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Game Reviews W

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    Table of Contents
    The Warlord, the Princess, and the Bulldog
    WARP!
    Waystation
    The Weapon
    Wearing the Claw
    The Wedding
    When Help Collides!
    When in Rome 1: Accounting for Taste
    When in Rome 2: Far from Home
    Who Created That Monster?
    Whom the Telling Changed
    Winchester's Nightmare
    Windhall Chronicles: See Path To Fortune
    Winter Wonderland
    Wishbringer
    The Witness
    Words Of Power
    World
    Worlds Apart
    Wormhole: The Beginning
    Wumpus 2000

    The Warlord, the Princess, and the Bulldog
    From: Mike Snyder (wyndo SP@G prowler-pro.com)
    Review appeared in SPAG #44 -- April 30, 2006

    TITLE: The Warlord, The Princess & The Bulldog
    AUTHOR: David Whyld
    EMAIL: dwhyld SP@G gmail.com
    DATE: March 31, 2006
    PARSER: Adrift
    SUPPORTS: Adrift Runner and GLK Adrift
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/springthing/2006/warlord.zip
    VERSION: Version 1

    It's not the next chapter in The Chronicles of Narnia (and if no other reviewer
    makes the same joke, I'll be surprised). David Whyld's Spring Thing 2006 entry,
    written in Adrift, reprises the exploits of mercenary bad-ass Stavros "The
    Bulldog" McGrogan in a sequel to his earlier A Spot of Bother. It's up to The
    Bulldog to sneak, fight, grunt, and puzzle-solve his way to victory against the
    evil Warlord, Baron Grishtak.

    At times, this is a contradiction. From the start, the goal is clear. I don't
    mean the goal of the story (which is also clear), but the goal of the game
    itself. Finish the three primary objectives with full health for a score boost,
    and pick up more points for solving puzzles rather than pushing past them with
    brute force. This opens the game to a variety of play styles, but that "best
    score" objective is the carrot dangling just beyond reach. The Bulldog loses
    life points when he fights, and without a clear idea of how to gain them back
    (let alone how many can *be* regained), my inclination was to avoid fights and
    slink about the castle solving puzzles, preserving every point of health
    possible. So much for being a bad-ass.

    Even though I enjoyed the game using this strategy, I might have enjoyed it
    more if I hadn't been aiming for a perfect game. In the end, it didn't matter.
    I didn't complete one of the three objectives, and I won with a score of only
    80 and health of 90. The ending - and the death ending too, when I purposely
    let The Bulldog get pounced by The Tiger - was still satisfying.

    Things take a bit longer when you play for points. Instead of beating up the
    bad guys, I lured them into traps, tricked them into leaving, or simply avoided
    them entirely. When I stumbled into traps or lost health in unexpected ways, I
    opted to "undo" or "load" a prior save, so I could try another approach. This
    made the game tougher. To get it all right the first time, I would have needed
    to read the author's mind. The interesting thing is that this was just another
    way of playing the game. With a different objective - let The Bulldog fight
    enemies and bully his way past the tough parts - it doesn't require psychic
    powers. It's a fair system which rewards do-overs without making do-overs
    essential to win.

    I've mentioned "health points" several times. If you have visions of RPG stats
    and random dice-rolls - especially if you don't *like* those things - take
    heart. That's not how WPB works. Think of it as the antithesis of a scoring
    system. When you earn "score" points, it's for completing a task, reaching a
    milestone, or hitting some score-worthy trigger. These are things built into the
    game, and the points are set. If you play much IF, you've probably seen this in
    action. WPB has this *in addition to* its health point system. Points come off
    by making mistakes, or in other predetermined ways that involve alternate puzzle
    solutions. Sometimes, these mistakes (especially in facing enemies) can be
    repeated, but on the whole it's more like a credit system. The Bulldog is
    extended so many of these "mistake" points, and he spends them as necessary.

    The beauty is that making these mistakes usually gets The Bulldog past puzzles.
    For instance, there are several ways to pass the landmines near the beginning of
    the game. One way in particular saves The Bulldog from damage entirely. Other
    ways leave him only slightly scathed (or perhaps unharmed, but with the loss of
    something that might be the key to avoiding damage later). Of course, stepping
    into it (with persistence) solves the puzzle too, at the expense of a chunk of
    health.

    It's designed to be winnable, no matter how low your health becomes. The more
    damage The Bulldog takes, though, the fewer risks he can endure. Suppose this
    drops to a single remaining point. The game remains winnable, but every
    additional obstacle must be overcome with brains instead of brawn. This can
    become *very* difficult. Health can be recovered, but I never was quite sure
    how much. If I recall, I healed about 30. The Bulldog has suffered some prior
    to the start of the game, beginning with 63 health. Health of 100 is considered
    "full". It may be possible to recover more than 37, making it possible to take
    damage and still finish with full health. I never figured out the max. It's just
    as possible that every method in the game adds up only to a total of 37, meaning
    a perfect win requires a totally unharmed Bulldog. Maybe a better player than I
    - or Whyld himself - will say for sure.

    Really, it's a clever design. I can't think of a single puzzle that didn't
    have two or more solutions. The easier the solution, the fewer the points (and
    often, the more damage The Bulldog would take). Because my goal had me going
    after the toughest of each solution, I hit the built-in help often. After only
    a short ways into the game, I was requesting every hint available in every
    room. In a way, this became just another tool, like "undo". Instead of cheating,
    it seemed more like a part of the game. Some hints even felt more like puzzles
    to solve. Even *with* hints, it was often difficult to work out the best (most
    rewarding point-wise) solutions. Without them, though, I never would have.

    This all makes it difficult to say just how tough The Warlord, The Princess, and
    The Bulldog is. I solved many of the puzzles with easier solutions at first,
    costing The Bulldog only a few points of health. I would have finished faster -
    and possibly without so much reliance on hints - if I had just pressed forward
    from those points. I suppose it ranges from "challenging but not overly
    difficult" to "one step down from impossible", depending on what approach you
    take. Mine was more on the side of the latter.

    Whyld has done an excellent job of anticipating much of what players may try.
    The implementation level alone is amazing. Very little encountered in the game
    lacks first, second, even third-level implementation. If you look at scenery
    that has parts, you can look at those parts. You can often *interact* with those
    parts. If those parts have parts, they're probably implemented too. It pays to
    really inspect what's around. Even though much of it is optional, enough digging
    can bring up the keys to alternate puzzle solutions.

    The prose in WPB is dotted with amusing passages. Generally, Whyld isn't trying
    for real comedy - and if so, it probably wouldn't have worked here anyway. It's
    more the "ah ha, that was funny" kind of subdued but cliched humor you'd expect
    from a story in which the hero only grunts yet everybody understands what he
    means. When Baron Grishtak writes a letter to his ace henchman - subsequently
    obtained by The Bulldog - he admits that he "foolishly jotted down the access
    code to the master computer on the bottom of it." He goes on to encourage his
    henchman to destroy the letter after reading it, for that very reason.

    As to the presentation, the author held nothing back. My first fifteen minutes
    were spent just reading the introductory material - details about the game,
    additional commands, the intro, etc. The game font size can be adjusted via the
    command prompt. Screen-clearing at each room change can be turned on or off
    (personally, I liked it on - it was easier to quickly scroll up and reread room
    descriptions that way). Around four different fonts were used - one for room
    headers, one for the room description, the default font for most game messages,
    and a script-style font for letters and notes. It may sound like a hodgepodge,
    but it works well (if you're using the Adrift runner and your Windows-based
    computer has those fonts) and it set WPB apart from other games in terms of
    style.

    To now, it may seem as though I have no complaints about The Warlord, The
    Princess & The Bulldog. A big game, though, has more room for things to go
    wrong. None of these problems (in my play-through, anyway), were game-killing,
    but they ranged from mildly annoying to completely preventing (or, at times,
    *allowing*) certain solutions. My transcripts note quite a few typos - not
    surprising in a game of this size and complexity, but still minor dents in the
    proverbial finish. Weirder quirks included things like the non-working pendant
    (it worked once, but after a subsequent "undo" or "restore", shaking it didn't
    work even though it still had 3 charges); being able to enter the guards'
    training courtyard in a "they're gone" state, even though they shouldn't have
    been; a reference to a voodoo doll in the hints, which doesn't seem to be in the
    game (Adrift will usually respond to objects it knows, even in other places, and
    it didn't know that one); being able to break the panel in the sleeping quarters
    repeatedly; I didn't realize it at the time, but the "code to the master
    computer" is too long to work in either of the computers found later in the
    game; some available exits were unmarked on the map; some exits described in the
    text didn't work in the game; you can't "undo" to before a hint screen; I
    couldn't get "exit" to work (even though it was supposed to), when trying one of
    the codes; A seven-letter password scattered throughout the castle appears to
    have two fifth letters; it's possible to set the watch before winning, so that
    it goes off during the final scene; a few other miscellaneous quirks.

    As the game progressed, these things either became more common or more
    noticeable. Maybe it was the cumulative effect, but my faith in the game's
    internal consistency was shaken. If I felt at all guilty about reliance on
    hints, the feeling passed when I thought that maybe the game was broken just
    enough to *prevent* the solutions I needed for a perfect win. This may not be
    true. From my experience, the bugs that persist after beta testing are usually
    the bugs in sections that *aren't* vital - else they would have been worked out
    already. Nonetheless, it's a reminder: the better the polish, the higher the
    faith.

    Most of the design works great. The health point system contributes to alternate
    puzzle solutions, and alternate puzzle solutions are abundant. The hints,
    although cryptic at times, are helpful. Even so, a few specific parts left me
    cold. One very early puzzle (the one that avoids a loss of health - an easier
    but damaging alternate does exist) requires waiting a few turns after taking
    action. I was impressed that the game allowed the particular action, but I
    thought I had messed up - so I did an "undo". Speaking of "undo", you can
    unwittingly make a move that disables it, in what I can only describe as a prank
    perpetrated by the author. It's by no means a necessary (or even an obvious)
    move, but some players will try it. I found no way to re-enable it, aside from
    reverting to a prior save (or starting over). One obstacle requires that you
    lose everything in inventory. The hints describe a way to keep most of it, but
    it requires repeating an action (and it's even possible to undo a failure,
    repeat, and succeed the second or third time).

    As a Spring Thing entry, WPB is fittingly sized. My play-through - taking most
    puzzles the hard way and relying heavily on the built-in hints - was eight and
    a half hours. Despite the flaws, I enjoyed the time I spent with The Warlord,
    The Princess & The Bulldog. An incredible amount of effort was put into this
    game, and it really shows. A post-competition release could address the
    remaining problems, making it even more recommendable.

    My Spring Thing score: "9"

    Zip file containing ADRIFT game file

    WARP!
    From: Stas Starkov <stas_ SP@G mail.rb.ru>
    Review appeared in SPAG #30 -- September 20, 2002

    NAME: WARP!
    AUTHOR: Dosius Software Co. and Richard Kelly
    EMAIL: None given
    DATE: 2002
    PARSER: Inform Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/warp.z5
    VERSION: Release 2

    Beginning of the game:

       You're on a space station.  This is nothing special in itself, but
       for some reason, due to your body's genetics, your very presence is
       causing the station to become unstable.  Stay aboard, and the station
       will explode.

       ...

       WARP!
       Usocon interactive fiction - a science fiction story
       (C)Copyright Dosius Software Co. and Richard Kelly, 2001-2002
       Release 2 / Serial number 640101 / Inform v6.21 Library 6/10
       Interpreter claims to support Z-Machine Specification 1.0
       PC interpreter version F detected.

       Welcome to WARP!
       Try not to mess up too quickly.

       Bedroom
       This is a rather sparse bedroom.  About the only thing here is your
       bed, which folds up into one of the floor tiles.  Exits lead north,
       west and east.

       What should I do now (dare I ask)?
       Well? _

    Looks like a jokey game, doesn't it? Well, the truth is: the game is
    implemented badly, and no joke can prettify the impression. More
    examples:

       What next? x bed
       [I don't see that here.]

       What should I do now (dare I ask)?
       Well? w

       Bathroom
       This is a modest bathroom with doorways leading east and southeast.
       You can see a sink and a toilet here.

       What next? x sink
       In the sink is a ring.

       What next? get ring
       Taken.

       What next? wear ring
       You can't wear that!

       What next? x ring

       What next? asdf
       I know your waist line has a bigger number than your IQ, but even you can do
       better than that.

       What next? _

    I think comments are needless. I mention only one more thing --
    instant-death rooms.

    Summary: An amateurish work. The premise is not bad, but not enough for a
    _game_.

    Zcode .z5 file

    Original PC version (titled "Chaos In Space">

    Waystation
    From: Julian Arnold <jools SP@G arnod.demon.co.uk>
    Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996

    NAME: Waystation                          PARSER: TADS standard
    AUTHOR: Stephen Granade                   PLOT: See below
    EMAIL: sgranade SP@G phy.duke.edu              ATMOSPHERE: See below
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive               WRITING: See below
    PUZZLES: See below                        SUPPORTS: TADS run-time ports
    CHARACTERS: See below                     DIFFICULTY: See below
    URL: <ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/way.zip>
         Needs TADS run-time (v2.2 or later),
         <ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/tads/>

    While driving home from work at night your car's engine dies.  Stopping at
    the side of the road you get out to investigate (not because you have the
    slightest clue of what the problem is, but rather because that seems the
    thing to do).  Moments later you are engulfed in blue light and pass out,
    awakening once more in a dungeon-like cell.

    The introduction to "Waystation" can be seen as analogous to the game as a
    whole-- rarely do you have a reason for your actions, other than that they
    seem like the right thing to do at the time-- objects are collected simply
    because they can be, and used by the same rationale.

