The Rest of Your Mice

Lime/Coconut: We're Done For Now

2012-01-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

It's official!

There aren't enough people in the contest. That's okay! This is still a thing. I'm trying to decide the timeline for the next iteration of the contest, which will be essentially identical to this one. I don't want to give too much or too little time, or have it overlap too much with other contests.

Any entries submitted thus far will not be released in any way. They can be resubmitted when the contest goes live again, either with a fresh version or a "hey, remember that entry? Yeah, that." if you want me to just search through my Gmail and use the old version.

Lime/Coconut: Less than a month left!

2011-12-04T19:16:00.001-07:00

It's December!

That means you have the rest of this month to send in an entry to the First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp! Right now, while a number of people have expressed interest only a few have sent actual entries in.

WHAT THAT MEANS IF YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT ENTERING:

It means you have less competition than you may have been previously expecting! How exciting for you! If you haven't started yet, you can probably do something pretty cool in a month. It's possible that you will be a little distracted due to the various holidays taking place around this time of year, but even so I have faith in you, hypothetical person! Get going!

WHAT IT MEANS IF YOU HAVE ALREADY ENTERED:

If I don't get more people participating, then as promised in the original announcement the contest will be called off and no prize will be awarded. I will re-announce the contest at some later date and notify you via email, and you can let me know if you want to re-enter. Your code will not be used or released in any way if there's no contest. The details of the contest are not guaranteed to remain exactly the same when re-announced, but are highly likely to do so.

WHAT IT MEANS IF YOU WEREN'T PLANNING ON ENTERING ANYWAY:

Nothing, really. You can just carry on with your day. But hey, since you're reading this there must be some small spark of interest. Think it over again, this time remembering that the odds are (at least for the moment) pretty favorable. I mean, yeah, it won't be determined by random so it's not just about how many people entered but don't sell yourself short! You're talented and have good ideas, you can totally compete with the others!

WHAT IT MEANS IF YOU ARE A LIME AND/OR A COCONUT:

It's a pretty safe bet to say that if you are a lime or a coconut you can't read, or even ask someone to read this to you. In fact, most studies indicate that neither limes nor coconuts have brains and wouldn't be able to comprehend or participate in this contest. Although coconuts do have some things in common with mammals. I mean, they have fur (of a sort) and produce milk (of a sort). Anyway, I remain fairly confident that what is needed here is a central nervous system (of a sort). And even then, not all things with brains are up to the task. Lemurs, for example, make terrible text adventures. Always a "guess-the-verb" situation with those guys.

Story 200: We Daren't Go A-Hunting

2011-11-10T23:04:00.000-07:00

** Welcome to MechaCupid Computer Dating Service! **
** Your current chat status is: Available **

7ro11nDirty: heyyy pretty lady i like youre profile pics

7ro11nDirty: you into the costume thing thats cool

MaryMun: Excuse me?

7ro11nDirty: the sexy librarian getup i can be down with that

MaryMun: Those are my regular clothes. That's just what I look like.

7ro11nDirty: lol sure those glasses are real ;))))

MaryMun: Yes. Yes they are.

7ro11nDirty: damn girl you have an attitude i like that

MaryMun: I think we're done here.

7ro11nDirty: why you have to be a bitch? i wouldn't want to date you anyway your ugly

MaryMun: You know I can still see the start of this chat, right? The whole "I didn't want to go out with you anyway" thing is both sad and immature.

7ro11nDirty: probly a stupid feminist

MaryMun: Yes, one who doesn't date trolls. Goodbye.

7ro11nDirty: oh so your racist is that it???

MaryMun: What?

7ro11nDirty: everyone is so racist here i hate it nobody wants to go out with me just because of how i was born

MaryMun: No, it's because you're being an ass. Nice try though.

7ro11nDirty: you just said its because im a troll and now you pretend its not about race

7ro11nDirty: nice try though

MaryMun: Since when is troll a racist term?

7ro11nDirty: ????

7ro11nDirty: what if I said i wasnt going to date you because your human

MaryMun: I'm sorry. I just now looked at your profile. I didn't realize. I meant "troll" as in someone who tries to rile people up online. I didn't know that you are a literal troll.

7ro11nDirty: thats still racist its a stereotype that we start shit online

MaryMun: I'm not sure the words are related. I think that trolls online are a reference to trolling, which is where you drag bait behind a boat.

7ro11nDirty: i like to fish

7ro11nDirty: so its still racist

MaryMun: I don't think it works that way.

7ro11nDirty: its still offensive so whatever

MaryMun: Fair enough. I apologize for the offense, and promise to make an effort to be more aware in the future. I still think you're an ass though. Just to be clear: that is due to your behavior and not your race.

7ro11nDirty: i would show you such a good time baby

7ro11nDirty: take you back to my bridge

MaryMun: Your bridge?

7ro11nDirty: yeah i live under a really nice bridge i get wifi free from the hotel and theres the river and i have a cave hollowed out all old school

MaryMun: I'll pass.

7ro11nDirty: i wont eat you i swear nobody does that anymore much except for holidays

7ro11nDirty: but im not really religious

7ro11nDirty: im spiritual though

MaryMun: Look, maybe it is a little... not racist, but ethnocentrist or something. But whatever it is, I just don't like the idea of hanging out under a bridge.

7ro11nDirty: yeah but its all classy like in the lord of the rings

7ro11nDirty: like the hobbit houses

7ro11nDirty: but maybe wetter and more moss

MaryMun: And you were still an ass a minute ago. I haven't forgotten that.

7ro11nDirty: moss is good for you

7ro11nDirty: plus its soft on your feet

MaryMun: Good luck finding someone.

7ro11nDirty: im awesome in bed

MaryMun: Goodbye.

7ro11nDirty: i mean not an actual bed i break those but if you put some mattresses down i will rock your world

7ro11nDirty: and ill cook you for breakfast

7ro11nDirty: i meant to say cook you beakfast

7ro11nDirty: not actually cook you and eat you or anything

7ro11nDirty: because i dont do that

7ro11nDirty: thats not a thing

7ro11nDirty: anymore

** USER "7ro11nDirty" ADDED TO IGNORE LIST **

DEATH: HEY.

DEATH: HEY.

DEATH: HEY.

DEATH: HEY.

DEATH: HEY.

DEATH: HEY.

MaryMun: Sorry, I was AFK. What's up?

DEATH: COME OUTSIDE.

MaryMun: Not happening.

DEATH: COME CHECK OUT THIS SWEET CAR.

MaryMun: You're death. I know it's a trap.

DEATH: NO IT IS NOT A TRAP.

DEATH: IT IS A SWEET CAR. I SWEAR.

MaryMun: I don't see it.

DEATH: YOU CANNOT SEE IT FROM THE WINDOW. COME OUTSIDE.

DEATH: YOU CAN SEE IT BEST FROM THE STREET. STAND IN THE STREET AND LOOK EAST.

MaryMun: This is pathetic. You lost, okay? Let it go.

DEATH: IT IS ALMOST HERE. QUICKLY, COME OUTSIDE AND LOOK AT THIS SWEET CAR.

DEATH: HURRY

DEATH: HURRY

DEATH: YOU MISSED IT.

DEATH: I HATE YOU.

MaryMun: Man, it's incredible that I managed to see through that clever ruse. It's just amazing.

DEATH: YOU CHEATED AT THAT GAME.

MaryMun: You know I didn't.

DEATH: I NEVER LOSE AT CHESS. I JUST DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW TO PLAY ON THE COMPUTER.

MaryMun: Stop being a sore loser, and let it go. You lost, I won, it's over. I'll die again some day, don't be in such a rush. It's creepy.

DEATH: I THINK YOUR GARBAGE DISPOSAL IS BROKEN.

MaryMun: Sweet jebus. Are you seriously doing this?

DEATH: YOU SHOULD REACH IN AND CHECK IF SOMETHING IS STUCK IN THERE. IT COULD BE SOMETHING VALUABLE.

** USER [error: user not found] ADDED TO IGNORE LIST **

DEATH: NOTHING CAN STOP DEATH.

MaryMun: I'm going to file a complaint or something.

DEATH: THERE ARE TECHNICALLY NO RULES ABOUT HARASSMENT. THE EMPLOYEE MANUAL WAS WRITTEN AT THE DAWN OF TIME.

DEATH: WE WERE NOT SO WORRIED ABOUT LAWSUITS BACK THEN.

MaryMun: I meant with the dating site.

DEATH: I AM ONLY USING THIS SITE AS A CONDUIT. I DO NOT HAVE AN ACCOUNT, ALTHOUGH I HAVE OFTEN THOUGHT ABOUT IT. I GET SO LONELY.

MaryMun: You know, I talked to a zombie on here last week.

DEATH: YOU SHOULD GO ON A DATE WITH HIM. USE FOOD-SCENTED SHAMPOO.

MaryMun: What I mean is, I bet there's something in your employee manual about letting people run around after they die.

DEATH: NECROMANCY IS ALLOWED WITHIN CERTAIN GUIDELINES.

MaryMun: My roommate Nancy in college was studying necromancy, so I'm aware. I learned a lot, including the difference between animated dead and a full-blown undying corpse. Almost like someone just forgot to collect him...

DEATH: I HAVE BEEN BUSY.

MaryMun: I'm sure you wouldn't want me bringing oversights like that to anyone's attention...

DEATH: FINE.

DEATH: YOU WIN AGAIN, MORTAL. BUT YOU CANNOT DEFY ME FOREVER.

MaryMun: Understood. Now shoo.

DEATH: WHILE I HAVE YOU HERE, SINCE THIS IS A DATING SITE, WOULD YOU LIKE TO MEET ME FOR DINNER?

MaryMun: Would you swear an oath that I won't die during our date, or as a result of our date?

DEATH: YOU TAKE ALL THE EXCITEMENT OUT OF EVERYTHING.

DEATH: LIVE ON THE WILD SIDE.

MaryMun: Where would the anthropomorphic representation of death even take someone on a date?

DEATH: I AM OMNIPRESENT, BUT I WOULD PREFER TO STAY ON THE WEST SIDE OF TOWN. I KNOW A NICE ITALLIAN PLACE.

MaryMun: Do you even eat?

DEATH: NO, BUT I COLLECT PEOPLE FROM THIS RESTAURANT SOMETIMES.

MaryMun: For what?

DEATH: FOOD POISONING.

MaryMun: Goodbye.

DEATH: SHIT.

Ponyboy118: Listen. You look hot in those profile pics, there's no point lying about that. But I think we both know that hot chicks are ususally stuck-up and hate men and I don't want to waste my time if that's your thing.

MaryMun: Yeah, I hate men so I made an account on a dating site. That makes sense.

Ponyboy118: Lookes like I called it, another feminist lesbian out to continue the oppression of men.

MaryMun: Checking the profile and... yup! Centaur. Why are all centaurs Men's Rights Activists?

MaryMun: Wait, nevermind, just remembered I don't care.

** USER "Ponyboy118" ADDED TO IGNORE LIST **

BarneyC: Greetings.

MaryMun: Hey there.

BarneyC: I was looking at your profile and I was... impressed.

MaryMun: Hmm. Yours says you're a vampire. Did you notice the part in my profile under "deal breakers" where it says that I don't want anyone who eats humans?

BarneyC: I did. I swear that I have never in my life (or after, heh) fed off of a human. It's simple enough to get blood from a butcher.

BarneyC: And I know everyone says that you can tell the difference between human and animal blood but they're just snobs.

MaryMun: I've heard that about wine too, that even most wine snobs can't tell cheap wine and expensive wine apart in a blind taste test.

BarneyC: Exactly! I had one sip of human blood just out of peer pressure (and even then, it was freely given and the human wasn't killed or turned into a vampire or anything) and I couldn't tell. It maybe tasted a little different, but not better or worse.

MaryMun: Hmm. Okay, I guess you pass the no-eating-people test.

BarneyC: So long as you don't need me to be a vegetarian. :)

MaryMun: Not at all, I like the occasional steak.

BarneyC: Oh no, the S-word!

BarneyC: Just kidding, of course.

MaryMun: Cute. So I see you're a doctor?

BarneyC: Yes, I hold four doctorates. The first one was in medicine but that was a long time ago, I haven't kept up with the new techniques and technologies. Then psychology (also a bit outdated I'm afraid), and then English literature, and then religious studies.

MaryMun: Did that last one cause a problem, with all the holy symbols?

BarneyC: Quite the opposite! Once you see that many conflicting religions lined up next to each other you kind of stop being impressed by any of them.

MaryMun: What about the other things?

BarneyC: Trying to determine what to bring instead of pepper spray if we go on a date?

MaryMun: Just curious.

MaryMun: Well, I was just curious. Now that you've put the thought in my head I do want to plan ahead.

BarneyC: Not a problem.

BarneyC: I have to wear sunglasses during the day because my eyes are sensitive to the sunlight, but I don't burst into flames or sparkle or anything. I hate garlic, but it doesn't hurt me. Holy water is just water. Entering somewhere uninvited or crossing over a river will make me feel all jittery and paranoid for the rest of the day, I'm still not sure why.

MaryMun: What about wooden stakes?

BarneyC: Anything that destroys my heart or brain (or separates my brain from my heart, like beheading). It doesn't need to be wood or silver or anything like that.

MaryMun: Good to know. Any perks to being a vampire?

BarneyC: Some. I get to live a long time, obviously. I'm just a tad stronger and faster than your average athlete, without having to work out. I don't get sick, unless I try to eat something other than blood.
I miss coffee. I still make it sometimes, and then just smell it.

MaryMun: That's pretty depressing.

BarneyC: Sorry to be a downer. I promise I'm usually fun on a date.

MaryMun: Well, what would a date with you look like?

BarneyC: Not sure, it doesn't show up on film.

BarneyC: Get it?

MaryMun: Yeah. Is that your whole answer?

BarneyC: Sorry.

BarneyC: Well, I was thinking we could meet at your place and I do a little globeharping.

MaryMun: I'm not familiar with that term.

BarneyC: You probably just know it by another name. Here, try this: [LINK]

MaryMun: Sweet jebus! Why in the world would you think that I would be into that?

BarneyC: Oh, sorry, I didn't know that wasn't your thing.

MaryMun: Of course that's not my thing! That's not anyone's thing!

BarneyC: I don't know about that.

MaryMun: Fine, let me put it this way: There are few enough people out there who would be into that that you assuming I would be is completely absurd. Better?

BarneyC: It's fun, you might like it.

MaryMun: Nope! There's no possible way I could like that. There's not even good odds that I would survive that.

BarneyC: It's okay, I have all the right equipment so it's really pretty safe.

** USER "BarneyC" ADDED TO IGNORE LIST **

Cweed420: Hey how about going out with me??

MaryMun: Well this is a dating site, so I guess I should at least be open to the possibility.

Cweed420: You should call me.

MaryMun: Let's stick to chat right now.

Cweed420: I'm way more persuasive over the phone.

MaryMun: Is this a mind control thing?

Cweed420: No.

Cweed420: Maybe.

Cweed420: It's just a thing I do.

MaryMun: Getting me to go out with you by using mind control is pretty much rape.

Cweed420: Well there would be no sex involved. I'm a siren, I just lure people over to my place.

MaryMun: And then drown them?

Cweed420: That was when I lived underwater. Now I have an apartment, so they just hang out for a while.

Cweed420: Do you like Halo? I have an xBox, we could play Halo together.

MaryMun: Wow.

Cweed420: It's not anything creepy. You would just hear my hypnotic voice and then go to my apartment and chill on the couch for a while eating Chex Mix until I fall asleep. Then you could leave.

MaryMun: Saying "it's not anything creepy" doesn't make that true.

