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ISSUE #41 - July 15, 2005

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

                             ISSUE #41

            Edited by Paul O'Brian (obrian SP@G colorado.edu)
                           July 15, 2005

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

    SPAG #41 is copyright (c) 2005 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.

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

    Bolivia By Night
    Catseye
    Conan Kill Everything
    The Dreamhold
    Façade
    The Fire Tower
    Heist
    Moonglow
    Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
    Wumpus 2000

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

    Way back in 1999, Magnus Olsson asked me if I'd like to take his place
    as the editor of SPAG. I was honored and flattered to be asked, and
    after some consideration, I accepted. Since that time, for the six years
    and 24 issues that followed, I've done my best to make SPAG a worthwhile
    contribution to the IF community. I hope the reviews and articles
    collected herein have been enlightening, or at least entertaining. I've
    certainly had a lot of fun producing the zine.

    You can probably guess what I'm heading towards here. A lot has changed
    in the IF community and in my life over the past six years, and I find
    that I no longer have the time, energy, and enthusiasm to devote to IF
    that I once did. Given that my son Dante was born just last month,
    somehow I don't see a lot of spare time in my immediate future, either!
    So I've decided to step down as editor of SPAG.

    Fear not, however! The torch has been passed, and the zine will live on
    in the capable hands of its new editor, Jimmy Maher! You may recognize
    Jimmy's name as the author of Filfre, a nifty new z-code interpreter
    (see this issue's news section.) Or perhaps you know him from the fine
    SPAG reviews he's written, including this issue's eloquent evaluation of
    Wumpus 2000. Hey, you might not even recognize his name at all, but rest
    assured, you'll get to know him well. I have a feeling he's in for a
    prosperous tenure, so please welcome him if you get a chance.

    As for me, I'll be around. Who knows, I might even submit a review now
    and then! In the meantime, thank you for helping to keep text adventures
    alive.

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR------------------------------------------------------

    From:	Richard Otter

    I notice that your list of 'New Releases' never seems to include Adrift
    games.

       [That's not entirely true, Richard. See, for example, SPAG 37, where
       the list includes "Curse of the Dragon Shrine". What is true (as I
       say at http://sparkynet.com/spag/newreleases.html) is that the SPAG
       New Releases Shelf consists of those games announced on the
       rec.*.int-fiction newsgroups. I'd encourage ADRIFT authors (for that
       matter, all authors) to post new game announcements on these
       newsgroups, particularly rec.games.int-fiction, since that will
       publicize their games to a wider audience -- one that includes me.
       (Or rather, one that includes Jimmy, since I won't be writing the new
       games section of upcoming issues.)
       --Paul]

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

    From:	Peter Hipson

    Funny what you find on the Internet that is not expected. Though I am
    sure you have been told the history of Adventure from IBM, here are a
    few things that may not be well known:

    1. Adventure was written to test and develop relational database
    techniques on IBM mainframe computers. It was written in Fortran.

    2. The game was so successful that it was ported to PL/I (though the
    port was poorly done by today's standards). I worked on the PL/I
    version, including extending the cave (many limits had been hardcoded in
    the software that needed fixing!) Some of this work was done at AIT (in
    Bangkok) with the support of IBM.

    3. The game was first ported to microcomputers around 1980. We did our
    first port to UCSD Pascal on the Apple II. (That port was from PL/I, and
    we had students retype the entire program as there were no ways to
    transfer data between the computers -- before microcomputer networks!)

    4. I hated Pascal. I next ported it to C, on the IBM PC. Along the way,
    the Basic version was born, from many different sources, including (so I
    understand) Apple.

    5. Some years later, I did a partial port to C++. This port was not
    finished properly, but maybe some day...

    If anyone is interested in the C code, I think it is still on one of my
    servers. I could be convinced to post it...

       [Nifty! If anybody's interested in discussing this letter, I suggest
       rec.games.int-fiction as the forum, since SPAG isn't published
       frequently enough to support an ongoing discussion. (Man, I'm really
       shilling rgif today, aren't I?) Also, Adventure/Colossal Cave
       enthusiasts really ought to check out Rick Adams' excellent page at
       http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/.
       --Paul]

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

    From:	"El Clérigo Urbatain"

    First of all, sorry by my bad english ;) As all you know my last
    interview was made by a translator in the middle, so here it is my real
    bad writing.

    I write you to make two add on to the interview, one about my non
    partial opinions about the spanish IF community history, of course I one
    thinking person and my thought are mine, and are very partial. When I
    said that the gold era of PAW spanish IF was a mesh, I must admit that
    was at the end, when all collapses, 8 bits died, advetures died, and all
    fanzines was falling apart, with bad issues or issues with old info,
    articles, and such. However the gold PAW era give us nearly hundreds of
    PAW games, and a lot of really good DOS PC games, so thats not bad at
    all.

    And I must to add context to my egocentric phrase "I'm the Stanley
    Kubrick of the adventure", I must add in the sense that Stanley prefer
    to "interpreter" good stories of other people than make his own ones.
    I'll never thought in compare my skill with such master, but I love to
    interpreter and make my own version or "parserize" a story into an
    adventure. And so, I hope you enjoy the remake of Dracula I'm nearly
    uploading on the net for your enjoy.

    See you!

       [Thanks for the clarifications, Ruben.
       --Paul]

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

    NEW GAMES
    We've got a healthy crop of new IF to peruse this summer, from the tiny
    to the honkin' huge. Highlights include a joyous smashfest (reviewed by
    William McDuff in this issue), an intriguing puzzle game with a
    theological bent, a text-adventure prequel to an as-yet-unproduced
    amateur graphic Zork game, and sizable opus on the order of Curses.
    Capping the batch is Façade, the culmination of a five-year research
    project into interactive storytelling -- check out Nick Montfort's
    review in this issue.
       * Mini-Adventure demo games by Jon Ripley
       * Conan Kill Everything by Ian Haberkorn
       * Creepy Mansion by Kevin Lyons
       * All Hope Abandon by Eric Eve
       * Dawn Of The Demon by Paul Drallos
       * Finding Martin by Gayla Wennstrom
       * Façade by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern

    NOT NEW GAMES
    Andrew Plotkin does right by his old games. He originally wrote Inhumane
    in Applesoft BASIC, and then years later ported it to Inform. He
    released System's Twilight as freeware even while shareware
    registrations were still coming in for it. Now he's done it again with
    Praser 5, also known as Fifth Praser Maze. Zarf says that it's a "sort
    of logic-puzzle, word-puzzle... thing that I created in 1989." It
    originally lived as a collection of files on an academic file server,
    but he's ported it to Inform and put it on the archive.