    Your goal in the game is not revealed until over half-way through, so for
    the majority of the game you are reduced to moving purposelessly from
    location to location and solving seemingly arbitrary puzzles.  It could be
    argued that you are exploring the environment, but the game-world is not rich
    or coherent enough for this to be a satisfactory explanation.  Indeed, the
    game is a mish-mash of genres-- Granade has played with many ideas, but
    expanded on almost none of them. The introduction suggests alien abduction,
    but then you are transported to an all-too-human cell and seemingly left to
    rot there; after your escape you fetch up in an Orwellian world of barcoded
    and overalled workers, repressive armed guards, and unquestioning order;
    later, by way of the waystations of the title (interplanetary teleportation
    booths), you visit a garbage-dump planet, and a decaying, war-torn alien city
    (in which you find a Roman Catholic church untouched by the bombs which
    decimated the rest of the city-- shades of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds"?).
    This hotch-potch of genres overflows into the local geography in places.  For
    example, one building contains the worker's bathroom, the cafeteria, a
    strange museum-cum-library, an armoury, and a rather sensitive computer room
    all along the same corridor.

    The writing is quite good, the location decriptions are vivid and all the
    text is clear in it's meaning.  However, a somewhat juvenile humour pervades
    the game, with the produce of the worker's cafeteria likened to school
    dinners and the not uncommon trap thrown in which unfairly kills the player
    after luring him into considering it a puzzle (the most obvious example being
    the slightly infamous exploding toilet "puzzle" early on in the game).
    Equally, the solutions to some puzzles verge on the ridiculous (passing the
    laser beams) or are only apparent with foreknowledge gained through previous
    failure (protecting yourself from the acid rain, escaping the ruined house,
    or using the viscous liquid).  Also, there are a lot of red herrings, both
    portable objects and referrable-to, but useless, scenery objects.  Used
    sparingly and carefully such red herrings can contribute to a game's
    atmosphere and "realism," but here they generally do neither, and the lack of
    a satisfactory container (such as, say, "Curses" rucksack) results in the
    need for annoying inventory management.

    In summary, though the game is not wholly disappointing, neither is it
    particularly gratifying or inspired.  If you do not expect too much from it,
    in the way of a strong or developed plot, or detailed interactive NPCs (there
    are none) the game succeeds reasonably well as just that-- a game.  The
    puzzles, many of which seem to exist for their own sake only, as I've
    mentioned before, are generally of medium difficulty, and do not noticeably
    differ in this respect throughout the game.  Overall "Waystation" is a fun
    game, which perhaps offers as many lessons in how not to write IF as it does
    in how to write it.

    [This review was posted to rec.arts.int-fiction, 5th April 1996.]

    TADS .gam File (.zip)

    Solution (Text)

    The Weapon
    From: Stas Starkov <stas_ SP@G mail.rb.ru>
    Review appeared in SPAG #26 -- September 26, 2001

    NAME: The Weapon
    AUTHOR: Sean Barrett
    EMAIL: buzzard SP@G world.std.com
    DATE: 2001
    PARSER: Inform Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/weapon.zip
    VERSION: Release 1

    Surprisingly, the game's subtitle, "an Interactive Misdirection", is
    true enough. But this game offers additional err... misdirection. Well,
    the problem is -- you don't know who you really are until the very end.
    But that's the main idea (or call it the feature) of the game.

    "The Weapon" is strongly related to the outstanding game "Spider and
    Web" by Andrew Plotkin. Both games are heavily puzzle-oriented, but more
    than that -- they both have a lot of gadgetry in their puzzles, and you
    must work out how to use that gadgetry. I'm happy to add that the
    puzzles exist not just for sake of themselves -- they are based on the
    plot.

    In addition, both games' PCs know more than the player; you must explore
    not only surrounding world, but also yourself. Or at least you must care
    about what PC says. But there is a problem in "The Weapon" -- to follow
    the hints that reveal the PC, you must pay close attention to those
    hints. Strangely, the puzzles distract you from that, and I personally
    was not able to identify myself with the PC, because it was not far
    enough from a simple, boring cardboard stereotype. That's OK in most IF
    games, those with simple plots or those that are puzzle based (take "The
    Mulldoon Legacy" by Jon Ingold for example), but, as I noted above,
    after all "The Weapon" is a story with heavy plot, based on puzzles and
    self-discovery.

    "The Weapon" features the "most appropriate" conversation system: you
    type "talk" (or just "t") and the PC considers the current situation and
    says (in fact, more often just replies) what he/she thinks the most
    appropriate answer is. Ian Finley (and before that Adam Cadre in
    "Shrapnel") used this very technique in his game "Kaged". I found the
    effect weak then, but unlike "Kaged", in "The Weapon" there are several
    reasons why the author chose to use this conversation system. First, I
    think it's impossible (or very hard) to explain to the player "what's
    going on" in the game, since the PC is so far ahead of the player right
    from the start. Well, there _are_ alternative ways to show what's going
    on, but I don't think that cut-scenes or self-dialogues are more elegant
    methods for expressing the PC's thoughts. Second, as the author said,
    "you never need to TALK to win the game", but you need to in order to
    understand the story. Third, you can ask NPCs for things and order them
    to do things in the usual way, i.e. "Cheryl, open the door" or "ask Tom
    for a knife". Fourth, the PC's remarks are quite terse and seldom go
    very far from the NPC's questions -- and that lessens the "PC commands
    player" effect.

    Puzzles in the game are logical and mostly fair. But -- you can't solve
    some of them without seeing the death messages first. That's not very
    good, but with modern "UNDO" techniques you can reach the end of the
    game without much trouble. Overall, the majority of the puzzles are
    quite easy, because you can't do a lot in any particular moment of time,
    and that's good -- I was able to concentrate on the current puzzle for a
    long time. But there are no red herrings (well, the scenery "window"
    doesn't count), and I think that's bad -- red herrings add not only
    challenge for the player, but also a time to think about the situation
    aside from its puzzles. On the other hand, all the puzzles are well
    thought-out and sufficiently beta-tested. There are a lot of messages
    for the wrong moves of puzzle solving, and no technical bugs, as far as
    I can tell.

    To help you in puzzle solving, the author has added built-in hints. They
    consist of many levels (i.e. each puzzle has about 15 hints) and are
    well thought-out. But not everyone loves built-in hints -- they are far
    too easily accessible (I mean, you don't need even to connect to
    Internet) to prevent their use.

    There is only one NPC in "The Weapon", I think. But as in "Spider and
    Web", she is your enemy and you're trying to outsmart her. The NPC is
    fairly well implemented, but has little dynamism. She is not cardboard,
    but you can easily confuse her with it.

    The writing in the game was not easy for my lame English (I hope you
    don't forget that I'm Russian.) -- it was too heavy and had a lot of
    specific to science words. I was able to fully understand the story only
    after my fourth time reading one particular sentence -- a really rare
    situation for me. My English is lame, as I said -- let it not distract
    you from the game. But do note that.

    Also, the game supplies a newspaper -- the usual newspaper that
    describes recent news [events]. It helps to set the mood for the game.

    Overall, "The Weapon" is well implemented and has some good puzzles, but
    it is not _long_ enough to suck players into the game, I fear. The story
    is good and made me think about it after I finished the game.

    I almost forgot to say: "The Weapon" is a one room game. It is placed in
    the very far future and centers around the space war (or around post war
    events) with aliens (there are no laughs, it's serious). Not that this
    plot was never implemented before, but it's not bad for such a short
    story. This game is worth a look.

    SCORE:
    Atmosphere: 1.3 (not enough mind sucking)
    Game-play: 1.6 (mostly fair, but nothing outstanding)
    Writing: 1.2 (good, but not great -- for me)
    Plot: 1.3 (quite novel, but short)
    Wildcard: 1.4 (for gadgetry oriented puzzles; sci-fi story)
    Total: 6.8 (not bad)
    Characters: 1.1 (not very deep)
    Puzzles: 1.4 (good enough)

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

    I don't think a definitive taxonomy of IF puzzles has been written, but
    there have been gestures in that direction, and one of the better ones
    is in the recently released fourth edition of the Inform Designer's
    Manual. Graham Nelson doesn't so much describe the essence of good
    puzzles -- for the sensible reason, I suspect, that there's no unifying
    thread that distinguishes good puzzles -- as point out some of the more
    tiresome themes in puzzle creation (as well as some underexplored puzzle
    models). The themes are instantly recognizable to the seasoned IF
    player: Get-X-Use-X, locked-door (including variants involving guardians
    who want a particular object), maze, light-source,
    capacity-and-exhaustion, etc. It's probably an oversimplification to say
    that good puzzles are those that don't fit into the familiar categories,
    but I do think it's true that, for a puzzle to be genuinely memorable,
    it either needs to be outside the canon altogether or be a truly novel
    spin on the usual patterns. The puzzles in The Weapon are of both
    varieties, and for that reason they're, for the most part, satisfying to
    solve.

    You're in the middle of a war against an alien race, with a third race
    peripherally involved, and you're helping a superior officer figure out
    how to use a mysterious weapon -- except "helping" isn't quite the word,
    because you're interested in figuring out the weapon but not entirely
    interested in enabling the officer to succeed. Accordingly, the task is
    both to decipher the gadgetry and to mislead and misdirect the officer
    looking over your shoulder. Gadgetry-deciphering is a pretty familiar
    puzzle trope, but not with this sort of spin -- and, better, the tricks
    you come up with make sense, for the most part, and change to fit the
    situation. The gadgetry itself isn't particularly exciting, really, but
    the nature of the challenge demands some creative thinking -- how do you
    vary the tricks and misdirections to avoid going to the same well too
    many times, for instance?

    There are a few flies in the ointment. The puzzles aren't easy, and
    while for the most part they're logical, they also depend to some extent
    on visualization of things that aren't quite as well described as they
    could be. In other words, the puzzles make perfect sense if you
    visualize some key objects the way the author does -- but you might not,
    and the descriptions are a little too sparse to clue you in that you
    should be seeing the objects in question another way. There's a
    comprehensive hint system, to be sure, which helps fill in the gaps, but
    it's something of a drag to wrestle with puzzles and find, when you give
    up, that the solution was something that never crossed your mind because
    you "saw" the scene the wrong way. Another puzzle, while reasonably
    logical, suffers from guess-the-verb problems, and in several cases the
    game doesn't acknowledge guesses that are on the right track. These
    aren't mortal sins, though, and I'm willing to put up with some design
    flaws for the sake of some original ideas.

    The main NPC -- the officer -- is also well rendered; most of the
    puzzles hinge on observing her behavior or guessing at her reactions,
    and for the most part she functions logically. The relationship between
    the protagonist and the NPC isn't quite as well described and leaves a
    lot of questions unanswered -- why does the officer choose someone whom
    she clearly doesn't trust? Why does she seem to trust you at some times
    -- letting seemingly interesting developments pass with no comment --
    but not at others? Still, most of the problems are relatively minor, and
    a little imagination can fill in the gaps, I suppose. There's also an
    interesting twist at one point that forces the player to reassess
    everything that's come before -- though the twist might have worked
    better if another recent game hadn't done something extremely similar.

    The best way to describe The Weapon, I think, is that the seams don't
    often show: library responses are rare, descriptions and logical
    responses are in ample supply, and most aspects of the game appear to
    have been thought through, quibbles about visualization aside. The
    HTMLized feelies enhance the feeling of professionalism, though there
    isn't a lot to them; they're not as slickly done as Infocom's feelies,
    but they're well designed and suggest that the author took more than the
    usual pains to set the scene. The puzzles may not be everyone's cup of
    tea, but on the whole it's likely that the player will be reacting to
    the puzzles themselves (and to the concept), not to inadequate
    implementation thereof. Admittedly, it's not a long game -- four
    puzzles, by my count, and I did find some flaws even in those four
    puzzles -- but the flaws aren't fundamental tragic flaws, and many
    probably wouldn't consider them flaws at all (or wouldn't encounter the
    same problems). The writing, similarly, is unspectacular but effective
    -- it's strictly functional, doesn't try for splashy effects or clever
    dialogue, and never gets in the way of the game. The experience is
    rarely spectacular but almost never outright disappointing.

    The Weapon is intelligently done, and done with care; it may not set the
    IF world on fire, but it doesn't do much wrong.

    Inform (.z5) game file and HTML feelies

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

    NAME: Wearing the Claw
    AUTHOR: Paul O'Brian
    EMAIL: obrian SP@G colorado.EDU
    DATE: October 1996
    PARSER: Inform
    SUPPORTS: Inform Ports
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition96/claw
    VERSION: Version 1.0

    Last but not least.

    I'm torn with this one.  Using the changing hand as a marker for the
    player's progress is very imaginitive, but this doesn't quite mask the
    game's overall linearity.  Still, there are enough red herrings to keep
    it from being immediately apparent, and there is a nice re-use of
    puzzles, building on the previous challenges, particularly with the
    enchanted coat.

    The author comments that the claw was inspired by the desire to create a
    game without a scoring system, as he feels scores make I-F feel too much
    like a game rather than a story.  I'm not sure I agree entirely with the
    author's intentions here.  I personally use the score as a means of
    reassuring myself that I haven't just botched the game entirely (though
    of course it's not 100% effective).  The truth is, nearly every game I've
    seen to date has an optimum ending, the "real" ending to the game that
    closes the story as the author sees best.  Scoring is the easiest of a
    very few ways to let the player know when that ending has been reached.
    If a game is designed in such a way as to allow plotting without score,
    that's wonderful, but otherwise I don't think I-F should be penalized
    for failing to comply with this standard.  A lot of games use the
    scoring system effectively, even artistically.

    I sort of got off track there, didn't I?  Well, it'll give us something
    more to debate.  Overall, "Wearing the Claw" is a nice
    middle-of-the-road entry.

    From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #18 -- September 15, 1999

    One of the nice things about fantasy IF is that it's so malleable; rarely
    will the player complain that he couldn't suspend his disbelief enough to
    allow the author's innovation to work, because just about anything goes.
    As such, the fantasy setting serves Paul O'Brian's Wearing the Claw well,
    as it allows the author to incorporate some interesting experiments with
    the feel of traditional IF--and while the result isn't flawless, it's
    certainly good enough to be worth a look.

