewhat different
    experience playing a game when you can (say) grab the text out whenever
    you get stuck on a puzzle. In practice I plan on putting it out when I
    get it cleaned up a little more, as it's not really ready for use by
    anyone besides me yet. That cleanup's been stalled because there doesn't
    seem to be much demand for the program, but I do intend to finish
    eventually.

       SPAG: While I was on the Jetty web page, I played a bit of Bad
       Machine, and it freaked out my head all over again. What inspired
       that game? How do you feel about the way it's been received?

    DS: I got fairly lucky with this one, in the sense that the idea arrived
    more or less fully-formed and all that was left was (the tedious part)
    execution. More specifically I am pretty sure this article in the Onion,
    "Ask A Worker Bee" (which I would provide a link to, but it seems gone,
    so you'll just have to trust me) [It's available in the book "The
    Onion's Finest News Reporting, Volume 1" --Paul], was directly
    inspirational. Beyond that, well, IF as a medium offers a number of
    interesting advantages over static fiction. People are always mentioning
    'complicity' as one of those but I don't find that very compelling --
    the complicity is generally forced because if you don't go along,
    there's no game. But what you can do without forcing is provide the
    player a new *perspective*. So this was partly an attempt to give as
    different a perspective as possible while not making the game
    unplayable. I hope I found some kind of workable middle ground there.

       SPAG: You've done a number of SpeedIF pieces, including the only one
       ever to be nominated for an XYZZY award. What is it about the form
       that appeals to you?

    DS: Well, it's short, see. In theory this means that you can get out a
    solid idea and it's out there and bam you have a game without working on
    it for months. And this is very satisfying in some ways, particularly
    when you're thinking "man, I'm totally incapable of writing IF".

       SPAG: What was it like working on "Pick Up The Phone Booth And
       Aisle," the game which may have the largest number of co-authors in
       IF history?

    DS: Easiest IF I ever wrote part of; I vote next time we do a
    Curses-sized IF game with two hundred authors.

       SPAG: As an IF veteran, what's your assessment of the current state
       of interactive fiction?

    DS: Pretty cranky, I'm afraid. Or, rather, what it seems to me is that
    people are breaking new ground and making exciting new kinds of games,
    and at the same time new people are picking up the hobby, both of which
    are great individually but in practice what this seems to create is a
    growing gap between people just getting into developing IF and people
    who have been around for a while. Hence endless debates on topics we've
    all seen before: which language is better, why don't we do it all in
    C++, I have a great new authoring system that requires no programming
    wait where are you all going, etc.

    And that's fine and is something I expect, but somehow that seems to be
    a majority of the discussion nowadays, so enh. I guess people are
    putting that creativity into writing games, which is fine in a sense
    since we get great games out of it, but I am also interested in
    theory-as-theory and I'm sorry we don't see more of it. I personally
    think that a moderated group would encourage more of the kind of
    discussion I'm interested in, but there doesn't seem to be the broad
    base of support necessary to make that happen, so we'll just have to
    wait and see what happens.

       SPAG: Finally, another nickname question. Last year, Stephen Granade
       revealed that his ifMUD nickname "Sargent" grew from his initials,
       SRG. I've already tried that with "DS", though, and I don't get
       anywhere close to "inky." So out with it: why are you called "inky"?

    DS: It would be a good closer to the interview if I could reveal that
    I've been living under an assumed name all this time and my initials are
    actually "INK" or something, but all I can do is explain that everyone
    else in my immediate family has a name that ends in -y, and ditto for
    the dog, the cat, and the turtle, so when I was picking something short
    and snappy for an IRC nick, "inky" seemed like a reasonable choice. And
    it stuck so I stuck with it. And there we are.

    If anyone has read down this far, by the way, I should mention there is
    a new release of Jetty, version 1.1, on my page, which has a scrollbar
    and some additional font & color support, so if you downloaded an
    earlier version you may want to check this one out as an update.
    http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/jetty/

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

    Consider the following review header:

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

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

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

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

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

    FROM: J. Michael Bottorff (pika_163 SP@G yahoo.com)

    TITLE: Akron
    AUTHOR: Markus Kolic
    EMAIL: markusrtk SP@G golden.net
    DATE: 2000
    PARSER: Below Average
    SUPPORTS/PLATFORM: ADRIFT
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/adrift/akron.taf
    VERSION: 0.1

    We've all seen it in many games, especially RPGs. Your character wakes
    up and has no idea who he or she is. Amnesia sets in. In "Akron", this
    is also true. However, when your character wakes up, he's in --
    surprise! -- Akron, Ohio. It's where you live, you remember that much.
    And so you tromp all over Akron (or a certain part of it at least,
    because I don't think it's really that small) trying to search for who
    you are.

    So far so serious. However, when you stumble onto a cornfield, you get
    this description:

       You have blundered into a cornfield. Oh my. It looks like this is
       another one of those annoying mazes that the programmer loves so
       much. Well, let me give you a little hint - just go NORTH and you'll
       be out of the maze! You see, I, the computer, have changed this game
       JUST FOR YOU! Or, I can - oh no. The programmer's coming.
       AIEEEEEEEEEEEEE...

    The rest of the game follows suit, of course. In fact, the rest of the
    game is even *wackier*. (I would give you an example, but that would be
    spoiling.)

    The NPC's in this game are almost lifeless. The only one I could strike
    up a conversation with, was the cop, and that was because he was a clue
    to the game. Also, the game bugs are few, but drastic (for example, you
    can't pick up the library card).

    Some parts of "Akron" were endearing, others just irritating and
    mind-boggling. I didn't think this game was very good, but nor very bad.
    My advice: Pick it up if you are interested. If you like it, good. If
    not, just get rid of it. It's not going to be everyone's cup of meat.

    PLOT: A non-structured plot (0.5)
    ATMOSPHERE: Good, Ohio-ish (1.2)
    WRITING: Insanity shines through (0.8)
    GAMEPLAY: A lot of walking (0.9)
    VARIETY: Lots of variety (1.3)
    OVERALL: 4.7

    CHARACTERS: Few, but lifeless (0.7)
    PUZZLES: Completed with the right words (0.8)
    DIFFICULTY: Easy

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

    [We've got a few more reviews from Stas Starkov in this issue, but this
    time around he's enlisted the services of Valentine Kopteltsev to help
    him edit his English into a bit more understandable form. Consequently,
    I've changed far less than in previous issues. --Paul]

    From: Stas Starkov

    NAME: Depravity Bites
    AUTHOR: samjones
    EMAIL: samanthamisunderstood SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: 2002
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/depravityBITES.zip
    VERSION: 1.4

    My poor knowledge of English has played an evil joke on me. While
    searching the IF-archive TADS games directory, I found a file, which was
    quite large (so, I expected that it wasn't one of those tiny two-room
    games), and released very recently. Thus, I had the bad luck to download
    "Depravity Bites". Later, I checked what the word "depravity" meant.

    Ahem... I wish I hadn't seen the game.

    In short: this game is about perversity. One of the most decent
    paragraphs in the game reads:

       Reaching up gingerly you rub circles around both your nipples,
       tweaking them slightly to prepare them for the pegs. Then you take a
       finger full of flesh just over the left nipple and apply the strong
       peg. At first you don't feel anything but then the sting kicks in. A
       sudden flash of discomfort strikes and your first reaction is to
       remove the clip, but that would defeat the object. As the second peg
       snaps its teeth into the plumped flesh of your right nipple you feel
       the full sting of both pegs take effect. Not a dull pain, but a
       constant, high-pitched tingle, making you think to yourself again
       and again, that you should take these off because they hurt. But you
       don't.

    The game explores the darkest corners of homosexuality, sadism, and
    masochism. If you think that such a mix is just for you, you can try it.
    *Shudder*

    Technically, the game is also less than impressive: "guess the verb"
    problems, bugs, juvenile and very stupid humor, dull room descriptions.
    And did I mention tons of dirt pouring from the game's lines?

    How did I find out so much about the game, though I hadn't the nerve to
    finish it? Well, I had a look at the source file, which was enclosed
    with the game package. It's amazing how low human beings can demean
    themselves. I fear that tonight I'll experience horrible sexual
    nightmares. Damn you, "samjones".

    I don't want to spend any more of your and my time on this crashing
    deviancy. Thus, my final word is: if you're not a sadomasochist, don't
    even try to download the game. "Depravity Bites" shows very clearly why
    such games like "Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country" -- an evil
    parody on AIF (Adult IF) games -- are still being written. Compared to
    "Depravity Bites", "SM: TUC" is a Christmas story.

    Now I'm going to take a shower, and hope that my review won't be taken
    as an advertisement for pornography.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Fallacy of Dawn
    AUTHOR: Robb Sherwin
    E-MAIL: beaver SP@G zombieworld.com
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: Hugo standard
    SUPPORTS: Hugo interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/hugo/dawn.zip
    VERSION: 1.02

    One of the more interesting products of the revolution that has taken
    place in IF over the past few years is Robb Sherwin. Okay, technically,
    Robb (presumably) preexisted the revolution, but the style of his games
    didn't, to my knowledge, and somehow I can't see anything he has written
    getting created in 1996. What do I mean? Simply, Robb pretty clearly
    doesn't write his game for the puzzles, and players familiar with Robb,
    I'm guessing, don't play them for the puzzles either; rather, it's the
    writing -- the setting, the dialogue, the turns of phrase that he
    scatters around -- that makes his games worth playing, and everything
    else is an afterthought at best. Fallacy of Dawn, Robb's latest and
    longest, devotes more attention to puzzles than had his previous efforts
    (Chicks Dig Jerks and Crimson Spring), but the effect is still much the
    same.

    What's going on in Fallacy of Dawn? Well, it seems you live in a
    dystopian city gone even worse and work in a retro video arcade -- your
    life's passion appears to be '80s video games -- but you've been the
    victim of a mugging that's left you with brain damage of sorts, and you
    really need to scrape up cash for surgery. From there, the story careers
    wildly here and there for a while, without much intervention from you;
    your character has a habit of making important decisions during
    noninteractive sequences. The upshot, however, is that you eventually
    find yourself with two companions and a weapon, ready to accumulate some
    money by any means necessary...