    I FILFRE
    (I'm about to give a very very minor Enchanter spoiler, if you care
    about that sort of thing.) In Enchanter, the filfre spell was known to
    "produce gratuitous fireworks," which just so happened to display the
    game credits. Enchanter's invisiclues told us that the spell got its
    name as a corruption of "feel free," a phrase which game authors
    allegedly say a lot. Now, Jimmy Maher has exercised his freedom to
    create a different kind of fireworks: a brand new z-code interpreter
    known as Filfre. Some nifty things about Filfre are its integrated
    scrollback buffer (similar to what we find in the Mike Roberts' TADS
    interpreter) and the fact that double-clicking any word on the screen
    pastes that word into the command line. In addition, Filfre has the
    capability of constructing inventory and verb lists in separate panes,
    giving z-code games the feel of the old Legend classics. The interpreter
    is available at your friendly neighborhood IF archive.

    INFORM SCHOOL. NO, REALLY.
    For the past five years, the University of Michigan's Dearborn campus
    has offered a Computer Game Design and Implementation class, in which
    one of the assignments is to create an Inform IF game. Students have
    roughly a month in which to learn Inform and write a small game that
    meets a number of quality standards. Do they succeed? Well, you can
    judge for yourself, since all the games are posted at
    http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis487/z5/index.php. Each
    one is even available to play online via Zplet, should you be reluctant
    to download them. If you're curious about the assignment, it's here:
    http://www.engin.umd.umich.edu/CIS/course.des/cis587/if-f02.html.

    IF AFTER DARK
    SPAG talks a lot about IF, but there are some parts of IF that SPAG just
    doesn't talk a lot about. Nevertheless, they are out there, thriving in
    their own ways. One of these is the AIF ("Adult Interactive Fiction",
    aka X-rated IF) community. Luckily, this group has a newsletter of its
    own, posted monthly at http://newsletter.aifcommunity.org. Obviously,
    this site is not suitable for children, nor for viewing at work. But if
    you like that sort of thing, you might well find it's the sort of thing
    that you like.

    JIMMY NEEDS YOU!
    It's true that I'm stepping down as editor, but SPAG must go on! I'm
    counting on you guys to come through for Jimmy and send him some reviews
    for issue 42. In case you're stumped for what games to review, here's a
    little list to help prompt you:

    SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST
    ========================
    1.  All Hope Abandon
    2.  Dawn Of The Demon
    3.  1893: A World's Fair Mystery
    4.  Finding Martin
    5.  Future Boy!
    6.  Mystery House Taken Over games (any, some, or all!)
    7.  Narcolepsy
    8.  Return To Ditch Day
    9.  Threnody
    10. Whom The Telling Changed

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

    Consider the following review header:

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

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

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

    From:	Eric Woods

    TITLE: Bolivia By Night
    AUTHOR: Aidan Doyle
    EMAIL: aidandoyle SP@G rushpost.com
    DATE: March 9, 2005
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/springthing/2005/bbn.gam
    VERSION: One

    Bolivia By Night is a typical mystery-based interactive fiction game
    and, therefore, there's nothing particularly innovative about it. You
    play a journalist for an English-speaking newspaper, The Bolivian
    Herald. Initially you find yourself in an editorial meeting where you
    discover that David, the head reporter, has been missing for over a
    week. You also get the assignment of interviewing two Bolivians with
    interesting jobs, a cook with a nationally televised show and a Ninja
    master. The game doesn't allow the story to progress until these
    interviews are completed. The whole game moves along in a similar
    fashion, giving the player only one course of action at a time. Bit by
    bit you discover a murder or two, the supernatural background of the
    motives for these murders, and the only course of action to make
    everything in the world right. Like I said, it's pretty typical.

    The author obviously had a political and moral motive in creating this
    game. There are many interesting geographic, historical and cultural
    facts about Bolivia woven through the storyline as well as some cracks
    on Republicans. These cracks often are presented when you touch photos
    of Presidents after you have been given heightened senses. The political
    figures making cameos in this story are the Bush boys, Margaret
    Thatcher, and Reagan. I found it ironic that if you choose to be
    American at the start of the game you find a photograph of Lincoln in
    your desk drawer. This is apparently a sign of admiration for Lincoln. I
    wonder if the author knows that Lincoln was a Republican.

    The game play is very smooth in Bolivia By Night. The author recommends
    that players use a multi-media interpreter though I didn't. I didn't
    notice any difficulties with making progress without those features. The
    author also recommends that you keep the game in verbose mode which I
    generally don't like. There were two points where this would have been
    helpful since room descriptions sometimes change when you return to them
    and you won't get any of the changed description upon re-entering. This
    was easy enough to overcome with a simple look command, though.

    There were some nice features in this game which I haven't seen in
    others. The C command gets you a list of characters with whom you have
    already interacted or about whom you have learned something. The a T
    command gets you a list of topics on which you have discovered some
    information. These innovations made note-taking during playing
    unnecessary, which I found to be very helpful. There is also a
    well-implemented hint file contained within the game, though the game is
    simple enough that a gamer with experience probably won't need it.

    There is an Internet café which you can enter and check your email. You
    get some choices as to how you can respond to these emails and the story
    does a good job of implementing your choice in later scenes. For
    example, if you decide to order the Rodriguez Twins DVD Volume III you
    will find it in your apartment, all packaged up, later in the game. You
    can collect all three DVDs throughout the game if you care to.

    The puzzles range from very easy to easy. Even those that border on
    clever are given direction through unprompted statements by your
    sidekick. Your sidekick, by the way, is a talking T-shirt. Again, due to
    the linear nature of the game, I didn't find any problem with following
    the storyline or deciding what I had to do next. I don't generally mind
    being pushed through a story but a little less of this would have suited
    my tastes more.

    By the time you've discovered the nature of the mystery, gained some
    super natural powers and thwarted the bad guys and their evil plot to
    return Bolivia back to the days when it was ruled by drug lords you'll
    have a clear idea of the author's motive for producing the game. It's a
    good notion, of course, but perhaps a little predictable. Overall I
    found the game enjoyable though not very engaging or memorable.
    Certainly it is well written with no bugs, typos, or grammatical errors
    if you don't include the rare preposition at the end of a sentence.
    There are also some points where the humor made me crack a smile. While
    the map able area is relatively small it does a decent job of
    representing Bolivia though I assume I was supposed to feel more like
    the people were struggling than I did. Have a whack at it if you have a
    couple of hours to kill and you aren't overly sensitive about some mild
    Republican bashing humor.