    The main innovation at issue is the replacement of the traditional
    point-based scoring system with something that actually relates to the
    plot. Specifically: your mission is to rid your homeland of a curse that
    has turned people's body parts into animal parts, and your own left hand
    has turned into a wolf's paw. As you overcome significant obstacles in
    your quest, however, your hand turns more and more human (and, conversely,
    when you screw up or otherwise get farther away from your goal, the
    wolfish part of you grows). The changes, one way or the other, are marked
    by a "tingling" or an "itching" in your hand, and the effect--to keep the
    player on course without the artificiality of points as a reward--is
    accomplished nicely. There was one time, however, when my hand became more
    wolflike even though I had just made progress toward my goal--but it's a
    minor flaw in a well-conceived experiment. It's true that, since the game
    was released, other IF has been released with more dramatic revisions of
    the standard scoring system--Sunset over Savannah, Little Blue Men--and
    still other games have abolished scoring systems entirely, among them
    Spider and Web. To my knowledge, however, Wearing the Claw was the first
    to rid itself of points as an indication of progress, and the author
    deserves credit for that.

    The other innovation that the author mentions was to weave the puzzles
    seamlessly into the plot, rather than having soup-cans-in-the-pantry sort
    of puzzles that don't fit into the narrative. This, likewise, succeeds,
    though it should be noted that there aren't all that many puzzles, and
    what there is isn't all that tricky. Still, given how most IF--then and
    now--simply tosses out puzzles to solve, with the implicit promise that
    the game will bestow something useful or interesting as a reward for
    solving the puzzle, a game that consciously avoids that path is a welcome
    change. It should be noted, however, that such an approach probably
    wouldn't be possible in a significantly larger game; it's difficult to
    provide a predetermined reason for overcoming every obstacle, particularly
    things like locked doors, other than that you feel a strange compulsion to
    explore your surroundings as thoroughly as possible. It would, at least,
    be interesting to see a longer work of IF that attempted to do what
    Wearing the Claw does in this regard.

    As mentioned above, Wearing the Claw isn't all that difficult; there is
    one logical leap toward the end that takes some thought, but most of the
    game flows by rather quickly. This was an entry in the 1996 Interactive
    Fiction Competition, meaning that it had to be short enough to be
    finishable in two hours--and it does, in fact, fit well within that limit.
    Though what's here is of high quality, the game does seem to end just as
    it gets going, and the player may be left wishing for more to do. (The
    "amusing" list is quite extensive, though.) There are quite a few rooms
    and objects (in proportion to the size of the game, at least) that play no
    part in the plot, which helps the game seem larger than it is--but, that
    aside, this shouldn't take anyone very long to finish.

    The find-the-McGuffin fantasy setting itself is nothing new, though it
    does allow the author to work with some of the hoary IF tropes--and there
    are a few twists at the end that do test the player's expectations
    somewhat. Moreover, the writing is good enough to sustain the game even
    when the plot feels familiar: room descriptions are economical and vivid,
    though the style of the conversations owes more to Tolkien than to
    everyday parlance. (Sample from the protagonist's mother: "I fear for you,
    dear one, but perhaps you can find on your quest some means of restoring
    prosperity to our village, which has been too long poor.") It also helps
    that the plot is largely free of glaring inconsistencies or incongruities,
    hardly a given even in fantasy settings.

    Those who genuinely dislike fantasy probably won't make an exception for
    Wearing the Claw, as it doesn't really push the boundaries of fantasy all
    that much. As fantasy IF goes, however, it's both thoughtful and
    imaginative, and manages to entertain consistently--and for those who
    weren't around for the 1996 competition, it might be worth going back to
    check this one out.

    Inform File (.z5) (updated version)

    Inform File (.z5) (competition version)

    The Wedding
    From: Duncan Stevens a.k.a. Second April <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #12 -- December 13, 1997

    NAME: The Wedding
    AUTHOR: Neil Brown
    E-MAIL: Not available
    DATE: 1996
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Inform interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/infocom/wedding.z5
    VERSION: Release 4

    Genuinely character-driven IF, as in stories whose plot and puzzles
    revolve around interacting with people rather than manipulating
    objects, is extraordinarily difficult to realize. Infocom's mysteries
    are some of the best attempts at this, but many of the characters even
    in those feel mechanical; it is all too obvious that there is a short
    list of keywords with appropriate responses. Neil Brown's The Wedding
    is not, admittedly, a fully character-driven game, but it does have
    that element -- and it illustrates just how difficult a goal it is to
    accomplish, even on a limited scale. On the whole, there are many good
    things about The Wedding -- but the moments that require interaction
    with the various NPCs simply fall flat.

    This is not to say that they are bad NPCs; they manage to be
    relatively realistic, to respond to an adequate variety of prompts,
    and even supply a modicum of humor. But, as so often happens, the
    puzzles involving them, though well-imagined, feel painfully
    artificial; they reduce the people to robots who will wait 100 turns
    for the next line of dialogue, say, or who don't notice notable events
    going on around them because they're not told to. One puzzle in The
    Wedding, in fact, requires that a character ask you a randomized
    question, you wander away surreptitiously and find out the answer, and
    then wander back and answer the question as if it were one
    conversation. Now, there is an attempt at realism here, in that the
    game mocks you if you try to find out the answer on the spot -- but it
    trades one silliness for another, in effect, in reducing character
    interactions to videotapes that can be stopped and returned to at
    will.

    The above is a minor absurdity, but there are more significant ones as
    well -- for instance, a certain character will (and must) follow you
    at a certain point, but not before then, and there is no logical
    explanation to the change. Another character's responses to you depend
    on your having discovered a certain fact about that character,
    regardless of what you do.  The security guard positioned by the front
    door is so remarkably dense that it troubles him not a bit that you
    come out of that door repeatedly; he simply refuses to allow you back
    in. Again, it should be said that these and other flaws in "The
    Wedding" illustrate the difficulty of coding realistic people more
    than any inadequacy on the part of the author; simple move-the-objects
    games are far less taxing. But when it comes to realism (and let's
    face it, the major charm of character-driven games is that they can
    approximate real life in some measure), there are snags aplenty. It
    may be a side effect of building a game around characters rather than
    objects that there are quite a few plot holes, some of them
    acknowledged by the author in the end credits; one of the main things
    that puzzled me was why someone buried something obviously worthless.

    The plot of The Wedding is apparently simple: your school chum
    Malcolm, due to be married, has disappeared, and you have been called
    in to help out -- but, because of family tensions, your mission is
    secret, so secret that you have to figure out alternative ways of
    getting into the house because the guard hasn't been authorized to let
    you in. (My question: if you're such a good friend of this Malcolm
    fellow and you're invited to the wedding, why do you have to sneak
    into the house?)

    After a few elementary clues about what's going on, you commence
    solving puzzles in classic "here's a nail, so I'll go look for a
    hammer" style; you have a series of puzzles to solve because they're
    there, and some are not obviously puzzles at all. (A surly teenager
    won't say anything to you? Isn't that just a fact of life, not
    something to worry about?) Some of the puzzles are rather clever and
    involve use of household gadgetry that, while not wildly inventive in
    terms of common sense, requires some steps that few works of IF bother
    with. (Put another way: The Wedding is situated so firmly in the realm
    of everyday life that it takes some mental adjustment to solve such
    down-to earth puzzles.) One hidden item requires an annoyingly exact
    command to find, though, and it's possible to bog down and not realize
    what's holding you back, and another mechanical puzzle requires
    something of an intuitive leap for the proper verb -- but, by and
    large, the puzzles are fairly good. Trouble is, as noted, they use the
    NPCs in ways that make them little better than props.

    The gameplay is likewise a bit uneven -- lots and lots of useless
    scenery, for instance (for which you get "that's not something you
    need to refer to..." messages, mostly), and some illogicalities, like
    a supermarket bag that can hold anything and everything, including a
    spade. (There is one character who wants a certain food item -- but
    once you bring the food, you can drop it on the floor and he'll never
    pick it up, or you can eat it yourself without any protest from him.)

    The Wedding has the usual Inform benefits, along with a very limited
    hint menu (plus other limited sources of hints worked into the game),
    and there are plenty of synonyms for most words -- and the game itself
    is wide enough that there are at least a few puzzles to work on at any
    given moment. (One puzzle (the dungeon problem) that seems to cry out
    "I have more than one solution!" does not, though -- maybe in a later
    release?) Dialogue is a bit clumsy as well -- "yes" in response to a
    direct question doesn't work; you must type "answer yes" or "say yes
    to" whoever, somewhat grating in a game where you learn many things
    from the various characters.

    The writing is mostly good, though it has rough spots -- there are
    some things in room descriptions that perhaps shouldn't be. For
    instance, when you first reach the front hall, you get this:

            The great entrance hall of D'Arcy manor evokes a twinge of
            jealousy within you -- the grand wooden polished floors and
            staircase, the expensive chandelier hanging from the high
            ceiling, the priceless Compton painting hanging on a wall. Why
            can't you inherit something like this? Leaving aside feelings
            of bitterness...

    Fine. Well-written, realistic. Except that you probably shouldn't feel
    it the tenth or eleventh time you enter the room -- I mean, you've
    probably seen hardwood floors before. Most of the room descriptions
    are well done -- descriptive, but controlled -- though I wasn't sure
    whether this one was supposed to be straightforward or sarcastic:

            This room offers refuge from the tastelessness that seems to
            prevail around the rest of the house. Framed pictures of
            famous film actresses, Garland, Dietrich, Midler and Streisand
            in particular, hang proudly on the sky-blue walls, alongside
            two extra-large pink and red ribbons. The abundance of style
            extends to the curtains, the most attractive you have ever
            seen. If only the rest of the house, to the south, had been
            decorated as well as this.

    Me, I never saw Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand posters as the
    epitome of good taste -- nor, for that matter, huge pink and red
    ribbons -- but perhaps it's just me. (If this is supposed to be
    ironic, it's not well done.) These are quibbles, though, because the
    writing here is generally solid and effective -- reasonably
    atmospheric and genuinely funny. When you confront one character late
    in the game, you get this:

            "Okay, muggins," you say, "spill the beans, squeak, start
            talking, loosen your tongue..." Then you realise that you are
            getting carried away, and drop the tough cop act.

    Not laugh-out-loud hilarious, but amusing nonetheless. There are many
    such moments -- the game is littered with Easter eggs, some of which
    are pointed out in a "fun stuff" file available when the gane is done
    -- that illustrate real interest in making the game enjoyable. (A
    television has 8 different channels, all with 10-15 randomized funny
    scenes depending on the channel -- the soap opera channel is one of
    the best, I think.) Brown has a feel for compact but effective room
    descriptions, as in the following:

            Considering the high technology that has gone into guarding
            this area, the cellar is surprisingly lo-tech. One very dull
            fluorescent tube casts gloomy light over the brick walls. The
            air is damp; cobwebs line the ceiling. A tunnel disappears off
            into the darkness to the northeast, and a set of stone steps
            lead east up to the passageway.

    For a concept like The Wedding to work, it needs good writing -- there
    are few things duller than trying to interact with badly written
    characters, or inhabiting a small game environment where the author
    hasn't bothered to make the locations interesting or believable. And
    the writing here is easily good enough to keep the player involved and
    prevent the game from becoming tedious even when nothing is going on,
    puzzle-wise, though a few too many of the rooms break the description
    by inserting your thoughts or reactions. There are many genuinely
    funny moments, as noted, and the whole thing is mercifully free from
    signs of taking itself seriously.

    There is much to like about The Wedding, in short, and its
    shortcomings are more due to the difficulty of its undertaking than to
    poor writing or programming; there are enough clever puzzles and
    humorous asides for the game to be involving despite the shortcomings
    in the plot and setup.  Despite its flaws, The Wedding is a solid
    entry in the IF library.

    Inform file (.z5)

    Inform source code (.zip)

    Stepwise solution (Text)

    When Help Collides!
    From: Cedric Knight <cknight SP@G gn.apc.org>
    Review appeared in SPAG #31 -- January 3, 2003

    TITLE: When Help Collides! (including 'Parched Mesa', 'Level 50' and
           'Bleach of Etiquette')
    AUTHOR: J. D. Berry
    EMAIL: jdberry SP@G cox.net
    PARSER: modified Inform
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF Archive
    DATE: September 2002 (Comp02 entry)
    SUPPORTS: Z-machine (interpreter-sensitive)
    URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2002/zcode/help/help.z8
    VERSION: Release 1

    Suggested "Cheese Rating" according to Emily Short's system: Monterey
    Jack, from a parodied book

    In an earlier and much briefer review, I claimed "When Help Collides!"
    (WHC) "does several new things and does them well". That judgement holds
    up after another two hours of playing, and yet somehow the game finished
    a middling eighteenth of the 38 pieces in Comp02, owing to what I
    surmise are its relative inaccessibility and novelty, and to questions
    over whether much of it is Interactive Fiction at all. So the more
    reviews the better. Several reviewers even apparently gave up in
    bafflement, convinced that they had no interest in discovering the
    internal logic of the game, and thus missing the varied entertainment on
    offer.

    Perhaps this isn't that surprising given the avalanche of an opening,
    where the player has to accept two truly surreal premises before
    starting play. The first premise on its own is only moderately amusing,
    an absurd behind-the-scenes explanation of what goes on in interactive
    fiction, involving a metafictional ghost-in-the-machine very similar to
    that used in the same Comp's better-received "Janitor" and perhaps
    reminiscent of the demon painter inhabiting cameras in Discworld. In
    this case, it is supposed that when a player types "help" in a game,
    some gremlin (man? woman? robot?) is charged with receiving the summons,
    travelling to the location of the character who asked for help in the
    game world and dispensing appropriate hints. Even this interpolation is
    more than the game itself states, but it is in fact a logical extension
    of the "game world" idea which accounts for the way a particular piece
    of software responds to typed commands. Supposedly an aim of IF is to
    make us forget the game is a piece of software -- what if the "help
    module ship" were itself also a character in that world, however "meta"?

    Were it merely an interactive fiction in-joke, however, I would have
    rated "When Help Collides!" down for not being relevant to any wider
    audience. The actual premise relates to just such a wider audience,
    although one that is mostly disjoint with the IF community: what if the
    space traversed by help modules is the same as that used for "self-help"
    personal advice? Including an external topic to spoof was a good move,
    and popular psychology books are a good choice, being pretty easy to
    send up, as Alistair Beaton does in his _Little Book of Complete
    Bollocks_, which consists of tips such as "Do not be afraid of death.
    Death is merely a continuance of life, only without the breathing. Eat
    lots of spinach." How would we feel if the hints for a game were
    similarly impractical, trite or counter-productive? Not a thought that
    is likely to ever occur to most players except in a dream, but the first
    "Act" of this game shows us anyway. So the scenario for this section is
    an example of genuine surrealist humour in IF, a form which has existed
    since "Colossal Cave", but which usually nowadays gives way to some kind
    of realism or simple abstraction.