** USER "Cweed420" ADDED TO IGNORE LIST **

Seamus999: Have you ever thought about investing in fairy gold? This limited time offer would put you on track to own your very own pot of Leprechaun currency, accepted in the Seelie and Unseelie courts! All you have to do is type 'I agree' into this chat window, signifying that you have read and agree to the terms stated in the contract, which can be provided upon request once you have accepted the offer.

** USER "Seamus999" ADDED TO IGNORE LIST **

BullHeaded: Hey there.

MaryMun: Hello.

BullHeaded: I know this is a strange way to start a conversation and I don't want to freak you out, but I have to ask an odd question.

MaryMun: Okay, shoot.

BullHeaded: Are you a fairy, or a harpy, or a mermaid or anything?

MaryMun: Nope. Totally human.

BullHeaded: Okay. Sorry. It's just that for some reason this dating site seems to have a lot of mythological creatures on it, and most of them are awful in one way or another.

MaryMun: I noticed. I'm glad it's not just me.

BullHeaded: Yeah, I guess we have that in common already.

MaryMun: So, mister normal human... what kinds of things do you like?

BullHeaded: Oh, I'm not a human.

MaryMun: What?

BullHeaded: Sorry, I can see how you would think that. My bad. I'm actually a minotaur, I just don't like most other mythological beings. I didn't mean to mislead you or anything.

MaryMun: No problem. I'm not really well-read when it comes to minotaurs, though. Is there anything in particular I should know?

BullHeaded: Well, for me specifically you should know that I like to cook, and read, and take walks on the beach.

BullHeaded: For minotaurs in general... I guess the main things to know is that we are the cursed offspring of humans and magical cattle - which actually happens more often than you would think. We all have no sense of direction, and require a special diet.

MaryMun: What kind of diet?

BullHeaded: It's just every few years.

MaryMun: What is?

BullHeaded: The diet.

MaryMun: What do you have to eat?

BullHeaded: Humans, but it's not like I'm a vampire or anything. It's just a few people every couple of years. It averages out to less than one a year, and I just ate last week so you would be completely safe.

MaryMun: Sorry, I have a policy against dating anyone who eats humans. It's right there in my profile.

BullHeaded: I was just trying to be honest with you.

MaryMun: Yes, and I appreciate that. But this policy is non-negotiable. I won't date anything that eats people.

BullHeaded: Well, good luck finding anyone on this site then.

MaryMun: Believe it or not, this is still better than most dating sites.

** USER "BullHeaded" ADDED TO IGNORE LIST **

** You have been succesfully logged out. **
** Thanks for choosing MechaCupid! **

Achievement Unlocked

2011-11-08T19:56:00.001-07:00

And here's the list so far:

Magic is made out of Science

2011-10-27T22:52:00.002-07:00

Sometimes people sigh at me when I say I don't believe in bigfoot or reiki or fairies or homeopathy or nessie or acupuncture or ghosts or alien abductions or psychics or power balance bracelets or whatever, and they comment on how sad it is that I take all the fun out of life - how sad it is that I don't see magic anywhere.

But I see magic all over the place. It's made out of science.

Here's an awesome levitating thing, that works way better than magic (although you have to keep it really cold... they're working on that part):

Here's a cloud that seems to change shape instantly due to ice crystals reacting to a fluctuating electrical field (watch the bit in the center):

Here's ferrofluid, which is awesome:

Here is a badass octopus that can nearly turn invisible:

Here's the Northern Lights, which I have sadly never had a chance to see in person:

Here's an Eddy Current Tube in action. It causes a magnet to fall really slowly, which is a bit of a trip:

That's enough for now, but I could go on all day. Science is awesome.

Hamster Grylls

2011-10-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

I don't normally do this, but I was playing around and saw the Bear Grylls meme and had to contribute something. So here you go:

Rapture Update

2011-10-23T14:00:00.001-07:00

I waited up all night on Friday for the end of the world and it didn't happen. I'm really upset right now, and I'm searching for answers. I tried to console myself by thinking of it as being part of a tradition as old as civilization itself - I mean, doomsday has come and gone more times than anyone can count - but that didn't make me feel better.

So I went to the Family Radio website to see what Harold Camping had to say. I figured that since it's Sunday evening he's had enough time to write something up and explain what to expect next. A new date for the end of the world, presumably.

Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period. On that day the true believers (the elect) will be raptured. We must remember that only God knows who His elect are that He saved prior to May 21.

Good news, everyone! The world is still ending on October 21st, 2011! This may require a time machine, but honestly if you want to destroy the whole universe bad science fiction has taught me that time travel is really the best way to go anyway. I'm sure that Family Radio is working on getting enough funding to slap together a prototype flux capacitor.

IFComp 2011 Review: Taco Fiction by Ryan Veeder

2011-10-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'm judging entries for the 17th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition because it is both awesome and fun. You should do it too. The rule is that you play for no more than two hours and then assign a score between one and ten.

Because I'll be writing these as I play you can expect spoilers and also some vagueness at the same time, so these will probably be most useful as something for people to compare to other reviews or their own playing experience. So, not terribly useful at all. Other reviews, most of them of higher quality, can be found by following the appropriate links on this page.

Next entry: Taco Fiction by Ryan Veeder.

Blurb: Taco Fiction is a game about crime. It contains some scenes of mild violence. Calling it PG-13 would probably be safe.
Short non-spoiler summary: This game is clever and fun. A few things could stand some polish but nothing that should stop you from playing and enjoying it.

Spoilers follow.

Oooh. Good job getting me hooked right away, Taco Fiction. Great opening. Okay, on to the actual game... X ME gets a non-standard response, but nothing for XYZZY.

That buzzing you hear is the fancy security system.

>listen to buzzing
You can't see any such thing.

Also, the "that's hardly portable" default message shows up for a lot of portable things although oddly the fire escape says "that should probably stay where it is" instead. A few other minor polish things, but there's so much more good than bad. I locate a garden, and then wander towards what I assume is my destination and... hmm. Should I? No. Clearly not, it would be a terrible idea. And yet, playing in character, bad ideas seem like the thing to aim for. I mug someone (note, he is a 'guy', not a 'man' which I guess is an important distinction?) and it goes pretty well. I feel confident, in a totally not confident kind of way.

The game just gave me turn-by-turn instructions for how to rob the taco joint. I have a terrible sinking feeling. It can't be that easy. Something is going to go terribly wrong.

...

Wow, that was fantastic. That was a very cool trick.

Okay, onwards and upwards! Or, more likely, downwards in a depressing spiral of self loathing. I find a corpse, and then mug someone else and get a goofy outfit out of the deal. Sure. There's something going down here and I don't know what, but at least I have a goofy mask.

I have some fun with some cops, and buy some ice cream, and... stuff. There's a door that I assume I'll be exiting from later since I can't open it. It's a little annoying that I can't knock on the door, but that's in line with my other minor frustrations – it's not bad enough to call it “guess the verb” because the correct one is always reasonable, it's just that other reasonable verbs or nouns aren't accepted.

Anyway, I fumble a little and then get on to the endgame which isn't too tricky. I get out with the money and a some food and then stop by to talk to the girl at the ice cream shop to warn her about the evil plot that's afoot. Except that's not an option. Hmm.

No matter what I do, there's no conversation option that goes anywhere. I can taste ice cream, and ask again about the ibis, but that's it. I've got all these maps and notes and things that she should see, but if I try to show things to her it says to do it through the conversation menu. Grr. Well, at least I can still go home with my big pile of cash.

That was a really enjoyable game. I think a post-comp version with some added responses, extra verbs and nouns and things, would make this perfect. Even without that, this is really high on my list so far.

Beware the Ides of March

2011-10-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

I know, the post title is just a bit too obvious. Anyway, I just saw The Ides of March and I'm not sure what the plot was supposed to be.

This was the look on my face through most of the movie.

I mean, I understood everything that happened in the movie. The non-spoilery version is that the protagonist is not particularly likeable but is enthusiastic and optimistic, and then stuff happens and he is still not likeable but is also less enthusiastic and more pessimistic. Of course, even then we get a pretty shallow look at the protagonist before shit goes down and the timeline is so short that this could just be the normal difference between him in a good mood and him in a bad mood so I can't swear that there was any actual character growth at all.

I guess spoiler alert, if you care. I'll insert a jump break here in case you care.

Okay, here we are after the jump. Spoilers abound.

Who was the antagonist of this film? I honestly have no idea. First the protagonist makes some shaky choices like sleeping with an intern and meeting with the campaign manager for the other side. This isn't really him vs. his morals or ideals or job ethics though, it's just thirty seconds of him looking mildly uncertain and then going for it. Then he finds out the intern is pregnant with the candidate's baby which is obviously a bad thing for the campaign but he just kind of deals with it. It's a strain on him (and obviously for the woman, but she's not the protagonist) but again it's not really him versus anything in particular.

Then, the next thing comes and the story that he was meeting with someone from the other side leaks. Oh no! And it was his boss, the way-more-likeable-than-the-protagonist Philip Seymour Hoffman, who wants him gone for being untrustworthy! Okay. So that's a conflict, yes, but Hoffman doesn't come across as the enemy and "the situation" is a bit vague. He tries for a job with the other side and that doesn't pan out, and then he finds out that the intern has killed herself which could have maybe led to some sort of something but doesn't, really. He uses her death to get Hoffman fired and gets himself back in there instead.

Sure, that sounds vaguely like a plot. He gets run out of the job, finds a way to get back in. But it's all done in one conversation, and then the movie keeps going for what feels like half an hour (including a comically long scene where we stare at a parked SUV while overly dramatic music plays). So that can't really be the plot. I don't know, I'm stumped. My wife pretty much summed it up:

"That whole movie would have been a five minute walking-while-talking conversation in The West Wing."

IFComp 2011: Game Updates

2011-10-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note. This year, authors are allowed to update the games during the competition. I can think of cases where this might be reasonable - for example, if they hadn't tested for the online play feature and had to make a minor display tweak once they saw how it looked in a browser. That would be a rare case, though.

Instead, the only game where I've actually looked at what changes were made had actually added content. That's the kind of thing that should be done prior to the start of the contest, as should beta testing. So I'm not paying any attention to any updates that are made - I downloaded the .zip file right away and will doing all reviews based on those versions.

If you are an author of one of these games and would like to let people know that you have fixed or improved some aspect of your game, just leave a comment under the appropriate review whether it's a change made during the comp or for a post-comp re-release of your game. Once I've finalized my ratings for all the games I may even go back and play the new versions - it just won't impact the scores for the comp.

IFComp 2011 Review: The Guardian by Lutein Hawthorne

2011-10-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

Next entry: The Guardian by Lutein Hawthorne.

Blurb: A beginner level fantasy quest, made to be straightforward to finish without previous IF experience. Small feelies, an instruction book and MIDI music, are included.
Short non-spoiler summary: This is a well-written but overly simple and linear work of fiction. It's best not to expect a game, so much as a story.

Spoilers follow.

x me not only gives an interesting response, but gives a special response the first time. XYZZY doesn't work.

The game is in first person, and already I suspect it will be more about atmosphere than puzzles or anything. Descriptions are a tad redundant (the gate and door are in the room description and listed seperately), but that's fine. As I wander things are reasonably but not deeply implemented (scenery is implemented, but details mentioned in those descriptions are not), though more than anything I'm struck by the fact that there are a lot of empty rooms. At one point my score goes up by five points just for walking into an area.

And that seems to be how this works. It's a story, an exploration, rather than a game. I find a stone at one point and take it - actually I found that you take it automatically if you try to leave the room it's in, although if you don't notice this and try to pick it up when you already have it the game says this:

>take stone
I wrap my arms around the heavy piece of rock, and with an incredible strain, heft it into my arms.

I already have that.

And shortly after finding the stone I hit a dead end and turned back around. All the way back, and then I find a place with a stone missing. I have to fumble a little bit because it seems like I should be putting the stone IN the hole but instead the command is to put it ON, or just drop it. Dropping it gives you forty points (even if you're in the wrong room - I ended the game with 2300 points, out of a possible 100). Most other things can't be taken, and some give the unfortunate default message of "that's hardly portable" even when the item would, in fact, be something you can carry. Other than the stone you can take a key (which doesn't seem to be needed) and some marble crumbs (which don't do anything but do trigger some flavor text and more points).

That was... fine. I get that the game wanted to have the character tromping back and forth all over creation, but I personally feel that since this was based on atmosphere it would have been better to have less rooms and more depth within each room. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this. A moment ago I called it an exploration, but that's not right. There are a few branches off the main path but not significant ones - three of the four are dead ends and the fourth leads to a library where you can't read the books or do anything else of interest so far as I can tell. So in the end this isn't a game or an exploration, and so it's not particularly interactive. The game is so linear and shallow that any given playthrough is going to be nearly identical to the one before. Not entirely, of course, and it was written in an interesting way so I still enjoyed myself. I just feel like the author didn't take advantage of the medium.

The First Annual Lime/Coconut IF MiniComp!

2011-10-07T22:02:00.003-07:00

Lime/Coconut

What the heck is this?

It's a contest! You can win real money, and a stupid trophy.

What do I have to do?

You have to design a test chamber for an Interactive Fiction game in TADS 3. When the object you designate as the Lime is placed in the object you designate as the Coconut, a door opens and allows the player to leave. That's the short version, there are details in the source code.

That's it? Put a lime in a coconut?

In theory, yes. In practice I expect to see everything from Rube Goldberg machines to conversation-driven puzzles. Some will be simple but hilarious, others will be complex and devious.

How do I enter?

Read through the code and think about what you would like to do. Don't rush it.
Allow inspiration to strike.
Design a test chamber in TADS 3 that can be added to the bottom of the existing code (as Testing Room 3) without breaking anything.
Send the source code to me at sodhner at gmail by December 31st.
If I reply and say there's a problem with the code, try to fix it.

Then what?

I will make each entry available to the public as compiled game files, listed in a random order. People can play, and give each room two ratings: Awesomeness and Difficulty. Awesomeness can be that it is humorous, or clever, or whatever. This is the score that determines the winner of the contest.

Wait, what is 'Difficulty' for then?

That's because after the contest I plan on stringing the rooms together from least difficult to most difficult. Not all rooms are guaranteed to end up in this version - some might be too similar (in which case the one with the higher score will get in) or maybe everyone hates a room. Then, if this goes well, I'll do the same contest again next year to get a new set of rooms.

Did you say real money earlier?

I did! It's not a lot, sadly, but enter the contest anyway. First place gets fifty dollars and a stupid trophy, and second place gets ten dollars and a stupid certificate. If you make multiple entries, you can't win both first and second place. The next best person who is not you will get second place. Speaking of multiple entries, if you send a billion entries I may ask you to pick your favorite three or something. As an important final prize-related note: if I get less than five humans with valid entries I will cancel and re-launch at another time of year. Any entries sent in can be re-submitted when I try again.

I'm trying to do something that requires modifying the core code.

Don't do that.

It's okay though, because it cannot possibly hurt anyone's room in any way. This can't break the game, it can only grant it more flexibility. I swear.

Oh. Well, I guess let me know what you want. I'm not making any promises though. If you can do it in a stupid clumsy work-around kind of way do that instead, and then I'll update the code with the better way after the contest is over.

Can I share my code prior to the voting?

That's fine but I don't want to hear anyone saying "so-and-so stole my idea!" because quite frankly there are going to be lots of similar ideas out there for a contest like this and I can't tell when it was 'stolen' and when it was just thought of independently. So if you are worried someone might steal your idea, either don't share or share but be sure that you implement your concept better than anyone else.

Link time!

Here's the main contest page: LINK!
Here's the basic source file: LINK! or LINK!
Here's the TADS 3 website: LINK!
Here's a picture of a cat: LINK!