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

    From:	"Niz"

    Maybe its just me, as the IF community has not been showering it with
    glowing reviews, but Aidan Doyle's BOLIVIA BY NIGHT (2nd place in 2005's
    Spring Thing competition) should have all the ingredients required to
    sweep the XYZZY awards next year, especially if the author can release a
    post-competition bugfixed version soon. It probably won't, but hey,
    that's awards for you.

    Initial feelings that the author made the game just to say, "Hey look, I
    went to Bolivia on holiday and instead of boring you with my photo album
    I'm gonna bore you with an IF game I made about it" are thankfully
    quickly shaken off as you head off on various reporting tasks for the
    "Bolivian Herald", investigate a murder, and uncover a conspiracy. The
    scenery feels right throughout: locations are never a chore to plough
    through simply looking for nouns to "examine". The writing is plain,
    simple and funny -- the author is thankfully not a frustrated poet
    trying to wow you with his turn of phrase. It's refreshingly
    down-to-earth. The characters feel alive (especially the TV chef and
    your chauvinistic colleague). The puzzles are just simple enough not to
    get in the way of the story, and entertaining enough to complement it.
    The whole thing is reasonably long (several hours' worth for an average
    player, divided into convenient chapters to allow for short spells of
    gaming), and the story could easily have come straight out of Robert
    Anton Wilson's ILLUMINATUS! trilogy of novels (a good thing).

    Okay, the tone of the game is somewhat silly, but let us compare for a
    moment with THE CABAL, an XYZZY nominee for best story of 2004: sure,
    THE CABAL didn't have talking Che Guevara t-shirts, ninjas and the ghost
    of Klaus Barbie, but it comes from the same "school" of piling on the
    conspiracies and craziness until you give in and just go with the flow
    hippy-style... its a style you either "dig" or you don't, and if it was
    "dug" for THE CABAL, why not here?

    The locations are fantastic. You can really taste the dusty, dry
    atmosphere, the slow pace of life, the coffee and cocoa. Every South
    American cliche is thrown in, from drug lords to llamas to witch-doctors
    to ancient Incan secrets to Shakira. Best compliment: I'm seriously
    considering travelling there now.

    Puzzle-quality is very high, often providing unique spins on standard
    fetch-quest type puzzles, and incorporating what could have just been
    storyline-asides into the main fabric of the game. The range and style
    of these puzzles is very varied: one such fetch-quest is solved rather
    literally (and gruesomely); another (to derail the bad-guys' actions) is
    solved by making use of what could have been just a throwaway gag; yet
    another is solved via a callback to your early reporting missions. As
    for the climactic "boss battle", any puzzle that involves a sun bed, a
    racy DVD, and a portable camera could never be considered derivative.

    Yes there are some technical flaws, in particular an annoying bug with
    the framed photo in Richard's room, and some awkward syntax requirements
    at times, but these things can easily be fixed. The tricky bit is
    getting the story, setting and puzzles right, and there the author has
    definitely nailed it.

    I get the feeling the game might be lost in the shuffle before the
    awards season comes round, as it doesn't feature any amazing new
    technical innovations or break the narrative conventions of IF. It's
    just a very solid, very playable, very entertaining romp that does
    something few other games can achieve: it's fun.

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

    From:	Mike Tulloch

    TITLE: Catseye
    AUTHOR: Dave Bernazzani
    EMAIL:daveber SP@G gis.net
    DATE: October 17, 2004
    PARSER: Simple (Microform parser)
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware -- Author's site
    URL: http://www.gis.net/~daveber/miniventure/
    VERSION: 3

    A 10k adventure? How good could it be? With visions of Scott Adams' 16k
    (master)pieces in mind, I began with trepidition. I found the game,
    converted it to pdb format, and loaded it on my aging Handspring Visor
    PDA.

    The intro is concise and informative, and gets you into the action right
    away. The game possesses a pulp fiction or a Golden age comic book feel.
    Your quest? Retrieve the necklace of your uncle Xevion from his
    mysterious house. It's straight-ahead youthful mystery-fantasy.

    The room descriptions are sparse, occasionally omitting words,
    presumably to save memory. Some of the error messages are unhelpful
    because of their brevity. For example, a simple one word response with
    nary a period in sight shows up quite a bit. Still others are errors,
    where a blank line displays as the response to your actions. You'll also
    notice some familiar synonyms missing, the most annoying of which is
    "get" -- you must use "take".

    Frustration builds into a claustrophobic spiral, brought on by the small
    number of rooms, the crippled parser, and the unhelpful responses. Only
    occasionally do zephyrs of humor lighten the mood. Want to take a
    breather? You can't, because the game can't be saved. Granted, that's
    not a problem on the PDA, unless you wanted to play another IF game and
    resume where you left off. Still, I'm of the opinion that all
    frustrating games should allow you to save.

    Catseye consists of one puzzle that starts off simple and rapidly
    becomes maddening; you have to play "guess the verb" and also "guess the
    input format for the verb". I finally resorted to r.g.i-f to find enough
    clues to win the game. I say that to my embarrassment, but to the
    author's shame. Even when you've won, you feel like the game's getting
    the last laugh. Your effort is rewarded with a scant two sentences.
    Unfair!

    I congratulate Bernazzani for cramming a game into 10k. However it feels
    like more of a programming triumph than an artistic one. The game is
    playable, but inordinately frustrating. It has an interesting feel, but
    not enough to compensate for the parsing problems and lack of feedback
    (both of which seriously interfere with gameplay). The lack of verbs and
    missing punctuation are also drawbacks. In short, thumbs down.

    Score: 3/10.

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

    From: William McDuff

    TITLE: Conan Kill Everything
    AUTHOR: Ian Haberkorn
    EMAIL: haberkornj SP@G yahoo.com
    DATE: April 12 2005
    PARSER: Infocom Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/inform/ConanKillEverything.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

       "I hope it is adequately stupid. Comments are appreciated."
                         -- Ian Haberkorn on Conan Kill Everything

    Fear not, Ian! You game is most definitely "adequately stupid". Which is
    meant in the best way possible, of course.

    Though perhaps Ian Haberkorn is a bit confused about which competition
    he entered with "Conan Kill Everything". When the title placed second in
    StupidTitleComp (a voting mechanism test for the 2005 Spring Thing) he
    seems to have thought he entered IntroComp, and created a playable game
    with that title, possibly hoping to claim a prize before the year was
    up. Alas, he will win nothing for creating this game other than the
    renown for creating such an amusing, if small, game.