    The title, incidentally, would appear to allude to the 1951 B-movie
    "When Worlds Collide", concerning a dramatic escape from a doomed Earth,
    and also perhaps to the nuttiness of _Worlds in Collision_, the
    bizarrely popular pseudo-historical theories of Immanuel Velikovsky,
    himself a psychoanalyst.

    The story of "When Help Collides!" begins with an explosive crisis, the
    "collision" between the two ideas previously mentioned, overwhelming not
    just the player character, but also the player. The first line of a new
    game, shown on its own in a blank screen without a prompt, reads:

       Amid the mangled virtual-ware littering this sector, your "Best Help"
       trophy stands defiantly. It has survived the crash.

    This line is hard to make sense of, particularly without even the blurb
    supplied for Comp02 ("Self-Help rams Game-Help. Accident or deliberate
    consciousness insinuation?") to provide context. Just enough information
    is given in the next line to clue the first command before the titles
    and a second collision. The player is supposed to accept all this before
    reading:

       Stunned twice in a matter of milliseconds--that's just not right.

    This also describes the typical feelings of the player pretty well. One
    problem with starting a piece on a high note like this is that it is
    impossible to keep the action going at such an extreme pitch for any
    length of time, and so we down to some kind of intelligible stability at
    various times. The torrent of one-sentence paragraphs begins to
    overwhelm. Nevertheless, invention and entertainment keep coming
    throughout "When Help Collides!", although it lacks any conventional
    dramatic structure.

    It also lacks a conventional game structure. Many players got the
    impression from the accompanying files that "When Help Collides!"
    consists of four completely unrelated sub-games of equal status; it
    would indeed be difficult to play all four within a two-hour time limit.
    The actual structure is as follows. Halfway through "When Help
    Collides!", on entering a scene on a "wagon" (a metaphor made physical),
    the narrative path diverges almost randomly into three. Each of these
    three paths leads to one of the "outer" games, so that a single pass
    through the game would consist of "When Help Collides!", plus one of
    "Parched Mesa", "Level 50" or "Bleach of Etiquette" -- it should be much
    more possible to complete this combination within the two-hour judging
    period. The idea that competition judges could each be judging an
    entirely separate game without realising it is itself amusing. Each
    sub-game (fortunately mostly too easy too need a help system) has two or
    three endings, the obscure optimal one involving a promised
    "transformation" with the help of some counsellor figure. The optimal
    endings of two also see the return of an object from Act I, while the
    third is unexpected, hinting at yet another level to the game.

    Unfortunately, the author seems to have committed a tactical error which
    helped confuse players. Instead of having "When Help Collides!" segue
    into the appropriated sub-game, a non-player character provides a
    password to be used after a restart. The reasons for this could have
    been partly technical (to overcome the problems of a single game file
    with four distinct banners and command sets), partly practical (to
    ensure the player has a fixed game position to return to without having
    to repeat the first section again, although this could have been ensured
    by insisting on a save), and partly aesthetic (to allow the judges to
    see the richness of invention in other endings). The actual effect of
    including the codes in the accompanying walkthrough was that players
    would indeed play the sections in any order, and were therefore less
    likely to understand the links between them.

    One other factor that might have made WHC (that is, the game as a whole)
    less popular was needing to learn a whole new command set to play. This
    applies particularly to the "Bleach of Etiquette" sub-game, and the
    second "wagon" section of "When Help Collides!". In both cases, the
    standard IF world model and language which principally centres on
    manipulating physical objects is dispensed with as irrelevant, and
    replaced with new ad-hoc actions. The effect of these actions is clued,
    but use of "undo" should not be regarded as cheating when getting to
    grips with them. Attempting a different interface for a game has in the
    past has usually been seen as a good thing, provided it works (Zarf's
    "The Space Under The Window" comes to mind), and it strikes me that the
    same standard should apply here. The button-pushing in the "wagon" scene
    is, in fact, not much more confusing than in many other games where the
    object is to discover the workings of some piece of machinery, but here
    usual verbs such as "put" are more clearly useless, and the only
    interesting command remaining is "examine". Amid all this, minor
    innovations, such as use of asterisks or brackets to denote the thoughts
    of the player character, go almost unnoticed.

    In the first Act, we see relevant "help" topics and irrelevant content,
    producing gags like:

       A barbaric, hulking figure looks up and asks, "What's 'alignment'?"

       >press help
       "We're all aligned to the same source. But somewhere along the line,
       some of us bend and twist, becoming quite unlike what our creator had
       in mind. Then the labelling begins: Chaotic-evil, lawful-neutral,
       etc... Unless we recognize that we're all in this together, we cannot
       truly become one with the source.

       That poisoned-scimitar-wielding dark elf? Give him a hug. Be
       surprised at what you might find."

    The second Act is less predictable and funnier, throwing in even more
    elements and further literalizing the metaphors and psychological
    constructs. Incidentally, the author warns that the game "works best
    with WinFrotz and JZip interpreters", and on others (including most
    Linux terps and Windows Frotz 2002) there is a subtle bug, as Andrew
    Plotkin noted in his review. This bug doesn't stop progress, but removes
    a lot of the fun of dealing with "manifestations".

    The game can then take one of three paths, each of which relates to a
    genre of interactive fiction, and each of which has an associated
    subgame supposedly typical of that genre. These paths are best described
    by the game itself as "Western", "Eastern" and "Fantasy", with Fantasy
    being the default, naturally enough. This review will give most
    attention to the "Eastern" path as that is the one that received most
    comment on r.g.i-f.

    Fantasy path -- Zarenzo the Black and "Level 50"
    ------------------------------------------------
       "My name is Zarenzo the Black, and I'm a necromancer. Every waking
       moment claims the need for power and control. The ends always justify
       the means. But when I saw myself in the mirror this morning, saw what
       I had become--the skull cap, the impractical black robes, the horde
       of undead oustide [sic] my window--I realized this has to stop. It
       just has to stop. I am powerless over necromancy."

    The final sentence is the punchline, quite rightly -- here we have a
    thoroughly evil character doing the equivalent of the "Twelve Steps" of
    Alcoholics Anonymous (although Necromancers Anonymous appears to only
    have six -- perhaps the Dark Arts allow one to skip the others). It's
    quite a nice idea -- instead of playing a hero, or forced to play an
    evil PC, here we learn about an evil character and have a chance to
    change him. The actual "help" we provide him is rather too glib to
    plausibly make any difference, but the scenery is well-implemented
    (other than that bug) and fun to play with:

       A tiny fear peeps in your ear. "I'm not finished with you, yet. Just
       you wait, you fu..." It disappears from view before it can finish its
       rant.

    Once through this scenario, we receive the password to Act III, the
    fantasy subgame "Level 50." This subgame introduces the innovative
    elements of its scenario more gently and explicitly than the WHC frame
    story does: the PC is not Megnax the Fighter in some fantasy world, but
    Jerry Dorkman playing Megnax in some Dungeons and Dragons convention. As
    with "You Are Here" in Comp01, this extra fictional level makes merely
    cosmetic changes to the story, but allows the author to comment, via the
    PC, on its weaknesses; you can get away with a lot when writing a spoof.
    Several comments are (I think, accurate) observations about the kind of
    weak jokes prevalent among people with high-level D&D characters, such
    as an aside about fantasy shopkeepers. Although this is the only
    outright comedy among the sub-games, it is self-conscious in its
    silliness. When sent to Limbo to bring Law to Chaos,

       >knock on grey door
       "A tinny voice calls out from behind the door. 'Can you come back
       tomorrow? It's been total chaos in here, today. Thanks much.'"

    Note here the extra set of quotes, as this is the dungeon master
    speaking. We're allowed only the occasional command that works on the
    interposing mezzanine reality:

       >smell dungeon master
       (The Phish T-shirt is warning enough.)

    As the help system is disabled, we do have a character, Xila the Bard,
    who will sing about your inventory to the tune of a Billy Joel song, but
    these hints are themselves rather obscure. Some obviously unwinnable
    situations are also notable.

    Western path -- Winston Puckett and "Parched Mesa"
    --------------------------------------------------
    Here, Act II of WHC takes its humour from imagined mannerisms and
    world-view of the Frontier rather than the moral "alignment" of the
    character: Puckett is venal, whereas the other two are thoroughly evil.
    Another Act III follows. "Parched Mesa", is subtitled "a classic
    western", yet something's gone a bit awry, as if this is another
    collision with an unexpected genre -- the dead seem to have swapped
    places with the living. This cross-genre aspect may be the real
    innovation here, rather than any old "unreliable narrator" stuff. Sparse
    implementation in the one mode (such as self-conscious room descriptions
    like "The place is as you remember it--with a dearth of furnishings yet
    a wealth of love.") is complemented with a fairly full set of standard
    responses ("Can't go thataway, pardner.") in the other. There's even an
    alternative banner title shown when you start a transcript. This
    disconcerting mismatch and other imperfections (infodump from an
    anachronistic NPC with three separate roles, an old-fashioned
    room-too-scary-to-remain-in) can, maybe unintentionally, heighten
    effects such as the sub-optimal ending.

    Eastern Path -- Nebusan Sedonkawa and "Bleach of Etiquette"
    -----------------------------------------------------------
    Berry's irony is at its finest in dealing with the spiritual progress of
    Nebusan, as when the vicious Yakuza encounters Step 3 of his recovery
    programme. This leads on to "Bleach of Etiquette", which I shall refer
    to as "Breach" -- there's nothing essentially racist in the little
    pronunciation joke, but it gives the wrong impression of a game that
    deals with Japanese culture at least without deliberate ignorance.
    Similarly, characterisation of the PC an albino also seemed a little
    forced and unnecessary.

    There are questions as to whether "Breach" is really interactive
    fiction, but the first point to make is that it is at least _fiction_,
    in plot, setting, characterisation and dialogue. I do not know enough
    about the secret world of the geisha to judge whether the game is really
    true-to-life, but regardless of whether it is or not, it manages to
    _feel_ authentic and exotic with its minimal descriptions, code names,
    and oddly-phrased language. (The one small element of fantasy does not
    necessarily undermine this; it could be dismissed as an idiosyncratic
    way of viewing or describing things.)

    It is commendable that the social status of the protagonist, Demetoria,
    is quickly established relative to the NPCs -- higher than some, lower
    than others -- thus adding realism to her struggle. We might ask whether
    we are somehow complicit in her oppression, but the player is probably
    quick to decide that co-operating is the likely to be her best
    opportunity, compared to what I imagined was her peasant background. The
    puzzle here is in finding whatever desperate strategy uses Demetoria's
    limited assets to achieve victory in her test; thinking in character,
    and exploration and discovery of hidden elements of the game world help
    in this fun challenge, which is a marker that this is not only IF, but
    good IF. "Breach" resembles Papillon's underrated "One Week" (LoTechComp
    2001) where a young woman tries to juggle all kinds of pressures leading
    up to an exam; both have a limited user interface that underlines real
    social constraints faced by the character and feel more than a "Choose
    Your Own Adventure" game. However, "Breach" differs in having only one
    important outcome to worry about, but many elements necessary to achieve
    it.

    Geishas are not prostitutes, and need to protect their reputation.
    Certainty about exactly what favours geisha might do for the people who
    pay for their company eludes me. Fortunately, discretion is assured here
    by an assortment of well-chosen euphemisms, the most explicit of which
    is "Fade to sack." The world depicted in Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a
    Geisha" suggests that this last euphemism is a bit too blatant, unless
    we are dealing with the lower orders of geisha. Conceivably, Demetoria
    is very fond of some of her clients, but in a way the only important
    consideration is how fond they are of her. They are a mixed bunch,
    providing a lot of the game's interest. The only stereotype among them
    is Vidoru, the electronics company president, who could do with a little
    more characterisation. His presence somehow suggested to me a setting in
    the early 1970s, when geisha culture was in decline, although a later
    reference to Churchill pins it firmly in 1951-5. Of particular interest
    among the other NPCs is the woman Chizumi, whose interest in Demetoria
    is less to promote equality of sexual orientations than a way of showing
    the extraordinary desirability of the geisha character.

    To tell the story of this geisha's week using the conventional IF game
    model and interface would, I think, be cumbersome and threaten to dilute
    the interesting NPC encounters with large amounts of detail. Commands
    for wearing make-up might take up half the game . So instead of relating
    to the world primarily through a language of physical objects and maps,
    "Breach" focuses more realistically on use of time (a limited resource)
    and higher-level actions. "Breach" is even modestly subtitled "An agenda
    planner", but I feel that excising the trivia of maps and object puzzles
    is something of a liberation for character- and plot-based IF.

    In effect, commands are entered in batches of seven, and each turn
    consumes about three hours, with a game consisting of 41 turns. This
    arouses suspicion that "Breach" is not properly IF for two reasons.
    Firstly, a command once entered in the batch cannot be altered on the
    basis of a previous one, as if the PC lacks free will. To this I answer
    that appointment-keeping is a realistic constraint in the absence of
    major catastrophe, and that there are still frequent opportunities to
    learn from the game, plan, and interact. (In actual fact, "undo" (x7)
    becomes very useful when playing to win.) Secondly, that there is only
    one really significant verb, "book", showing a paucity of range of
    action. However, that same verb is used to cover diverse actions from
    harp practice to asking for maths tuition, plus later unexpected
    actions. Some actions ("research", "counsel") could have come under
    "book" but arbitrarily do not. The PC does in fact increase her powers
    during the game, and several times I typed "i" absent-mindedly, rather
    than "when all" which gives the closest thing to an inventory. I will
    admit that after all the game world features and rules have been
    discovered, the combinatorial possibilities of action are not large, and
    there may be one or more attempts to solve the game mechanically as a
    single puzzle.

    The innovations in "Breach" are technically accomplished, and use (or
    abuse?) the Inform grammar and model in an interesting new way. I would
    hope some of the new elements will influence future game development
    somehow.