    ...and that's where things pretty much stop, plot-wise, for most of the
    game. As in, you wander around performing random tasks that give you
    money, and eventually you have enough, and the plot picks up again. The
    middle section is more than half of the game, however, and it amounts to
    a long meander. Worse, it's easy to run out of things to do and end up
    wandering hither and yon asking for spare change. Not literally, but
    close enough; it's not exactly interesting stuff. In that respect,
    Fallacy of Dawn is a step back from Crimson Spring -- there's more to
    the plot here than there was there, but there at least the plot kept
    moving rather than going nowhere for most of the game. It's not even
    accurate to call the digression a segue into puzzle IF rather than plot
    IF, as there aren't really any puzzles to speak of; the gameplay usually
    amounts to doing something extremely obvious, or following someone's
    instructions very closely, in order to earn money (or, alternatively,
    engaging in randomized combat, which hasn't been anyone's idea of a good
    IF puzzle since 1982). Nor, even, is there character development to
    speak of in this section -- your two companions tag along and say very
    little. The raison d'etre, as far as I can tell, is to force you to
    experience the setting in all its grimy glory, and that it does, ad
    nauseam. But as gameplay, this is roughly on the level of a Towers of
    Hanoi puzzle.

    There are more problems. I mentioned above that Fallacy of Dawn devotes
    more attention to puzzles than did Robb's previous games, but by that I
    mean "has more of them," not "has more creative ones." There's the
    puzzle where a vital item is under one of a whole bunch of objects, but
    of course you have no way of knowing which one, nor even that anything
    is under anything. (There's one thoroughly oblique hint, as far as I can
    tell, but that's it.) There's the puzzle that you solve by doing
    something over and over again, causing a certain NPC to (for reasons
    that aren't wholly clear) act like a loon. There's the puzzle that you
    solve when you're entirely incapacitated because the game, for no
    particular reason, lets you do one thing. There are the "puzzles" that
    amount to "try randomized combat, then try it again until you happen to
    kill the bad guy." And don't even get me started on the ending sequence,
    which requires insanely exact syntax under a tight time limit.

    Nor are the problems only design-related. There's more unimplemented
    scenery in Fallacy of Dawn than you can shake a stick at, and fewer
    synonyms than you can, um, fail to shake a stick at. The graphics
    regularly encroach on the text, and the gauges that are supposed to
    represent your health and your need for a drug fix (really) are
    represented by some strange high-ASCII characters. Toward the end, the
    game appears to forget about compass directions and require an awful lot
    of ENTER DOOR and such, for no discernible reason. And it's pretty easy
    to run out of things to say (via conversation menus) to the various
    NPCs, even when they really should have more on their minds; to some
    extent, I suppose, that's par for the course with menus, but when, for
    example, you have a romantic interlude -- at least, I think that's what
    it was supposed to be -- you really should be able to say more than one
    or two things.

    But the writing -- ah, the writing. It's probably fair to say that
    Robb's writing is an acquired taste, and it's not one that I've wholly
    acquired -- the gore, for example, is just a tad too lovingly described
    -- but I like it enough that I stick around to the end of a game that
    doesn't have much more to offer than good writing. (Well, okay, there's
    a plot, and outside sources had given me reason to believe that the
    story would start up again eventually, but I doubt that would have been
    enough.) Bizarre digressions abound -- this one, for instance, from the
    opening text, in the middle of the description of the attack:

       It wasn't a very good showing for either my face or my TLA, in fact
       it brought my knowledge of Vegas handicapping factoids up to two: you
       always bet against the Bills in the Super Bowl, and you always take a
       vapourizer and a pair of fists against my face and my personal
       property. Even if you're getting the points, natch.

    Funny one-liners abound (when you realized you failed to follow up on a
    romantic opportunity, "How on earth did I mess this up? I need to stop
    leaving the house without a personal social calendar assistant"), as do
    memorable images (apartments in a certain complex "feel, when you're in
    them, as well-crafted and sturdy as a margarine-slathered house of
    playing cards"). And it's not a matter of an occasional humorous tidbit
    -- there are amusing or memorably loopy lines in virtually every
    paragraph. (Pizza that's getting cold "has a half-life of skittish
    californium.") Fallacy of Dawn won its Best Writing XYZZY for a reason;
    with a less skilled writer at the controls, this would be a fourth-rate
    game, and I probably wouldn't have given it more than ten minutes.

    As it is, well, it's worth experiencing, though I found myself wishing
    for a text-dump utility more than once. The plot is second-rate sci-fi
    at best, but even second-rate sci-fi is worth playing along with if it's
    memorably written. I can't imagine what sort of IF Robb would write if
    he turned his attention to some of the basic principles of game design,
    and I wouldn't say that his writing makes up for every sin -- I wouldn't
    recommend Chicks Dig Jerks to anyone. As much as Fallacy of Dawn does
    wrong, however, I can't in good conscience refuse to give it a chuckle
    and a thumbs-up.

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

    From: Jacqueline A. Lott

    NAME: Fine-Tuned
    AUTHOR: Dionysius Porcupine (a.k.a. Dennis Jerz)
    EMAIL: jerzdg SP@G uwec.edu
    DATE: 2001-2002
    PARSER: Inform Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/FineTune.z8
    VERSION: Release 5

    "The life of a daredevil adventurer leaves precious little time for
    rest. There's always wickedness to thwart, innocence to preserve, and
    honour to uphold." ...and with that short yet intriguing introduction,
    you find yourself in the shoes (and goggles) of Troy Sterling, a man
    well ahead of his time.

    Fine-Tuned, in my opinion, is one of the better light-hearted games to
    come along in quite awhile. Though early releases of the game were known
    for being buggy, release five seems to be free of such distractions, and
    is well worth setting aside an evening or two to enjoy. If you're
    familiar with earlier versions of Fine-Tuned, release five has some
    extra features as well, including enhanced interaction between the
    characters, different solutions to some of the puzzles, a modified point
    system, and additional implementation in certain areas of the game.

    Dennis Jerz, writing as Dionysius Porcupine (a pen name which is
    explained in the credits of the game), does a fantastic job of creating
    an enjoyable game world, filled with memorable NPCs. As a player, I
    normally don't enjoy games which are heavily scripted; I don't feel like
    I'm playing the game so much as being dragged along through the plot.
    Fortunately, Fine-Tuned is written in such a playful and imaginative way
    that the player tends to forget that their fate is pre-determined.
    Multiple solutions exist for some of the puzzles, and though each
    solution garners the same number of points, the play differs somewhat,
    giving the game replay value. Instead of arbitrarily forcing the plot,
    chapters serve to break up the puzzles, allowing the player to focus on
    the right objects in the right order, without that terrible "Led By The
    Hand" feeling. The chapters also give you the opportunity to explore
    other characters in the game aside from Troy Sterling, which makes for
    interesting twists on how different characters think, feel, and interact
    with the situations that are presented to them.

    I could go on and on about who will enjoy this game. In short, I think
    anyone with a sense of humor will have a fantastic time. If you've
    played a variety of other IF titles, or are familiar with some of the
    current authors of IF, you'll enjoy it a bit more. Beyond that, I found
    that Jerz pulls in varied bits and pieces of real life from all over the
    place. I laughed at loud several times because the game hit home on a
    personal level, and I don't think I'm alone in this respect.

    It is really little wonder that Fine-Tuned received nominations for Best
    Setting and Best Player Character for the 2001 Xyzzy Awards. At the time
    of this writing, the awards have not yet been handed out, and
    Fine-Tuned's nominations wait alongside other deserving nominees.
    Regardless of how the awards are distributed, Fine-Tuned is deserving of
    both honors. Normally, I prefer to imagine that it's me in the game, but
    for once, I really enjoyed playing the part of a highly developed PC.
    Troy Sterling is a man of fashion, a hero for the younger generation,
    defender of the environment and protector of the weak. He has definite
    flair, and it's just plain fun to imagine yourself in his world - a
    world with great friends, malicious enemies, fun puzzles, and humor at
    every turn. All this, combined with Jerz's well-developed story, make
    playing Fine-Tuned a delight.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    From: Øyvind Thorsby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    From: Stas Starkov

    NAME: The Mulldoon Murders
    AUTHOR: Jon Ingold
    EMAIL: ji207 SP@G cam.ac.uk
    DATE: 2002
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Mulldoon.z8
    VERSION: Release 2

    The last IF Competition's winner, Jon Ingold, is a very productive
    author. The Competition has just finished and Jon already has made a new
    game. And not just an easy short game, but a long, complex one.

    This game is great. This game is big. This game is puzzle-oriented. This
    game is detailed. This game is designed tightly. And all this made me
    happy.

    Is it worth your time to play the game? If you expect a semi-CYOA game
    where you don't play but turn pages, then probably not. If you prefer
    easy puzzles or no puzzles at all, if story is your first priority, and
    if you are fond of experiments with IF art forms, then I must advise you
    that this game is not for you. But if you're a puzzle zealot, if you
    like to exert your brainpower, you'll be delighted in the game.

    I have been banging my head against the puzzles in MM ("The Mulldoon
    Murders") for a long time. And it was an enjoyable time for me. (Sounds
    masochistic, doesn't it?) And the main reason for the enjoyment was: I
    love to solve good puzzles. I like to play with various forms of
    gadgets. And I'm fond of puzzles wedded with a good story.

    As the author of MM says, this game is "an interactive sequel". That
    means you're going to like the game much more if you've played its
    predecessor, "The Mulldoon Legacy". I confess, I didn't finish "The
    Mulldoon Legacy", because its puzzles were too hard for me. So, I'm not
    an expert here. Nevertheless, I enjoyed "The Mulldoon Murders" _on its
    own _. If you haven't played "The Mulldoon Legacy", don't worry --
    you're not obligated to do that.

    The game's premise: you, a private eye, are sent to find the protagonist
    of the previous game ("The Mulldoon Legacy") in a big and spooky museum.
    But could it be said that the whole game is a big in-joke? No -- while
    the game's scene of action is the same, the puzzles and the story are
    totally different. But of course they're related to the old puzzles and,
    which is even more important, to the old story -- and this adds a lot of
    fun. In spite of MM being a sequel, its approach to writing is entirely
    unlike the previous game's. It's sufficient to say that your protagonist
    thinks he's been sent "to find the idiot" -- the classically cynical
    point of view of a gumshoe. Is _that_ bad? No, how can classic be bad?!
    Jon Ingold managed to mix the cynicism with really good atmosphere. Look
    at this:

       >go east
       You crash through the bushes. What a life.

       West of the River
       Suddenly you are hemmed in, by bushes on the west side, the museum
       building to the north, and a tall wall to the south. Your torch light
       flicks around the space, dragging a lit circle which makes your eyes
       sting; flecking on the unkempt grass under your feet.

       Leaning near the river is a metal canister, the side ominously split.

       To the east is the dagger-blade of a stream, running through a low
       arch in the wall under the museum itself. It has frozen solid.