IFComp 2011 Review: Operation Extraction by Ming-Yee Iu

2011-10-06T23:05:00.000-07:00

Next entry: Operation Extraction by Ming-Yee Iu.

Blurb: Rescue Dr. Galland, a bio-weapons specialist, from the Dawn Militia.
Short non-spoiler summary: An interesting experiment that I found a bit problematic. Take a look for the concept.

Spoilers follow.

NO beta testers were used during the development of this game.

Warning: This game will suck.
At least they're up front about it, right? Okay, already some past/present tense issues. See, the beta testers would have caught that. Okay, so I'm essentially some kind of invisible voyeur. What happens if I just click 'next' over and over? Hmm. Mission Failed. Okay, let's try following these guys.

The idea is really interesting, and not badly designed. You can click on names of locations to go there, and you can click on the character names to jump to them. It's pretty cool, although I worry that I'll miss the action while I look around. The writing is a bit clumsy, and I don't fully know what these guys are planning.

Hmm. I'm losing a lot. If anyone dies the mission is a failure (note from the future: this is only true sometimes), and these are not particularly motivated special agents. At one point they all just stood around and watched as the person they were supposed to be abducting was taken away. Nobody fired a shot or tried to do anything at all to stop it. They just watched. Other times one goes in guns blazing while the others dick around, not offering any kind of support. There's no strategy here.

And if I happen to be looking the other way at the wrong second I've missed the chance to steer these idiots. I guess that means I should map it out or something but I don't know that I can be bothered. Meh. Walkthrough it is! Hmm. The walkthrough actually requires use of the back button, and the final command doesn't seem to be something I can do. Still, if I just click next a million times I win with only one person dying.

This was... interesting. With better writing something using this format might be good, but it would need to really draw me in and have the actions of the characters have a certain amount of predictability.

IFComp 2011 Review: Fan Interference by Andrew Schultz

2011-10-06T22:20:00.002-07:00

Next entry: Fan Interference by Andrew Schultz.

Blurb: The 2003 Cubs are on the brink of the World Series. It's game 6, and they're even going to take a late 3-0 lead in the clinching game. They won't keep it. Unless you, who just got kicked off the bus near Wrigley Field, prevent that.
Short non-spoiler summary: Writing is decent but some commands feel overly obscure and the game would be rated Cruel.

Spoilers follow.

[Note: this game, being about baseball, contains baseball-specific terminology and references to people. If you have a question, WHAT IS and WHO IS should answer it.]

Phew! That's a relief. Like, actually. Good to know there's a safety net in place for folks like me. Okay, off we go... and I'm a kid. Looks like prologue material. That passes, I'm an adult, and it seems obvious I should buy a shirt, so lemme look for my wallet.

>look in jacket
In blazer is a wallet.

Not 'the' blazer, just... blazer. Cool. Anyway, I try to buy a shirt but the game tells me that's a bad idea. Instead I give blazer to the vendor and he just gives me a shirt. Sweet. Next I meet a crazy guy whose name, I presume, is Plot. Or Lord Plotington. Plotsworth. Anyway, he gives me a list of goals and a ticket after only a little confusion:

"Look, just get to the point," he says. "You wanna help the Cubs win the PENNANT or not?"

>yes
There's nothing to get all yessy about at the moment.

So I try to go in, but instead the game tells me to go spend a fortune on a cassette tape in an area I missed before. Thanks, game! Okay, now I go inside and immediately feel a bit overwhelmed. There are a lot of rooms, with not a lot actually going on. The game is sparsely implemented, sometimes in a way that matters. I wander, hoping I'm not lost and hoping that the details of the game aren't too important. The layout becomes clearer after a bit so that's nice.

I've got a lot of junk now, and it's getting close to time for my list of tasks. I have just enough baseball knowledge to understand the status bar so I know I need to get moving - It's the top of the fifth, and the first item is mid-sixth. I have no idea what to do with this stuff. I'm pretty sure I know where to be, but I can't get there.

But here's the thing... I can't get there because some random guy doesn't seem to like me. What? Hey guy, I don't care what you think so I'm just going to go up here and... no? Hmm. Here, I'll take off my Cubs shirt. Still no? Well, have some nachos. Have a cassette tape, it's unreasonably expensive. Have some money. Nothing? Here, let me spray you with cologne. Hmm, an error. Interesting. There's no response at all, it just goes to another prompt, without a space or anything. I hope that's not what I'm supposed to be doing.

Waiting doesn't work, which I guess means there's a back way in or something. (I'm waiting for someone to arrive in the area I can't get to.) Bleh. Screw this, I'm checking the hints. Hmm... the Sux shirt? I don't have that. Wait, didn't I try to buy one of those? Let's check the instant replay:

>buy sux shirt
You reach for your wallet, but is a joke shirt you'll never wear really worth that much?

Yeah, totally not worth buying that shirt. Thanks game. Good advice. Well, I can try to go outside to get it but that makes me lose the game. I guess I could restart, but honestly at this point I've spent enough time and effort trying to figure this out that the idea of restarting makes me really cranky.

Okay, so I restarted. I hurried back to where I was, roughly, but while I was able to get upstairs this time I couldn't figure out what to do to get into the door. I keep losing due to a stupid flunky, which I maybe could have avoided if I hadn't restarted and therefore gotten here way early and loitered too long. Hmm. Well, let me check the walkthrough. Well, that... seems odd. I'm supposed to go into the bathroom and fart.

Seriously?

See, there's a stall I can't get into despite knocking and kicking and stuff. Farting gets me in. I have no idea why. I guess the sound of someone farting in a restroom terrifies some people. Was I supposed to know that? Was that hinted somewhere? Looks like I was also supposed to belch at that random guy, for whatever reason. A lot of the other commands in the walkthrough look a bit suspect as well. Slide down trough? Like, the urinal? Slide... down the urinal?

I think we're done here. I've lost track of my time and don't want to break the two hour rule, and it seems clear I wouldn't get far on my own anyway.

Also, lame:

>x stall
It's metal, with the usual desultory graffiti someone must've had their own brand of fun writing.

>read graffiti
You can't see any such thing.

IFComp 2011 Review: Tenth Plague by Lynnea Dally

2011-10-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

Next entry: Tenth Plague by Lynnea Dally.

Blurb: You are thrust into earthly existence to fulfill the tenth and final plague.
Short non-spoiler summary: Remember those Bible Retold games from last year? Yeah, this isn't one of those. Play it though.

Spoilers follow.

The author name rings a bell on this one... ah! Her last offering was Divis Mortis, which I found to be overall a solid and enjoyable game. If The Tenth Plague is anything like Divis Mortis it will be way better than most of the ones I've played so far this year. We'll see...

Okay...

Well, this one is starting me off in a good mood because not only does it give proper responses to X ME and XYZZY, it also has a unique premise and allows me to (quite deliberately and with warning) lose the game with my first command. That's the kind of thing that gets my attention. One thing that gives me pause is that my first target is a Hittite slave, and that seems odd because I thought that the tenth plague of Egypt was the one that killed all the first-born Egyptians. Surely there would be no point in killing off non-Egyptians - especially slaves! But no, a quick look confirms that the plague killed firstborn indiscriminately as long as you didn't properly mark your door. Slaves are even specifically mentioned. Man, I always forget what a dick God is.

Okay, so I kill the slave. The game continues with more of this, and I need to be a little tricky at time to get to the firstborn. There are a lot of nice touches along the way - it looks like she caught any default message that wouldn't apply to a cloud of energy, and in particular the message for waiting is fantastic. The story itself is horrific, because after all we're talking about killing a bunch of innocent people. There's no way to do this in a way that is true to the story without being a total nightmare. The best (worst?) part for me is the end, with the reminder that Pharaoh had wanted to let them go but God "hardened his heart" just so he could get the plagues to a nice round number. (But don't forget, He's super merciful you guys!)

Ooh, added bonus at the end! There's a great commentary mode, though I would suggest playing through the game without it first. It's really cool to get to hear more about what the author was thinking. As much as I appreciated the game itself, I would say that the commentary was my favorite part.

IFComp 2011 Review: Last Day of Summer by Cameron Fox

2011-10-04T16:14:00.003-07:00

Next entry: Last Day of Summer by Cameron Fox.

Blurb: It's the last day of summer, and you're old enough now to go into town by yourself.
Short non-spoiler summary: A short game, easy but with lots of character.

Spoilers follow.

X ME gives a decent description and XYZZY, hilariously enough, makes you sleep so long that within a few turns you lose the game. Well played. This isn't actually a timed game so far as I can tell, but even if it were it's very short so that would be okay. This is a good game to compare to the one I played before it (The Ship of Whimsy) because while both were short and neither was hard, this one had personality and a story and was just all-around satisfying. It had little optional touches (XYZZY worked, it let me make a feathered cap, etc.) and felt like part of a larger world despite being fairly limited in scope.

I guess if I had to criticize something (and I don't know that I do in this case, but what the hell) it's that the man with the hat might be more satisfying if he didn't suddenly show up and announce his purpose. If he were already there somewhere in the game and we had to determine a hat was needed and seek him out. But that's a super duper minor thing.

IFComp 2011 Review: The Ship of Whimsy by U. N. Owen

2011-10-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

Next entry: The Ship of Whimsy by U. N. Owen.

Blurb: The Ship of Whimsy is almost ready to set sail...
Short non-spoiler summary: This wasn't really a game or a story. I guess I would call it a short scene?

Spoilers follow.

Default response to X ME, but XYZZY says something. So... mixed bag. I'm on a big boat, and there are little boats made out of walnuts so I guess I'm tiny? Shame there's no way for me to know. Like, for example, X ME.

The ship can't be seen from the dock, which is interesting, but then it turns out I can't see much of anything from anywhere. There are some actors that ignore me, though I do note they're human sized or larger which makes the half-a-walnut boats stranger. There's nothing much to do here, which seems odd. I go down the list of areas again:

Aftcastle (checked it)
Poop Deck (checked it)
Gangplank (checked it)

From the Gangplank I can get to two rooms that are part of the docks, and I checked them both. So... yeah. Now what? After some random button-mashing I find that there are unmarked rooms. Why some are marked and others aren't is a mystery, but whatever. So, I find a telescope and a rod and give them to the appropriate people, I untie the ship, and the game ends. It refers to the ship as if I'm watching it sail away even when I'm on board, going so far as to say that it is "difficult to make out details on the dwindling shape" while I'm right there on the deck. After playing around I realize that this is because I'm not supposed to be able to get on board.

Going East to get on the gangplank has the troll throw me off the ship, but going up instead works just fine. So take that, game, I'm going on the boat whether you want me to or not! This was another short one, you can complete it in less than thirty turns even with all the running back and forth.

Well, there was no real story and no puzzles at all but it didn't crash and technically it had an end, lame though it was. So... I guess that's something.

IFComp 2011 Review: Escape From Santaland by Jason Ermer

2011-10-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

Game number six: Escape From Santaland by Jason Ermer.

Blurb: Ugh. Christmastime at the mall. The last place you want to be, during the worst time of year to be there.
Short non-spoiler summary: Some enjoyable puzzles disguised as a quest to get your stolen car keys back. It's worth playing.

Spoilers follow.

I can't submit an actual score for this one because I was a betatester, and that's a shame - so far this is my favorite entry. The author was great to work with, taking feedback and acting on it as he deemed appropriate without taking anything personally. The game changed a lot in the first few revisions, and I see a couple of tweaks since the last time I chimed in. I'm eager to see what people think of this one... I suspect some will be annoyed by the maze (though it's not actually that maze-y so it should be fine).

I managed to get out without letting the reindeer slobber all over the candle, although (possibly because of my previous exploits) I wasn't able to take the reindeer itself home with me this time. Sigh. Still, I hereby award myself the fictional "minimal damage" award for not trashing the presents much.

IFComp 2011 Review: Awake the Mighty Dread by Lyle Skains

2011-10-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

And now it's time for Awake the Mighty Dread by Lyle Skains.

Blurb: You wake up on a train in a strange world, knowing only that if you sleep, the nightmares return. But someone else is also lost, and you must find him, or else the nightmares will capture you forever.
Short non-spoiler summary: Another game that feels unfinished. You wander around a dreamscape and do nothing of any importance, then it ends.

Spoilers follow.

X ME describes some clothing, no response for XYZZY. Meh. I'm on a train, and then at a station where nothing is properly implemented. There's a frog, which is metal and named Hal. Looks like another surreal game.

Hmm. Not a lot of specific notes here. This game is really sparsely implemented, with a majority of the items mentioned being non-existent. Bleh. I found that near the end it got really buggy, doing strange things with the glider like not letting me use it or throwing it into the next room without saying so in-game (and the glider itself doesn't appear in the room descriptions, so I had to try a few rooms before I found it). At one point I found that entering the room with the glider killed me and so I wandered around the palace wearing the thing. There's another logical exit but you can't use it. When you do get the right wording to jump out the bay with the glider, you die instantly. Surprise!

It seems you need the frog with you, although it's entirely possible to leave him behind or not get him in the first place, putting the game into an unwinnable state. Then again, the actual ending isn't much better since it doesn't really resolve anything and tells you that this is a work in progress. Oh? Well, this isn't IntroComp. Your game is supposed to be finished.

There's a lot going on that doesn't lead anywhere, like the items that show up in your inventory under the "sleep" container. You can take them out, look at them, drop them, whatever. They don't seem to do anything. That and the unimplemented scenery make this feel like something that was simply not ready to be submitted to a competition. Maybe I'm just a cranky old man, but I think I should be able to tell the difference between betatesting and playing a finished Comp game.

I should note that I'm pretty sure you can take another path near the start of the game and I didn't look into that route. If someone tries it and thinks it's way better than the palace, let me know.

IFComp 2011 Review: Dead Hotel by Comazombie

2011-10-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

Next up? Dead Hotel by Comazombie.

Blurb: Escape from a zombie-infested hotel by fighting or shooting your way out in this short CYOA survival horror adventure.
Short non-spoiler summary: When the above blurb says "zombie-infested" it means there is a single zombie. When it says "short" it means SHORT.

Spoilers follow.

I... what is this I don't even...

Look, I'd love to write a review but I don't really have any idea what happened. The writing has the feel of something translated poorly, but the real problem here is that there's not much of a game. You're in a hotel room and someone else is there in the bed but you can't interact with them in any way. You can rummage about a little but the only thing you actually need is the keys. At that point you can leave and run past (or shoot) a zombie and then head towards the roof. Once there you head to your car via the rooftop and win the game.

That's it. You can do it with a total of nine commands.

The optional things increase your score a bit, but don't change anything. There's an option on the menu that says "secrets" but all it does is display this message:

Secrets can be unlocked once zombies reach Lake Gardens in New York City.

There is no way this has any relevance to the game I just played. I am baffled.

IFComp 2011 Review: Vestiges by Josephine Wynter

2011-10-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

Game three! Vestiges (or Stumbling through Darkness) by Josephine Wynter.

Blurb: In the absence of reality, perception must suffice... You awake in a grave, with no memory of who you are or what happened to you. Using the items around you, you must escape the entity pursuing you and uncover the astounding truth of your origin.
Short non-spoiler summary: Poorly implemented and apparently unfinished, this is what would happen if a thirteen-year-old's first attempt at IF involved starting to write something about their D&D character's backstory before getting distracted by a shiny object.

Spoilers follow.

Ugh, amnesia. That's strike one. X ME gets the default response (strike two) and XYZZY does nothing (strike three!)... Man, this is not off to a promising start. Still, I'll give it a shot. Wow me, Vestiges!