    So overall the Comp release of WHC may lack a little polish, but is too
    easily written off as a confusing mess. A little persistence more than
    pays off, and the game is much less pretentious than this review might
    suggest. "When Help Collides!" is among the strongest pieces to come
    from any recent IF competition, playing with expectations like nothing
    else for years.

    Directory with zcode .z8 file, readme, and feelies in MS Word .doc format

    When in Rome 1: Accounting for Taste
    From: Paul Lee <bainespal SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #49 -- August 18, 2007

    TITLE: When in Rome 1: Accounting for Taste
    AUTHOR: Emily Short
    E-MAIL: emshort SP@G mindspring.com
    DATE: April 30, 2006
    PARSER: Inform 7
    SUPPORTS: Z-Machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/wir1
    VERSION: Release 2

    The first episode in a stated five, this little game was designed to be playable
    in approximately fifteen minutes.  Although it isn't the only very short example
    of interactive fiction out there, it has a more complete feel and takes itself
    more seriously than the few others of a comparable length that I have played in
    my very limited experience.  The plot is amazingly detailed for such a short
    game, moving the player through the scenes rapidly.  The game throws the player
    into the first of two puzzles as soon as play begins; following are two brief
    scenes where the player can pass the time in conversation before the end-game
    puzzle (and then a brief intro to the next episode).  This makes the beginning
    and ending feel somewhat like bookends even though the plot is left dangling for
    part two to pick up.

    The puzzles are basically well-implemented; they give the player pause but have
    fairly obvious solutions and are satisfying to solve.  Few, if any, objects are
    implemented that aren't either NPCs or used in a puzzle, and this is a good
    thing in the regard that this points the player's attention to the problem at
    hand, but not in the regard that it doesn't allow for multiple solutions.  This
    is partially made up for by the fact that both puzzles differ from play to play
    according to randomized elements, and one of them requires different objects
    depending on those elements, adding perhaps some replayability.  There are no
    serious or obvious bugs, but I did run into a few responses that were not
    implemented correctly (exceptions to rules and the like).  Perhaps surprisingly,
    both puzzles can end lethally.

    The writing is clever but very condensed.  Not many scenery objects can be
    examined, but the terse room descriptions don't even mention many.  The prose
    reveals the setting more than the descriptions alone.  Although the plot is
    serious in nature, the tone is light and humorous.  The writing is probably the
    aspect of the game that more than anything else makes it seem so full and
    satisfying with so little, though the game would be empty without the puzzles.

    On the whole, I found the gameplay experience to be slightly similar to the
    experience of reading a prose comedy short story written expertly but
    whimsically; both are sparing on their writing, getting to the point quickly and
    concluding abruptly (I'm thinking specifically of "The Notorious Jumping Frog of
    Calaveras County" by Mark Twain).  All this goes to show that works of humorous
    interactive fiction can still score on the literature scale, even ones that are
    very short in length and have puzzles.

    From: Molly G. <rosygirl5657 SP@G yahoo.com>

    The When in Rome series, by Emily Short, was written, mostly, to show off the
    new programming language Inform 7. If this game (and the other games written to
    show off Inform 7, available on the Inform website) is any indication, then
    Inform 7 should go far.

    Writing/Technical A
    The game begins, innocently enough, in Central Park, and only gets better from
    there. The writing in the game is truly superb, with crisp dialogue and funny
    situations. The NPCs are also superb, with a lot of nuances to make them seem
    truly real. My only problem with the technical side as such is that I felt there
    were places where it seemed sloppilly coded(example from beginning: saying GIRL,
    SEARCH [SPOILER] worked, but not ASK GIRL TO SEARCH [SPOILER]), but these
    examples are few and don't detract from the game.

    Puzzles B+
    The puzzles in this game can be quite a brain teaser, with a tricky puzzle at
    the end that is a kissing cousin to those "logic grid" puzzles you sometimes see
    in magazines. Unfortunately, due to the length of the game (but more on that
    later), there can be said to be only two (maybe three) puzzles in the entire
    game. That said, this is a case of quality over quantity, as the game still
    packs a mean punch of puzzly goodness.

    Storyline B
    Although writing and story may sound the same, there are cases when good writing
    gets attached to a simply gad-awful story, and vice versa (I feel The Apocalypse
    Clock, from the 2006 IF Comp, proves the former point quite nicely). This is not
    the case with this game. I won't spoil the plot for you, but let's just say if
    you like detective fiction, or science fiction, you definitely don't want to
    miss this game. Doubly so if you like both. Unfortunately, this brings up a
    problem I mentioned briefly above, namely: it's short. The author advertises as
    a lunchtime game, and boy does she mean it. Fortunately the sequel to this game
    has already been released, and hopefully the author will write more. Still, the
    "To Be Continued" at the end can be a downer for those who were just getting
    into the odd events depicted.

    Overall A-
    The game, if I may mix my scoring metaphors, loses some points for shortness,
    but makes up for it in sheer quality. The game can be completed in about 15
    minutes and is worth every nanosecond of your time.

    Blorbed Z-Code game file

    When in Rome 2: Far from Home
    From: Paul Lee <bainespal SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #49 -- August 18, 2007

    TITLE: When in Rome 2: Far from Home
    AUTHOR: Emily Short
    E-MAIL: emshort SP@G mindspring.com
    DATE: April 30, 2006
    PARSER: Inform 7
    SUPPORTS: Z-Machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware
    URL: http://inform-fiction.org/I7Downloads/Examples/wir2
    VERSION: Release 1

    The second "When in Rome" episode, "Far from Home," differs from the previous
    installment in that it is basically one puzzle.  There is no advancement of the
    story line to speak of, and there are few implemented details not pertaining to
    the puzzle in the interest of brevity.  A brief prologue and a short epilogue
    are included before and after this puzzle, but the prologue is little more than
    a formality (though it does seem to have an Easter-egg off sorts).  The epilogue
    sets the stage for the next game and hints at plot development.

    This one puzzle, then, is what the game should primarily be judged on.  It
    occurs all in one room, which makes this episode significantly less terse and
    more condensed than the previous game.  The puzzle is mostly an analysis sort,
    where you must decide which of several possibilities is correct based on
    observations of certain characteristics.  Those characteristics and the correct
    outcome are randomized for each play, making the game playable several times
    through before it exhausts itself, if one feels inclined to do so.  There are
    several layers of complexity one must work through, including all the steps
    required to observe, some basic gadget manipulating, and humorous (or annoying)
    obstacles thrown in.

    I found the puzzle to be rather difficult.  Although I usually enjoy a good
    puzzle, the categorizing and logical elimination required to solve this one
    didn't really suite me.  The first time I played through the entire puzzle, I
    lost at the end, getting the unsatisfactory outcome.  The same thing happened
    the second time I tried, and in the end, the only way I was able to finish was
    by resorting to UNDO every time I got the bad ending and guessing again.  This
    caused even more frustration because I thought that I had reduced the
    possibilities down to two that might have been right; but it turned out neither
    were, and the correct solution didn't make sense to me.

    Complaints and frustration aside, the short game was enjoyable even to me.  The
    kind of player best suited for this work would be the serious puzzler who isn't
    afraid to write things down on paper to help crack the puzzle if necessary.
    Still, even people preferring plot development to puzzles won't have to rough it
    out too long; there are hints, and it doesn't take long to get to the final bad
    outcome.  And if you get there you can always cheat like I did and guess until
    you get it right.

    Blorbed Z-Code game file

    Who Created That Monster?
    From: Chris Molloy Wischer <breathingmeat SP@G graffiti.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #39 -- January 7, 2005

    TITLE: Who Created That Monster?
    AUTHOR: N. B. Horvath
    EMAIL: nbhorvath7 SP@G hotmail.com
    DATE: October 2004
    PARSER: TADS2 standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS2 interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: IF Archive
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2004/tads2/whocreated
    VERSION: Release 1 (Competition version)

    Who Created That Monster is a satire memorable for its effectively
    nightmarish vision of Iraq in the not-too-distant future. It contrasts
    an ultra-capitalist state installed by the post-war administration
    against a highly regulatory security system, which fails to control the
    ongoing terrorist problem. Horvath's Iraq is populated by passers-by
    acting out strangely polite little interactions, politicians both weird
    and terrible, conspiracy theorists, guards and of course the
    aforementioned terrorists. Some of the NPCs are extraordinarily
    eccentric, which adds to the bewildering and somewhat unsettling
    atmosphere of the game.

    The plot, in which an investigative journalist delves into the dirty
    past of Western involvement in Saddam's activities, isn't really up to
    much, and the central mystery seems to have a completely arbitrary
    solution within the confines of the game world. Some of the writing is
    rather peculiar, with bits and pieces of geography, history and
    speculation showing up as non-sequiturs, sometimes in room descriptions
    and sometimes out of thin air.

    The programming incorporates a number of imaginative solutions to some
    long-established problems. For example, there is plenty of combat, which
    under normal circumstances would create an ever-increasing abundance of
    corpse objects, cluttering the map and causing parser problems. WCTM
    quietly steps around the problem by equipping the characters with
    weapons which transform their victims into fleeting clouds of smoke. The
    first few times it seems odd and slightly silly, but it does fit nicely
    into the almost surreal style of the game.

    However, the combat system is my main complaint about the game.
    Terrorists pop up like dwarves, becoming progressively more difficult to
    kill. Faced with the possibility of getting killed by some unlucky dice
    rolls, I very quickly went for the walkthrough in order to get the game
    finished before the combat became too threatening. Unless a game is
    specifically about defeating monsters and levelling up, I really do not
    appreciate combat which has the same overall effect as random
    deathrooms.

    _Who Created That Monster_ is an intriguing jumble with an effective
    setting; I gave it 7 out of 10.

    Directory with .gam TADS2 file and walkthrough

    Whom the Telling Changed
    From: Felix Plesoianu <felixp7 SP@G yahoo.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #43 -- January 7, 2006

    TITLE: Whom the Telling Changed
    AUTHOR: Aaron A. Reed
    EMAIL: aaron SP@G aaronareed.net
    DATE: March 13, 2005
    PARSER: Inform Standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF Archive and author's site
    URL: http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/telling.z5

    VERSION: Release 2

    I don't normally review interactive fiction because I'm very picky, not to
    mention an awful puzzle solver, and I'd rather not be unfair as well. Often, I
    would type quit as the first and only command in a game. Especially when the
    work announces itself as experimental.

    Not this time around. Whom the Telling Changed begins so... relaxed. You're a
    prominent member of a shepherd tribe in the ancient times. Every full moon,
    everyone gathers to hear a tale of even more ancient times. Only, tonight the
    telling will change the fate of the tribe, and it's up to you to get it right.
    The tension, virtually inexistent at first, builds up in perfect gradation. You
    can't miss the climax, it's obvious.

    Right at the beginning I thought I was facing a guess-the-noun situation but
    the vagueness was in fact intentional. At first, I didn't know what I was
    supposed to do, either, but it became clear soon enough, thanks to the well-
    placed characters, and by that time I was already hooked, anyway. Speaking of
    nouns, the writing uses few but effective words, and some of them are keywords;
    typing one of these by itself performs the most obvious action for it at the
    time, usually ask about. The full command works just as well.

    This system showed its strength as the story proper began. My, I love
    conversation-based games. It's just that sometimes these are too subtle for me.
    Again, not this time around. I really liked how the game decided to convey
    important information when I didn't ask about it (here's that command again).
    My reactions were probably inappropriate at times, but Telling... weaved them
    gracefully into the story. Not that I had many reasons to react: through most
    of the second part, the only required command is z. Which was so much the best,
    as I didn't quite agree with the player character's views.

    Not everything's perfect, of course. At one point, I was told I speak too much,
    though I had been silent for most of the time (as another character later
    confirmed). At the peak, it finally saw the opportunity to alter the course of
    the story, as the author had promised, but choosing the right keyword for the
    desired effect required a bit of guesswork; and until the very end, I wasn't
    sure I actually made a difference. But the story came out the way I wanted, so
    I guess the game works as intended after all.

    Telling... is a short, but fresh and satisfactory experience. Play it to the
    end, read the afterword, then play it again. You'll have a big (and pleasant, I
    hope) surprise. I know I liked it, and I'm waiting for more games in the same
    vein.

    Zcode executable (.z5)

    Original Spring Thing 2005 competition release with walkthrough

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

    TITLE: Winchester's Nightmare
    AUTHOR: Nick Montfort
    E-MAIL: nickm SP@G media.mit.edu
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-machine interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/winchest.z8
    VERSION: Release 2

    I confess I hadn't heard anyone argue that the various bits of shorthand
    that IFers have become accustomed to--one-letter compass directions, Z,
    X, G, and such--inhibit realism, but Winchester's Nightmare is a game
    built, among other things, on that thesis. Beyond that, the game
    emphasizes the exploratory aspect of its world to the point where you
    can go very far indeed without encountering any puzzles as such. The
    result isn't exactly a roaring success, though it has some interesting
    moments.

    You're Sarah Winchester, wife of the gun manufacturing mogul, and you're
    struggling, in terms more figurative than literal, with your conscience
    and your family's legacy: specifically, you're wandering two parallel
    landscapes, one of them relatively pristine and one, it seems, scarred
    by a more violent age. The wandering is the high point of the game,
    really, since the author avoids making judgments for you: to what extent
    the "after" landscape represents progress or decay, to what extent
    you're complicit, and to what extent you can do anything about them are
    all left fairly vague. The images are evocative, and the contrasts often
    done rather subtly--compare this:

       Sarah is at this island's edge. The wooden platform she stands upon
       runs out from eastern bank, into the Great River, at the brink of New
       City's cluster of buildings.

    with this:

       Sarah is at this island's edge. Concrete runs out from eastern bank,
       into the Great River, at the brink of New City's cluster of
       high-rises. A few rusted pieces of rebar jut out, dimly lit from
       nearby streetlamps. South along the water is the entrance to a
       warehouse.

    Here, things look like they've taken a turn for the worse, but not
    everywhere: some locations move from deserted and bleak to populated and
    thriving, suggesting that the game isn't interested in simplistic
    judgments. The game's world is full of locations freighted with symbolic
    significance--a church, a government complex, an oil field, an armory, a
    university--but, again, the game doesn't take it upon itself to connect
    the dots. In that respect, Winchester's Nightmare is almost akin to a
    painting that incorporates two scenes side by side: there's much to be
    observed in the contrasts, and hypothesizing about the significance for
    the central character of each aspect of the paintings. Cut-scenes of
    sorts, involving characters who appear, say something cryptic to you,
    and disappear again, heighten the disjointed feel, but the whole thing,
    given some thought, rewards analysis.