    In this game you play the legendary Cimmerian barbarian, Conan, and your
    objective is simple. Kill everything. No, not every living thing.
    Everything. The walls of the room only escape Conan's mighty wrath
    because they "are already dead. Conan suspects that he killed them in an
    earlier episode."

    Although a one room game, and as mentioned before, very short, some
    interesting puzzles exist here. None will stymie a veteran IF player for
    long, but they puzzles are fair and logical, if progressing to a logical
    extreme. There's not much of a plot or story to speak off, but given the
    source of the game, expecting one seems silly.

    The game itself is technically sound, although more verbs could be
    implemented as with most games, and what can be reached from the table
    is perhaps a bit generous. Also, the actions of the fly in the room seem
    to be a bit too random at times, which can make a long wait. The writing
    is terse, tight phrasing emulating the 'action, not words' approach of
    your average barbarian stereotype. This simplistic style actually
    generates some of the humour, and there are also some great lines
    sprinkled here and there.

    Significantly, the game endings take a step back to a director's view of
    the action as a movie, giving a view that this farce is something of a
    play within a play. This decision actually helps, as some distance from
    the absurdity keeps the player from getting too involved and turned off
    by the stupidity of the main action. Not that these aren't amusing as
    well.

    The main complaint against the game is that it is, as I've said
    repeatedly, quite short, finishable in less than half an hour even if
    you get stuck at one point or another. More could certainly be added:
    for instance, Conan's association with beautiful women is a significant
    part of the mythos, and is missing here. Besides, with such an addition,
    there's a got to be a joke about the 'little death' that could be
    inserted somewhere.

    Still, considering the inspiration, this is an excellent little game.
    One can only hope that "You Get Transported To Another Dimension and
    Find This Weird Machine In A Maze And Then Some Other Stuff Happens,
    It's Really Cool" will be as good if Jacqueline H. decides to produce
    it. (Though it's certain to be stupid.)

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

    From:	Paul Lee

    TITLE: The Dreamhold
    AUTHOR: Andrew Plotkin
    EMAIL: erkyrath SP@G eblong.com
    DATE: December 2004
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/dreamhold.z8
    VERSION: Release 5

    The Dreamhold, in my opinion, strikes the mark of a well-done adventure
    game. This game is written with people new to the lore of interactive
    fiction in mind; in fact, there is a "Tutorial Voice" narrator that
    guides you through your endeavors, helping you with the basic concepts
    of IF. One thing that distinguishes this game is that all aspects of
    this game -- not just the ever-helpful Voice -- seem to be written to
    encourage and bring satisfaction to the player. Rather like a parent,
    this game guides and directs you. It is not that you are not allowed to
    fail, but when you make a mistake, you are gently admonished, then shown
    the right way around an obstacle. As I am fairly new to IF, I found this
    game both insightful and refreshing. Although I already knew how to
    travel and manipulate objects with commands, I was delighted to glimpse
    the sage and kind mind of an interactive-fiction master and the art to
    which I am an infant.

    From my perspective, the story is the weakest point of "The Dreamhold."
    That is saying much, for it really is not that bad. At the start of the
    game, the motives for the player character are escape, exploration, and
    self-discovery. As the game moves forward, the plot becomes much more
    interesting. Still, the game does not explain its story as it presents
    it to the player, and I was incapable of figuring it out. I knew there
    was meaning there, yet at best I could put together a few pieces of
    background, which would seem unrelated to each other if it were not for
    a common detail or two, the significance of which I could only muse at.
    I was especially confused at the ending -- it was definitely an attempt
    to tie everything together, but for me it just confused and muddled the
    little bit that I thought I had worked out. Still, the story was not a
    complete failure -- the scenes of background were so nicely integrated
    with the puzzles as to keep me interested in both the narrative and the
    crossword. While irritating, it was fun to try to figure out the meaning
    of the scenes and the history of the player character. Also, my
    difficulties with the story may have been personal; perhaps other people
    would find it all to make perfect sense. Maybe the game was not even
    written to have a clear meaning at all, in which case with story as with
    puzzles "The Dreamhold" succeeded in its goals.

    More than making up for the story are the puzzles. Solving the puzzles
    is pleasantly rewarding, and new areas to explore and more story to
    unfold come as results of your efforts. The game never forgets about its
    striving player -- all the puzzles are fair and to my knowledge cannot
    be made unwinnable. Most are probably easier from the norm, but figuring
    out how objects work can sometimes be a bit complicated, although never
    frustratingly so. In addition to the Tutorial Voice, which sometimes
    offers help, the game offers a thorough hint system that will not at
    first spoil the puzzle you are working on, if it tarnishes the joy of
    solving it just a bit. The whole makes "The Dreamhold" very enjoyable.
    In fact, I, being introduced to IF after it had taken a turn toward
    narrative, was shown by this game the value and excitement of good
    puzzles.

    The mechanics of the game were excellent to the high standard as a
    tutorial that the game sets initially for itself. I do not try every
    possible action or close every door behind me just for the sake of
    ensuring that it works properly, but I found no bugs in the game. It is
    especially mandatory for this game to be bug-free because of its status
    as beginner's IF; it was created in such a way that it could actually be
    someone's very first game, so imagine the confusion on the part of the
    poor newbie when something did not work as explained. Not only is the
    game without bugs, but also I recall running into no grammatical errors.
    For even those folks who have their playtime experience ruined by minor
    slips of grammar, "The Dreamhold" will likely immerse you in its perfect
    prose.

    As a game in general, "The Dreamhold" raises the bar high, not just as a
    tutorial. It builds up the player's trust by never failing to live up to
    its high standards, and the result is great. You become the game's
    friend and feel it encouraging you in your difficulties and delighting
    with you in your triumphs. At any rate, for beginners and advanced
    players alike, I recommend anyone the awesome glow of satisfaction that
    comes from "The Dreamhold."

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

    From:	Nick Montfort

    TITLE: Façade
    AUTHOR: Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern
    EMAIL: feedback SP@G interactivestory.net
    DATE: July 2005
    PARSER: Custom
    SUPPORTS: Windows, >= 1.6 GHz, >= 256MB RAM, OpenGL
    AVAILABILITY: http://www.interactivestory.net/download/
    URL: http://www.interactivestory.net/
    VERSION: 1.0

    Not another one-room game set in an apartment!

    Well, actually, you probably couldn't call Façade a game in the typical
    sense -- even though a pre-release version was a finalist in the 2004
    Independent Games Festival, and the New York Times called the system
    "the future of video games." Façade may or may not even be IF, for that
    matter. But it's clearly something closely related to it, and whether
    you're willing to award it the IF label or not, there are good reasons
    that a lot of people -- myself included -- think that Façade is a
    tremendous advance in interactive storytelling.