    The atmosphere was great. It was the second reason why I loved the game
    so much. It was very effective and... gothic(?).

    Another aspect where the game meets the highest modern standards is the
    extent to which the author intervenes with the player's actions. On one
    hand, the game won't allow the player to perform really stupid actions;
    on the other hand, it doesn't assume too much of what the player really
    wants to do. This way, you never get messages like "You open the door
    and shoot at the guardian who appears in the room" in MM. (Well, that's
    _almost_ true - there is one exception to this rule in the game.) And
    that's how I like it: limited author appearance in the player's actions
    gives the game more interactivity and doesn't make it unfairly hard or
    unfairly easy.

    And now about how hard this game is. Yes, it is quite hard, especially
    in the middle part. However, if you've solved "Mulldoon Legacy" on your
    own (Wow, you're kind of cool!), you'll find this game _easy_. Most of
    the game puzzles are intuitive and realistic -- if your mind is a bit
    twisty. And the puzzles don't require you to perform unmotivated (if you
    believe that solving a puzzle is a sufficient motivation) and strange
    actions. The puzzle realism -- that's why the game has won a place in my
    heart. And the realism was deliberate -- you'll see that in the end.

    To tell the truth, some puzzles could be solved only the hard way, i.e.
    you couldn't just smash a locked door and move further through the game
    like a locomotive, using just brute force. But this game is
    puzzle-based, so puzzles are there to let the player solve it the hard
    way. If you think that puzzles must be solved in all possible ways, this
    game is not for you. However, Jon Ingold has limited the manipulation of
    objects in such a way that you'll meet a possibility of alternative
    solutions quite rarely. Yes, puzzles are deliberately hard, but that's
    why the game is puzzle-based.

    But as some games have shown, easy puzzles can be made hard when
    designed badly. If the player needs to apply twenty objects in his/her
    inventory to hundred objects scattered across the map in hundred rooms,
    he/she will lose interest pretty soon. Each object in a game should be
    thought over carefully -- concerning both the way it works, and its
    relevance to the game. If the game has too few complex objects, it's a
    Scott Adams adventure. On the other hand, if a puzzle-based game has too
    many objects, not only will it turn the author's work into a nightmare,
    it also will bore the player to death because he/she hardly will be able
    to solve a single puzzle, let alone the whole game. And Jon has shown
    that he is a master at creating puzzles -- they are solvable but not
    easily. So the game design was well thought-out.

    Of course, the game's puzzles were not as trivial as "move the rug", or
    "collect four parts of the obscure key". You may ask now, of what type
    were the puzzles, then? To answer in short -- Jon Ingold has created
    puzzles that lie _a bit_ out of the player's first reaction to a puzzle.
    To me, some puzzles were easy, some not. For example, I ran through the
    second half of the game quite fast. But before... I asked the author for
    hints and Jon gave them to me. I don't think that I'd be able to finish
    the game without his help. But I think that soon someone will upload a
    hint file to the IF archive.

    Recommended for all puzzle lovers.

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

    From: Francesco Bova

    The Mulldoon Legacy is a big game, in fact the biggest I've ever played.
    In spite of its expansive and interesting scope however, it's a game
    that is seldom if ever analyzed or discussed. Taking a look at the
    annals of IF review you see a lot of great games being mulled over like
    Photopia and Spider And Web, but nary a mention of the Mulldoon Legacy.
    In fact, finding a Mulldoon review is next to impossible (barring, of
    course, Duncan's review in SPAG). So the question remains: why is a game
    as dense and interesting as the Mulldoon Legacy not being discussed? One
    reason might be that with so cavernous a game to review, it's hard to
    know where to start. The Mulldoon Legacy has 100+ rooms, many set-piece
    puzzles, and countless little subplots that all form threads in an
    overall pattern, but deciding which thread to start with is daunting to
    say the least. Another problem might be effectively summarizing what all
    the threads put together really mean. This was my biggest problem,
    because when I'd finally finished the Mulldoon Legacy, although duly
    impressed, I found myself unable to articulate my gaming experience.

    Well, I'm now glad I didn't hypothesize as to what it all meant because
    it appears I wasn't on the right track all along. The Mulldoon Murders,
    Jon Ingold's sequel to his mammoth epic of a masterpiece goes a long way
    in capping off the Mulldoon Legacy and bringing closure to some
    unanswered questions from the original, while opening the doors to a few
    others. There's a great story in there somewhere, but I'll take a look
    at that a bit later. For now, let's focus on the gameplay.

    More an epilogue that takes place a few weeks after the original
    Mulldoon than a true sequel, the Mulldoon Murders focuses on the same
    weirdly constructed museum we loved plodding through in the original.
    This time however, instead of giving us 100+ rooms to explore, the game
    focuses primarily on one corner of the museum.

    A smaller amount of rooms also means a smaller amount of items to
    interact with, which is significant because the original game in the
    series was often bogged down by the combinatorial explosion that comes
    with a lot of rooms and hundreds of items. Most of the scenery and room
    structures are very familiar with slight twists in the geography; That
    is to say, it's not the exact same layout as the original but the
    grounds, principal NPCs and some items have taken on mutated, often
    darker, characteristics from the original.

    Considering the landscape by and large is the same, I found it
    impressive that there was very little duplication of puzzles. By my
    count, prior knowledge from the original game only helped me in one or
    two areas, as Jon implemented some novel and interesting ways to
    traverse the same hurdles.

    The puzzles tended to be multi-faceted, which is to say you'll need to
    do a fair bit of lateral thinking. Almost all the puzzles are
    satisfying, and there is plenty of reuse of apparently single-use items
    (an Ingold hallmark) in creative and initially unforeseen ways. The
    puzzles are mostly fair, with only one or two relying on a blind faith
    that rewards you without really knowing why. Having said that though,
    the game play is tight enough and the landscape small enough that even
    if you get stumped, fiddling around with different objects should help
    you find your way quite quickly.

    Other nice features include not being able to put the game into an
    unwinnable state, and absolutely beautifully drawn out scenery
    descriptions. Ingold's descriptions are stark and rarely verbose, with
    the odd grammatical or spelling mistake. Interestingly enough I thought
    the odd mistake added to the raw feel of the prose. Here's an example:

       Strange Sculptures Room
       This is the western end of a long hallway, and where the rubble of
       your explosion stops, strange sculptures start. But these sculptures
       aren't stone - they're blocks of plastic, bits of cloth, squares of
       foil. The most striking is the large celery stick reaching up to the
       ceiling. A few stairs lead down to the southwest, out of this
       particular exhibit.

    So all in all, a great little puzzle game with great scenery. To my
    surprise however, it didn't end there. As with the original in the
    series, I found myself getting so caught up in the prose and the puzzles
    that I rarely noticed the fact that there were Weighty Issues Afoot.
    It's interesting that in both Mulldoon games I found myself discounting
    Jon's storytelling ability by focusing on the games more as puzzlefests,
    only to be ultimately surprised by the endings.

    At the beginning of this review, I had mentioned being glad that I had
    not hypothesized as to what was really going on in the original, and
    here's why: My initial feelings after finishing the original Mulldoon
    were that the final outcome in that game had been mostly *a good thing*
    for the PC. The sequel left me with a much more malevolent taste in my
    mouth, which in turn made me think differently about the original in the
    series and its many threads and subplots. This shifting of assumptions
    was in fact the piece of Mulldoon II that appealed most to me because,
    like a fine wine that takes on new characteristics with the right
    cheese, it left a completely different taste on my palate.

    The ending has sparked some good debate on r.g.i-f, and has turned on a
    whole new group of players to the Mulldoon series which is great for Jon
    Ingold and ultimately good for IF. As for myself, I think I've got a
    better inkling as to what's going on but I'm still not sure I have
    enough to hypothesize as to what it all means (fortunately, I didn't let
    that stop me from reviewing this time). Here's hoping Mulldoon III sorts
    out a few more of my quandaries (yes Jon, this is a request).

    Finally, in some of the game notes, Jon mentions that Mulldoon II works
    as a stand-alone game. Although I agree that prior knowledge of the
    original won't necessarily help you complete the game any faster, it
    will certainly enhance your playing experience as a whole. As a result,
    playing Mulldoon II without giving the original a shot first is not
    recommended.

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

    From: Thomas Smith

    TITLE: Pytho's Mask
    AUTHOR: Emily Short
    E-MAIL: emshort SP@G mindspring.com
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GMD)
    URL: ftp://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/pytho.z8
    VERSION: Release 2

    I want to marry Galatea. This is something that should be got out in the
    open, to avoid any later confusion. Galatea is stimulating, engaging,
    fun, not to mention one of the greatest -- probably the single greatest
    -- technical achievements in IF. And I want to marry her.

    Sadly, there is nobody in Pytho's Mask who I want to marry. This is
    probably a good thing. On the other hand, I do want to buy the palace
    and live in it. These strange desires should probably be a cause for
    concern and -- eventually -- expensive therapy; however, they do serve
    to point one thing out: the tremendous talent of Emily Short.

    There are other things that could point this out, of course. Things like
    the bravura opening: a few lines of cryptic dialogue are followed by an
    immediate scene-change, at which point you are engaged in conversation.
    This is impressive. Not necessarily because of the technical difficulty
    -- anyone can script an NPC to say a line -- but because of the sheer
    cheek of it: how many IF authors are there who even encourage you to
    converse with their NPCs, let alone draw your attention to them?

    Of course, this is done not out of cheek, but rather because this author
    -- almost uniquely in IF -- can get away with it; Emily Short's NPCs are
    far ahead of anyone else's, both technically and in terms of character.
    In fact, that could be said to be the only problem with Pytho's Mask:
    the technical aspects of this game represent such a leap ahead that the
    other parts of the game seem occasionally to struggle to keep up. The
    idea of combining ask/tell and menu-based conversation systems so as to
    keep the fluidity of the first but the sense of the second was utterly
    brilliant -- but there are many places where either so much has been
    implemented that it is possible to simply get lost in conversation, or
    others where the crucial topic is mysteriously lacking.

    Is it unfair to judge Pytho's Mask like this? By any other author's
    standards, the conversations in it are a hell of an achievement -- it's
    just that this isn't any other author, this is the author responsible
    for Galatea, and indeed the author responsible for this system. Not only
    that, but everything else about the game is superb. What seems like a
    slightly bizarre fantasy story rapidly settles into a whodunit -- or
    rather, whos-going-to-do-it -- with added love interest, both of which
    are beautifully written and paced. The writing is good; the
    implementation is deep (although with some gaps). The game is shortish,
    but that isn't in itself a problem -- there's plenty packed in.
    Generally, then, this is not quite a perfect game, but it's getting
    pretty close.