    As interactive fiction, however, Winchester's Nightmare isn't quite as
    successful. For one thing, the author has replaced the > prompt with
    "Sarah decides to," again presumably in the service of realism; it's not
    quite as confining as the disabled abbreviations, but it's still
    jarring, and, more importantly, it reduces the comfort level for the
    experienced IF player. It's true that, from a strictly literary sense,
    the > and the various abbreviations mutilate the flow of the narrative a
    bit; the transcript doesn't read nearly as well that way. But the flow
    of the story in the player's mind--the feeling of immersion that's
    produced when the player can do what comes naturally (and for veteran
    players, X and G do come naturally) without thinking about the mundane
    details of having to type in commands to prod the program to output
    text--is lost. Others may not feel this way, of course, but the danger
    of the approach adopted by Winchester's Nightmare is that it lets form
    get in the way of content, and risks dragging the player out of the
    story every time the game reminds him or her that one-letter commands
    aren't allowed.

    A separate but just as damaging problem with the painting aspect is that
    you don't have much more interaction with the game's world than someone
    viewing a painting; there are a few simple objects, and you can examine
    most things, but there's very little that you can manipulate in any real
    way. I suppose that's inherent in what the author is trying to do-this
    is supposed to be a dream landscape-but still, when you wander through
    room after room that doesn't permit any action more dynamic than
    EXAMINE, it's easy to feel more like a spectator than a participant.

    The real problem, though, is that the game has to go somewhere after
    you've been wandering around, and the author's way of making it go
    somewhere is pretty difficult to figure out; moreover, even once you've
    figured out the basic contours of what you're trying to do, actually
    doing it is much more difficult than it should be, and you're likely to
    be reduced to wandering through the game looking for random objects,
    exploratory mood utterly shot. (You do need to gather some objects, and
    there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to where you find them.) You may
    get lucky and hit on the puzzle solutions immediately, but if you don't,
    the game's strongest point--the complexity of its setting, and the
    number of rooms that are there simply to fill out the landscape--becomes
    a major nuisance, since you'll be wandering through dozens of rooms that
    aren't useful for puzzle-solving purposes. It would have been better, in
    other words, if this particular story had abandoned puzzles entirely, or
    at least minimized their difficulty; having to turn to object-hunting,
    after spending so much time just absorbing your surroundings, is a major
    wrench. In a way, the puzzles that you solve aren't otherwise
    inconsistent with the feel of the game: they're heavily steeped in
    symbolism and they involve somewhat nonlinear thinking. Moreover, it
    would arguably be a lesser game with no conflicts to overcome, and
    puzzles are probably the best (and only) of creating real conflict in
    IF. The trick, here, is to give the player a sense of conflict without
    impeding the flow of the story, and it doesn't really work here;
    perhaps, if you had a strong hint early on in the game about what you're
    supposed to be doing and how you 're to go about it, the player could
    combine his or her exploration with puzzle-solving in the first place.

    There are lots of good ideas floating around in Winchester's Nightmare,
    including some rather intriguing ones about ways to explore the
    psychology of the PC. (Even if the game doesn't supply much of the
    content outright--again, you have to fill in a lot of blanks--the
    character of Sarah is far from simple.) They're hampered, however, by
    some unfortunate game design choices, and the end result works better
    from a purely literary standpoint than as interactive fiction--an
    experiment worth trying, perhaps, but not all that satisfying for the
    player.

    Inform .z8 file

    Winter Wonderland
    From: Duncan Stevens <dns361 SP@G merle.acns.nwu.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #19 -- January 14, 2000

    TITLE: Winter Wonderland
    AUTHOR: Laura A. Knauth
    E-MAIL: Laura.Knauth SP@G Stanford.edu
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: Inform standard
    SUPPORTS: Z-code interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition99/inform/winter/winter.z5
    VERSION: Release 1

    Laura Knauth's Winter Wonderland is unfortunately named--it brings to
    mind a horrible, insipid song, for one thing--but also accurately named;
    the genre is fairy-tale, and "wonderland" is the best way to describe
    the game's gentle, nonthreatening world. Players who don't mind things
    like dryads and fairies will find much to enjoy in Winter Wonderland;
    players who do, however, are advised to steer clear.

    The premise should tell the potential player all he or she needs to know
    about Winter Wonderland: you're a little girl sent into town to buy a
    single candle so that your family will have something to put on its
    tree. You'd really like to buy some shoes for your sickly younger
    brother Sander, but your family's too poor to afford shoes for both of
    you. Along the way, you stumble into a magical realm replete with the
    aforementioned dryads and fairies and other things of that ilk. While
    everything is quite well done, about as well done as it can be, the
    nature of the game--where is HTML-TADS when it's needed? we need wailing
    strings and chiming bells here--is such that it's the ultimate in Not
    Everyone's Cup of Tea.

    The puzzles (for there are quite a few of them in the magical realm)
    aren't anything special, on the whole; they are more akin to artificial
    roadblocks (bad) than problems seamlessly integrated into the story
    (good). Most of them boil down to doors to unlock in order to obtain
    objects that will unlock other doors; the saving grace is that the
    writing is plentiful and quite good. Some of the doors, to be sure, are
    unlocked in creative ways, but by and large the puzzles are just
    puzzles, and there's nothing unifying the puzzle-solving in any
    meaningful way. It's a shame, and it's a little strange, since the game
    takes care to develop the framing story--but then dumps you in the magic
    forest, and you're to assume that if you wander around and solve a bunch
    of puzzles, things will be all right in the end. Winter Wonderland has a
    lot of company there, of course, in Infocom's games among others--but IF
    has been moving away from that model in recent years. It is also worth
    noting that one puzzle toward the latter stages of the game is simply
    poorly implemented (and the hints, helpful elsewhere, are no help here),
    and my enjoyment of the game as a whole waned as I struggled with the
    poor implementation, I fear. Other than that, however, the game is very
    solidly implemented; there are no alternate solutions, as far as I know,
    but the given solutions are reasonably well clued and logical (though a
    few rely on effects that could not have been anticipated), and there are
    no major bugs.

    As noted, the writing is plentiful and generally good enough to overcome
    the flaws in the puzzles, though there is rather a lot of it; the
    tendency here is toward more details rather than less. That's not so
    inconsistent with the overall feel of fantasy, though, where big splashy
    descriptions are more or less acceptable (whereas real-world-type
    settings are better served by just a few sentences to bring out the
    salient details). The main problem with the writing is that there are a
    few too many adjectives and adverbs, even given the setting, and some of
    the descriptions are a bit overwritten; the initial paragraph setting
    the scene (think movie voice-over) is an example:

       In a far off land, there lies a little village nestled in a snowy
       mountainscape. As the townsfolk joyously prepare for the coming
       winter solstice, a young girl living with her family in a humble hut
       at the outskirts of town gains no comfort in the festivities. Her
       closest companion, her younger brother Sander Bales, has fallen
       seriously ill with a fever and can barely lift his head from the bed
       upon which he lies. Young Gretchen could hardly have suspected that
       such circumstances would cause the fanciful events that were to occur
       upon this solstice eve.

    "Nestled," "joyously," "humble," "seriously," "young" twice, "fanciful",
    etc. There are also some grammar problems (though the sheer amount of
    text tends to obscure them), but on the whole the writing is reasonably
    good. It's just--well, depending on your mood, it might come across as
    saccharine. Or it might come across as charming. Similar is the dryad
    who speaks in verse; it's reasonably competent verse, but it verges on
    being a little much.

    Perhaps the best way to describe Winter Wonderland is that it fits very
    snugly within its genre, namely earnest and occasionally heart-tugging
    fairy tale, and does very little to push that genre's boundaries.
    There's nothing inherently wrong with that, especially since that in
    particular is ground less trodden than some areas of IF (et tu,
    trapped-in-the-research- lab?), but it does require that the reader
    accept the conventions of the genre and put aside even the remotest
    vestige of cynicism. Any work of fiction that deals with the
    holiday-time struggles of a poor family whose youngest child is sick is
    already toeing the self-parody line; Winter Wonderland does about as
    well as any game could to avoid crossing the line. Winter Wonderland is
    also one of the few genuinely child-friendly games since Infocom left
    the scene, and it's far more bearable for adults than, say,
    Seastalker--but very few games are universally accessible to and
    enjoyable by both children and adults, and this is not one of them.

    I, personally, enjoyed Winter Wonderland quite a bit; perhaps I was in
    the right mood. But while it's well-crafted IF in most respects, it's
    not the sort of thing that will necessarily appeal even to all fans of
    well-crafted IF. For my part, I gave it an 8 in this year's competition.

    Directory with Inform .z5 file and settings information

    Wishbringer
    From: Graeme Cree <72630.304 SP@G compuserve.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #5 -- April 19, 1995

      NAME:  Wishbringer:  The Magick Stone of Dreams
                                          GAMEPLAY:  Infocom Standard
      AUTHOR:  Brian Moriarty             PLOT:  Pretty Good
      EMAIL:  ?                           ATMOSPHERE:  Very Good
      AVAILABILITY:  LTOI 2               WRITING:  Very Good
      PUZZLES:  Average                   SUPPORTS:  Infocom Ports
      CHARACTERS:  Above Average          DIFFICULTY:  Introductory

         Although it's not widely realized, Wishbringer takes place in the
    Zork/Enchanter universe.  The Festeron Town Library, where the Legend
    of Wishbringer book is checked out from is also the source of some of
    the documention found in the Zork Trilogy.  In Wishbringer, you begin
    as a mail clerk in the Festeron Post Office, who is sent to deliver a
    letter to the Magick Shoppe at the other end of town.  When you get
    there, you discover that the shop owners' cat is being held by the Evil
    One in exchange for the magick Wishbringer stone.
         When you leave the Shoppe you discover that the old woman has
    slipped you the stone, and that the town of Festeron has changed into a
    dark caricature of itself called Witchville.  As you explore, you find
    that the former items and occupants of the town have transformed into
    twisted alter egos of themselves (the effect is much like that of
    classic Star Trek's "Mirror, Mirror" episode).  Your mission is to
    defeat the Evil One and your boss, Mr. Crisp, and to transform the town
    back into Festeron, with the help of the Wishbringer stone, some
    friendly platypii, and your own raw wits.
         Wishbringer's puzzles are generally very easy, and most of them
    have multiple solutions, being solvable either through reasoning, or
    using the Wishbringer stone to wish for some sort of aid.  But if you
    rely too much on the wishes, you may fail to acquire items that you may
    need to solve later puzzles.  In online conferences author Brian
    Moriarty has said that because of this, the moral of the story is that
    frivolous wishing can be a bad thing.
         The atmosphere wavers between being comic and sinister, and is
    difficult to classify.  At times it seems almost as though it is trying
    to be a children's game, what with having the plot revolve around a
    kidnapped cat, and supplying such fanciful images as talking platypii,
    and disembodied boots that patrol the town.
         Wishbringer was one of the 5 older titles chosen to be reissued in
    a bare bones Solid Gold edition with onscreen hints.  This was probably
    purely to extend its marketing cycle, as it is one of the Infocom games
    that least needed onscreen hints.  Indeed, the "wish for advice"
    function of the Wishbringer stone already partially fullfilled this
    role.  Since the Solid Gold editions had greatly reduced documentation,
    the Legend of Wishbringer book was deleted from the packaging and
    incorporated into the program itself, appearing as a storybook in your
    starting inventory.
         Wishbringer was also one of the books chosen to be novelised in
    Avon's Infocom books series.  The novelization of Wishbringer, written
    by Craig Shaw Gardner, author of the Batman Returns novelization (among
    others) deals with a different transformation of the town, and a
    different postman named Simon, who deals with the problem in a
    different way than in the game.  Though very well written in points,
    and one of Avon's better Infocom books, the plot is not always
    completely consistent.  For example, at one point we are told that the
    Evil One needed to physically acquire the stone to make the
    transformation permanent, and that if no one had it that that it would
    be temporary.  Later, we are told contrarily the Magick Shoppe owner
    must herself possess the stone in order to prevent the transformation
    from being permanent.  Since she had voluntarily let the stone out of
    her possession in the first place, this makes her look either very
    stupid, or very confused, or both.
         Wishbringer is generally a very fondly remembered game, even by
    those who feel moved to apologize for the ease of the puzzles.

    From: Magnus Olsson <mol SP@G df.lth.se>
    Review appeared in SPAG #6 -- July 26, 1995

    As a postal clerk in the small seaside town of Festeron, your only
    problem, apart from the occasional angry poodle, is your even angrier boss,
    Mr. Crisp.  When he tells you to take a special-delivery letter to the
    Magick Shoppe right outside town, you have no idea that this errand
    will throw you right into the middle of a life-or-death struggle
    between good and evil, or that your idyllic, maybe a little boring
    life will be turned into a nightmarish parody of itself...

    This is the beginning of _Wishbringer_, one of Infocom's
    "introductory" games. That label has led people to dismiss it as a
    trifle, or as aimed at a juvenile audience. It is true that the game
    is a little smaller, a little easier, a little less complex than
    Infocom's "big" games. It is also a little nicer to the player (it's
    very hard to get killed, and at some places you get warned to save
    your game before attempting some dangerous action).

    To draw the conclusion that the game is in any way inferior to other
    games would be a big mistake, however. In fact, I regard this game as
    one of Infocom's very best products: a small-scale masterpiece.  The
    puzzles may be easy, but they're original and innovative. The game may
    be less complex than, say, Zork, but complexity is not necessarily a
    virtue by itself. It may be aimed at a juvenile audience - but aren't
    most computer games?

    What I like the best about this game is that it works with small
    means. There are no horrible monsters, no monstrously evil
    super-villains - but the transformation of idyllic Festeron into a
    distorted, evil mirror image of itself is far more effective; at least
    the first time I played it, it managed to fill me with a fundamental,
    existential dread that is much worse than any fear for monsters or
    evil wizards.