I pick up the stone altar which seems like it shouldn't work. The next room has "a wooden doors" and pictograms that don't exist... this is going very badly. The badness continues as I pick up a tombstone and notice something glinting by it but can't quite locate a noun to refer to the glinting with. I try to "prise" the altar open with the shovel because that's the word the game keeps using, but it doesn't actually know that verb so I use the shovel to unlock it instead. There's a sword inside (described twice) so I take it and re-lock the altar with the shovel. Somehow. Eventually "look next to tombstone" gets me a key, and then I wander back into the crypt only to be trapped as the door vanishes. Um.

So... is that it, then?

I guess so. Restart!

So interestingly the sword can't be called a sword, and even though the game implies you have to destroy the gates with the sword you can't do so. Instead you have to actually type UNLOCK GATES WITH VESTIGES. Not kidding. At this point we learn your name is Raven, which I honestly should have guessed as soon as I saw you had amnesia. I suppose your last name is probably Darksteed or Shadowmane or something.

Okay, we get some hints of plot and find out I'm a "Reaper" (yes, last name must be something like Blackheart) and slip into past tense for a bit. Sure, why not. I collect some more scenery because it's not nailed down and that's how I roll and then try to open some doors:

>open doors
(first unlocking the chapel doors)
bara

Bara indeed. Anyway, once I just try unlocking it with things the game helpfully mentions a violet keyhole (Have you heard Violet Keyhole, my Velvet Underground cover band?) and tells me to put the red and blue keys together. This game is its own walkthrough. Anyway, it then says I would achieve nothing by doing this but I know that's just a particularly unfortunate error message so I keep trying and although "combine red key with blue key" doesn't work, "combine blue key with red key" does. Um... fine. Sure. Okay, into the chapel!

...

And there's nothing in there. At all. A quick look at the walkthrough shows me no further commands. Nothing happens, the game doesn't end or anything. It just... stops. I can wander around but there's nothing to do. Wow. See, if I could give a game a zero I totally would right now. Screw you, Raven Coalblood.

IFComp 2011 Review: Sentencing Mr Liddell by I-K. Huuhtanen

2011-10-04T10:15:00.001-07:00

Game number two is Sentencing Mr Liddell by I-K. Huuhtanen.

Blurb: "The time has come", the Teacher says, "to talk of many sins: of wives and mums and unloved sons (of where it all begins), and why it's really all your fault, and whether no-one wins."
Short non-spoiler summary: This is one of those surreal games where the whole thing is a dream. Writing is decent, no game-killing bugs, but there's nothing particularly interesting either. Might just not be my style.

Spoilers follow.

Okay, from the title and blurb I assume this is related to Alice in Wonderland which is always a great source because it's such silly nonsense that it's okay to have something loosely inspired by it without feeling a need to actually fit in with the source material. So let's see what we have here...

Hah! Okay, I swear that I wrote that bit before I started, and yet pretty much the first thing it says is:

The game is loosely based on the Alice books by Lewis Carroll and often quotes them, but is not an adaptation of those novels.

Hmm. No description for X ME, and nothing for XYZZY. Lame. Also, and this seems to foreshadow some sort of Cheshire Cat action, my wife Catherine (Cat) is divided into head and body when I try to look at her - although both give the same description. Hmm. I head out and soon the plot starts. I do my best to stop it, since it seems obvious something is about to happen to my child I try to take the kid or move the stroller but no, it plunges into the river anyway. Well, I suppose if it hadn't the game wouldn't be able to start. Fun fact? My two year old kid is a champion swimmer.

Okay... so I can excuse the surreal stuff because it's deliberate surreal stuff. I show my ticket to a few people, punch my brother, and sure enough I see my wife partially vanish. I ask her about some things with no obvious success, and it takes me a while to notice that my ticket has turned into a school assignment without telling me. So I ask about that, and that seems to get me somewhere but I still can't make real progress. I try writing on the paper and that's clearly something I'm meant to do so... hooray? Of course I can't figure out what to write.

Ah, it seems some words are in italics. Huh. So now my paper says "we dream life live" which doesn't make any sense and the teacher won't accept it and I'm missing something. Eventually I give up and manage to get in line and leave without turning in my assignment. There have been some odd typos, but my favorite so far is this one:

>x director
A large man in a bowler and a suite.

Talking to the poppies or the director get me nowhere. I poke around the room but there's not a lot here. I look behind the poppies and there's nothing, but when I look under them I get a response. There's a kind of annoying round of dish-throwing that feels like a chore more than anything else, and then I chase my brother and get to play rock-paper-scissors, which I lose. But then after that I get stuck again, and given the surreal nature of the game and the limited time I have to play it I go ahead and check the walkthrough. This is where I run into a problem, which is that I have already done what the walkthrough says, but it didn't work. The walkthrough says to take a piece of headstone, but...

>x rubble
Among the rubble you notice two large stone plates: a headstone split in half. Also a smaller piece has broken off the other half.

>read headstone
The black headstone is split in half. There's some carving on the stone.

>read carving
The carving on one half of the headstone says "h! such a n" and on the other "You woke me out of o".

>take piece
You can't see any such thing.

And sure enough the piece isn't there anymore in the description, nor is it in my inventory. Hmm. Anyway, I continue on and so far as I can tell this doesn't matter. It's just strange that I got an error and then the command was in the walkthrough and yet seems to have no impact. Meh. So now I get to write a three-word sentence using the words I collected, although I can only come up with five good sentences and three don't work. The two that do get me the exact same result. Meh.

The game implies I could have had other endings, and that's nice because I do like multiple endings, but the sentences not seeming to do anything different makes me not want to bother starting over in the hopes of getting more endings. That was... fine, I guess. Not sure what score it deserves - it could have used some polish but there was nothing blatantly bad about it. I guess it just wasn't my style. I feel like a lot of the symbolism and psychological whatever didn't go anywhere. I get that the main character had issues of some sort with his family, but those issues weren't fully explored or explained or resolved and they didn't tie into the puzzles. I guess they tie into the ending somewhat in theory but at least for the ending I got I don't know how that would be.

In case anyone is curious:

I saw my daughter shoveling coal, and then was in the river and swam up to a boat. I could either stay with her (in which case I saw my wife on shore with an ambulance) or swim to shore (in which case I woke up and CPR was failing on my daughter and I get a brief glimpse of a boat drifting away). That's it. If anyone gets a different ending let me know.

Not sure how I'll score this one. Let's wait and see how the others measure up.

IFComp-Inspired Random Musing

2011-10-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

So, someone was talking to me about my review of The Hours and suggested that I was possibly being a little bit harsh. For the record, I happily welcome disagreement and I'm aware that I am a flawed person who has occasionally become stuck in a game only to discover that I forgot about a totally obvious door that I hadn't tried yet. Having not used my full two hours on The Hours, I could in theory go back and try again. Here's the comment that I want to rant on, though:

The vase with the necklace is describe when you type "search desk". Not the best design decision, granted, but not quite as bad as not mentioning the item at all.

This is the second game (not in this competition, just in general) where I have run into this problem and I have to say I feel perfectly justified. Here's the rule that I have: If glancing at the object itself from a distance would reveal something, it doesn't require searching.

The desk in this case has no drawers, and no clutter. Therefore it is nothing but a plain flat surface and the vase - which is the only thing on the desk - would be clearly visible from anywhere in the room. How in the world does that require searching? The other example of this was just as bad - I playtested a deeply flawed game where the first puzzle had you on a square platform with no way off and you had to type "search platform" to find the parachute that was laying there. Again, there was nothing else on the totally visible floor so the bag with the parachute would be obvious.

In both cases the description of the surface gave no indication of the item and did not hint that there was anything that might necessitate searching. I actually kind of love picturing how this would go down. The character hunches down over the desk, carefully running his hands over the smooth surface. Inch by inch, feeling for any imperfection - a secret button, a masterfully concealed drawer. Foot by foot, nothing but disappointment. Finally, questing fingers chance across something... what could it be? Sweating with nervousness, hands shaking, he traces around the disturbance on the otherwise barren wood. It's round... and tall? His eyes strain to see the hidden shape, and finally it snaps into focus - it's a big vase with roses in it. Aha!

So, yeah.

IF games feel good when they feel intuitive. In this same game (The Hours) there was someone trapped under a table and PUSH TABLE got it off him. It's possible that LIFT TABLE or MOVE TABLE or whatever would also work (and I hope they do) but I didn't even need to find out because the game knew what I was going for and was ready to respond. I didn't have to play guess-the-verb or anything, and that made me feel like I was in the game. On the other hand, "search" is not something that you do to a clean, visible surface - but even if it were, "look" would have to give you the same information in this case because all you need to do to see a vase of flowers is look.

IFComp 2011 Review: The Hours by Robert Patten

2011-10-03T20:03:00.008-07:00

The first game up is The Hours by Robert Patten.

Blurb: Your new job as a time traveler may be harder than you thought.
Short non-spoiler summary: I didn't make it far in this one because it broke, but I wasn't really enjoying it anyway. The characters act strangely enough that it's hard to get into.

Spoilers follow.

Okay, first things first. X Me doesn't give me much, XYZZY has a response though. I tool around and get fairly reasonable responses. And then this:

>x window
The only glass in this opening is the moonlight. You see shadows moving through the garden below. You would be dead before you reached your means of escape.

The fountain whispers to the dark.

Go ahead and look out the window, for all the good it will do you." Eric billows smoke through his teeth. "You were supposed to be my lookout, not my liability!"

You feel ...
1) Defensive
2) Apologetic
3) None of the above
>>

The only glass in this opening is the moonlight? So, moonlight is glass now? I guess this is supposed to be poetic, but it seems off. I would expect the smoke to billow, not be billowed. Little things like that. It may just be me. Anyway, with no idea yet what the hell is going on I don't feel particularly defensive or apologetic so I guess I'll pick option three... which for some reason makes me punch Eric in the face. Huh. I guess "none of the above" means "rage". That, and what happens next, make me feel like I'm an observer rather than a participant. I light the library on fire to escape some robots that just kind of stand there while I pick up a cigarette and try to get some scrolls burning (funny, they were all scary a minute ago but they'll just watch the fire get going and leave me alone) and then I get another choice about my feelings: I can be "Merciful" or "Spiteful", when I still don't really feel either. Eh, I'll just do my best to be consistent and since the last thing I did was punch Eric in the face for no reason I will now leave him to die in a fire.

Your fingers feel the indentations in the stone. They're letters -- you can feel what they are. In fact, 2,000-plus years before you were born, you can read them.

This isn't the first "I haven't been born yet" comment, and I'm five minutes into the game. I get it. I'm a time traveler. Maybe this should just be part of the standard response:

> Take banana
You take the banana, thousands of years before you are born.

> x me
As good looking as ever... even though you won't be born for a long time.

I get out of there, and then answer some questions on a computer. It's asking me things that the character would know but that I don't, so I make up random answers and then throw the computer in the water. Take that, computer. So there's more railroading where I take a shower and pick from a suit or dress which I suppose is supposed to determine my gender although I don't see why I can't be a dude in a dress. So then my coworker talks to me and already knows that I left Eric to die but doesn't seem particularly bothered. I'm all, "Hey, I know leaving my coworker to burn to death wasn't ideal, but it's my first day" which seems like a weak line. Sounds like I might lose my job for that. Just maybe, though.

That's okay, though, because everyone here is insane. I meet a scientist that blows himself up, and then my coworker hits me over the head, and then Eric is alive and doesn't care about the fact that I punched him and then abandoned him, (yes, fine, this is an alternate timeline Eric but if I knew someone left who they thought was me to burn to death I wouldn't feel particularly comfortable around them) and then I start to have a mental breakdown, and then Eric runs off. It's a bit surreal. So before he left Eric said he wanted me to find a necklace, but I don't see one here and can't leave. There's a television I can watch, a couch I can sit on, a fridge with some chicken I can nibble, and a desk. That's it. Oh, there's a window too. But I can't seem to do anything useful.

Spending far too long on this...

Hmm.

Okay, time for the walkthrough.

...

Huh, seems that there are some invisible items in this room. Well, The Hours, having items that are vital to the completion of the game and yet are never mentioned or even hinted at means you suck. This is the most basic of all basic things. (UPDATE: See this post) Should I even bother playing any further? Well, maybe one more chance. So, I get the stupid necklace and try blowing myself up, which works. I try using the exploding tick to get out, which fails. I try waiting. I try wearing the necklace, and examining it, and putting it back, and some other stuff.

Walkthrough again!

...

Nope, no help. In the walkthough it seems to all work. So that means I'm well and truly stuck, and right off the bat I think the Comp has found it's first '1'. Nowhere to go but up from here!

IFComp 2011: Here We Go!

2011-10-03T17:53:00.015-07:00

So, the annual Interactive Fiction Competition is here again! Sweet!

IFComp goes from October 1st to November 15th, and anyone (that isn't the author of one of the games) can vote. So go play and vote! There's a few specific games I won't be voting on because I playtested a couple of games this year, but I'll still be posting reviews for all of them. Or at least, that's the plan - there are a ton of games this year! You're supposed to play each one for (up to) two hours, so this is potentially a little over three days of playing non-stop. I've used the randomization function on the IFComp website to scramble the order, and I'm sticking to it:

Update: Please see this note about game updates.

The Hours
Sentencing Mr Liddell
Vestiges
Dead Hotel
Awake the Mighty Dread
Escape From Santaland
The Ship of Whimsy
Last Day of Summer
Tenth Plague
Fan Interference
Operation Extraction
The Guardian
Taco Fiction
The Myothian Falcon
Playing Games
The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M
The Elfen Maiden
Cana According To Micah
Blind
Calm
It
PataNoir
How Suzy Got Her Powers
The Play
Luster
Fog Convict
Ted Paladin And The Case Of The Abandoned House
Kerkerkruip
Return to Camelot
Professor Frank
Andromeda Awakening
The Binary
Beet the Devil
Cold Iron
Six
Death of Schlig
Cursed
Keepsake

Science! on the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-08T18:29:00.007-07:00

I just watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and I wanted to share. This review contains little to nothing about the part of the plot that revolves around the chimps as characters and focuses on the scientific process portrayed in the film. Even so, while it doesn't spoil everything it spoils plenty and I actually found this movie enjoyable enough that I would suggest seeing it. Yes, seriously. That being said, let's take a look at:

Dr. James Franco Does Science!

Dr. James Franco is trying to cure Alzheimer’s, so he makes a virus that goes in and gets the brain to repair itself. I'm totally okay with this, probably because I don't know enough to recognize which things that come out of his mouth have some basis in actual science and which things are silly Star-Trek style technobabble. So, lead on Dr. Franco. Let's see you do science.

He's got twelve chimps to work on, and at the start of the movie we find that one of them has become smarter. This is treated as a big success although they make it clear that the drug is supposed to repair damage rather than increase intelligence and later they act surprised about this side effect, so I can only assume that the chimp's intelligence tests were indicating she was of normal intelligence for a chimp and they had previously done something to deliberately brain damage her even though there's no indication of that at all in the movie. Whatever, I'll still go with it.

So now that one chimp has shown a positive effect, they want to drag all the investors in to ooh and aah and invest in this thing so that they can move on to human testing. Really? You've got twelve chimps (six if we assume there's some sort of control group) and one has just now started to show signs of this thing doing something to its brain and you want to jump to human testing? What about the other chimps? What about waiting a while to see about any long term effects? This seems important, and surely there's a lot of money already tied up in this thing if you are at this stage. Wait it out, Dr. Franco.

But no, Dr. Franco is impatient and his boss seems okay with that. So they get the rich people together and give the big talk about how awesome this is and then they get ready to bring the chimp down and... okay, hold on. I'm sure there's a way that it makes tons of sense to rub lab animals all over the rich folks, but I'm having trouble thinking of it. Chimps are dangerous, and you don't know if someone's aftershave or the big PowerPoint presentation or something else totally random will freak it out. Angry chimps (or poo-flinging chimps, let's not forget those) do not make investors happy).