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

    From: Stas Starkov

    NAME: Stranded
    AUTHOR: Jim Bayers
    EMAIL: bayers SP@G honors.arizona.edu
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (GNU General Public License Version 2)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/stranded.gam
    VERSION: 1.0

    What would you say if you saw a room description like this:

       Main Street
           This is Odduck's main street which is also Highway 13. Huge elms
       grow to each side, their leaves casting mottled shade on the
       pavement. It's safe to cross as there are few cars. Set in the center
       of the street is a manhole cover. From here, Main Street stretches
       east and west. To your north is the Odduck Diner, home of world
       famous jerked chicken. South of you is a park filled with trees.

    What was your first thought after reading the paragraph above? Let me
    guess -- you thought, "The author can't write at all". Yes, it's obvious
    that the writing is icky, that the sentences are put in the wrong order,
    that the sentences themselves are very short and unamusing, that ... but
    that's enough.

    And what would you say if you saw a whole game consisting of such
    passages? I can imagine your answer being short -- a four-letter word.
    :-)

    But I haven't told you all the truth. Those stylistic lapses were done
    deliberately! Why do I think so? Hmmm... Because it looks _too_ babyish,
    _too_ art brut, _too_ simple-hearted. But: "Stranded is an interactive
    game for educational use," the game author says. (Have you noticed the
    absence of the word "fiction"?) And believe me, he doesn't lie -- the
    game was _intended_ for a young, very young player. But the mere
    intention is not enough to make a good game, I think.

    I don't know much about nurturing children, but when I was a child, I
    read well-written books; they were true literature by true authors. And
    I've never read a book written by a child for children, but I'm aware
    that there can be other approaches to literature for children.
    Apparently, the author of "Stranded" took one of those other approaches.
    I think, during game creation, he was under the impression a child's
    book should express itself in baby-like language. Was he right? Do
    children enjoy the same lowbrow language that they talk themselves?
    Maybe -- I can't judge: I'm neither a child, nor a schoolmaster.
    Nevertheless, I can't disregard the game's language, because it's _me_
    who has to express my opinion of it (and the game in general), and it's
    _you_ who have to make a decision whether to play the game, or not, on
    the basis of that opinion.

    However, it's not as easy as you probably think. The game also contains
    graphics, which look as if made by a child. The pictures were not drawn
    by hand and then scanned -- rather, they were created with the aid of a
    vector graphic editor ("CorelDraw", I suspect). They are not ugly, but
    they are _intended_ to look like a kid's work: unrealistic perspectives,
    askew lines, flat two-dimensional depictions of 3D-objects. But wait --
    there is a style of art that uses this very approach. It is called
    "primitivism". The disciples of the style think that art must be
    uncomplicated and jolly.

    Primitivism is mainly a pictorial art, but when I look at the writing of
    the game I notice it's primitivistic, as well. Thus, "Stranded" is a
    work of primitivism. See -- the game is a work of art! But not everybody
    is ready to enjoy that art style. I wasn't, for instance -- to me, the
    writing seemed just ... umm ... not good. But I'm sure somebody will
    like the style, at least because it's so unusual.

    But let's go into further detail of the game.

    As I said, "Stranded" is intended for novice players, so there are not
    many puzzles or other challenges. The game is quite straightforward and
    easy: your protagonist -- a young pupil -- missed a bus in a small town
    called Odduck. Now he/she wants to leave the town to go home, or
    get back on his/her bus. And to do that, he/she needs money for a
    ticket. In such a situation, the only possibility is ... to find a job.
    To be more specific, he/she runs errands. All the errands are easy, and
    not very interesting.

    From a hardcore IF-player's point of view, the game's dialogue system is
    not done very well. It's menu-based, so you can choose one of its
    options at a time, but it also lets the player have the same dialogue
    again and again and again. Well, the usual graphic adventure features
    exactly this type of dialogue system, and children might find it more
    convenient; but again, I'm not a child, so I didn't like it.

    Some of the puzzles are purely educational, some didactic. That's good
    for a young player.

    The number of locations in the game is quite large, but the locations
    can be accessed easily and they look ... uhm ... bright. And the whole
    game is lighthearted. The town the PC gets stuck in is a big, sunny, and
    almost trouble-free place, inhabited exclusively by kind people. The
    town residents, who are speaking a funny vernacular, lead a peaceful,
    happy life. But the PC needs to get home. Like in real life.

    Unfortunately, I've found a bug in the game; it wasn't terrible, but it
    let me win the game without solving all the puzzles. I sent a note to
    the game author saying about the bug, and he promised that it will be
    fixed in a next version.

    Let me sum it up: "Stranded" is a short cushy game either for young
    novice players or for somebody who feels nostalgic about innocent
    childhood. Hardcore IF players probably will find the game weak.

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

    From: Duncan Stevens

    TITLE: Vacation Gone Awry
    AUTHORS: Johan Berntsson, Fredrik Ramsberg, and Staffan Friberg
    E-MAIL: vacation SP@G ramsberg.net
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: Inform, modified somewhat
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/Vacation.z5
    VERSION: Release 2

    I must acknowledge that Vacation Gone Awry got my attention right away
    -- but not with the cleverness of its premise or with a nifty hook. No,
    what grabbed me was the copyright notice, which described the game as
    "copyright (c) 1988-2002." Not many works of any kind are fourteen years
    in the making, and IF has a sufficiently short shelf life that putting
    that much time into an IF game is worthy of note. More to the point,
    though, the world of IF changed more than a little between 1988 and
    2002, and I wondered just how retro Vacation Gone Awry would feel. The
    short answer: fairly. But not unpleasantly so.

    One of the aspects that makes Vacation feel a little dated is that the
    plot is a bit on the ostensible side. You're vacationing with your
    family when a big causal event happens, which leads to various puzzles
    involving getting into a research lab, which leads to standard
    research-lab situations and mildly artificial puzzles, many of the
    there-must-be-*something*-important-behind-this-obstacle variety. There
    are NPCs, to be sure, but most are cardboard at best; their saving grace
    is that most of them do move around without, as far as I can tell,
    tripping over any bugs. Most importantly, though, nothing much happens
    after the first third or so of the game, besides that you solve puzzles;
    most IF of more recent vintage is somewhat more story-driven, in that
    solving puzzles will lead not only to more puzzles but also to some sort
    of plot development, but in Vacation the plot is pretty much given to
    you whole at the beginning. This stuff isn't the kiss of death, I
    suppose, but it does give the game a certain flavor.

    As a puzzle- rather than a plot-driven game, however, Vacation is a
    reasonably good, though by no means perfect, example of the form. Lessee
    -- the good: there's a timing puzzle that involves a certain amount of
    large-scale thinking (figuring out who's where when) and some advance
    planning, though some trial and error is necessary as well. The bad:
    that same puzzle requires an astounding amount of stupidity from a
    certain NPC; let's just say that most people, when they encounter
    someone walking away from a suspicious event, don't just wave them by.
    The good: the game's world is built in a way that does a passable job of
    modeling a real research lab -- not every locked door can be opened, for
    instance, and certain locations are there because realism requires them,
    not because they're essential to a puzzle. The bad: some of the red
    herrings are simply confusing and don't appear to be driven by realism,
    as there's no particular reason why the features in question should
    appear where they do (which tends to suggest to the savvy player that
    puzzles are at work). The good: a puzzle that involves delving into an
    NPC's past. The bad: the way you put that knowledge to use is (a) cruel,
    (b) far from subtle, and (c) made unnecessarily hard by the point in the
    game -- i.e., very early -- where the puzzle comes up. As in, the game
    closes off if you don't take advantage of a specific opportunity at a
    specific time, and taking advantage of that opportunity requires
    knowledge that you're unlikely to have gathered by that point. The good:
    a multi-room puzzle that's an homage of sorts to a pretty good puzzle
    from Lurking Horror. The bad: here, unlike there, solving the puzzle in
    the way you do really should attract some attention, but the attention
    never comes.

    You get the idea. The design problems aren't severe by any means, and
    most probably wouldn't have been considered design flaws at all in 1988;
    a lot of them amount to NPC stupidity or cardboardness, and those things
    haven't always been considered major warts. Still, the game simply
    doesn't try all that hard in that department -- there are quite a few
    things that the NPCs should be able to talk about but can't, and you can
    carry around all sorts of suspicious items without any comment from
    them. There's also the larger problem that, even though you're supposed
    to be working with some scientists in a lab, no one seems particularly
    interested in actually working with you, and you can go about your
    puzzle-solving business without anyone asking what you're doing. The
    puzzles themselves are clever in their way; it's just that the player
    who says to himself "but I could never get away with that" may get onto
    the wrong track.

    The writing is adequate, though largely unexceptional -- most of the
    descriptions are pretty workmanlike, but there are flashes of
    personality here and there. Trying to charge off into a storm elicits
    "Hey! There's a blizzard going on, in case you forgot," and "search
    jeans" brings "You figured out the difference between boys and girls a
    long time ago. You know what is in the jeans." There are some clumsy
    moments as well, though -- for some reason, Inform's default "That's
    hardly portable" for stationary objects has been replaced by "That seems
    unmobile," not an improvement, and this description of a sound, "There's
    that whistling sound again. It does sound like someone whistling," is
    simply redundant. This paragraph is representative:

       The corridor, entering from the south, ends at a heavy door made of
       steel. Judging from the temperature, being somewhat lower here than
       in the rest of the building, you jump to the conclusion that the door
       could lead out into the cold (or into a giant freezer, perhaps...)

    The "being somewhat lower" phrase is clumsy and "judging from the
    temperature" is a little wordy, but "jump to the conclusion" and "giant
    freezer" are pretty funny, in a wry way. The writing is also marred by
    sprinkling of typos and misspellings that recurs just often enough to be
    noticeable. The problems -- e.g., "Suddenly high-pitched alarm signals
    start emerging from hidden loudspeakers"; do sounds really "emerge"? --
    aren't so awkward that they make things unclear, however, and on the
    whole the writing isn't a major flaw.

    The technical aspect is okay, on the whole -- the NPC movement daemons
    work particularly well, and one complex object in the castle was well
    handled. There are also very few library responses, though some of the
    replacements are less helpful than the library; one that I found
    particularly irritating was, as a generic failure message, "You do. Not
    that it seems to change anything," even though more often than not the
    action in question had not been "done." I wrestled with the syntax a few
    times, but mostly when I was on the wrong track anyway, and synonyms are
    reasonably plentiful. The problems lie more in the design.