    Still, the game never becomes gothic or macabre; the genre is
    horror-comedy, and the balance between horror and humour is nicely
    kept. The humour never becomes facetious or intrudes on the plot, but
    derives mainly from the sheer absurdity of the situation; the horror
    aspects never degenerate into empty fireworks or become so terrible as
    to stop the humour from working. All the time, you have this anxiety and
    feeling of threat at the back of, but it never gets bad enough to keep
    you from enjoying yourself - it's more like watching 'Twin Peaks' than
    'Aliens^3'.

    The game also has great charm, not only in its loving attention to
    detail, but also in its references to other Infocom games (how many
    people have seen the family life of grues and lived to tell about
    it?). Add to this engaging and memorable NPC's (the most memorable
    being, perhaps, something as improbable-sounding as the mailbox from
    Zork 1), a set of very clever (though simple) puzzles (the video game
    and the blurry room are expecially noteworthy), excellent writing, and
    some breathtaking cliffhangers, and you get a very good game indeed.

    A nice touch is that the major puzzles have alternative solutions; the
    Wishbringer of the title turns out to be an object in the game, and
    with that in your possession you can wish for various things, such as
    darkness, rain, or flight. I managed to find the "scientific"
    solutions to all puzzles; however, for beginning players it may be
    nice to have a way around difficult problems - and of course it adds
    variation to the game.

    The endgame, finally, is everything it should be: brief, not too
    difficult, suitably climactic (though not flashy) - and it also
    manages to provide a surprise at the very end, when you thought
    everything was nicely wound up.

    My only major complaint is that it is quite easy at some places to get
    the game into an insolvable state, without noticing that until much
    later; this lowers the gameplay score slightly, though the puzzles are
    sufficiently simple that it's not too difficult to start over again.

    All in all, this is a very enjoyable little game, as well as an
    excellent piece of writing. As an introduction to Infocom, or to IF in
    general, it is superb; for experienced adventurers it provides a
    delightful diversion from the complexities of games such as Curses and
    Spellbreaker.

    Solution (Text)

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

    NAME:  The Witness              PARSER:  Infocom Standard
    AUTHOR:  Stu Galley             PLOT:  Solve a Murder
    EMAIL:  UNKNOWN                 ATMOSPHERE:  VERY GOOD
    AVAILABILITY:  LTOI 1           WRITING:  Good
    PUZZLES:  Not Bad               SUPPORTS:  Infocom Ports
    CHARACTERS:  Good               DIFFICULTY:  Rather Easy

            The year, 1938.  The place, Los Angeles.  A wealthy but paranoid man
    has asked you, a police detective, for protection.  But despite everything
    you do, the man is killed.  Can you find who killed Freeman Linder?  The
    Witness was Infocom's second detective adventure; its parser contains many
    of the commands now standard to this genre.  The writing is the weakest part
    of the game; many times I felt as if Stu Galley had simply lifted whole
    chunks of clever responses from Deadline, the first Infocom detective
    adventure.  The plot is well-laid out, though linear in nature.  The
    characters is where the game shines.  There are really only three to deal
    with, one of whom you can discount almost from the first of the game.
    However, those two remaining NPCs are quite alive and feisty.  I gave my
    wildcard points for the feel of both the game overall and the characters.
         The Witness is available (where else?) in The Lost Treasures of Infocom
    1, available from Activision.  The repackaging is flawed, but at least it is
    available.  The Witness is a good medium-difficulty detective game.  After
    you finish Moonmist, work on The Witness, then Deadline, as they become
    progressively harder.

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

            Who killed Freeman Linder?  You came to his house to protect him from
    an unknown threat, but he has been murdered nonetheless.  In Witness,
    you take the role of a 1930s police detective and must find out what
    caused Linder's demise.  Question the suspects and search the Linder
    estate for clues that will bring you closer to the truth.  Witness was
    Infocom's second mystery game, and is nowhere near as difficult as
    Deadline.
            The plot flows quickly, and it is rather easy to stumble upon
    the guilty party.  However, Witness does a great job at capturing the
    feel of the 1930s.  This is achieved partly from the writing, but more so
    by the characters.  The NPCs are interesting and provide the player with
    entertainment after all the puzzles have been solved.  Witness is easy
    compared to many of Infocom's other titles, but it is still enjoyable.
    Witness can be found in LTOI 1, and serves as an excellent introduction
    to interactive mystery to gamers.

    From: Bozzie <edharel SP@G remus.rutgers.edu>
    Review appeared in SPAG #9 -- June 11, 1996

    NAME: The Witness                       PARSER:Infocom
    AUTHOR:Stu Galley                       PLOT:30's mystery
    EMAIL:???                               ATMOSPHERE:Very Good
    AVAILABILITY:LTOI 1, Mystery Col.       WRITING:Good
    PUZZLES:Few, but well done.             SUPPORTS:Infocom ports.
    CHARACHTERS:Excellent                   DIFFICULTY:EASY/MEDIUM

    You've been hired by Freeman Linder, a businessman who is scared for his
    life.   After you arrive to his home, he tells you his story, just before he
    is shot.  Now you've got a murder to solve, before its too late.

    This is an excellent game. But then, as it was the first game I ever played,
    more then 10 years ago, I may be somewhat partial to it.  It features one of
    the most coherent, realistic mysteries, and possibly one of the most
    consistent stories all together.  Mr. Galley worked hard on this one and it
    shows.  There are no plot holes, and the game makes complete sense.  That is
    one of the vital things about a mystery, and even more so an interactive one,
    where you have to consider every possible storyline, and every tangent you
    can take.  [For example, try not going to the house one time and see what
    happens].  He also is careful to place clues in the writing.  You could just
    follow the "obvious" beginning path and get at least 2 clues without
    examining or questioning anybody.

    Another important step is having good, believable characters, and this is
    where Mr. Galley truly shines.  The characters here are as believable as they
    have ever been in text adventures.  They lie, bluff, change their minds and
    more.  They move around with reasons, and will keep in mind you (The
    detective) when considering their actions.  I'll admit, I fell in love with
    Monica, despite her calling me a masher consistently.  I would, however, have
    liked at least one more character to have had.  Three is never a good number
    to pick when making mystery suspects.  I would have liked someone from Mr.
    Linder's business, for example.  Still, I won't be too choosy.

    The puzzles in this game are standard mystery type.  You question the mystery
    suspects.  You read the prose carefully for clues.  You spy on characters and
    their actions.  You try to search every room and examine every evidence you
    find, with Sgt. Duffy by your side to help assist when you need his help.

    The atmosphere is well done, if sometimes overly cliched.  But, for some
    reason, I think Mr. Galley may have wanted that effect.  You were watching an
    old 30's mystery movie, not conducting a criminal investigation.  Still,
    while most people think that it has the atmosphere of the Maltese Falcon, I
    would tend to think it was more like the Charlie Chan movies.  You weren't
    heading off everywhere to look for clues, just remaining in a somewhat
    restricted area, questioning people.

    Solution (Text)

    Words Of Power
    From: Emily Short <emshort SP@G mindspring.com>
    Review appeared in SPAG #33 -- June 25, 2003

    TITLE: Words of Power
    AUTHOR: Stark Springs
    EMAIL: (I wasn't able to find one listed)
    DATE: 2002
    PARSER: Glulxe
    SUPPORTS: Glulxe interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware, IF archive.
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/words.zip
    VERSION: 4

    My initial reaction to this game was, to say the least, mixed. It is a
    Glulx work, with a complicated UI, pictures, and (though I couldn't hear
    it on my computer) sound: clearly a lot of effort had gone into the
    production. On the other hand, one of the first things I encountered was
    a talking cat. My natural allergy to excessively cute cliches kicked in,
    and I set the game aside for a time. Eventually I came back to it, and
    I'm glad I did.

    Stark Springs' game is ambitiously packaged. It comes with two pdf files
    of background material, which represent reading matter you find during
    the course of the game; only a password (learned in-game) can unlock
    them. Considering that there's quite a lot of this material, I
    appreciated the chance to read that material in the pdf format rather
    than from the game screen. Having the huge amount to read early in the
    game reminded me, negatively, of a similar effect at the beginning of
    Fort Aegea, where I didn't care for it. All the same, having a pdf
    worked in Springs' favor: I knew that I could always come back and refer
    to the file later if necessary, and it was also possible to skim it
    without reading everything, so that I knew roughly what I was going to
    be in for later. The massive infodump is still not my favorite way of
    revealing backstory, but if there had to be an infodump, this is as good
    a way as any.

    Besides the pdf files, there's a complex graphical interface. Along the
    right side of the screen is the conversation menu; along the top, the
    status bar; and along the bottom, buttons representing the Words of
    Power. The text color and background are frequently changed, a la
    Photopia, to suggest changes in setting and atmosphere.

    All this UI gadgetry could have been confusing, but, on the whole, I
    didn't find it so. The conversation menu looked perhaps a bit awkward
    crammed into a narrow space where all the sentences had to wrap -- I
    think I would have designed that differently, and perhaps put the power
    buttons on the right and the conversation menu at the bottom of the
    screen -- but I found that I quickly got used to the effect. The
    conversation menu was also decorated with an illustration of whichever
    NPC you're talking to, a bit like Fallacy Of Dawn. In a game with a fair
    number of NPCs, this is quite useful, because it provides a visual hook
    in addition to the NPC's name to help the player remember who everyone
    is.

    Speaking of the conversation menu, conversation in the game uses a
    technique similar to some I've used myself: the player is allowed to
    choose a piece of dialogue from the menu, or else to change the topic of
    conversation to something else. Important bits of dialogue can be
    repeated ("Tell me again what you know about the forest..."), and the
    topics available to switch to are listed in the menu as well. I found
    this fairly effective and easy to use, except that there were a number
    of times when I would have liked to be able to talk about something that
    wasn't available: for one NPC I met repeatedly during the game, it would
    have been nice if additional conversation items had appeared over the
    course of the plot so that I could have discussed more of my discoveries
    with him. But it's always a challenge to provide what the player will
    experience as "enough" conversation in a game, and I understand the
    limitations that might have prevented Springs from adding more.

    As for the Words of Power mentioned in the title: Springs has invented a
    magic system based on combining elements to construct a complete spell.
    The elements can be verbs, nouns, or modifiers, and they are all
    represented as buttons at the bottom of the screen, so that there's no
    need to memorize the vocabulary. This gives the player a nice range of
    action, using a syntax that is not much different from the standard
    command structure used to communicate with an IF game in the first
    place. It's easy to work out new combinations to suit new occasions. As
    a concept, such magic is more sensible than the spellcasting system of
    Enchanter and its followers, and it lends itself more readily to
    exploration or invention by the player.

    There are a few flaws. I would have liked to see a more interesting
    treatment of the effects of failure when the magic was cast incorrectly
    or on the wrong thing; a few inventive messages here would both have
    helped teach the player how to use the magic correctly, and provided
    some local color. But even so, I didn't find it particularly difficult
    to learn to use the Words. In fact, I would have liked to see a larger
    selection of them -- the system has more potential than this game
    actually exercised, I think. The number of words available befits a
    relatively short game (as this is), but I would have enjoyed playing
    with the combinations even more.

    The setting is something of a mixed bag. Examining objects tended to
    reveal no more than was already in the room description. For instance:

       Stone Road
       When the path leads you out of the tree cluster, the scene in front
       of you seems unreal and it takes you a few moments to figure why. A
       large plain stretches to the west, but you can see no horizon line,
       only a hazy band, far far away, of a darker blue than the sky. The
       sun, huge and orange like a basketball hangs low in the sky. A
       neglected road, paved with round, irregular stones and overgrown with
       grass makes its way from north to south and its both ends are lost in
       the same haze that replaces the horizon line.

       The cat ambles along.

       >x road
       The road is paved with round stones and looks neglected.

    There's nothing to be seen here that we haven't seen already, and I was
    initially disappointed by the effect. As I played on, I got used to it:
    this is not a heavily puzzle-centric game, and obsessively examining
    everything is not the point. Ultimately the game succeeds in teaching
    the player what sort of interaction is required by politely discouraging
    fruitless kinds of action.

    Speaking of the descriptions, the writing is somewhat unpolished in
    spots -- the sentence that begins "A neglected road" goes on a bit too
    long, while the phrase "its both ends" seems a bit unidiomatic.

    For all that, if you look past the form of the writing to the content
    itself, that content is fairly evocative. Here is a fantasy game (sort
    of -- there's magic, and a talking cat), but it is set on a planet built
    like a science fiction planet, with a different diameter and a more
    distant sun. The effect, an impression of great age and distance, is
    both beautiful and melancholy. In fact, the whole map of the game is
    built on the same massive scale, with locations that encompass entire
    ruined cities and forests. Some elements of the story are a little too
    familiar, perhaps -- the race of forest-dwellers and the race of miners
    smacks of Tolkien, and other pieces of the backstory ring a little too
    familiar -- but not all of them. So on the whole the setting could have
    been more sharply imagined and better described, but there were enough
    intriguing elements to keep me engaged. I found that I liked it best if
    I mentally translated the descriptions into a kind of cinematic
    treatment, with many desolate landscape shots.

    The story likewise turns out to be more interesting than I originally
    anticipated; it takes several bends without ever ceasing to make perfect
    sense, and it also manages finally to fuse the story and the puzzle
    system into a bit of in-character decision-making of the kind I like
    best, where the player has the power to make a critical decision based
    on the puzzle-solving skills and plot knowledge she's picked up. It's a
    technique I associate with really great game design, and though the
    effect here isn't quite as powerful as the effect of a similar juncture
    in Spider and Web, it's still in excellent company.

    Despite some early apprehension, I also found the game extremely
    playable. The story controls the pacing: I was never stuck at any point,
    and those few times when I found myself even slightly at a loss soon
    resolved themselves. There's enough for the player to do that the effect
    doesn't feel completely linear and closed off, too -- and this is not an
    easy balance to strike.

    The final verdict, then: this is a pretty good game in several ways. If
    it had been sharpened a little on a couple of fronts -- the magic system
    deepened, the characters given a bit more edge and complexity, the
    writing polished -- it could perhaps have been a great game. As it is,
    it falls shy of great, even occasionally slips into mediocre, but there
    is still plenty to make it worth playing. I liked the magic system quite
    a lot, and liked the way the UI helped the player with it; if there were
    to be a sequel or another game using this system, I would be interested
    in playing it. I have even forgiven the presence of the talking cat.