And whoops, the chimp looses its shit when they try to take it out of the cage but they keep trying, because they would rather have a really upset and erratic chimp screeching and poo-flinging at the investors than no chimp at all I guess. It gets free, and the security in this place is such that it's easy for an escaped lab animal that has been exposed to a viral gene therapy to do whatever it wants. With amazing precision, it manages to head right to the big investment meeting and then gets shot by security. (The security guards aren't exactly fans of the rich folks, and so they don't mind opening fire into the crowd. Luckily the bullets don't pass through the chimp and so everyone is okay).

So, the project is declared a failure even though this seems like a case of bad chimp wrangling rather than a problem with the actual procedure, and the mean boss orders all the chimps disposed of. This is done instantly without making any effort to figure out what went wrong because the company isn't concerned with flushing unimaginable amounts of money down the drain. After killing all the chimps, they notice that there's a baby and realize that the chimp that lost it did so because it didn't want to be separated from its child.

Okay, James Franco. I'm taking the "Dr." part off of your name for the rest of the review. This is your star pupil, the test subject that you're counting on to get funding for your big project and nobody noticed that it was pregnant? As a side note, the gestation period for a chimp is eight months, so let's be generous and say they could have been tracking the experiment for maybe seven. Just in case you wanted a timeline I guess.

Okay, so James (can I call you James?) takes the baby home and then we fast-forward to three years later and the baby monkey is super smart obviously but let's focus on the SCIENCE! that mister Franco is doing. He steals some of this wonder treatment from his work because they still have crates and crates of this stuff shrink-wrapped for distribution years after the project has been scrapped even though it was never to that stage at all. He gives it to his dad who has Alzheimer’s and there is an immediate improvement.

Five more years go by, and suddenly his dad starts to develop immunity to the treatment. I guess this is an ongoing thing unless you're a chimp, and I guess James Franco's dad's immune system is like Canada in that it is perpetually five years behind the times. So, James tells his boss that he needs to develop a stronger virus that people won't get immune to (which is always a good idea). His boss approves this once Jimmy F says he has one completely unscientific anecdotal case where it made a person smarter instead of just curing Alzheimer’s, and he orders a bunch more chimps to test on.

One of the chimps is said to have been through a whole mess of different experimental tests which I would think makes him a really poor test subject, but I'm not a scientist like Franco. So they take these chimps and do nothing at all to get a baseline or anything as far as I can tell. One of the chimps shows some spunk and Franco is like, "That one!" and they're off. They make the experimental virus that people don't get immune to in an aerosol form because safety is for wimps, and then they put on the tiniest face masks they can find and dose the chimp in a room that isn't properly sealed or anything. The hose pops off and one guy inhales a bunch of virus, but that doesn't really worry anyone so they send him home without further observation.

The chimp gets super duper smart right away, so the boss wants to try it on another chimp but James Franco is upset and says it's too soon. Obviously there's no need for more than one data point. Also, he points out that they can't even think about human testing yet because there's no knowing what it would do to a human - he says this with a totally straight face even though he took some home the night before with the intent of gassing his dad. Of course, if they really wanted to know what impact the virus has on a human they could ask the guy who got sprayed before... oh, he's out sick? Never mind then, I'm sure he's fine.

And then after that there's really too much angry chimpanzee to get any science done.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

Fig. 1 - My Dad

SuperVillainy Phase One, In Which I Embark On A Glorious New Career Of Evil

2011-06-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

I've decided to become a supervillain. Not entirely sure of the best way to go about this. Suggestions are welcome.

My mother has started things of nicely by suggesting some important visual components, including a black cape and a moustache. These are good things to keep in mind, and if anyone else has ideas send them over, but I think first I may have to pin down what would make me a "supervillain" rather than just an asshole.

Minions would be a great start, but ideally they would be robots or mutants or ninjas. Undead of some sort. Whatever.

An official title would help. I'd love to be an actual Baron, but those titles are a bit pricey. I can be a Baron of Sealand for about ninety bucks, which seems to be the cheapest option and is still more than I'd like to spend. I can get a religious title for just twenty, and some of them are pretty epic. That might be the way to go.

Finally, as Ethan points out, by definition as soon as I get a superhero to acknowledge me as his or her nemesis I've arrived. I'll have to keep an eye out for opportunities there.

My New Favorite Movie I Won't Be Seeing

2011-06-15T21:11:00.001-07:00

So, there's a new movie coming out and I need everyone to just watch the trailer because I don't really feel like I can describe it correctly. I can tell you that it's essentially Rock'em Sock'em Robots: The Movie but I suspect that most people reading that will underestimate just how much this is about robots boxing.

It's completely about robots boxing, you guys.

Here, in a nutshell, is the plot of Real Steel (imaginary subtitle: The True Story of the Rock'em Sock'em Robots): See, Wolverine is a washed-up boxer who is at least partly washed up due to having his job outsourced to robots. Because that totally makes sense and could happen. So now he is a Robot Boxing Manager, or whatever, but obviously he is down on his luck so that there can be drama. His adorable estranged child who is covered in grime through most of the trailer is all precocious and shit, and together they break into a Robot Junkyard and steal an old robot that Wolverine explains is no good.

So then obviously the underdog robot gets trained by Wolverine and becomes a great boxer or whatever. He's the Robot Seabiscuit to Wolverine's Spiderman. That last sentence? Not a joke. We now live in a universe where that sentence can exist non-ironically. I guess when it comes down to it I'm a little sad that they didn't just go ahead and actually call it Rock'em Sock'em Robots and get it over with, and even more sad that that wouldn't be the most absurd movie in the works.

I feel confident in saying that this film will contain one of the best montages since Karate Kid.

Blogspot is Worse Than Cheap Sushi

2011-06-14T22:44:00.001-07:00

Blogspot is being a total ass, and I don't know if it's just to me or in general. I think at this point even more than having Blogspot work I want it to be made into a robot or something so that I can punch it in the face. It keeps acting like I need to sign in, but if I go to sign in I already am. And it's not that the page needs to be refreshed or anything, I cleared my cache and whatnot. (And then, obviously, I really did need to log in again but that didn't help the situation.) So screw you, Blogspot. Jerk.

Anyway, while this is keeping me from posting comments elsewhere I can still post stuff on my own blog. Not that I ever do, and not that anyone would read it if I did. But hey, just in case - here's a deep thought for the day:

Lottery tickets and packages of grocery store sushi are essentially the same thing to me. In either case I know it's a bad idea to buy it not just because it's a waste of money but also due to the accompanying feeling of shame. I know that the eventual destination of this purchase will be the trash can, but a few times each year I buy one anyway because it's not about the inevitable disappointment - it's about that moment of hope where you can fantasize that something good will come of it.

Still waiting.

Rapture Update: GAME ON!

2011-05-23T11:57:00.003-07:00

Good news, everyone! Reports are still coming in (and Harold Camping was supposedly going to make a statement today, though at the time of this writing that doesn't seem to have happened) but it seems clear that the plan for doomsday is still on. Yes, fine, the Rapture didn't look like everyone expected. The "earthquakes" were downgraded to gentle breezes and those of us that were lifted up to the heavens really only made it a few feet up before settling back to Earth, mildly dizzy. But it happened. So we need to keep the clock running!

3 months to live on this Earth; if you survive Judgment Day, Saturday May 21, 2011, -- the Day when Christ will rescue His selected children and take them to Heaven [in an ascension of perhaps 200,000,000 Elect] -- then there will be only death here on Earth, no hope, and eternal damnation for any of the ~7 Billion remaining a short time on Earth [a horrible Hell-on-earth]... those that live through the Great Earthquake of Saturday May 21, 2011, will survive only a few months -- 153 days at most; then, on Oct 21, 2011 God will destroy the entire Universe and everything in it, by fire.

That's from "Bible Ministries International". So, more than expected are left, due only one person being fully Raptured and nobody dying in the earthquakes. That's not a big deal, though, because the post said roughly seven billion and there's just a tad under that worldwide so if they're already subtracting 200k Raptured it doesn't seem like they were expecting the earthquakes to do a lot.

Nor do they need to! I mean, what does a few hundred million people change when you're talking about the entire universe (and everything in it - important distinction, there) being destroyed by fire? This does bring us to the next issue God has to face... how will he pull that off?

I'm glad you asked. Well, Hydrogen is the most common element and it's pretty flammable so that's a great start. Even so, when you burn hydrogen you tend to get other elements, which themselves then have to be burned up. It seems unlikely, in fact, that you can light the universe as a whole on fire. Whatever divine arson takes place will be able to kill off the human race if done properly, but won't get rid of the universe (not even everything in it). I made a quick prayer to consult with God on this and while I didn't get through to Him directly I did speak to a senior angel who stated that God is thinking about turning all matter in the universe directly into fire. There are some technical problems with that as well, but it looks promising.

So, just to recap - despite appearances, the Rapture has taken place and we've got about three months before we are either destroyed by fire or somehow turned into fire directly. This would be a good time to stop paying your bills and quit your job, although I'm going to need some people to stay employed so that I can still eat fast food right up until the end.

I'll keep you posted on any further updates.

EDIT: Harold Camping has just confirmed, Doomsday is still on for October. Just as I suspected, all other catastrophes have been put on hold while God works to make sure The End will happen by the deadline.

Rapture Update: HOUSTON...

2011-05-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

... We have a problem.

So, it's finally 6:00 PM here. Initial reports were indicating that the rapture wasn't happening, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that it is, indeed, Judgement Day. I can tell you this with absolute certainty because I have personally been Raptured.

Mostly.

Amy has set up my laptop on top of the bookshelf so I can continue typing as I lie here against the ceiling. It's kind of a neat feeling, although it's not exactly comfortable. I know that someone could tow me out the door and let me go, but honestly at this point I have some concerns.

First of all, I'm not the kind of person that you would expect to get saved. This may be a clerical error (heh) and so it's possible that they'll change my mind once they get a better look at me and... well... drop me. If that happens when I'm here, less than ten feet over a nice comfy couch, that's cool. If it happens at ten thousand feet I'll be more than a little disappointed.

Second, there haven't been any of the other signs that were foretold. I know if nothing else there were supposed to be some serious earthquakes. My current theory is that they were supposed to be powered by the souls of the Raptured, and since there's been so few of us it's only enough juice for a minor nudge, which has gone pretty much unnoticed.

But we'll see. We have a few more timezones to go, maybe God is storing up the charge to have one big earthquake at the end of the day. In the meantime, we're having a Rapture party with devil's food cupcakes, meatball subs, spinach and artichoke dip, and Left Behind: The Movie.

And with me on the ceiling there's a lot of room on the couch.

Rapture Update: TOTALLY FOR REALZ

2011-05-21T10:30:00.001-07:00

The rapture is actually happening! For reals you guys, people are already vanishing!*

As planned, it's happening at 6:00pm local time, obeying time zones. This allows you some time to repent, which is handy. It also means a few tips are in order:

Get to the airport, and charter a flight. Make sure your pilot is not saved - that's important - and then pray as you wait for the rapture. If 6:00pm passes and you find yourself left behind, hop on the plane - you'll be able to make it to the next time zone before God does, so you can pray extra hard on the way over (maybe making a few adjustments) and try again in the next time zone. Repeat as needed.
If you are certain you are already saved, DO NOT cross from a non-raptured time zone into a raptured time zone. There's an hour of inactivity while God waits for the hour to change, and if you go from 5:30pm to 6:30pm during that rest period by crossing into a new time zone you won't get raptured at all. It would be a shame to have to sit through the Tribulations when you should have been sitting on high with God, eating popcorn and watching others suffer.
If you find yourself being lifted into the heavens, BE CAREFUL. The saved dead are raised first, and then everyone ascends together. If you die while ascending (due to collision with an airplane, a lighting strike, etc.) you won't get raised again - that portion of the day has already ended. After the tribulations it's likely God will do a second check to see if anyone repented, but you don't want to take any chances.
If you feel intense pain and begin to bleed right at 6:00pm, it may be that some small portions of your body are made out of the saved dead. I'm not accusing you of being a cannibal or anything, but it's only natural that after enough time some amount of human tissue would work itself into other people (possibly being in other animals or plants in the meantime). As the saved dead are resurrected and thier bodies are made whole, bits may be reclaimed from you. Hopefully the damage will be minimal and you can recover for long enough to repent and then die a horrible death in the Tribulations.

* Or maybe not, I'm just guessing here.

Spring Thing 2011 Reviews

2011-05-16T18:31:00.003-07:00

Well, I finished playing through all the Spring Thing 2011 games just in time to enter my votes.

Final thoughts:

I wrote the reviews while I played, but since I've procrastinated on posting this and the results are now available: I'm sad to see The Promise didn't do better. I'm also surprised to see Alabaz got first place. I'm not remotely surprised to see the high standard deviation on Stiffy.

On an only partially related note, Inform games almost always handle "look under" wrong:

> LOOK UNDER DISTANT MOUNTAIN
You find nothing of interest.

> LOOK UNDER MONUMENT
You find nothing of interest.

> LIFT MONUMENT
It's far too heavy - you can't budge it at all!

> WTF?
I'm not sure, honestly.

But anyway, reviews for all six of the games can be found below, with spoilers. If you're one of the two people reading this on Facebook or the RSS feed, you have to click through to see the rest. Clicky clicky.

Also, if you want to jump to a specific spot on the page you can do that too, in case you're looking to spoil one but not others:

Bonehead

Hallow Eve

The Lost Islands of Alabaz

Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis

The Promise

Wetlands

Bonehead

This is a game about a specific historic moment in baseball... and not a happy one. You play as "Bonehead" Merkle, on that fateful day that he gained his nickname. The game starts out with some fairly basic interactions, and I had no trouble getting onto the train and getting to the ballpark. I did lose once by deliberately provoking a policeman, because... well, because I could. This section of the game is still a typical IF experience. Once on the field, I poked around some and did some training - not a lot of training, I'll admit. It's possible my later difficulties could have been prevented had I talked to people a bit more and really made an effort to practice my baseballery.

The game started and now rather than normal puzzle solving I'm trying to play baseball. I learned through trial and error. Some commands I guessed right away, others I had to fumble for. No real problems here that I couldn't overcome, although it was a lot of UNDO, catch ball, UNDO, move towards ball, UNDO, creep, UNDO, get off plate, while trying to get the wording right. I got up to bat, and... yeah, I struck out. I tried really hard not to, but no matter what I did I missed the ball. I tried to UNDO and swing differently, but all four swing commands I'm aware of ended the same way. I don't know if I missed something or what - certainly it's possible to go past that point so something for sure went wrong.

The writing is good, the concept of replaying a real-life moment in sports is good. There are some things that are a tad under-implemented but not to the point of it being a big deal. I liked the asides, and the different endings. All in all it was a neat game. That being said, I didn't give it a fantastic score. The thing is, I found myself thinking of the jet-bike racing in Chrono Trigger or the godawful Blitzball thing in Final Fantasy Two Hundred or whatever. Those mandatory RPG mini-games that feel out of place and are not, in and of themselves, good games. The baseball in Bonehead is handled as well as it could be in a text adventure and is a billion times better than Blitzball, but it almost got in the way of the story because I, the player, have no idea what I'm doing and was relying on UNDO and mad flailing. The character, meanwhile, sure as hell knows what he should be doing and so it feels like... well, like playing a minigame in an RPG.