    How grave those problems are is, as usual, a matter of taste. As most of
    the puzzles are reasonably well-conceived, some will enjoy this
    thoroughly; as the logic is often less than thorough, particularly
    around the edges, some will find this annoying. For my own part, I ended
    up somewhere in the middle, but a given player's attitude will more than
    likely depend on how that player feels about IF created circa 1988.

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

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

    Name                    Avg Sc    Chr     Puz # Sc  Issue Notes:
    ====                    ======    ===     === ====  ===== ======
    1-2-3...                  4.1     0.9     0.5    3     23 F_INF_ARC
    9:05                      6.6     0.7     0.5   11     20 F_INF_ARC
    Aayela                    7.0     1.0     1.3    6     10 F_TAD_ARC
    Abbey                     6.8     0.6     1.4    1     24 S10_I_ARC
    Above and Beyond          7.3     1.5     1.6    5     24 F_TAD_ARC
    Acid Whiplash             5.2     0.7     0.2    5     17 F_INF_ARC
    Acorn Court               6.1     0.5     1.5    2     12 F_INF_ARC
    Ad Verbum                 7.4     0.9     1.7    3     23 F_INF_ARC
    Adv. of Elizabeth Hig     3.1     0.5     0.3    2      5 F_AGT_ARC
    Adventure (all varian     6.4     0.6     1.1   15   8,22 F_INF_TAD_ETC_ARC
    Adventureland             4.4     0.5     1.1    6        F_INF_ARC
    Adventures of Helpful     7.0     1.3     0.9    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Aftermath                 4.0     0.7     0.7    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Afternoon Visit           4.1     1.0     0.8    1        F_AGT
    Aisle                     6.8     1.4     0.3   10     18 F_INF_ARC
    Alien Abduction?          7.5     1.3     1.4    5 10, 26 F_TAD_ARC
    All Alone                 8.2     1.3     0.7    2     22 F_TAD_ARC
    All Quiet...Library       5.0     0.9     0.9    6      7 F_INF_ARC
    All Roads                 8.8     1.6     1.7    1        F_INF_ARC
    Amnesia                   6.9     1.5     1.3    4      9 C_AP_I_64
    Anchorhead                8.7     1.7     1.5   29     18 F_INF_ARC
    And The Waves...          7.9     1.5     1.1    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Another...No Beer         2.4     0.2     0.8    2      4 S10_I_ARC
    Arrival                   7.9     1.3     1.4    5     17 F_TAD_ARC
    Arthur: Excalibur         8.0     1.3     1.6    44,14,22 C_INF
    Asendent                  1.7     0.0     0.3    1        F_INF_ARC
    At Wit's End              7.1     1.2     1.3    1     23 F_TAD_ARC
    Augmented Fourth          7.9     1.2     1.6    7     22 F_INF_ARC
    Aunt Nancy's House        1.3     0.1     0.0    2        F_INF_ARC
    Awakened                  7.7     1.7     1.6    1
    Awakening                 5.9     1.1     1.1    3  15,18 F_INF_ARC
    Awe-Chasm                 3.0     0.7     0.7    2      8 S_I_ST_ARC
    Babel                     8.5     1.7     1.3   11     13 F_INF_ARC
    Balances                  6.6     0.7     1.2    9      6 F_INF_ARC
    Ballyhoo                  7.3     1.5     1.5    6      4 C_INF
    Bear's Night Out          7.3     1.1     1.3    7     13 F_INF_ARC
    Beat The Devil            5.5     1.2     1.1    4     19 F_INF_ARC
    Begegnung am Fluss        5.6     0.8     1.4    1        F_I_ARC
    Being Andrew Plotkin      7.5     1.5     1.1    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Best Man                  5.2     0.8     1.2    2        F_INF_ARC
    Beyond the Tesseract      5.0     0.8     0.9    2      6 F_I_ARC
    Beyond Zork               7.6     1.5     1.7   11  5, 14 C_INF
    Big Mama                  5.4     1.2     0.6    3     23 F_INF_ARC
    BJ Drifter                6.5     1.2     1.2    5     15 F_INF_ARC
    Bliss                     6.3     1.1     0.8    4     20 F_TAD_ARC
    Bloodline                 7.7     1.4     1.1    2     15 F_INF_ARC
    Border Zone               7.2     1.4     1.4    7      4 C_INF
    Breakers                  7.5     1.5     1.1    1        C_I_AP_M_64_S
    Break-In                  6.1     1.1     1.4    3     21 F_INF_ARC
    Breaking The Code         0.4     0.0     0.0    2        F_INF_ARC
    Brimstone: The Dream.     6.5     1.4     1.1    1        C_I_AP_M_64_S
    Broken String             3.9     0.7     0.4    4        F_TADS_ARC
    BSE                       5.7     0.9     1.0    3        F_INF_ARC
    Bureaucracy               7.1     1.5     1.4   13      5 C_INF
    Busted                    5.1     1.1     0.9    2     25 F_INF_ARC
    Calliope                  4.7     0.9     0.8    3        F_INF_ARC
    Carma                     8.0     1.9     1.2    1        F_GLU_ARC
    Cask                      1.5     0.0     0.5    2        F_INF_ARC
    Castaway                  1.1     0.0     0.4    1      5 F_I_ARC
    Castle Amnos              4.6     1.0     0.8    2        F_INF_ARC
    Castle Elsinore           4.3     0.7     1.0    2        I_ARC
    Cattus Atrox              4.9     1.2     0.8    1     17 F_INF_ARC
    Cave of Morpheus          5.4     1.3     1.0    1        F_ADR_ARC
    CC                        4.2     0.4     1.0    1        F_ALAN_ARC
    Change in the Weather     7.5     1.0     1.3   14 7,8,14 F_INF_ARC
    Chaos                     5.6     1.3     1.1    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Chicken under Window      6.6     0.8     0.3    4        F_INF_ARC
    Chicks Dig Jerks          5.2     1.1     0.7    9     19 F_INF_ARC
    Chico and I Ran           7.2     1.7     1.1    1        F_INF_ARC
    Christminster             8.3     1.6     1.6   21     20 F_INF_ARC
    Circus                    3.4     0.5     0.8    1
    City                      6.1     0.6     1.3    2     17 F_INF_ARC
    Clock                     3.7     0.8     0.6    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Coke Is It!               5.6     1.0     0.9    3        F_INF_ARC
    Coming Home               0.6     0.1     0.1    1        F_INF_ARC
    Common Ground             7.1     1.6     0.3    3     20 F_TAD_ARC
    Commute                   1.3     0.2     0.1    1        F_I_ARC
    Comp00ter Game            0.9     0.1     0.1    1        F_INF_ARC
    Congratulations!          2.6     0.7     0.3    1        F_INF_ARC
    Corruption                7.2     1.6     1.0    4 14, 21 C_MAG
    Cosmoserve                7.8     1.4     1.4    5      5 F_AGT_ARC
    Cove                      6.5     0.8     0.7    4     22 F_INF_ARC
    Crimson Spring            6.9     1.5     1.2    1        F_HUG_ARC
    Crypt v2.0                5.0     1.0     1.5    1      3 S12_IBM_ARC
    Curses                    8.0     1.2     1.7   20  2, 22 F_INF_ARC
    Cutthroats                5.7     1.3     1.1    9      1 C_INF
    Dampcamp                  5.0     0.8     1.1    3        F_TAD_ARC
    Danger! Adventurer...     3.2     0.3     0.7    1        F_INF_ARC
    Dangerous Curves          8.6     1.5     1.6    1     24 F_INF_ARC
    Day For Soft Food         6.8     1.0     1.3    5     19 F_INF_ARC
    Deadline                  6.9     1.3     1.3    9     20 C_INF
    Death To My Enemies       4.4     0.9     0.7    4        F_INF_ARC
    Deep Space Drifter        5.6     0.4     1.1    3      3 S15_TAD_ARC
    Deephome                  4.0     0.5     0.9    2     21 F_INF_ARC
    Degeneracy                8.7     1.5     1.3    1     25 F_INF_ARC
    Delusions                 7.9     1.5     1.5    5      14F_INF_ARC
    Demon's Tomb              7.4     1.2     1.1    2      9 C_I
    Desert Heat               6.0     1.3     0.7    1     23 F_TAD_ARC
    Detective                 1.0     0.0     0.0    9 4,5,18 F_AGT_INF_ARC
    Detective-MST3K           6.0     1.2     0.2   10 7,8,18 F_INF_ARC
    Dinner With Andre         7.2     1.6     1.4    1     23 F_INF_ARC
    Ditch Day Drifter         6.3     0.9     1.6    5      2 F_TAD_ARC
    Djinni Chronicles         7.1     1.1     1.1    3     23 F_INF_ARC
    Down                      6.0     1.0     1.2    1     14 F_HUG_ARC
    Downtown Tokyo            6.1     0.9     1.0    6     17 F_INF_ARC
    Dragon Hunt               5.4     0.5     0.5    1        F_HUG_ARC
    Dungeon                   6.2     1.0     1.6    3        F_ARC
    Dungeon Adventure         6.8     1.3     1.6    1      4 F_ETC
    Dungeon of Dunjin         6.0     0.7     1.5    5  3, 14 S20_IBM_MAC_ARC
    Edifice                   8.0     1.4     1.8   10     13 F_INF_ARC
    Eins Swei Spiegelei       5.0     1.1     1.0    1        F_ARC
    Electrabot                0.7     0.0     0.0    1      5 F_AGT_ARC
    E-Mailbox                 3.1     0.1     0.2    2        F_AGT_ARC
    Emy Discovers Life        5.0     1.1     0.8    3        F_AGT
    Enchanter                 7.3     1.1     1.5   10   2,15 C_INF
    End Means Escape          6.1     1.4     1.1    1     23 F_TAD_ARC
    Enhanced                  5.0     1.0     1.3    2      2 S10_TAD_ARC
    Enlightenment             6.5     1.1     1.5    3     17 F_INF_ARC
    Erehwon                   6.2     1.2     1.5    4     19 F_TAD_ARC
    Eric the Unready          7.4     1.4     1.4    6        C_I
    Essex                     5.7     1.2     0.9    1        C_I_AP_M_64_ST
    Everybody Loves a Par     7.0     1.2     1.2    3     12 F_TAD_ARC
    Exhibition                6.2     1.4     0.3    6     19 F_TAD_ARC
    Fable                     2.0     0.1     0.1    3      6 F_AGT_ARC
    Fable-MST3K               4.0     0.5     0.2    4        F_AGT_INF_ARC
    FailSafe                  7.5     1.0     1.0    1  24,25 F_INF_ARC
    Fear                      6.3     1.2     1.3    3 10, 24 F_INF_ARC
    Fifteen                   1.5     0.5     0.4    1     17 F_INF_ARC
    Firebird                  7.1     1.5     1.3    4     15 F_TAD_ARC
    Fish                      7.5     1.3     1.7    4 12, 14 C_MAG
    Foggywood Hijinx          6.2     1.2     1.3    3     21 F_TAD_ARC
    Foom                      6.6     1.0     1.0    1        F_TAD_ARC
    For A Change              8.0     0.9     1.3    6 19, 22 F_INF_ARC
    Forbidden Castle          4.8     0.6     0.5    1        C_AP
    Four In One               4.4     1.2     0.5    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Four Seconds              6.0     1.2     1.1    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Frenetic Five             5.3     1.4     0.5    3     13 F_TAD_ARC