    This "one act interactive drama" is the outcome of a research project
    that has spanned more than five years, one that you can read more about
    in the two creators' dozen-odd academic papers and in Mateas's
    dissertation, done as the last publication of the Carnegie Mellon
    University Oz Project. Façade is not just good research, though. It can
    provide an intense, compelling experience, even though a session can be
    played in about fifteen minutes.

    When you download and fire up the system, you'll get to visit with your
    old friends Trip and Grace -- 3D illustrated characters whose statements
    have all been recorded by voice actors -- as their marriage falls apart.
    You'll be able to type short statements to converse with them, move
    around the room using the arrow keys, and use the mouse to manipulate
    objects. Façade lacks adventuring, a clear way to win, and the typical
    IF command structure -- if you type "PICK UP THE MAGIC EIGHT BALL"
    you'll be saying that to Trip or Grace, not instructing your character
    in what to do. You can manipulate objects, however, and can say whatever
    short statements you like to the two other characters. If you manage to
    keep your comments fairly relevant to the conversation, or apartment, or
    situation, the two are likely to react appropriately, both in an
    immediate sense and in terms of the overall development of the
    conversation and the drama.

    Before getting deeper into why Façade is so great, I'll mention that the
    two authors and developers, Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, do happen
    to be my good friends and fellow bloggers with me at Grand Text Auto,
    where I made the official announcement of the release of Façade. So, you
    may choose to take my evaluation of the system with a grain of salt. But
    then, if no one reviewed interactive fiction by people they knew, there
    would be a lot less reviewing going on.

    I'll also mention a few other things by way of preface: Façade is a
    working prototype, one quite capable of providing a powerful experience
    that is both interactive (in a meaningful way) and dramatic (in the
    tradition of drama, going back to Aristotle). But it's also capable of
    breaking. Trip and Grace can fall eerily, permanently silent and remain
    planted in the same spot. You can get stuck walking in the door. Things
    that you type can be interpreted by the system in what seems to be
    exactly the wrong way. As is the case with interactive fiction, you have
    to learn something about how to interact fruitfully before you can
    interact fruitfully. Trying to play along, and not getting it quite
    right, can lead to frustration. Façade's excellence is not that it has
    some sort of dramatic Turing-Test-like ability to handle everything you
    can throw at it; there are plenty of ways to run aground, even when
    you're not trying to.

    The thing about Façade, though, is that when things go right, which
    isn't all that difficult to achieve, they can go brilliantly right. Your
    conversation can take you in an exhilarating free ride over the Freytag
    diagram of Trip and Grace's soul-searching and their coming to terms
    with their relationship, a ride that is not just funny, but manages to
    be touching. And, it's a ride that you get to steer: once a good typist
    is keyed into the way to talk to Trip and Grace, he or she can provoke
    reactions, draw the conversation to different topics, side with one or
    the other character, and nudge the drama in different directions. Grace
    and Trip are not stateless Elizas; they are closer, if anything, to
    Galateas, but they also maintain an awareness of the way the
    conversation has progressed so far, and they work together to achieve
    dramatic goals, and they use a complex behavior control system to blend
    their high-level and low-level actions together smoothly.

    The Oz Project at CMU, the major academic effort in interactive drama so
    far, sought to develop systems that were "highly interactive," that is,
    ones that allowed the player to move, talk, and act at any point, rather
    than only at the end of a turn. Façade realizes this goal, among others.
    Grace and Trip react fluidly to comments from the player at any point,
    given the somewhat asymmetric typed text interface. They player is
    always free to move around and check out things in the apartment. The
    system structures events beginning at the level of the dramatic beat (a
    visible action and reaction) and allows the player to intervene between
    beats or to interrupt a beat.

    Façade is also impressive in how it deals with language. It is able to
    understand many statements that are relevant to the current situation,
    and to correctly handle jokes, praise, agreement, disagreement,
    flirting, rudeness, and so on. Not that every possible statement is
    always correctly classified and acted upon, of course. But the natural
    language understanding system works well enough, enough of the time, for
    the drama at hand. Again, the amazing thing isn't that this system is
    flawless. It's that players can manage to get through an entire act
    without a noticeable slip-up -- even though this framework for
    interaction, unlike the venerable ">" prompt in IF, has few precedents,
    and players can't build on their previous knowledge of how to interact.
    It's as if you found someone who had never played interactive fiction
    before, sat this person down at a new version of Adventure, and found
    that after a few minutes of typing the game understood practically all
    the input it was getting and the newcomer was having a great time.

    While Façade looks more like a graphical adventure or a strange
    first-person shooter than like most text-based IF pieces, the insights
    that Mateas and Stern have gained in working on the system can certainly
    trickle into more traditional IF. It's not the place of a review to
    start outlining all the ways in which they might do that, but I will
    note that Mateas, with his student Mark Nelson, has already looked into
    how some of the techniques employed in Façade can be used in the context
    of an existing interactive fiction. Those two discuss this topic in a
    paper presented at the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital
    Entertainment conference, "Search-based Drama Management in the
    Interactive Fiction Anchorhead."

    Currently Façade only runs on Windows XP, 2000 or ME. It's pretty
    processor intensive, and will refuse to run on processors slower than
    1.6 GHz. It's also an 800 MB download via BitTorrent. (You can spend $14
    plus shipping to get Façade on two CDs, which Mateas and Stern sell at
    cost.) If you're an IF fan with an adequate Windows machine, it's
    certainly worth the download time or CD cost. I had to ask around my
    department for a while to find a suitable computer to borrow for Façade
    installation and play, so I envy those who only have to wait for the
    download to finish. A Mac version is planned, and will happen whenever
    the two developers (hopefully with some volunteer help) can manage the
    port, but it isn't imminent. In the meantime, if you're lucky enough to
    have a system on hand that will run Façade, check it out! I'd venture to
    guess that it will be the most impressive one-room game in an apartment
    that you'll play all year.

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

    From:	Mike Penman

    TITLE: The Fire Tower
    AUTHOR: Jacqueline A. Lott
    EMAIL: jacq SP@G allthingsjacq.com
    DATE: 28 May 2004
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive, Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/art/if-artshow/year2004/firetower.z8
         A map is located at:
         ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/art/if-artshow/year2004/firetower_map.jpg
    VERSION: 1

    Writing for the IF Art Show isn't easy, I know. Faced with the remit
    "explore interactivity", where do you begin?