There are times that someone takes a text adventure and does something really innovative with it. That's awesome. There are also times that some specific puzzle within an otherwise "standard" game has some unique twist. That's also okay. But in this particular case the baseball, central mechanic though it was, just served to get in the way of the well-told story for me. Thinking about it now, I guess most of my favorite text adventures involve people doing things they aren't competent at. I've never really thought about it, but I guess that forgives any clunkiness in the interface or any gap between the player and character. Hmm.

Hallow's Eve

This was... not amazing. It had a very unpolished feel, with things just generally making life more difficult than it should have been. It was one of those games that just screams "Hey, look! It's my first finished text adventure!" which is fine when it's not in a competition. If this had been something I just stumbled across or was asked to play as a beta tester, I would have a lot of nice things to say about it. Instead, I'm looking at it as a judge. From that perspective, the maze of twisty little passages was unforgivable, and the interactions between the player and... well, everything and everyone else... needed serious work.

One nice thing that I do want to say, though - I like the fact that you get different endings depending on when you drive away. I went back to the car several times to try this out, and was pleased with the results.

I'm not going to bother with a more in-depth breakdown of the smaller issues, because there's a lot. As far as larger plot-based stuff that isn't just a coding issue, I would say the game would be better off having a single badguy to deal with, or a coherent team of badguys, or something. The random assortment feels off to me. I did do a few things worth noting - I drank 791 beers, which probably should have killed me. I also managed to get to the location where one hapless teen is tied up before the teen herself did, so that I could see her tied to a pole and then hurry to the front of the house and watch her arrive and get grabbed. I suppose I should have warned her.

I could have enjoyed a game that was a satire of those awful '80s slasher flicks, but this seemed to either be taking itself seriously or just forgetting to make jokes. Just for the record, I'm not sure why anyone would take '80s slasher flicks seriously.

The Lost Islands of Alabaz

This is a game meant for a younger audience, and has an appropriately simple fantasy feel to it. You're traveling by boat to islands lost in a magical mist, each accessed by use of a special pearl. So you go to one island, find a pearl, go to the next, and so on. After the first few you have to start going back and forth somewhat, which almost immediately feels tiresome. You navigate back to your boat and to the wheel, align the wheel and raise the anchor, and then head to wherever you're going. In most cases there's a minimum of seven commands to get from wherever you are to wherever you want to be. It's not the end of the world or anything, but it's annoying. There are also some items or tasks that feel overly difficult to stumble upon; the robot doesn't mention cupcakes the first time you talk to him, and after the first time I was asking about specific things so I never learned that I needed to procure baked goods for him. I didn't think to type "search food" for salt because the things I did type made it seem pretty clear that the food was just scenery. I didn't look under the basket, because nobody would ever look under the basket without the walkthrough. But all that could be forgiven.

So then, I get a bottle of air. I can use it a little at a time, or let it all out at once. I decide to see what happens if I let all the air out right by the windmill, which seems like a reasonable thing to try. Nothing happens. Well, that's a little sad, but no problem. I'll just go re-fill the bottle, since I've been told where to do that. So I go, and... um. Nope. Nothing I type lets me put more air in the bottle. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I really don't think so. Either it's a bug, or it's bad design. Nothing is in the walkthrough, so I go online to see if anyone else is having this problem and find out that there's a totally different game-ending bug that I quickly confirm I have already incurred (I just wasn't to the point where I would notice yet). So that's that. These really feel like problems that should have been caught in beta testing... I'll be honest, when I saw (at the same time I confirmed I was hosed) that this was written by the person who made Anchorhead I was dumbfounded. Anchorhead is my go-to example of incredible IF, the game I tell everyone they need to play.

Anyway, game-ending bug means this gets a very low score. Go play Anchorhead, though.

Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis

Oh, Stiffy. I don't even know what to say. This game is... huh. I almost said "for mature audiences" which would be probably the wrong way to word it. I wouldn't for a moment categorize it as pornography, though, so let's just say there's a lot of sex, and while some of the descriptions are graphic they're all very casual or even cartoonish. At no point did I feel aroused or offended by all the humping. The rape, on the other hand... well, turns out rape isn't funny. Had that been at the start of the game I would have just been done with it, but I didn't encounter anything until catching up to the point where the game starts. There are two instances of rape, one where a character is forced to have sex through intimidation and another where the main character forcibly violates someone with a foreign object. Both of these are unavoidable if you want to get to the intended ending. The ending involves being raped thousands of times, and that's the GOOD ending. Ugh.

On a technical level it's pretty good. I started coming across little glitches or typos late in the game, leading me to suspect that early parts of the game got more attention. This isn't an uncommon thing in my limited experience. The only major problem I ran into was putting the game into an unwinnable state right near the end by causing my sunglasses to vanish - you need those to go to the final room (well, the final room where you actually do anything). Puzzle-wise, most of it was simple but I did have some problems. I had one instance of guess-the-verb, and one of oh-for-the-love-of-god-just-give-me-the-item. I also spent a lot of time looking for money and not finding it before giving up and looking at the walkthrough which told me to just buy the ten shekel item with only five shekels. What? How does that make sense? I later got stuck at one point entirely through my own blindness, somehow missing an exit that led to a whole section of Alexandria. Determining where I went wrong was hard though, because the hints are location-based and often useless, and the walkthrough skips a big section.

The humor was... spotty. Some things were amusing, some were not. A lot of the humor is through references to other things, either in the world of interactive fiction or history or ancient literature. I'll assume that some of the many references I didn't get were hilarious. I don't think they made the most of the faux-erotic nature of the game, most of the sex stuff was just... there. I already said it wasn't arousing or offensive (rape aside, for that second part) but it also wasn't funny. It's like fart jokes. Farting isn't, by itself, all that funny except to twelve-year-olds. That doesn't mean that fart jokes can't be funny, it just means they aren't funny by default any more than a kitchen table is.

It's interesting that the item you're after is the Golden Banana of Discord, and this game seems custom made to win that award... except it's entered in the wrong competition. Hmm. Anyway, this would get a decent but not amazing score for the base level content. It loses something for the game-ending glitch (not as much as Alabaz because it's less likely to come up) but then drops all the way to the bottom for the rape jokes.

The Promise

And now... the fast-paced and exciting world of medieval chores!

No, no I kid. Mostly. This game did involve a lot of chores, which felt like it was training for some later event. There was, eventually, a later event... but it didn't require any of my newly found candle-making skills. My woodworking talents and comprehensive knowledge of where to find glass and string did me no good. Still, I actually enjoyed this game. You're in a village surrounded by eternal winter (the timeline of "eternal" is a bit vague, certainly it's been winter for far too long) and you're on the verge of adulthood and... you do chores. Favors, really. I didn't find any of these difficult, and I even got some extra points for doing a few things without being asked. There's a very pretty map, which is nice - I only had to consult it once but it was good to have it. There are other little touches, like a 'remember' command that gives flavor, and different text from the NPCs depending on your standing in the village. If you want to see what they say when they hate you, start the game by calling everyone to the village square over and over until they stop coming (I did this on a second play-through hoping that nobody would show when the plot twist arrives - sadly they still came running). They also notice when you do things like drop the item they've asked for next to them rather than handing it to them.

After the chores you learn of an imminent attack on the village, and you get yet another fetch-quest - this time to the forest. My first time through I was only asked to get two things, but when I was being a jerk they needed four. So that's interesting. While doing this you meet the reason for the extended winter, a forest spirit of some sort. Seems she's easily offended and when your father broke his promise to return and play with her she decided he shouldn't get to have summer anymore and should "die in the cold". This is okay with me; the idea of a spirit that's friendly one minute and torturing you the next due to some minor slight is well-founded in folklore. So we talk, and she makes you promise to leave her magical little valley and never return. Upon arriving in the village it becomes clear that the marauders (who I pictured as Vikings due to the description of the boats) have the town so terribly outnumbered that the items you got from the forest aren't really going to help. I'm tempted to replay this part and hide under the wharf to see what happens, but I suspect at this point the game is on rails. You lose UNDO, and the marauders herd you up to the forest. I wanted to drown them in the peat bog but instead (not surprisingly) you end up at the entrance to the magical valley. Do you break your promise, or be bludgeoned to death by a Viking?

This seemed like an easy choice to me, not just as a player knowing what the game wanted but even in character. It's not a matter of "I made a promise and that's important", it's more like "this crazy forest spirit made it winter forever just because her play date didn't come back - if I break another promise she might just kill everyone I know". So the moral choice presented was about self-sacrifice to give the village a fighting chance, not about keeping my word. Anyway, the spirit sees this and is happy I didn't go back on my promise and has wolves eat all the Vikings. Nom. I went back and tried breaking my word, and guess what happens to my friends and family? Yup, wolves again. So that's consistent, at least. Interestingly she lets you live so you can appreciate the fact that you got your whole village killed.

I really would have liked it if the skills from the first half somehow translated into something useful for the second half, but overall it was a good game. I liked the atmosphere, I liked the effort that went into having extras you might never see, and there were no serious bugs (only two minor ones I noticed - the dead stranger is only mostly dead, and one of the messages while running from the marauders (triggered by going South) seems out of place if you do it in the forest. I think it was only supposed to be when you were attempting to get back into the village). So, high score for the Promise.

Wetlands

This had an odd feel to it. It's modern, but seems like a fairy tale. By the end of the game this makes more sense, but at the start all I knew is there was a lake and some pipes and maybe, possibly, a crystal city. I wandered around a bit, found some things and determined some stuff that should clearly be on my to-do list, and then... got stuck. At the time I thought there was no walkthrough (I later found it on the Spring Thing website, it just wasn't included in the .zip file like the others) and there are no hints, so I went online and started looking for other people talking about the game - hoping for minimal spoilers that might advance me. Thankfully I found a review which complained about not realizing they could climb the tree and not thinking until this realization to try climbing the fence. The funny thing here is that I thought the tree was totally fair (there are wind chimes up there that announce themselves as atmospheric text and draw your attention to the tree, so I thought that was properly hinted) but even after climbing the tree the fence seemed like a deliberate and impassable barrier. Now that I knew it could be climbed things went a little better, though I was still annoyed at a few points. Some of this was my fault - probably I should have noticed the stick instead of writing it off as scenery, for example. Other things didn't actually give me trouble but ticked me off anyway; you have to climb a water tower but can't reach the ladder. The correct command is "jump". I got that almost instantly but still grumbled as I typed it because I feel like if I didn't need anything other than my own physical movement to get there it should be implied. Is it out of my reach, or isn't it? Do I need to type "stand on tip-toes" if something is on a high shelf, or can the game just say "after some straining, you just barely hook the handle of the mug with your fingertips"? That last part is a random made-up example, in case you were confused.

So, yeah, there are some issues. The other thing was the inventory management, which got strange at times. You have two pockets and your hands, so you juggle a lot... but each individual pocket is big enough to contain every item in the game except for a valve wheel that doesn't fit in either. The pockets are, essentially, pointless. Maybe they could have had just "pockets" as a container rather than both right and left and I would have been okay. Meh. At any rate, there wasn't anything that was too buggy and while I suspect that I could put the game in an unwinnable state it would be obvious pretty quickly - you destroy a building and anything in it is lost to you, so I guess just drop something vital on your way out and you'll be hosed. Like I said, though, that feels pretty obvious. What didn't feel obvious was the concept that whatever I was doing was important enough to destroy a building for. I mean, at that point I still didn't understand the underlying motivations for my character and so I felt like some random bored tourist investigating a story about something that quite possibly didn't exist... not something that warrants destruction of public property.

I gave it a pretty good score, though.

Stearns Wharf

2011-05-03T21:02:00.003-07:00

Amy was supposed to come with me on my business trip. She couldn't come, though, so instead it's just me and Mr. Freeze. He seemed pretty psyched about this cannon, he was kinda depressed when he found out it wouldn't fire OR fit as a carry-on.

Mr. Freeze learns that pigeons are ungrateful. The original plan was to lure one in with the promise of a french fry and then leap onto its back and ride it all over, pooping on tourists.

So Totally Grown-Up

2011-05-03T11:14:00.006-07:00

On a conference call with people on three different countries while waiting at the airport for my flight to the California office. I am officially an adult. Ignore Mr. Freeze.

Story 199: Behind the Curtain

2011-04-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

Everything in the office is meant to put technophobes at ease. The furniture is hand-carved wood, the art on the walls are all originals, and there are files made of actual paper on the massive desk rather than a data pad. Ken is smart enough to know that it's an illusion, but he still appreciates the effort. The quiet ticking of an analog clock helps to settle his nerves, and he sinks into the chair in a more relaxed way than he had intended so that when the door finally opens again and the local Ambassador comes in he has to quickly straighten up and mentally check to confirm his body language is professional. Too late he realizes he probably should have just stood up.

The Ambassador doesn't seem to notice one way or another. She wears an older style of suit, another concession to the technophobes, but radiates competence and self-confidence. Ken can't decide how old she is, which he chalks up to rejuvenation treatments; at some point the lines start to blur and you can't say if someone is twenty or fifty. Behind the Ambassador a ball of pink fluff the size of Ken's fist zips along on tiny tank treads. She spins and looks at it with a withering glare.
"Hey. This is a no-robot zone, and you know it. Back off."
Ken shifts uneasily. He's not a fan of the robots, but it still makes him nervous to hear one yelled at - even if it is pink and fuzzy. "It's fine, madam Ambassador. I don't mind technology."

The Ambassador smiles as she sits. "Give it some time." She picks up a manila envelope and unseals it, sliding a small stack of papers out. "Let's see... ah. Mister Jeffries, correct?" Ken nods, mentally preparing his speech.
"Your request is granted. Let's schedule another meeting for next year, that should be enough time for everyone to either become miserable or decide they like it."
For a moment the ticking of the analog clock is the only sound, and then the tiny pink robot begins to thump against Ken's shoe while emitting a high-pitched growl.
"Just ignore him, he's harmless. Before we move on to other business, do you have any questions?"

"Well... um. Madam Ambassador, I'll be honest. I expected you to deny the request, it's taking me a moment to shift gears. You're actually prepared to allow us our own community? The robots... the AIs... they don't have a problem with it?"
The Ambassador laughs. "Mister Jeffries, the AIs couldn't care less. Here, watch this." She presses a nearly invisible button on the edge of the desk, and the image of The Prime appears in the air.
"Hey. I'm declaring it Sandwich Day. Fully recognized holiday, paid time off for everyone, double rations of bread. We'll have banners, parades, whatever. Repeating every year."
The silver head nods. "Whatever you say, Hotness."
The Ambassador presses the button again and the image vanishes. "Ugh. I told him to stop calling me that. Old nicknames die hard though, right? And I guess the ruler of Earth can call people whatever he wants."

Ken's mouth is too dry to speak. He settles for just staring at the Ambassador with his mouth hanging open.
"Ken... can I call you Ken? Ken, the thing is that the AIs won. It's over. With everything running smoothly, no war, and the population under control they've got an overabundance of resources. Your group's request, for a land free of AI interference? That kind of thing was only vetoed before because the groups were doing it so they could abuse kids without oversight, or start doomsday cults, or whatever. The proposal you drew up has all the proper checks and balances, so that's not a concern. In a year half of them will be miserable because they don't realize how much the robots do for us. Another half of what's left will have been kicked out for one reason or another, and then some percentage of the leftovers will leave because with so few people the community won't be the same. In the end, you'll have a tiny group of hippies living in trees. That's fine, but you won't like it for yourself. I can tell."

The fuzzy robot starts on a new strategy, attempting to scuff Ken's shoes with its treads. "Madam Ambassador... are you this... honest... with everyone?"
"Hah! No. No, I have to keep up appearances. That does bring us to the other business I mentioned a moment ago. Ken, I wanted to meet with you this fine holiday because I want to retire. I haven't broken the news to the AIs yet, because I wanted to hire a replacement first. What do you say? Cushy office, a stupid amount of power, and all you have to do is not be a dick or a pushover."
Ken's mouth opens and closes a few times. "Madam Ambassador... is this a joke?"