    Frenetic Five 2           6.6     1.5     1.0    3 21, 22 F_TAD_ARC
    Friday Afternoon          6.3     1.4     1.2    1     13 F_INF_ARC
    Frobozz Magic Support     7.2     1.2     1.5    3        F_TAD_ARC
    Frozen                    5.5     0.7     1.3    1        F_INF_ARC
    Fusillade                 7.1     1.5     0.3    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Frustration               5.7     1.1     0.9    1     21 F_TAD_ARC
    Futz Mutz                 5.3     1.0     1.1    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Galatea                   7.4     1.8     0.9    5     22 F_INF_ARC
    Gateway                   8.6     1.4     1.8    7     11 C_I
    Gateway 2: Homeworld      9.0     1.7     1.9    6     24 C_I
    Gerbil Riot of '67        6.3     0.7     1.1    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Glowgrass                 6.9     1.3     1.3    5     13 F_INF_ARC
    Gnome Ranger              5.8     1.2     1.6    1        C_I
    Golden Fleece             6.0     1.0     1.1    1     21 F_TAD_ARC
    Golden Wombat of Dest     6.3     0.7     1.1    1     18 F_I_ARC
    Good Breakfast            4.9     0.9     1.2    2     14 F_INF_ARC
    Got ID?                   6.2     1.4     1.0    1        F_INF_ARC
    Great Archeolog. Race     6.5     1.0     1.5    1      3 S20_TAD_ARC
    Guardians of Infinity     8.5             1.3    1      9 C_I
    Guess The Verb!           6.5     1.2     1.4    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Guild of Thieves          6.9     1.2     1.5    4     14 C_MAG
    Guilty Bastards           6.9     1.4     1.2    5     22 F_HUG_ARC
    Guitar...Immortal Bar     3.0     0.0     0.0    1        F_INF_ARC
    Gumshoe                   6.2     1.0     1.1    7      9 F_INF_ARC
    Halothane                 6.6     1.3     1.2    4     19 F_INF_ARC
    Happy Ever After          4.6     0.5     1.2    1        F_INF_ARC
    HeBGB Horror              5.7     0.9     1.1    2        F_ALAN_ARC
    Heist                     6.7     1.4     1.5    2        F_INF_ARC
    Hero, Inc.                6.8     1.0     1.5    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Heroes                    7.9     1.8     1.6    1        F_INF_ARC
    Hitchhiker's Guide        7.3     1.3     1.5   16      5 C_INF
    Hobbit - The True Sto     5.9     1.1     0.8    1     26 S10_I_ARC
    Hollywood Hijinx          6.3     0.9     1.5   12        C_INF
    Holy Grail                6.2     0.9     1.2    1     21 F_TAD_ARC
    Horror of Rylvania        7.2     1.4     1.4    5      1 F_TAD_ARC
    Horror30.zip              3.7     0.3     0.7    2      3 S20_I_ARC
    Human Resources Stori     0.9     0.0     0.1    2     17 F_INF_ARC
    Humbug                    7.4     1.6     1.3    4 11, 24 F_I_ARC
    Hunter, In Darkness       7.3     0.9     1.4    7     19 F_INF_ARC
    I didn't know...yodel     4.0     0.7     1.0    5     17 F_I_ARC
    I-0: Jailbait on Inte     7.7     1.5     1.2   20     20 F_INF_ARC
    Ice Princess              7.5     1.4     1.6    2        A_INF_ARC
    In The End                4.8     0.6     0.2    3     10 F_INF_ARC
    In The Spotlight          3.2     0.2     1.0    2     17 F_INF_ARC
    Infidel                   6.9     0.2     1.4   15      1 C_INF
    Infil-Traitor             2.9     0.1     0.7    1        F_I_ARC
    Informatory               5.5     0.5     1.3    1     17 F_INF_ARC
    Ingrid's Back             7.0     1.6     1.6    2        C_I
    Inheritance               5.0     0.3     1.0    3     20 F_TAD_ARC
    Inhumane                  4.4     0.3     0.9    4  9, 20 F_INF_ARC
    Intruder                  6.7     1.3     1.1    4     20 F_INF_ARC
    Invasion of... Jupite     1.9     0.3     0.6    1        F_I_ARC
    Jacaranda Jim             7.5     1.0     0.9    3     24 F_ARC
    Jacks...Aces To Win       7.1     1.3     1.2    3     19 F_INF_ARC
    Jarod's Journey           2.5     0.5     0.3    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Jewel of Knowledge        6.3     1.2     1.1    3     18 F_INF_ARC
    Jeweled Arena             7.0     1.4     1.3    2        AGT_ARC
    Jigsaw                    8.2     1.6     1.6   19    8,9 F_INF_ARC
    Jinxter                   6.1     0.9     1.3    3        C_MAG
    John's Fire Witch         6.5     1.0     1.5    9  4, 12 S6_TADS_ARC
    Jouney Into Xanth         5.0     1.3     1.2    1      8 F_AGT_ARC
    Journey                   7.2     1.5     1.3    5      5 C_INF
    Jump                      3.2     0.5     0.7    1        F_INF_ARC
    Kaged                     6.8     1.0     1.0    3 23, 25 F_INF_ARC
    King Arthur's Night O     5.9     0.9     1.0    4     19 F_ALAN_ARC
    Kissing the Buddha's      7.9     1.8     1.5    6     10 F_TAD_ARC
    Klaustrophobia            6.4     1.1     1.3    6      1 S15_AGT_ARC
    Knight Orc                7.2     1.4     1.1    2     15 C_I
    L.U.D.I.T.E.              2.7     0.2     0.1    4        F_INF_ARC
    Lancelot                  6.9     1.4     1.2    1        C_I
    Land Beyond Picket Fe     4.8     1.2     1.2    1     10 F_I_ARC
    LASH                      7.6     1.3     1.0    5     21 F_INF_ARC
    Leather Goddesses         7.2     1.3     1.5   12      4 C_INF
    Leaves                    3.4     0.2     0.8    1     14 F_ALAN_ARC
    Legend Lives!             8.2     1.2     1.4    4      5 F_TAD_ARC
    Lesson of the Tortois     6.9     1.3     1.4    5     14 F_TAD_ARC
    Lethe Flow Phoenix        6.9     1.4     1.5    5      9 F_TAD_ARC
    Letters From Home         7.0     0.6     1.2    2        F_INF_ARC
    Life on Beal Street       5.4     1.3     0.1    3        F_TAD_ARC
    Light: Shelby's Adden     7.5     1.5     1.3    6      9 S_TAD_ARC
    Lightiania                1.9     0.2     0.4    1        F_INF_ARC
    Lists and Lists           6.3     1.3     1.1    3     10 F_INF_ARC
    Little Billy              1.1     0.4     0.0    1        F_I_ARC
    Little Blue Men           8.2     1.4     1.5   11     17 F_INF_ARC
    Lock And Key              6.6     1.0     1.5    1     20 F_GLU_ARC
    Lomalow                   4.6     1.0     0.6    3     19 F_INF_ARC
    Losing Your Grip          8.5     1.4     1.4    6      14S20_TAD_ARC
    Lost New York             7.9     1.4     1.4    4 20, 26 S12_TAD_ARC
    Lost Spellmaker           6.3     1.3     1.1    5     13 F_INF_ARC
    Lunatix: Insanity Cir     5.6     1.2     1.0    3        F_I_ARC
    Lurking Horror            7.2     1.3     1.4   16    1,3 C_INF
    MacWesleyan / PC Univ     5.1     0.7     1.2    3        F_TAD_ARC
    Madame L'Estrange...      5.1     1.2     0.7    1     13 F_INF_ARC
    Magic Toyshop             5.2     1.1     1.1    5      7 F_INF_ARC
    Magic.zip                 4.5     0.5     0.5    1      3 S20_IBM_ARC
    Maiden of the Moonlig     6.4     1.3     1.5    2     10 F_TAD_ARC
    Masque of the Last...     4.7     1.1     0.8    1        F_INF_ARC
    Masquerade                7.3     1.6     1.0    1     23 F_INF_ARC
    Matter of Time            1.4     0.3     1.4    1      14F_ALAN_ARC
    Mercy                     7.3     1.4     1.2    6     12 F_INF_ARC
    Metamorphoses             8.7     1.3     1.6    1     23 F_INF_ARC
    Meteor...Sherbet          8.0     1.5     1.6    9 10, 12 F_INF_ARC
    Mind Electric             5.2     0.6     0.9    4    7,8 F_INF_ARC
    Mind Forever Voyaging     8.4     1.4     1.0   14   5,15 C_INF
    Mindwheel                 8.5     1.6     1.5    1        C_I
    Mission                   6.0     1.2     1.4    1     21 F_TAD_ARC
    Moist                     6.4     1.3     1.1    5        F_TAD_ARC
    Moment of Hope            5.0     1.3     0.3    3     19 F_TAD_ARC
    Moonmist                  6.2     1.3     1.0   16      1 C_INF
    Mop & Murder              5.0     0.9     1.0    2      5 F_AGT_ARC
    Mother Loose              7.0     1.5     1.3    2     17 F_INF_ARC
    Mulldoon Legacy           7.4     1.2     1.8    1     24 F_INF_ARC
    Multidimen. Thief         5.6     0.5     1.3    6    2,9 S15_AGT_ARC
    Muse                      7.9     1.5     1.2    4     17 F_INF_ARC
    Music Education           3.7     1.0     0.7    3        F_INF_ARC
    My Angel                  8.2     1.8     1.4    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Myopia                    6.1     1.3     0.6    2        F_AGT_ARC
    Mystery House             4.1     0.3     0.7    1        F_AP_ARC
    Nevermore                 7.2     1.5     1.4    1     23 F_INF_ARC
    New Day                   6.6     1.4     1.1    4     13 F_INF_ARC
    Night At Computer Cen     5.2     1.0     1.0    2        F_INF_ARC
    Night at Museum Forev     4.2     0.3     1.0    4    7,8 F_TAD_ARC
    Night of... Bunnies       6.6     1.0     1.4    1        I_INF_ARC
    No Time To Squeal         8.6     1.6     1.5    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Nord and Bert             6.1     0.6     1.2    9      4 C_INF
    Not Just A Game           6.9     1.0     1.3    1     20 F_INF_ARC
    Not Just... Ballerina     5.3     0.8     0.9    3     20 F_INF_ARC
    Obscene...Aardvarkbar     3.2     0.6     0.6    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Odieus...Flingshot        3.3     0.4     0.7    2      5 F_INF_ARC
    Of Forms Unknown          4.5     0.7     0.5    1     10 F_INF_ARC
    Offensive Probing         4.2     0.6     0.9    1        F_INF_ARC
    On The Farm               6.5     1.6     1.2    2     19 F_TAD_ARC
    On The Other Side         2.2     0.0     0.0    1        F_I_ARC
    Once and Future           6.9     1.6     1.5    2     16 F_TAD_ARC
    One That Got Away         6.4     1.4     1.1    7    7,8 F_TAD_ARC
    Only After Dark           4.6     0.8     0.6    4        F_INF_ARC
    Oo-Topos                  5.7     0.2     1.0    1      9 C_AP_I_64
    Outsided                  2.5     0.7     0.2    2        F_INF_ARC
    Pass the Banana           2.9     0.8     0.5    3     19 F_INF_ARC
    Path to Fortune           6.6     1.5     0.9    3      9 S_INF_ARC
    Pawn                      6.3     1.1     1.3    2     12 C_MAG
    Perilous Magic            5.7     1.0     1.2    3     21 F_INF_ARC
    Perseus & Andromeda       3.5     0.4     0.9    2        64_INF_ARC
    Persistence of Memory     6.2     1.2     1.1    1     17 F_HUG_ARC