    Jacqueline A. Lott chose to begin with an engaging character. The
    protagonist of The Fire Tower is consistently drawn, from the results of
    ">look at me", ("You glance down and the first thing you see are your
    hiking boots. They're serious hiking boots...") to knowledgeable asides
    made during the IF. She even has a purpose, having come to the fringes
    of Mount Cammerer in the Appalachians to walk solo and get away "from
    everything: work, responsibilities..."

    Though it was good to find such a well-presented character, it's Mount
    Cammerer that stars in this piece. This was an entry in the 2004 IF Art
    Show "landscape" section. It took best of show and "best setting" at the
    following XYZZYs.

    The first, powerful impact is of a beautiful landscape beautifully
    presented. It's tempting to describe sweeping scenes with flowery prose
    but the author resists that temptation. The text is sparse and
    transparent; it doesn't get in the way of the country depicted and
    everything is described with an infectious enthusiasm. I was left
    feeling relaxed, as though I'd been there, at least in part. I presume
    that was the main objective of the piece, so it's a success from the
    first play through.

    That sense of "being there" is enhanced by the sheer interactivity of
    the piece. Faced with something that says, in essence, "See how
    interactive I am!" I start to verb the nouns. This setting is deeply
    implemented. Almost everything can be examined, heard, smelled, felt and
    tasted. I know more about Appalachian flora now than I did before
    playing.

    Sometimes a lack of options left me feeling frustrated. I wanted to go
    back on myself or try routes that I wasn't allowed to. I was
    particularly miffed to find that I missed the work's titular tower
    because, having moved away from it without entering in order to re-check
    a previous description, I was barred from returning. But this isn't a
    game -- the author's trying to guide the player around a landscape --
    nor would route reversals or unplanned diversions be in character for
    the experienced lone-walker protagonist.

    Time -- always a difficult dimension in landscape -- is well handled.
    The protagonist's watch counts one minute for each turn and each travel
    description adds a number of minutes dependent on the terrain covered.
    There's a sense of time passing at a realistic rate, adding to the sense
    of "being there".

    I was disappointed with the centre of the game, the fire tower. It being
    the target and title of my walk, I was looking forward to finding
    something extra there. It's as beautifully described as everything else,
    but I'm not sure it deserves its pivotal placement.

    It's a good sign if the only major gripe I can raise about an IF is that
    I was left wanting more. In particular I wanted to explore the issues of
    stilting and entrapment -- barely but skillfully hinted at -- that led
    to this walk in the first place. I wanted to turn the protagonist to an
    equipment shop and then along the whole Appalachian trail, fulfilling
    her lifetime dream. For a player like me, without any real interest in
    puzzles, it wouldn't take much to turn this into a full length game in
    the Sunset Over Savannah mode.

    Perhaps the best praise I can offer the piece is this: I wish I'd
    written it. Its clean, artless-seeming approach fosters the illusion
    that I could have. In fact, I think I feel a landscape entry for next
    year's IF Art Show coming on. But first I'm going back to see if I can
    find the bear that Emily Short saw.

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

    From:	Valentine Kopteltsev

    TITLE: Heist
    AUTHOR: Andy Phillips
    EMAIL: pmyladp SP@G pmn1.maths.nottingham.ac.uk
    DATE: 1997
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/heist.z8

    In the last few years, a lot of talk could be heard about IF "growing
    petty" (which effectively means, text adventures becoming shorter).
    Well, there certainly are objective factors calling forth the numerical
    superiority of shorter works -- after all, a simple arithmetic
    calculation shows that in the period of time it takes an average author
    to write a hundred-room game, the same author can create about five
    games of equal quality with only twenty rooms each. (In fact, the real
    statistics could turn out even less favourable for longer games, because
    the beta-testing work usually increases at a rate outstripping growth).
    Of course, there're also a number of subjective factors that make this
    quantitative imbalance even harsher, but this isn't the proper place for
    discussing them; I'd just like to mention that, as usual, several
    opinions about the optimal size for a modern text adventure exist. My
    personal point of view on that matter can be best expressed with a
    paraphrase of a saying popular in Russia: More IF games, good and
    different! Of course, if we had three or four Curses!-sized works
    released each quarter it'd probably be a bit too much, but if they
    vanished from the IF scene completely, a certain vacuum would be left
    behind.

    Andy Phillips seems to be one of the people who don't want the latter to
    happen, and who don't just restrict themselves to idle talk but take
    active measures to prevent it. Heist certainly can be considered a
    contribution to the struggle against the extinction of IF giants.

    At this point, I'd like to take the bull by the horns, and call the game
    by its proper name: it's a puzzlefest. Those of you who don't feel like
    spending the next period of time (quite an extended one -- the
    walkthrough for Heist includes over 1000(!) moves) hearing about logical
    problems can stop reading right now -- the rest of this review is
    dedicated entirely to puzzles. Of course, the game has a story, and a
    setting, but it really isn't what it is about. ;)

    Well, the opening section of Heist could probably be as off-putting as
    the beginning of this review. From the very start, the author
    demonstrates he's not inclined to any compromises -- once the player has
    decided to take her brain to the gym, she has to sweat her guts out from
    the very start. No warming-up exercises are provided for; the prologue
    is at least as hard as the rest of this work.

    In some respects, it's even harder: you see, as you progress, you begin
    to get accustomed to the author's design style, and start to know what
    to expect of him. The early stages of just *any* game, on the contrary,
    have chances (at least, theoretically) to take the player by surprise.
    Heist doesn't quite miss these opportunities.

    The first thing the player needs to get accustomed here is, uh, let's
    call it adventure game logic. What do I mean by that? Now, suppose your
    relative is going to die, and wants you to visit his place after his
    death. (BTW, this also represents the first problem to solve in Heist).
    On the other hand, he intends to make getting there some sort of
    challenge (for whatever reason), so that he doesn't just send you the
    key by mail. There are several ways to accomplish that, but in real
    life, something like travelling to India to kill a tiger whose stripe
    pattern matches that of your relative's door-mat, reading the
    combination tattooed on the beast's stomach, then returning and using
    the combination on the safe in your relative's office to open it and
    discover there the key sought for hardly would come to anyone's mind,
    although it can't be contended that this action sequence has no logic at
    all. What is more, even a "lite edition" of this solution based on a
    visit to the local zoo, or even on catching a like-coloured cat on the
    nearby garbage heap wouldn't be much of an option, either; however, it
    probably would fit reasonably well into a text adventure. While this
    very example isn't adopted from Heist, the game often uses similar
    approaches to puzzle creation, and heavily relies on the assumption that
    people will fiddle with certain things/visit certain places not because
    there's any indication it's going to help them, but just because it's
    possible.