"Not at all. The area needs a new local Ambassador, and once you've been properly disillusioned by watching this project collapse around you... you'll be perfect. So. Go forth, try to start a new community, and call me in a year." She glances down at the proposal and frowns, "Or... ten months, actually. Tops."
She stands, and leans forward to shake Ken's hand. He attempts to thank her but is still stunned enough by the meeting that he only manages to mumble something. She scowls, but Ken is relieved to see it isn't directed at him. "Capslock! You leave Mister Jeffries' shoes alone or so help me..."

Ken excuses himself and heads back out towards the train. Had that meeting really happened? Surely she couldn't have just approved his proposal and offered him a job without even consulting with the AIs? No human holds that kind of power. As he goes to step onto the platform, Ken looks up and sees some drones hanging a banner across the street.

"HAPPY SANDWICH DAY!"

Story 198: Limited Options

2011-04-10T00:01:00.007-07:00

This is another that was first published at 365 Tomorrows.

"I can already tell you aren't interested in the admittedly confusing equations I've taken the time to write out, which is fine. So to give a quick and imprecise summary I will use the tired metaphor of Schrödinger's Cat, where a cat is placed in a box with something toxic that will be released with a fifty-percent likelihood, triggered by radioactive decay of something else in the box.

"In the Many Worlds interpretation the universe splits, and in one the cat lives while in the other it dies. Obviously we only get to see one of the two, but both happen somewhere. In the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead until a measurement collapses the wavefunction to just one option at random. In the Stockholm interpretation, the cat falls in love with the scientist that locked it in the box.

"Nothing? Well, my wife thought it was funny. At any rate, while the Copenhagen interpretation is currently the most accepted there are problems with all of the theories and they are all devilishly hard to test. In large part this is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one, until we can get more data. Rather, until they can get more data. I already have it, and know the answer. I'm just not sharing it yet.

"Imagine, for a moment, that the Many Worlds interpretation is correct. That means that entire universes are unfolding constantly, an unimaginable number of them every moment. Some have speculated that we could find a way to travel between them, see the alternate versions of Earth that might have been. That's a pretty thought, and something that might come to pass someday, but what I've discovered while working towards it is far more productive – and profitable.

"The device you see before you provides limitless free energy. This one prototype could power every device in the world at once if you could find a way to plug everything in. Every instant our reality is remade along with an infinitely expanding fractal cloud of others, and this device just... nips one in the bud. All the energy of the big bang, for free. All for just one lost option, one that will never be missed.

"Destroy the universe? Not this one. No, it's quite safe. Technically speaking it destroys a universe every ten seconds or so, but they're more like proto-universes. It's not a big deal, really. It very nearly collapses them before they exist. Very nearly. Honestly, you don't need to look so horrified. We're talking about free energy here. This is the holy grail of science. It's... excuse me?

"No, I told you it's perfectly safe. It can't break in a way that would do any more harm than a transformer exploding – You would have to deliberately turn it into a bomb if you wanted it to do anything serious. Well, yes, in theory. I'm not sure that's a productive use of free energy, but I suppose with the right design you could release a minute fraction of the harvested energy as an explosion before the device obliterates itself. Call it one-one millionth of a percent, enough to level New York. No, no. The state.

"But we've gone off-topic. Back to the matter of free, clean energy for... Pardon me, but I'll thank you to put away those guns."

Story 197: Sight Unseen

2011-04-03T00:01:00.001-07:00

This story was originally published in Daily Bites of Flesh 2011 from Pill Hill Press. (April 3rd)

When everything is over and the police have released him, Greg will watch his copy of the security tapes. He'll rewind and play the part where they set foot in that lab over and over again, trying to pinpoint the moment where Sarah dies. He'll zoom in far past the point where it does any good, the low resolution of the cameras making the extreme close-up look more like random static, and advance frame by frame with the shapeless fuzzy inkblot of Sarah's face looming larger than life on the screen. One frame, she'll be there. The next...

The security tapes won't pick it up, but in person Sarah makes a sound as she is pulled out of view. It could have been a scream, but having just exhaled her lungs are empty and so all that Greg hears is a squeak, like a scared mouse. Later he'll have those tapes to fixate on, to obsess over, to watch again and again until his wife leaves him and his friends stop calling. But right now he just stares. A hundred empty cages, once used for storing lab animals, line the wall Sarah had been standing next to. Only a handful of the rusted cages are large enough for a person and none at all offer any place to hide.
"Sarah?" Greg calls, hoping against all evidence that she might reply from some unseen corner of the abandoned facility.

She was still new to the job, trying to earn some easy money to help with college. When the alarm tripped Greg said it would be a nice simple way to ease her into the job. The research facility, once a popular target for animal rights activists, was now only used for the occasional rave. He explained to Sarah that there were cameras but the tapes were stored locally and so they would still be going in blind, but that didn't worry him; chasing drunk college students off of vacant property was just good fun, and would give him a chance to show off for the new kid.

"Sarah!" Greg yells again, a hint of panic entering his voice. The remaining fluorescent bulbs flicker and buzz, casting a weak glow through the film of dead insects in the fixtures. For a moment the only other sound is his breathing, and then the chewing starts. There's a wet tearing, and the popping crunch of bones. There's no source, nothing in the room but Greg. Later, watching the videotape, he'll think it sounds like someone on the other end of a phone eating cereal. The maddening sound ceases for a moment and without fanfare a shoe lands, from nowhere, in the middle of the floor. Greg can tell instantly that Sarah's foot is still in it.

Seen only later is the fact that after Greg runs out, screaming and sobbing, the shoe vanishes again as suddenly as it appeared. And the chewing starts back up.

Story 196: Hooknail

2011-03-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

This story was originally published in Daily Bites of Flesh 2011 from Pill Hill Press. (January 7th)

James looked up at the slate-grey sky as he walked, at the bare branches of trees that meshed overhead like a tangle of beetle legs. They rubbed against each other as the wind rushed through the woods and in the sound of the bark rubbing together James could almost hear that word again, spoken in fear by the trees themselves. Hooknail.

"Hooknail isn't real, right Brian?" the words were almost swallowed by a sudden gust that threatened to pull James' jacket clean off, but his brother still heard and stopped for a moment to answer.
"Oh, it's real all right. Just like I told you at the campfire. With those long black curved fingernails that tear into your skin and hold you still while it eats you. Piece. By. Piece. In fact..." Brian leaned towards James and whispered in a conspiratorial way, "... it lives under those rocks, right up there." He gestured just forty feet up the path, at a jumble of glacial boulders.
"Does not," James said without conviction. "You're fibbing."
Brian shrugged, and started to wander closer to the dark shadow of the rocks. "Okay," he said, "Come over here then. Come take a look."

James took a shaky breath. He wanted to go back to the campsite, to the warm fire and the faint mildew smell of his old tent. He knew Brian would tell the other kids, though, and they would make fun of him for the rest of the trip. Pastor John would say "boys will be boys" rather than doing anything.
Closing his eyes, he forced himself to inch forward until he could sense the boulders right next to him, hear the wind whistling between them, feel the warm breath of something on his ankles...

It flew out from between the rocks, a shape like a human but impossibly tall and skinny. One horrible hand grabbed Brian by the face, talons digging in to his cheeks, while the other seized James by the leg. Brian's scream was muffled against the monster's palm as he flailed uselessly. The creature leaned in close to James, watching him curiously.
"You have quite the imagination, child." The beast's voice was raspy but still human, its breath reeking of spoiled meat. "I suspect I didn't even exist a moment ago. Fascinating, to have form granted by mere belief!"
James shut his eyes tight and tried to ignore the burning pain in his leg. "I don't believe in Hooknail. I don't believe in Hooknail."
"Oh yes you do, child. Now I'm going to keep a hold of your leg while I eat your brother - try not to make too much of a fuss. Don't worry, I would never eat you. I want you to stay with me forever, to believe in me."
Hooknail started to force Brian, still weakly struggling, between two boulders. As if in thought it paused for a moment, and then looked back at James appraisingly.
"Well... maybe a finger or two."

Happy International Women's Day... Ladies.

2011-03-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry about the title. I couldn't resist.

It's the 100th annual International Women's Day, which celebrates women internationally rather than women who happen to be international. Not surprisingly, I only became aware of this today*. Before now I didn't know there was such a thing as International Women's Day, and if I had I would have suspected that it was only listed on those novelty calendars that try to have something to celebrate for every single day of the year.

I like reality better, where this is an actual recognized and celebrated thing. I would like reality even more if it were a place that didn't need an International Women's Day and we really could drop it onto those novelty calendars alongside "Eat a Burrito Day" and "Spuds MacKenzie's Birthday (Observed)". That would be sweet.

Reality is not, sadly, that place. I am childishly bitter at feminism in general for making me aware of that fact. As a white middle-class male I prefer to not only benefit from my enormous privilege, but be completely oblivious of it so that I'm not hassled by any pesky feelings of guilt or dissatisfaction. Sadly, in my old age I've embraced skepticism and that means not just assuming what you already believe is true. It means not dismissing a claim simply because you don't like it, or because it doesn't feel right, or because it would be inconvenient.

Some are easier than others, but it's less about the topic and more about the person's pet causes. Have you dedicated years of your life and massive amounts of money to searching for bigfoot? You then have a vested interest in bigfoot being real even though at this point we've long since crossed from mere absence of evidence into actual evidence of absence. Have you filled the deep emotional need for someone to blame with the idea that vaccines caused your child's autism? Then I'm going to have trouble convincing you that you're wrong even though it has been thoroughly proven and is, in fact, harmful to the underlying cause of autism awareness and research. Do you benefit from a society where men are treated better than women? Well then...

And that's the burden of a skeptic. Our mission can never be to disprove something, it must always be to assess the truthiness of it. It's not about saying that claims are wrong, it's about looking at the evidence for or against them without bias or malice. Yes, fine, at some point when the same claim has been disproven a thousand times you can resort to a little malice just to keep from having a breakdown (I'm looking at you, homeopathy) but even then if some new or unique theory comes along you have to actually look at it.

So, feminism. If you read that word and roll your eyes or shake your head in a mixture of sadness and disgust I'm willing to bet you haven't examined the claims properly. You may be reacting to a straw man argument, or maybe it's a real and actual argument that mainstream feminism embraces and that you actually do disagree with. The problem, as implied above, is that if you are in a state where you still have a conflicting belief that you cling to some of the feminist stuff will be too much of a stretch. Heck, if you read the wrong stuff by the wrong people some of it will be too far out in left field even if you're totally ready to be on-board with feminism in general. So we start small. Baby steps.

There are for sure a million places to begin, but for this 100th International Women's Day I want to go ahead and play it really safe. I'm not going to go anywhere near rape culture even though it's a real and terrible thing. I'm not going to get into preferential treatment in the workplace or in politics. I'm not going to look at all the scary subtle things that invade the very way we talk about men and women. I'm just going to talk about movies. This is like feminism kindergarten.

Your homework, for International Women's Day, is to think of five movies that pass the Bechdel Test. The Bechdel Test, in case you haven't heard of it, has three simple rules:

1. The movie must have two (named) female characters...
2. Who talk to each other...
3. About something other than a man.

The conversation doesn't have to be deep or insightful and the movie doesn't have to be remotely feminist friendly. If one named female character says "Math is hard!" and the other named female character replies "I know, I'd so rather be shopping for shoes!" and those were the only lines either one had in the entire movie... that counts. Done. You have passed the test. I don't care if the rest of the film is men screaming gendered slurs while blowing up things. If this seems like a really easy test to pass, well, it is. Incredibly easy. Mind-blowingly easy. And yet...

It's not that you can't come up with five movies. You can, I'm sure of it. There are plenty out there. While you think of them, though, you'll also come up with at least five that don't pass and several that you think might pass, but wouldn't be sure without watching it again. Look at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for an example of that last category. I know that it passes the first point, and I'm even sure that it passes the second one, but the third? Knives makes a lot of one-sided comments where I'm not sure she even gets a reply (she says she likes Envy's band, but doesn't she just get a blank stare back?) and there's some Scott-centric stuff which wouldn't count... hmm.

Compare this with the Reverse Bechdel Test. Can you think of a movie that would fail if the male/female requirements were reversed? Not five this time, just one. One movie where two named male characters don't talk at some point about something other than a woman. You may have to resort to some little independent film with no conversations or only one character or something. As far as mainstream films, I resorted to Googling and still only found a handful.

So that's your homework. Think of some movies, and then maybe ask yourself if there isn't something askew in our society if this can even be a question at all. Either more movies should pass the Bechdel Test, or more should fail the Reverse Bechdel Test, or both. Happy International Women's Day, and may we someday not need to have one anymore.

* "Not surprisingly" because I only know what I read on blogs. Still, I felt better after I realized none of the women in the office (that's everyone but me) knew either. One commented on the fact that this is also a day known for women flashing people to get beads, but I don't really know what to say about that.

Story 195: Schism

2011-02-28T00:01:00.004-07:00

He calls me, sometimes, and he tells me that he's disappointed. So, so disappointed. But fuck that guy. I don't need to be in a relationship right now, and certainly don't need an abusive one. The phone rings and I pick it up because I have to, because I can choose not to listen to him but I can't ignore him, not exactly. I hold the handset between my cheek and my shoulder while I watch reality television on the couch and I listen to him berate me, tell me that I should be ashamed of my life. That I need to come back to him, to submit to him. I don't reply except to swear when my favorite contestant gets thrown off of Top Chef. At some point he hangs up but I don't notice for a while. It gets easier every day.

He was always overbearing and demanding but there was a time that he complimented me too. He would tell me that he loved me and that I was special and that out of all the universe I was the thing most important to him and that I would never get caught and I should pick up more manure and gasoline on the way home. They never cook that kind of stuff on Top Chef. And I did what he asked because he did ask, nicely, and the compliments and feelings that I was important kept me warm at night until one day they didn't and I asked him, meekly like a woman should be, if this was really a good idea. And then he yelled.

It was snowing outside, frozen and cold and lonely with the trees like skeletons and what I wanted more than anything was to read a shitty book in a house that didn't smell like homemade explosives - that smell took weeks to go away because it soaked into the nice butcher block counter - and instead he yelled at me for not doing what he asked me to, for questioning him at all. That worked pretty well, at first. It wasn't as warm and fulfilling as being told I was his most perfect love but it absolved me of responsibility. I can't question him, he's yelling! See how authoritative he is? Clearly this isn't up to me.

In bed that night, with my fingertips stained from our vicious cooking project, the lack of his booming anger made the silence open up like a chasm and I could hear my own voice in the darkness saying, "If this is what he does when you say no... it wasn't really asking before." And that voice inside me, just little old insignificant me, was more right than he ever was. So I asked him to do something to prove that he loved me. Something special. That made him mad again, because I was questioning him still after all that we had been through together, but then I pointed out that it never really felt like we were together at all. Certainly I had never seen him. And I hung up the antique phone.

And it rang again, and I answered because that's what you do when he calls. You answer.

But I told him again, do something. Something miraculous, for me. Something to show that you love me, and that you exist, and then maybe we can talk about building more bombs. Only maybe, though, because there's more to life than high explosives and sometimes I could go for a root beer float or something. I felt silly then because it was the middle of winter and I didn't really want anything cold. I didn't even want a miracle, I just wanted him to back off for a while. He yelled that he was The Lord My God and I would listen to him and obey him or be cast into the lake of fire and then of course all I could picture was how nice and warm that would be and how sick I was of Nebraska.

