A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM FOREVER by Chris Angelini
I didn't enjoy playing this at all, having spent 900f my time tramping
back and forth along the corridor in the different time zones. The game
seems to have not been play-tested, and it raises rather more questions
than it answers. Why a diamond ring (it could at least have been a
Heechee Gadget (tm) with miraculous properties)? How did the coal turn
into a diamond when it was just buried in a hole for 2000 years, rather
than being compressed by miles of sediment for millions (I was expecting
instead to have to put the coal through the glass-making machine)? Is
this a cunning reference to the coal/diamond puzzle in "Zork I", or is
it just serendipity? Why was there a starvation time limit when
(apparently) there is no food in the game? Is this just the infamous
"TADS has starvation and sleep deprivation time limits unless you
explicitly turn them off" bug, or is it deliberate? Why does the
walkthrough think I can refer to the "glass cover" as a "case"? And so
on.
UNCLE ZEBULON'S WILL by Magnus Olsson
This game seemed very reminiscent of "Hollywood Hijinx": a mysterious
will, a hunt through a deserted house and descriptions enlivened by
references to my childhood memories of the place. I almost expected to
find Uncle Zebulon still alive at the end, menaced by my evil cousin
Hector... Perhaps "Cyr-Dhool" is some kind of reference to Liz
Cyr-Jones, co-author of "Hollywood Hijinx".
The magic/technology-switched background was a good idea (have you read
"The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick?), though I think it
could have been extended a bit more (and what are "train strikes" doing
in this world? -- perhaps "magic carpet strikes" instead?). There was a
point where I felt overwhelmed by information -- a good feeling, mind
you -- and I wondered if I was going to have to replicate Zebulon's
alchemy experiments (shades of "Christminster" here). But it became
apparent that most of the information was redundant, and from there on I
found it easy.
For me, there were various aspects that disappointed. The puzzles
(apart from the one-object restriction, which was excellent) seemed a
bit pedestrian (four objects hidden in obvious places; *two*
collect-the-related-objects puzzles). And the writing was very flat and
lifeless, managing to be lengthy without being either vivid or
humourous. Half a dozen descriptions have some variation on "This room
has been ransacked by your greedy relatives". And I was hoping for at
least some people in the land of Vhyl to welcome me (perhaps the sequel
will reveal where they've all gone).
UNDERTOW by Stephen Granade
A very ambitious work let down by its implementation. I think that
interactive fiction has to get to grips with characterisation and
complex character interaction, but it has to do that while allowing
suspension of disbelief and remaining interesting and playable. I think
Stephen was very brave to tackle this kind of material (it's something I
considered doing for the competition, but rejected because I didn't have
time, and because in any case I don't know how to do it!), but I'm
afraid I didn't appreciate the result.
Characters in "Undertow" don't seem to have the knowledge that they
should have, based on what they've seen me do. For example, suppose I
tell Carl about seeing Thom's body in the water; later on, I still get
the exchange "`What is it?' you ask him [Carl] en route. `Thom. We've
found him dead.'". Then there are perfectly sensible actions that are
prevented for arbitrary and stupid reasons. The worst such problem I
found was that I couldn't pick up Ashleigh's purse or get her gun!
Surely no-one in such a situation -- a murdered man just discovered --
would leave a gun lying around on the deck for anyone to pick up? The
game says that if I'm seen with a gun, then people will think I killed
Thom. Well then, let me pick up the gun, and implement the other
characters' suspicions!
Then there are basic problems with the way the story develops: after an
extremely hectic opening, suddenly nothing else seems to happen until
the boat explodes (a situation which reminds me a bit of "Plundered
Hearts"), and the player is left with no idea of what to do.
"Undertow" seems not to have been play-tested much (if at all), when in
fact the genre demands extremely rigorous testing. It's hard to be a
detective when "ask ashleigh about carl" produces the response "Carl is
no longer here" and "carl, tell me about ashleigh" produces "You can't
reach that from the dinette bench." There are lots of little bugs, such
as "The battery cover is closed, revealing a nine-volt battery", and the
consistent misspelling of "gauge" as "gague". There are also far too
many objects (try typing "tell all about thom" in the Forecastle - I
noticed 25 scenery objects in that one room alone!). This clutter
obscures rather than illuminates.
There does seem to have been a lot amount of work put into "Undertow",
but the task facing authors of this kind of game would seem to be
greater still.
GENERAL NOTES ON THE COMPETITION
I thought there were some excellent games. Kudos to "The One that Got
Away", "A Change in the Weather", "Uncle Zebulon's Will" and "Toonesia"
for being entertaining and playable, and also to "Undertow" for
attempting the impossible.
Thanks to everyone who commented on "Magic Toyshop", good or bad (more
comments by e-mail or post, please!). I will tidy up the source code
and upload it to the archive in the next week or so.
I think the idea of having separate sections for Inform and for TADS
should be dropped next year; the imbalance between the votes in the two
sections wasn't very large: 31 TADS, 42 Inform. Sure, demanding that
all judges play every game would rule out a few people from voting, but
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. This year there seemed to
be a difference of quality between the two sections: the TADS games were
on the whole better than the Inform ones, and I think it would have been
more telling to have a joint result.
If people feel that shutting out judges who couldn't get access to a
machine for which a TADS port exists was just too unfair, then why not
have some system which scales votes according to how many entries there
were in each section and how many voters could play the games in each
section so as to even out these sources of imbalance -- ask me if you
need to know what the maths might look like.
-- Gareth Rees