    There are a couple more things one needs to get used to, regarding
    technical aspects of game creation. The first of them is illustrated
    best by yet another abstract example. Let's imagine that in some text
    adventure, the player gets to an abandoned airfield, finding there a
    wreck of a plane. So, (s)he types "X PLANE", and sees the following
    lines:

       This aircraft hardly will ever fly again: the hull is all rusty, and
       the covering of the wings has rotted through here and there,
       revealing the underlying ribs. The undercarriage, its posts twisted
       and bent, rests on two flat-tyred wheels. The cowl is missing, as are
       a few other, more essential motor parts. From where you're standing,
       you can't look inside the pilot's cockpit, but its shattered hood and
       a bundle of wires sticking out of it quite unambiguously hint at the
       fact marauders already have been there. A glance at the empennage
       brings you to two important conclusions: 1. judging by the rests of
       the markings, the airplane once belonged to the Royal Ligutanian Air
       Force, and 2. even if all its other parts were intact, this machine
       still wouldn't be able to take off.

    Further on, our player randomly tries out, say, "X WINGS", "X COCKPIT",
    and "X EMPENNAGE", each time getting the same description. I think 99%
    would give up after that, rightfully deciding the aircraft was
    implemented as a single object, and stop examining its parts. How could
    they possibly know that, if they happened (by chance or by persistence)
    to enter "X WHEELS", they'd be rewarded with an entirely different
    response:

       You never thought of the reasons why the airplane had been left here
       to rot away, but as you look at the wheels you realize that at least
       one of them was sabotage: protruding from the left tyre is a sturdy
       steel needle (needless to say, it appears to be crucial for your
       further progress).

    Such situations are very common in Heist, so that inspecting every
    single element of a multi-part object is a good idea. To be fair, it's
    to be said the whole is by far not as draconian as it might have been,
    because the game does its best in limiting the scope of objects the
    player can interact with by using the standard "That's not something you
    need to refer to..." response. Still, not being aware of this
    particularity could be pretty confusing.

    The other feature requiring getting used to is a strange minimalism of
    some descriptions (as with the previous issue, examples are scattered
    all over the game). For instance, somewhere in the middle of the story,
    I found a remote control unit, which claimed to have "three simple
    buttons", yet gave no hint about how I could distinguish between them. I
    tried "X BUTTONS", but was told that I couldn't see any such thing.
    Pressing the remote control didn't earn me any information about the
    buttons' unique characteristics either (it merely replied with "Nothing
    obvious happens"). As it turned out, this cul-de-sac could be overcome
    by typing "PRESS BUTTON" (note the singular) and learning the
    distinctive features for the buttons from the standard disambiguation
    response -- "Which do you mean, ...". OK, this method worked, but don't
    tell me it's a good game design style!

    Normally, I'd dismiss something like that as slopwork; however, it's
    hardly applicable in this case, because Heist clearly isn't sloppy.
    Thus, I tend to see these features as some sort of the author's
    conceptual design choices I'm just failing to understand.

    After the prologue, the game splits up into a number of sub-games -- a
    decision amiable for both the author and the players. The author has
    obviously spared a lot of coding work, especially considering the fact
    that the player's inventory can't be transferred between the game parts;
    the players have received an additional chance to complete at least a
    major section of Heist on their own (while solving the entire game
    without help from outside probably also is possible, it'd certainly
    require more time and efforts most people could afford to spend on a
    text adventure). And, of course, there are puzzles, puzzles, puzzles.
    Puzzles abound. Most of them are decent, original and fun to solve,
    although they make massive use not only of adventure game logic, but
    also of adventure game conventions (you know, things like the player
    becoming able to pick up an object that previously had been too heavy
    for him to carry after (s)he swung the dumb-bells a few times). One of
    the puzzles seems to be loaned from Zork II, but I think the reason for
    it lies in the author just being unfamiliar with the immortal
    masterpiece by Infocom; since there's enough proof in Heist of Mr.
    Phillips' creativity regarding puzzle design, I can't blame him for that
    -- not having played Zork certainly isn't the worst crime in the world
    (actually, it's no crime at all).

    And this is pretty much all that can be said about this game. It's not
    without faults, but true puzzle-lovers will forgive all of them:
    occasional typos (admitted, their rate is kept quite low, especially
    considering how huge the whole thing is), a few wording problems, and a
    couple non-fatal bugs. As to those who aren't true puzzle-lovers, they
    shouldn't play this game, anyway.

    As to me, I'm completely happy with Heist, and I hope games of this kind
    (and size) will be kept being released. At times, it's great to have
    something you could put your brains to work onto, and to do so (with my
    inclination to bad puns, you could bet I was going to say it!) without
    haste.

    The SNATS (Scores Not Affecting The Scoreboard):

    PLOT: OK for a puzzle-oriented game; otherwise, I'd rate it lower (1.2)
    ATMOSPHERE: See PLOT, although a few places are really atmospheric (1.3)
    WRITING: Even and solid (1.2)
    GAMEPLAY: Well, puzzlefest. An entertaining puzzlefest, though (1.4)
    BONUSES: The amount of work that obviously has gone into a work so huge
             automatically deserves at least... (1.2)
    TOTAL: 6.3

    CHARACTERS: Well-implemented and not annoying - what else can be
                required of a NPC in that kind of game? (1.2)
    PUZZLES: Lots of 'em, a vast majority being decent, original and fun to
             solve (1.4)
    DIFFICULTY: The game is obviously intended to keep the player busy for a
                very, very long time (10 out of 10)

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

    From:	Mike Tulloch

    TITLE: Moonglow
    AUTHOR: Dave Bernazzani
    EMAIL: daveber SP@G gis.net
    DATE: October 4, 2004
    PARSER: Simple (Microform parser)
    SUPPORTS: Zcode interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware -- Author's site
    URL: http://www.gis.net/~daveber/miniventure/
    VERSION: 3

    Moonglow exudes a 50's Sci-Fi feel, that some may find to be cliched,
    but it does provide a familiar backdrop in an economy of words. You see
    a UFO crash in your field; you can guess what unfolds next.

    Moonglow, like Catseye, is a 10k adventure, but it feels more polished
    due to its more robust parser. Like the aforementioned game, it is lean
    on description, terse with its replies, and consists of only a few verbs
    and objects. I also discovered an instant death routine that seemed a
    bit capricious. As with Catseye, you can't save the game, should the
    need or desire arise.