    Glulx game file and feelies

    Glulx game file (no sound version) and feelies

    World
    From: Magnus Olsson <mol SP@G df.lth.se>
    Review appeared in SPAG #4 -- March 2, 1995

      NAME: World                           PARSER: Limited
      AUTHOR: Doug Mcdonald                 PLOT: Simple but non-linear
      EMAIL: ???                            ATMOSPHERE: Superb
      AVAILABILITY: IF Archive, F                  WRITING: Very good
      PUZZLES: Fairly standard, much treasure-hunting and exploration
      SUPPORTS: Unix, DOS, VMS, etc (C source included)
      CHARACTERS: Few, simple               DIFFICULTY: Below average

    Five and a half years ago, when I first got full access to the
    Internet, one of the first things I did was to look for FTP sites with
    interesting software. Finding the Usenet source archives on uunet was
    marvellous; finding the source to a large adventure game there
    was even more exciting. I downloaded the game, tried it on my Unix
    workstation, and liked it so much that I brought it home and compiled
    it on my PC at home. The game was called "World" and was _huge_; due
    to its sheer size, I never completed it (I got stuck about 75%
    through, put it aside for a few days, and never got about to complete
    it), but it made a lasting impression. When writing these reviews for
    SPAG, I couldn't resist the impulse to dust off my old copy of "World"
    to see if it's lost any of its attraction over the years; to my joy,
    it hadn't.

    "World" is a game in the tradition of the old mainframe adventures
    like Colossal Cave and Zork/Dungeon. This means that it's a big game
    (several hundred locations), with a heavy emphasis on treasure-hunting
    and exploration. Unlike those games, however, the author has managed
    to create a much more coherent world - which doesn't stop it from also
    being a world that is very varied and offers a lot of surprises.

    The story is simple: you, being a lowly latrine orderly on a starship
    that's just landed on an alien planet, have volunteered to explore it
    on foot. By collecting alien artifacts and specimens of interesting
    wildlife, you hope to earn a (long overdue) promotion. The planet soon
    turns out to have quite a few surprises in store for you...

    While the plot may not be that great, what makes this game memorable
    is the outstanding atmosphere. Somehow, the author manages to make a
    world which is quite improbable when you think about it, and which is
    filled with quite a few of the cliches of Sci-Fi, seem very
    convincing. You not only get the feeling that "you're there", you experience
    that elusive feeling that is the very essence of science fiction - the
    sense of wonder.

    The writing is very good, with lots of long, very graphic descriptions
    of a weird and wonderful, alien world. The mainframe tradition is
    noticeable in that the author doesn't shy away from using long
    descriptions - fortunately without falling into the trap of excessive
    verbosity or overuse of purple prose.

    Unfortunately, the parser and vocabulary aren't quite up to the
    standard of the writing, reducing playability and leading to a few
    "guess the verb" situations. Still, it's not worse than your typical
    AGT parser, and since most puzzles don't require any advanced
    manipulation of objects you can get along quite well. Also, some
    slight misses (which would surely have been found by more extensive
    playtesting) detract somewhat from the overall impression.

    As an adventure _game_, "World" isn't very remarkable; it does stand
    out, however, in the way its author manages to give credibility,
    texture and atmosphere to a totally alien world.

    Amiga (.lha)

    PC Executable (.zip)

    Solution (Text)

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

    TITLE: Worlds Apart
    AUTHOR: Suzanne Britton
    E-MAIL: tril SP@G igs.net
    DATE: 1999
    PARSER: TADS standard
    SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters
    AVAILABILITY: Freeware (IF Archive)
    URL: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/worlds.zip
    VERSION: Release 2

    A variety of adjectives could well be applied to Suzanne Britton's
    Worlds Apart, but the main one that comes to mind is "rich." Rich in
    story, rich in characterization, rich in description, and generally rich
    in details of every kind--there's nothing thin or underdone about Worlds
    Apart. Whether any given player enjoys the story depends on the player,
    of course, perhaps even more so than in most IF: the plot depends on
    abstractions to an unusual extent, and keeping up with it requires a
    certain openness to unusual ways of information processing. Still, this
    is one story that rewards persistence on the player's part, and those
    who don't make the effort are missing something special.

    What's going on is--well, figuring out what's going on is one of the
    game's few real puzzles, so it won't be revealed here, but suffice it to
    say that almost no information is given to you initially. The process of
    discovering who and where you are and what you're doing there is rather
    deliberate; there's a lot of information to glean over the course of the
    story, but very little of it is available initially, which makes the
    game somewhat less immediately accessible than it might be. Contributing
    to this problem is the world you inhabit, which may fairly be described
    as alien; there are plenty of unfamiliar names and terms scattered here
    and there, and while they all eventually either get explained or become
    obvious, a player could be forgiven for finding the learning curve a bit
    steep at first.

    There's an upside to all the strangeness, however, that comes as the
    story develops: the player's imagination is freed to an extent it might
    not be if all the quantities were initially known. The flora and fauna
    you discover, for example, are given primary characteristics, but mostly
    the details are left for the player's mind to fill in. Dan Schmidt's
    For a Change did something similar (though to a much greater extent,
    of course, since the level of abstraction there was much higher), and in
    many ways it's a liberating experience to be encouraged to fill in
    relevant sensory details for yourself. Paralleling this are the verbs
    that you use to interact with other characters and with the environment,
    verbs which either aren't standard-IF at all or are used in highly
    unusual ways; the player is forced to put together his or her own images
    of how those verbs work.

    The plot, for its own part, has its own logic, which, like everything
    else, may not be initially apparent; themes that seem quite sensible
    after they're encountered a few times may simply be baffling the first
    time or two they appear. There's an adaptive hint system that fills in
    most of the gaps (though not all), and while Worlds Apart is far from
    puzzle-oriented, it's likely that most players will end up using the
    hints at least once or twice. It's not so much that the puzzles are hard
    as that they require being on the author's wavelength. One that
    initially stumped me involved applying recently learned knowledge, and
    while I recognized immediately what to do, I didn't manage to supply the
    proper verb for quite a while. (It wasn't a verb that I, or anyone else,
    had ever encountered before, and while the game gave me an obvious clue,
    I tried to convey the action through more conventional verbs.) This
    isn't, I hasten to add, a bad thing. The world of Worlds Apart is all
    the more immersive for its strangeness. But it's not impossible that
    some might find it frustrating.

    One of the greatest strengths of Worlds Apart is its cast of characters.
    True, you don't interact with them in especially complex ways; many of
    the interactions amount to cut-scenes, and much of the rest of it is
    ASK/TELL--but these are impressively complex characters. There isn't a
    thoroughgoing hero or villain among them; all have their faults and
    virtues, and while some are more likeable than others, none are there
    merely to be loved or loathed. Better still, their various personalities
    aren't merely identifying features ("here comes X, and he's going to
    display his character trait so that we don't confuse him with Y")--the
    plot depends on those personalities, and understanding the characters
    mean understanding why the plot unfolds the way it does. They also have
    some fairly complex relationships with each other, and much of what you
    learn about them you pick up secondhand, adding to the complexity.
    Better still, there's one character whose motivations and true nature
    are almost entirely open to interpretation (or so it seemed to me), and
    how the player chooses to perceive that character's actions may, or may
    not, shape how he or she views the rest of the story. There's no special
    technical wizardry that I could discern behind the character
    development--just good writing and lots and lots of ASK/TELL topics--but
    they come alive, arguably more so than in any work of IF in memory. And
    if some remain a bit opaque at the end of the story, well, it adds to
    the aura of mystery.

    The writing is uniformly excellent: it's full of details, as noted, but
    generally the descriptions aren't so long that they become ponderous.
    Typical of this economical approach is this passage:

       You have come to a secluded glade, half-sheltered from the elements
       by the many trees extending their branches out over the clearing. One
       of these in particular catches your eye, a gentle giant of a ch'nuka
       whose boughs stretch wide in every direction. Once, it might have
       shaded this place on its own, but now it shows signs of failing
       health--some of the branches are almost bare, and decaying leaves
       surround the trunk in piles and litter the clearing, although it
       feels like summer, and the other vegetation here is thriving.

    All the details necessary to set the scene are here--tree, leaves,
    vegetation--but the author also manages to convey the feel of the
    setting, and the tree that dominates the glade also dominates your
    impression of the place. The decay of the ch'nuka is more important than
    the continued vitality of the surrounding vegetation, and so it
    dominates the description; had the author chosen to give the other
    vegetation more attention, the extent to which this particular tree
    affects your perception of the scene would be lost. Moreover, the
    contrast between the dying tree and the thriving vegetation wouldn't
    work as well if it were explicitly pointed out; leaving the reader to
    draw the contrast and wonder about it works much better. Here, and
    elsewhere, the author eschews a camcorder approach for a more
    subjective, intuitive account--the aspect of the scene that draws your
    attention not only is described in more detail, but also colors your
    overall view of the setting. The author's writing skills are
    particularly apparent late in the game, when there's a Wishbringeresque
    transformation of your surroundings; not only are the changed features
    of the landscape vividly rendered, but every scene is emotionally
    charged in ways similar to the above.

    Worlds Apart is not a flawless effort (as opposed, of course, to all
    those flawless works of IF out there). There are some questionable game
    design choices--at one point, for instance, you happen across a book
    with a great deal of information that becomes pertinent to a certain
    task, or series of tasks. Unfortunately, you can't take the book with
    you when you're carrying out the tasks (logically, given the nature of
    the assignment), and you may end up having to retrace your steps to
    consult the book that you couldn't take with you. The worldbuilding that
    the inclusion of the book accomplishes is outstanding--thorough and
    plausible--but the frustration aspect threatens to yank the player out
    of an otherwise immersive scene. The progress of the story sometimes
    depends too much on wandering around and eventually noticing that
    something has changed in an unforeseeable way, and while that encourages
    frequent re-exploration, it may prove frustrating to the player who
    wants the story to keep moving. The hint system fills in the gaps most
    of the time, but there are a few gaps. And the end is a bit abrupt;
    there's a reference to a possible sequel, but it's disappointing to
    leave the game's world with so much unresolved.

    There is much to like about Worlds Apart, in the end--in quantity and
    quality, the detail that went into the worldbuilding is unmatched in any
    work of IF in recent memory, and it's unlikely that any player will
    catch all, or even most, of the story on the first try. If it's a little
    inaccessible at first, that comes with the territory--i.e., introducing
    the player into a highly complex and well-developed world--and it's
    hardly a fatal flaw. In its interactivity and in the quality of its
    storytelling, Worlds Apart is a remarkable accomplishment.

    TADS .gam file

    Macintosh version

    PC Executable

    Wormhole: The Beginning
    From: Cthulhu <patrickc SP@G direct.ca>
    Review appeared in SPAG #11 -- September 16, 1997

    NAME: Wormhole: The Beginning
    AUTHOR: Philip Dearmore
    EMAIL: morbeus SP@G eskimo.com
    DATE: 1995
    PARSER: TADS
    SUPPORTS: TADS ports
    AVAILABILITY: Free but "discontinued"
    URL: http://www.eskimo.com/~morbeus/neotext.html
         ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/wormhole.zip

    Wormhole: The Beginning is the "introductory" game from
    Neotext. According to its web page, it has been "discontinued." Well,
    what can I say? It's a game that succeeds very well despite its
    massive flaws. It's annoying and frustrating, hobbled by cliches and a
    completely substandard parser. On the other hand the plot is so
    compelling, so interesting, that I simply couldn't stop playing this
    game.

    It's the middle of the night. Your friend George Edfry, who lives in
    Virginia, wakes you up with a phone call. The description of the phone
    call, BTW, has got to be THE funniest moments in any game outside of
    the Space Quest series. So you go to his house.

    Morning. The game begins. You've left your keys in the ignition of
    your Honda after locking your door and exiting the car. Excuse me, but
    how the heck is that possible? Never mind, since that's the setup for
    one of the game's most interesting puzzle. There are also George's car
    and, for a sinister bit of foreshadowing, an unexplained Lincoln
    parked outside of his house. You can interact with neither of these
    cars in any way whatsoever. The author put in a brilliant surprise
    when I looked under the welcome mat, and... I won't even dream of
    telling you! You soon get to a puzzle where, to progress any further,
    you have to deal with a hostile guard dog in exactly the same way that
    you dealt with the poodle in Wishbringer.

    Well, that was the opening game. Soon you will be discovering the
    fiendishly clever plot and brilliant surprises. It soon becomes
    obvious that one of George's experiments have gone horribly
    wrong. Food stains on carpets are replaced by blood as you
    progress. You will discover a rift into another dimension. And,
    eventually, you will find George himself in a state that came as a
    complete surprise to me.

    Fun, eh? Yep. but this game has serious flaws. There's a chimney that
    you can enter, shades of Curses, but you can't do anything in it!
    There's a flashlight in the game that works the same whether it's
    turned on or not. In short, the coding is awful. Nowhere is this more
    evident than in a room with a pool of mercury in it. Try ENTER THE
    POOL, GO IN THE POOL, JUMP IN THE POOL, and JUMP ON THE POOL -- three
    of them give a "you can't do that" message. You cannot put anything in
    the pool. You cannot put anything on the pool. You cannot look in it
    or under it. You can't drink it. And, even though it's specifically
    called a "reflection pool", it's utterly impossible to shine the
    flashlight on it. Towards the end the game has your character say a
    line (about moon-stones, for those who know) when he could not
    possibly know what he's talking about. And the final puzzle, that of
    finding the last moonstone, has got to be the most stupid and
    illogical one I've ever played because it requires George to be a
    moron almost beyond comprehension.

    I'm looking forward to playing Neosoft's second game, Urban
    Cleanup. Wormhole has promise. Perhaps Urban Cleanup will realize it.

    TADS .gam file and DOS Executable

    Wumpus 2000
    From: Jimmy Maher <maher SP@G grandecom.net>
    Review appeared in SPAG #41 -- July 15, 2005

    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.

    Zcode .z5 file

    Inform source code

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