    Phlegm                    5.2     1.2     1.0    2     10 F_INF_ARC
    Photopia                  7.4     1.5     0.6   28     17 F_INF_ARC
    Phred Phontious...Piz     5.2     0.9     1.3    2     13 F_INF_ARC
    Pickpocket                4.1     0.6     0.8    1        F_INF_ARC
    Piece of Mind             6.3     1.3     1.4    1     10 F_INF_ARC
    Pintown                   1.3     0.3     0.2    1        F_INF_ARC
    Pirate's Cove             4.8     0.6     0.6    1        F_INF_ARC
    Planet of Infinite Mi     6.8     1.1     1.3    1     23 F_TAD_ARC
    Planetfall                7.4     1.6     1.4   14      4 C_INF
    Plant                     7.3     1.2     1.5    4     17 F_TAD_ARC
    Plundered Hearts          7.4     1.4     1.3   11      4 C_INF
    Poor Zefron's Almanac     5.6     1.0     1.3    3     13 F_TAD_ARC
    Portal                    8.0     1.7     0.2    3        C_I_A_AP_64
    Prodly The Puffin         5.8     1.3     1.1    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Punk Points               6.4     1.4     1.3    1        F_INF_ARC
    Purple                    5.6     0.9     1.0    1     17 F_INF_ARC
    Pyramids of Mars          5.8     1.2     1.1    2     24 AGT_ARC
    Quarterstaff              6.1     1.3     0.6    1      9 C_M
    Ralph                     7.1     1.6     1.2    3 10, 25 F_INF_ARC
    Rameses                   8.0     1.6     0.4    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Rematch                   7.9     1.5     1.6    1     22 F_TAD_ARC
    Remembrance               2.7     0.8     0.2    3        F_ARC
    Reruns                    5.2     1.2     1.2    1        AGT_ARC
    Research Dig              4.8     1.1     0.8    2     17 F_INF_ARC
    Revenger                  4.2     0.8     0.5    1        F_INF_ARC
    Reverberations            5.6     1.3     1.1    1     10 F_INF_ARC
    Ritual of Purificatio     7.0     1.6     1.1    4     17 F_ARC
    Saied                     4.6     1.0     0.2    1     15 F_INF_ARC
    Sanity Claus              7.5     0.3     0.6    2      1 S10_AGT_ARC
    Save Princeton            5.6     1.0     1.3    5      8 S10_TAD_ARC
    Scapeghost                8.1     1.7     1.5    1      6 C_I
    Sea Of Night              5.7     1.3     1.1    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Seastalker                5.2     1.1     0.8   11      4 C_INF
    Shade                     8.5     0.7     1.0    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Shades of Grey            7.8     1.3     1.3    6   2, 8 F_AGT_ARC
    Sherlock                  7.0     1.3     1.4    5      4 C_INF
    She's Got a Thing...S     7.0     1.7     1.6    3     13 F_INF_ARC
    Shogun                    7.0     1.2     0.6    2      4 C_INF
    Shrapnel                  7.5     1.4     0.5    7     20 F_INF_ARC
    Simple Theft              5.8     1.3     0.8    1     20 F_TAD_ARC
    Sins against Mimesis      5.5     1.0     1.2    3     13 F_INF_ARC
    Sir Ramic... Gorilla      6.0     1.2     1.2    2      6 F_AGT_ARC
    Six Stories               6.3     1.0     1.2    4     19 F_TAD_ARC
    Skyranch                  2.8     0.5     0.7    1     20 F_I_ARC
    Small World               6.5     1.3     1.1    4 10, 24 F_TAD_ARC
    So Far                    8.0     1.1     1.4   13 12, 25 F_INF_ARC
    Sorcerer                  7.2     0.6     1.6    7   2,15 C_INF
    Sound of... Clapping      7.1     1.3     1.3    8      5 F_ADVSYS_ARC
    South American Trek       0.9     0.2     0.5    1      5 F_IBM_ARC
    Space Aliens...Cardig     1.5     0.4     0.3    6   3, 4 S60_AGT_ARC
    Space under Window        7.1     0.9     0.4    6     12 F_INF_ARC
    Spacestation              5.6     0.7     1.1    1        F_INF_ARC
    Spellbreaker              8.5     1.2     1.8    8   2,15 C_INF
    Spellcasting 101          7.4     1.1     1.5    4        C_I
    Spellcasting 201          7.8     1.6     1.7    2        C_I
    Spellcasting 301          6.0     1.2     1.2    2        C_I
    Spider and Web            8.6     1.7     1.7   19      14F_INF_ARC
    SpiritWrak                6.7     1.2     1.3    6     22 F_INF_ARC
    Spodgeville...Wossnam     4.3     0.7     1.2    2        F_INF_ARC
    Spur                      7.1     1.3     1.1    2      9 F_HUG_ARC
    Spyder and Jeb            6.2     1.1     1.4    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Starcross                 6.6     1.0     1.2    7      1 C_INF
    Stargazer                 5.4     1.1     1.1    1        F_INF_ARC
    Starrider                 7.2     1.2     1.4    1        F_INF_ARC
    Stationfall               7.7     1.6     1.5    7      5 C_INF
    Statuette                 3.7     0.0     0.1    1        F_INF_ARC
    Stick It To The Man       6.2     1.8     1.0    1        F_GLU_ARC
    Stiffy                    1.2     0.1     0.2    2        F_INF_ARC
    Stiffy - MiSTing          4.1     0.8     0.3    7        F_INF_ARC
    Stone Cell                6.0     1.1     1.0    3     19 F_TAD_ARC
    Stranded                  6.4     1.4     1.5    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Strange Odyssey           4.0     0.0     1.0    1
    Strangers In The Nigh     3.2     0.7     0.6    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Stupid Kittens            2.9     0.6     0.4    2        F_INF_ARC
    Sunset Over Savannah      8.7     1.7     1.4    6     13 F_TAD_ARC
    Suspect                   6.2     1.3     1.1    8      4 C_INF
    Suspended                 7.7     1.5     1.4    8      8 C_INF
    Sylenius Mysterium        4.7     1.2     1.1    1     13 F_INF_ARC
    Symetry                   1.1     0.1     0.1    2        F_INF_ARC
    Tapestry                  7.3     1.4     0.9    6 10, 14 F_INF_ARC
    Tempest                   5.3     1.4     0.6    3     13 F_INF_ARC
    Temple of the Orc Mag     4.5     0.1     0.8    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Terror of Mecha Godzi     4.6     0.8     0.6    1     26 S10_I_ARC
    Test                      1.9     0.1     0.4    1        F_ADR_ARC
    Textfire Golf             7.1     1.3     0.4    2     25 F_INF_ARC
    Theatre                   7.0     1.1     1.3   13      6 F_INF_ARC
    Thorfinn's Realm          3.5     0.5     0.7    2        F_INF_ARC
    Threading the Labyrin     1.9     0.0     0.0    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Time: All Things...       3.9     1.2     0.9    2 11, 12 F_INF_ARC
    TimeQuest                 8.0     1.2     1.6    4        C_I
    TimeSquared               4.3     1.1     1.1    1        F_AGT_ARC
    Toonesia                  5.8     1.1     1.1    6  7, 21 F_TAD_ARC
    Tossed into Space         3.9     0.2     0.6    1      4 F_AGT_ARC
    Town Dragon               3.9     0.8     0.3    2 14, 22 F_INF_ARC
    Transfer                  7.6     1.0     1.6    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    Trapped...Dilly           5.1     0.1     1.1    2     17 F_INF_ARC
    Travels in Land of Er     6.1     1.2     1.5    2     14 F_INF_ARC
    Trinity                   8.7     1.4     1.7   18    1,2 C_INF
    Trip                      5.4     1.2     1.1    2        F_TAD_ARC
    Tryst of Fate             7.1     1.4     1.3    1     11 F_INF_ARC
    Tube Trouble              4.2     0.8     0.7    2      8 F_INF_ARC
    Tyler's Great Cube Ga     5.8     0.0     1.7    1        S_TAD_ARC
    Uncle Zebulon's Will      7.3     1.0     1.5   12      8 F_TAD_ARC
    Underoos That Ate NY      4.5     0.6     0.9    3        F_TAD_INF_ARC
    Undertow                  5.4     1.3     0.9    3      8 F_TAD_ARC
    Undo                      2.9     0.5     0.7    4      7 F_TAD_ARC
    Unholy Grail              6.0     1.2     1.2    1     13 F_I_ARC
    Unnkulian One-Half        6.7     1.2     1.5    9      1 F_TAD_ARC
    Unnkulian Unventure 1     6.9     1.2     1.5    8    1,2 F_TAD_ARC
    Unnkulian Unventure 2     7.2     1.2     1.5    5      1 F_TAD_ARC
    Unnkulian Zero            8.4     0.7     0.8    21,12,14 F_TAD_ARC
    Varicella                 8.2     1.6     1.5    9     18 F_INF_ARC
    Veritas                   6.6     1.3     1.4    4        S10_TAD_ARC
    Vindaloo                  2.9     0.0     0.4    1        F_INF_ARC
    VirtuaTech                6.1     0.0     1.2    1        F_TAD_ARC
    VOID: Corporation         3.2     0.4     0.8    1        F_AGT_ARC
    Water Bird                5.0     1.1     0.8    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Waystation                5.5     0.7     1.0    4      9 F_TAD_ARC
    Weapon                    6.8     1.1     1.4    1     26 F_INF_ARC
    Wearing the Claw          6.5     1.2     1.2    7 10, 18 F_INF_ARC
    Wedding                   7.4     1.6     1.3    3     12 F_INF_ARC
    What-IF?                  1.6     0.0     0.0    2        F_INF_ARC
    Where Evil Dwells         5.1     0.8     1.1    1        F_INF_ARC
    Winchester's Nightmar     6.9     1.5     0.5    1     22 F_INF_ARC
    Winter Wonderland         7.6     1.3     1.2    7     19 F_INF_ARC
    Wishbringer               7.6     1.3     1.3   16    5,6 C_INF
    Withdrawal Symptoms       4.4     0.5     0.7    1        F_INF_ARC
    Witness                   6.7     1.5     1.2   10  1,3,9 C_INF
    Wizard of Akyrz           3.2     0.3     0.8    1
    Wonderland                6.4     1.4     1.1    3        C_MAG
    World                     6.5     0.6     1.3    2      4 F_I_ETC_ARC
    Worlds Apart              8.0     1.7     1.4   10     21 F_TAD_ARC
    YAGWAD                    6.7     1.1     1.3    2     23 F_INF_ARC
    You Are Here              6.0     1.0     1.3    1        F_INF_ARC
    Your Choice               5.5     0.0     1.1    1        F_TAD_ARC
    Zanfar                    2.6     0.2     0.4    1      8 F_AGT_ARC
    Zero Sum Game             7.5     1.5     1.6    4     13 F_INF_ARC
    Zombie!                   5.2     1.2     1.1    2     13 F_TAD_ARC
    Zork 0                    6.3     1.0     1.5   10      14C_INF
    Zork 1                    6.1     0.8     1.4   24  1, 12 C_INF
    Zork 2                    6.4     1.0     1.5   13  1, 12 C_INF
    Zork 3                    6.5     0.9     1.4    8  1, 12 C_INF
    Zork Undisc. Undergr.     5.9     0.9     1.1    3      14F_INF_ARC
    Zork: A Troll's Eye V     4.4     0.6     0.1    3     14 F_INF_ARC
    Zuni Doll                 4.0     0.6     0.9    2     14 F_INF_ARC