    The puzzles here are a medium level of difficulty, but I found them
    rewarding. First, they are separate puzzles (not simply part of one big
    puzzle as in Catseye); second, they are creative, in that they made
    sense, weren't immediately obvious, and yet weren't insanely difficult.
    The plot proceeds linearly but does involve a lot of "guess the verb"
    towards the end, however, due to the lack of helpful responses. In
    comparison to Catseye, Moonglow is more descriptive, more interesting,
    and more realistic. (Yes, it's a realistic SF.)

    Moonglow is diverting and worth an hour or two of playing. Bernazzani
    hit the mark with this one.

    Score: 6/10.

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

    From:	Paul Lee

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

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

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

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

    From:	Jimmy Maher

    TITLE: Wumpus 2000
    AUTHOR: Muffy St. Bernard
    EMAIL: muffysb SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: November 2004
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Z-code ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/wump2ka.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Wumpus 2000 is a rather bold amalgamation of everything the average
    member of the IF community hates the most. We have hunger daemons,
    randomized combat, and arbitrary death. Best of all, the whole game is a
    gigantic five-level maze. Don't move on to the next review just yet,
    though. There are some interesting things going on here.

    As its name would imply, Wumpus 2000 is an homage to the early '70's IF
    progenitor Hunt the Wumpus. However, Wumpus 2000 adds to Hunt the Wumpus
    at least a suggestion of a plot and more interactive elements, thus
    changing its form from an elaborate logical puzzle to a full-blown, if
    rather unusual, text adventure. The player is a newspaper reporter whose
    expose has angered the wrong people, resulting in her being deposited
    into a monster-infested toxic waste dump below her city. The objective
    is simple survival and, ultimately, escape. To do this, the player must
    explore a 5-level, 100 room dungeon which is randomly generated for each
    game, building up equipment and experience in preparation for her
    showdown with the game's ultimate foe, the wumpus itself. In classic
    dungeon crawl style, the monsters and challenges get steadily tougher as
    one progresses, but the rewards -- in the form of more powerful weapons,
    and treasures which can add to the player's score upon escape -- also
    increase. You will also have the opportunity to get physically stronger
    in a couple of different ways, a nice stand-in for the conventional RPG
    experience level trope. Taking advantage of these opportunities is
    essential if you are to have any hope of defeating the tougher monsters
    on level 3 and below.

    Yet the heart of Wumpus 2000 remains mapping. There has been
    considerable discussion on the IF newsgroups about potential
    alternatives to the traditional compass style of navigation. Wumpus 2000
    is interesting in this regard, for it dispenses with directions
    altogether. Rooms are numbered from 1 to 100, with rooms 1 through 20 on
    level 1, 21 through 40 on level 2, etc. Exits from each room are listed
    not with their direction but with their destination. For instance, the
    exits from the first room of my game looked like this at the beginning:

    Exit 1 corkscrews toward an unexplored room.
    Exit 2 corkscrews toward an unexplored room.
    Exit 3 corkscrews toward an unexplored room.

    After I had explored a bit, they looked like this:

    Exit 1 corkscrews toward room 1 (A vast, rough chamber.)
    Exit 2 corkscrews toward room 17 (A vast, rough chamber.)
    Exit 3 corkscrews toward room 18 (A vast, rough chamber.)

    Mapping this is not really that difficult, although it does require a
    slightly different frame of mind. One must stop thinking directionally
    and start thinking solely in terms of connections. Deeper in the
    dungeon, things start to get a bit more complicated. You will encounter
    steep slopes upon which you can lose your footing, rushing water which
    can sweep you away in undesired directions, and other such obstacles.
    Things get really tough in the bottom couple of levels, when you run
    into things like this:

    Exit 1 corkscrews toward a familiar part of this room.
    Exit 2 corkscrews toward an unexplored part of this room.
    Exit 3 corkscrews toward a familiar part of this room.
    Exit 4 rises steeply toward room 85 (A vast, dark chamber.)

    As you can see, there are now multiple locations located in the "same"
    room. Mapping this sort of thing requires some real ingenuity, as well
    as resorting to the old standby of dropping items about the place and
    hoping no wandering monsters carry them off. For the truly masochistic,
    there is an option to turn off the room numbers altogether throughout
    the dungeon. Needless to say, I didn't partake.

    Other than exploring and mapping, you will spend your time collecting
    and experimenting with a variety of useful and not so useful items,
    fighting monsters, and slowly building up your character. There really
    are no traditional set-piece puzzles. The game is completely simulation
    oriented, with it challenges all arising organically from the
    environment. I would say its gameplay has as much in common with Nethack
    and its cousins as it does with traditional narrative IF.

    Dungeons and Dragons tropes get pretty unbearable pretty quickly for me,
    but the game's saving grace is that it never takes itself particularly
    seriously. Monsters are silly and fun, and you will even find some very
    humorous little notes left by the dungeon's earlier (doomed) explorers.

    It isn't the sort of thing I usually enjoy, but I had quite a good time
    with Wumpus 2000 for the first few hours. I found it fairly challenging,
    but not ridiculously so like, say, Nethack, and figuring out how things
    worked and reading the game's humorous little descriptions and asides
    was a lot of fun. Eventually, though, things got simultaneously more
    difficult and tedious, and I started to cheat, making copious use of the
    UNDO command. The presence of UNDO destroys much of the challenge in a
    game like this, for virtually any combat can now be won by UNDOING
    anytime the result in a given turn is unfavorable to your character. I'm
    frankly rather surprised that the author didn't disable it, although I'm
    not disappointed. I seriously doubt I would have ever completed the game
    without it.

    Even with UNDO, winning the game for me involved some more extensive
    cheating. I found myself on the last level of the dungeon, having killed
    the dreaded wumpus, with two of the three keys I needed to make my final
    escape. Naturally, I couldn't find the third. In the end, I hacked into
    the object tree to find that last elusive key and win the game.
    Sometimes a man must do what a man must do...

    The prospective player should be aware that there are a few bugs to be
    found. The worst of these is that doing an INVENTORY while holding the
    gem pouch you find on one of the later levels will crash the game with
    an illegal opcode. Perhaps another release will be forthcoming to
    correct this issue, and a few other more minor niggles.

    For me, the problem with a game like this is that increased challenge
    just feels like increased tedium. At some point it all becomes work
    rather than fun, and then I either give up or cheat. I suspect that many
    other IF players are, like me, looking for something fundamentally
    different in their computer entertainment than that which Wumpus 2000
    provides, and so I am not surprised that there has been virtually no
    discussion of this game in the community since its release. Still, if
    you think you might enjoy a heaping dose of RPG-style simulation and
    old-school mapping puzzles to go with a little bit of narrative, give
    Wumpus 2000 a try. It really does do what it does very well, and I don't
    know of any other modern parser-based game quite like it.

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