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

    The Top Ten:

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

    As usual, veeery little activity in the ol' Top 10. To wit: Babel moves
    up a spot, from #9 to #8. Consequently, Spellbreaker moves from #8 to
    #9. And that's all. Good thing I decided against hiring Casey Kasem to
    announce these charts -- he'd be bored out of his skull.

    1.  Gateway 2: Homeworld  9.0   6 votes
    2.  Anchorhead            8.7   29 votes
    3.  Sunset over Savannah  8.7   6 votes
    4.  Trinity               8.7   18 votes
    5.  Spider and Web        8.6   19 votes
    6.  Gateway               8.6   7 votes
    7.  Losing Your Grip      8.5   6 votes
    8.  Babel                 8.5   11 votes
    9.  Spellbreaker          8.5   8 votes
    10. Mind Forever Voyaging 8.4   14 votes

    As always, please remember that the scoreboard is only as good as the
    contributions it receives. To make your mark on this vast morass of
    statistics, rate some games on our website
    (http://www.sparkynet.com/spag). You can also, if you like, send ratings
    directly to me at obrian SP@G colorado.edu. Instructions for how the rating
    system works are in the SPAG FAQ, available from the IF Archive and from
    our website. Please read the FAQ before submitting scores, so that you
    understand how the scoring system works. After that, submit away!

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

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

    WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE FOLLOWING GAME:
    Lock & Key

    PROCEED NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE PLAYED THIS GAME!

    THIS IS NOT A TEST! GENUINE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

    LAST CHANCE TO AVOID SPOILAGE!

    From: Eytan Zweig

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

    This is a SPECIFICS review, which means that it contains explicit
    spoilers and analysis of the game's puzzles. Worse than that, it is
    mostly occupied with mentioning where "Lock & Key" went wrong, and not
    on what it did right, even though it did a lot more right than wrong. If
    you haven't played it, all I can say is that "Lock & Key" is a lot of
    fun, and quite easy - don't deprive yourself of the pleasure it offers
    by reading this review first.

    "Lock & Key" is pure puzzle IF, and it's quite clear from the moment you
    finish the prologue and start the game proper that the plot exists to
    serve the puzzle and not vice-versa. The writing itself is great, with
    nearly everything in the game being both entertaining and easy to
    understand. The overall plot is basically a parody of old-school IF
    conventions, with those conventions arranged as just the way the world
    works -- adventurers will have a supply of seemingly randomly selected
    items that happen to be just right for the job, every dungeon must have
    a way out, every maze just serves as a delaying tactic, and guards are
    the most brainless creatures in creation. The player is put into the
    position of making a dungeon work with these limitations.

    Unfortunately, the plot quickly starts to become irrelevant, as the
    player has to restart the game over and over in order to figure out his
    next step. It's not just that the game is a relearn-by-dying game --
    Adam Cadre himself wrote "Varicella", which shares that trait with "Lock
    & Key" but never loses the plot in the same way -- but that there really
    isn't anything in the plot that isn't already told in the first attempt.
    Obviously, the player will not restart the game from the beginning each
    time, but only from the planning stage -- but even then, he'll be
    reading the same text over and over dozens of times before it's over. To
    make things worse, once the plans are given, the endgame mostly consists
    (with one major exception) of typing "z" repetitively -- about 20 times
    are needed to play the whole thing through. Adam Cadre kindly provides
    the ability to script the endgame commands and replay them, but that
    just further removes the player from the plot, making it harder for to
    look for any changing information. Moreover, this is not a fully
    effective solution, as some player interactivity is required in the end.

    But the way the endgame plays, even though it does so over and over,
    isn't Lock & Key's biggest problem. The biggest problems Lock & Key
    suffers from are not when the puzzle takes over the IF, but the design
    of the puzzle itself, and its interface. The puzzle contains several
    elements which don't really contribute anything to it, but merely serve
    to make it less interesting. The first such element is the door-laying
    stage -- according to the "making-of" notes, this was supposed to be an
    opportunity for the player to lay his own mazes, which was then
    simplified. Unfortunately, what remains is just tedious and
    uninteresting -- the constraints on placing the doors are so extreme
    that very few possible configurations remain, and among those, the most
    obvious one (use all the rooms) is the correct one. Essentially, this
    phase of the game boils down to the player having to type "open
    direction", "look direction" 16 times in order to return to the
    interesting stuff. The other pointless element is the money limit. It
    does not really function as an inhibiting factor to the amount of traps
    the player can place -- the dungeon's size does that; unless one tries
    buying dragons, it is in fact a lot more difficult to run into the money
    limit than not to do so. And the dragon gag, while funny, didn't need
    the whole game mechanic there. The money limit also doesn't work well
    plot-wise -- the king keeps praising you for staying on budget, but you
    don't even have the choice of going over-budget. At the very least, it
    would have been more amusing to allow the player to go over-budget and
    then face the consequence when meeting the king rather than just block
    him from doing so.

    But the main problem of "Lock & Key", which all the nitpicks listed
    above are really instances of, is that the interface is not suited for
    the puzzle. In order to place a trap, you have to go through the double
    stage of placing it and buying it. This allows Adam Cadre the
    opportunity of writing twice as many entertaining events, but it also
    makes the game twice as tedious -- the player has to go through the
    events so many times that he will inevitably stop caring about reading
    the never-changing text. You need to place 10 traps to win the game,
    each of which must be mentioned twice (actually, there is a feature --
    the command QBUY ALL -- which allow you to bypass this second stage, but
    if it's documented somewhere, I haven't seen it). Worse, once you buy a
    trap, you can't move it, which means that if you misplace a trap and
    then save the game, you have to restart. So, at best, whenever you
    restore the game you then have to buy all the traps.

    In a private correspondence, I asked why the game was designed this way,
    instead of just having a single step (with all the text appearing at
    once) which was reversible. The answer I received, I think, explains the
    source of the problem -- the reason is that, from a story point of view,
    planning and purchasing are a different thing; you wouldn't want to
    interact with the shopkeeper whenever you look at the catalog. This is
    true in life, and would be true if this was an attempt at simulationist
    IF. But it's not, it's a puzzle, and as such it is a lot more important
    that the puzzle interface be comfortable than that it should reflect the
    way things work in real life.

    So far, I've been heaping negative criticism on the game, and it seems
    like I have a very bad opinion of it. I don't -- I think it's a
    brilliant puzzle, and a very entertaining game. But the reason I took
    five long paragraphs to list the flaws and only a few short lines here
    and there to list its virtues is that I think that the flaws are more
    interesting. Many words have been written about how modern IF should
    function as a story-telling device, but not as much has been said about
    how the capabilities of modern IF could be used for other things, such
    as pure puzzles. "Lock & Key" attempts to be a puzzle, but it is
    problematic mainly because it does not strip itself from enough of the
    trappings of story-based IF in order to be a great puzzle; if a little
    less thought was put into making things work "right", and a little more
    thought was put into making them work smoothly, "Lock & Key" would be
    impeccable.

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

    SPAG is a non-paying fanzine specializing in reviews of text adventure
    games, a.k.a. Interactive Fiction. This includes the classic Infocom
    games and similar games, but also some graphic adventures where the
    primary player-game communication is text based. Any and all text-based
    games are eligible for review, though if a game has been reviewed three
    times in SPAG, no further reviews of it will be accepted unless they are
    extraordinarily original and/or insightful. SPAG reviews should be free
    of spoilers.

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

    For a more detailed version of this policy, see the SPAG FAQ at
    http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/spag.faq.

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