And you know, he didn't do any miracles. He stopped calling for a while, and then when he started again it felt like he was drunk-dialing me. He was incoherent, and emotional, and abusive. I couldn't really do anything about it since the phone was already disconnected - had never worked since I bought it at that pawn shop at all - and if I didn't answer it would just keep ringing forever. I could always throw it out, but then he might start calling on my cell and I go through my minutes fast enough as it is.

I'm too tired to sleep and still on the couch and nothing good is on cable but the sagging springs of the couch have lowered me down into my little nest of blankets and so I'm just watching a rerun of some special on the Travel Channel. The phone rings and I hold it to my ear but there's nothing on the other end. I get this image of him crying somewhere, alone, and I feel sorry for him even though he's abusive and a murderer and the biggest monster that ever lived because deep down I don't know that I have a choice. He made me this way, to love him.

"Are you alright?"
Yeah, he says. But I don't like those new clothes you bought. Your skirts are too short and your necklines are too low. It's immodest.
"I like them. I look good in them. I don't need your approval."
I don't like the world anymore. I don't understand it. Things were better when people just wanted to not die. That's all I wanted, just for people to hunt the other animals and build little shelters or freeze to death or whatever. I don't... I don't understand art. Or humor. It's all stupid.
Then he sighs, like only god can.
"I know. But I'm not going to blow anything up for you."
You could be forgiven, he says.
"Fuck forgiveness. If anyone needs forgiveness it's you. I'm not doing this anymore."
There's just silence on the line.
"No more talk of bombs, or infidels, or ending civilization. But... if you need to talk... you can call. This was nice, not yelling for a change."
He whispers something just before the line clicks and goes dead. I can't be sure but I think he said he lied about not liking my new clothes. I shouldn't encourage him, but I say a little prayer of thanks anyway - just for the good things in my life. He'll probably never change, and talking to him is terribly unhealthy of me, but... at least for now the news isn't about explosions. For now.

Story 194: Risk Averse

2011-02-21T00:01:00.008-07:00

WillG: I can't just throw away five years of my life. I've got seniority in this department, and they're talking about maybe getting me that certification next year if they can make the budget work. You've never held down a job more than a year, it's easy for you to suggest something stupid.

Nancy Incredible: This isn't stupid, William. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.

WillG: I know this is hard because you're a high functioning sociopath, but just try to put yourself in my shoes. What would you do if you were here for five years?

Nancy Incredible: You mean five minutes?

WillG: No, five years.

Nancy Incredible: No, you're confused. You mean minutes, maybe days on the outside. Asking me what I would do after five years here doesn't even make sense, it's like asking me what I would do if confronted with a magical wish-granting unicorn in that it has no relation at all to reality.

WillG: Please, just hypothetically...

Nancy Incredible: No, see, you still don't get it. There's not even a hypothetical situation where I would stick around that long. I mean, maybe if some guy had a gun to my head but even then he'd have to sleep some time, right? I'd give it two days of that shit before I tried something foolishly heroic. So, you know, even given some time for the authorities to find my bullet-riddled corpse and process it and everything and then a while to plan the funeral I would say the answer would be that in five years I would have been buried for four years and, like, eleven months. Does that help?

WillG: No.

Nancy Incredible: Well, that's not my fault, it was a stupid question. I mean, really, like the security guard wouldn't do something about someone walking around the building holding a gun to my head? You don't even think about these things before talking, do you?

WillG: I hate you.

Disconnected.

Will rolled away from his computer and picked up the flyer Nancy had left on his desk. It was awful, clearly made in about ten minutes with a basic paint program. There were clip-art of people jumping into the air holding wads of cash, and also for some reason a beach ball. There wasn't a lot of text, and yet somehow it managed to contain every terrible idea known to man. A risky investment, unproven science, and activities that were legal only through an oversight.

The header had too many exclamation points, too.

He knew that Nancy would be stopping by in person soon to try and convince him, but he also knew that due to the extreme disconnect between what sounded like a good idea to her and actual rational thought it wouldn't be hard to resist. He looked at the flyer again, trying to imagine what anyone could possibly see in it. Judging from which words were bolded, the author of the flyer seemed to think the draw involved EUROPA, GENETIC HUMAN ENHANCEMENT, a ONE TIME INVESTMENT, and SPACE. None of those things sounded appealing to Will.

Nancy popped he head around the corner, and he was surprised to see she wasn't smiling.
"Listen, Will. I'll make this quick and I'll be serious. You hate this job, they're never going to approve that certification or invest in you in any way, they haven't given you a raise since you got here, you'll never get around to using any of that vacation you've built up and rumor is that they're going to cap it which means you'll lose most of it at the end of the year. The only difference between this venture and your horrible job is that if it goes wrong it will be a better reason for you to feel sorry for yourself and if it goes right it will be way less likely to kill you. Also, while I personally don't find you attractive I know of several very nice single girls that are signing up for this thing and I know you want to date someone at some point before your soul finishes leaving your body. Get off your ass and do something stupid or so help me I'll get you fired myself. You know I can."

And with that, she was gone. Will just sat there, staring at the empty space she had been occupying. He had been totally prepared to fend off he insane assertions about how fun it would be, but this tactic had him floored. His phone rang, and he answered it still in a stupor.
"Will, yeah, this is Bryant. Listen. The certification is on hold for now because we're still having trouble with the budget, but we want to offer you something else instead. You know how we let Reggie go? Someone needs to do his job and we've got a hiring freeze going on so we can't replace him. It would be a huge help to us if you could step in and do that. We can't give you a raise, but it would look really great on your review which might mean that this certification thing gets pushed through next time. How about that?"

Will crumpled up the flyer and threw it away, sighing. "That would be fine, sir."

Story 193: Wish You Were Here

2011-02-15T19:03:00.000-07:00

"I'm skeptical," Mitchell says. "This is me being skeptical. Witness my skeptical face, painted with fresh coats of doubt and apprehension."
Jess is silent, leaning against a tree trunk and watching her breath in the chilly air. Mitchell paces around the cardboard box, fall leaves crunching under the soles of his brand new sneakers. He's the tallest college freshman at Southfalls, six feet four inches, but with the box standing on its end it's still just a little taller.
"It looks like a regular refrigerator box," he says. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his coat because he has forgotten his gloves again, a fact that makes it hard for him to articulate his thoughts. The urge to gesture dramatically with his hands battles with the image of numb fingertips and narrowly loses after consulting with his already frozen earlobes and nose.

Jess strides forward and pushes on one side of the box. A cut-out rectangle nearly the height and width of the box swings inward, but the dim sunlight that filters down past the mostly skeletal trees does nothing to illuminate any contents. She steps inside and gives Mitchell a meaningful look before pushing the flap closed again. Mitchell, for his part, isn't certain what the meaningful look was intended to convey. He waits a moment to see if something is going to happen and then, when it doesn't, a small part of his brain suggests that there is a possibility that Jess wants him to join her in that cramped, dark space. He kicks some leaves idly and wonders if she is aware that he is roughly 97% gay, +/- 3%.

A sudden cold gust of wind upends the box and sends it rebounding off of a tree trunk. It's quite clearly empty. Mitchell attempts to say something profane, but is in such shock that instead he says "Biscuits." without realizing it. His nice new sneakers seem to be rooted to the spot, and for a good five minutes he just stares at the refrigerator box as the cardboard flaps wave in the breeze. He's thinking about what Jess said, on the way to see the box.

"It's magic," she had said. "Or sufficiently advanced technology. Never can tell." When he asked what about the cardboard box was magic she laughed, and told him to wait. "You'll see," she had said. Now, startled back to the present by the sight of a few fat snowflakes drifting down, Mitchell walks hesitantly over to the box and stands it upright. He tries to position it where Jess had, placing the rocks back over the bottom flaps. His fingers start to go numb from the cold as he makes minute and pointless adjustments, second-guessing his placement as he tries to put off what he knows has to happen next.

Finally, carefully, he pushes the roughly-cut door and looks inside. The internal dimensions match the external ones as far as he can tell, so he steps inside. Nothing happens, apart from a slight drop in the wind chill. Pushing the flap closed, Mitchell takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He wonders if there's a hidden camera somewhere, and decides he doesn't care. Nothing continues to happen, and Mitchell is forced to open his eyes and step back out. The snow is becoming a bit more serious, and in the distance between the trees he can see dark fuzzy clouds that promise a serious layer of the stuff.

"Jess," Mitchell says to nothing in particular, "I'm really cold and still suspect this is some sort of trick. So... I'm going inside. I'll see you there. I hope." He trudges up the hill back towards the campus, and pictures seeing Jess in class the next morning laughing at him and telling him how she had tricked him. Another part of his brain pictures her desk being empty, pictures police asking questions he can't answer as the cardboard box collapses under a blanket of white. But for now, until one vision or the other comes true, Mitchell just rubs his icy fingers together and hopes.

Everything You Need to Know About The Cape

2011-01-09T21:19:00.003-07:00

I'm watching The Cape, because I guess I like to be angry or something.

I figured it would be bad, because at no point did any part of any of the commercials look even remotely good, but somehow it is falling below my already subterranean standards. To be fair, though, it's bad in a way that seems specifically tailored to infuriate me so if you are one of the 6,892,545,410 people in the world that aren't me you may not have as much of a problem with it.

The Cape is about the only honest cop in a corrupt city who is framed and then pretends to be dead and becomes a vigilante to defeat the badguys. Okay, fine. The badguys are corny in a comic book sort of way, with puns and deformities - this is okay too, because that just means you're warned to not expect realism. The thing is, that only gets you so far.

So, The Cape gets himself... a cape... and wants to use this to fight evil. At first this is just some random bit of cloth - why he feels he would be able to use this as a good weapon isn't clear. Soon, however, his newly found mentor gives him a better cape that he just happens to have laying around, and this better cape gives him the ability to do all kinds of magical things. The cape can appear and disappear, sucking itself up into the hood area. The cape can stretch out and grab items from across the room. The cape can lift an adult wearing all kinds of gear and fling them effortlessly through the air. The impossibilities don't stop there.

The movie-style hypnosis I can forgive, but the super smoke bomb vanishing act is just awful. You know the kind of thing I mean - there's a puff of smoke and the person is gone even though goons were standing all around him. How does a little localized cloud of smoke make the people standing outside that smoke not see you walk past them? Pretty much they teleport, and say that it's just the smoke distracting everyone (including the camera, I guess).

And that's the thing. If this were magic, it would be fine. I have no problem with magic. Instead, they want to act like it makes perfect sense for all of these things to happen without the intervention of elves or cosmic radiation or whatever. Why? Just say it's a magic cape. How hard is that? You would still have a few things to explain, like why he doesn't wear a mask when it's vital to the safety of his family that nobody knows he's alive, but... one thing at a time.

So anyway, yeah. Done with that show. NBC has put a little work into it, so even though it's bad I would give it at least a month before getting canceled. Let's say a month on this time slot, another three or four episodes at some awful time, and then it's gone.

---

EDIT: It looks like they aired two episodes in a row and nobody changed the channel, so I walked in on a little bit of the second one. It looks like he did decide to cover up his face a bit, so the much smaller issue is taken care of I guess. This doesn't change my estimate for mid-season cancellation.

---

EDIT TWO: Zing! My timing was just about right, though they didn't change the time slot. Eight nights total (that's nine episodes since two played the first day) with one more episode made but only being shown on the website.

A Kinda Stinky New Year

2011-01-01T02:50:00.001-07:00

It's a few hours into 2011, and the air outside is thick with gunpowder. There's a visible cloud in the air, and I suspect it covers most of central Arizona - even though the recent change making some fireworks legal was countered by local rules and my particular city opted to have them remain illegal for another year there's not a single store in the state that doesn't have a display and the excitement is still fresh in people's minds. My sister-in-law works on the burn ward, and sarcastically thanked Jan Brewer for the job security.

Still, no ambulances or firetrucks in my neighborhood at least - just that thin haze that seems to be lingering even several hours after the last explosions. Not believing in any particular superstitions, I prefer to declare absolutely everything to be a good omen for the year. Everything smells like sulfur? That means it's going to be a prosperous year! We're out of cat food? That means our pets will be healthy this year! Heck, since it's the start of a new calendar I'll go one step further and make some slightly more specific predictions for the coming months.

JANUARY
The Earth trembles in the east, and a star falls.

FEBRUARY
Hostility on the border, and a great fire.

MARCH
The nation mourns the loss of a visionary, and a scandal in Washington.

There. We'll do this quarterly, and I can pretty much guarantee that my amazing psychic powers will match or even beat all the other mystics making predictions this year. Anyway, it's three in the morning and totally time for some sleep. Happy new year, everyone!

A parting thought for Christmas

2010-12-25T20:43:00.001-07:00

This has been a difficult year for our tree. First the lights were out, then they were fixed, then some went out again, and then the replacement lights that were supposed to twinkle softly instead threatened to trigger seizures in any passerby.

As I removed the ornaments to put the replacement replacement lights up (which also had issues, but I don't want to go there) I realized that while we do have more special ornaments than plain balls none of them hold any real sentimental value to me because most are too new and, on top of that, store-bought.

Some are customized or were picked to represent a specific event, but as nice as that is they don't make Christmas a personal thing any more than the garlands or lights do. My parent's tree has all sorts of decorations that we made in school out of construction paper, shredded wheat, toilet paper rolls… whatever was handy, it seems. My wife and I might gather that kind of ornament over time, but for now...

For now I have my stocking.

There's nothing I love more about Christmas than that stocking. It was hand made by my sister-in-law-in-law (my wife's sister's wife) and it is the ideal stocking in every way. Functionally, it is roomy and doesn't have stuff inside to snag on gifts. It also has a neat little pocket in the front that is perfect for gift cards or whatever. It also looks awesome, because it involves blue corduroy which is somehow… cozy.

It's nice to know that, whatever else happens, I have the stocking situation totally covered.

I guess it's dangerous somehow?

2010-12-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

I got yelled at today, by the pretentious douche next to me in traffic. He was upset about the fact that I was texting while driving, which I would have found understandable if it weren't for two things:

1. I wasn't driving, I was sitting totally stationary due to a combination of traffic and a red light. If a car were to fly out of nowhere and hit me in that situation, no amount of attentiveness would have allowed me to move my car.

2. I wasn't texting. I was glancing at the directions on my GPS, an activity which is arguably less distracting than (just for example) staring at what the guy in the car next to you is doing.

But other than the driving and texting parts I was totally driving and texting, Mr. Artistically Battered Yellow Jeep Guy.

Story 192: The Sound/Fury Variable

2010-12-15T19:37:00.001-07:00

This is another that was first published at 365 Tomorrows.

Charles is scared, which is understandable. If I had to guess I would say that in his head he’s attempting to dial the police right now, over and over, even though I’ve blocked all transmissions. The lab has to be heavily shielded for my experiments, the fact that it helps with this kidnapping is just a happy coincidence. The tiny jerks of his eyes stop and he focuses on me.

"Walter... please. You need help. Don’t do this. Don’t kill yourself."

I have to smile at that. "I’m not trying to commit suicide, Charles – although it’s true that the machine will destroy the planet upon activating whether it works or not. So, yes, there’s at least a ten percent chance that I’ll kill myself... but those odds are acceptable. I have one shot for this, one chance to meet my maker. In one way or another I’ll be walking in the footsteps of God."

The reaction will begin at the core of the planet, if I’ve done everything correctly, and just before it tears the Earth apart I’ll be flung backwards in time. Impossible, according to all my peers. Insanity, according to Charles. He’s trying to get my attention again, encouraged by my mention of God. I’ve avoided his religious debates in the past, but here at the moment of destruction I see no reason to hold back. I take the double-crucifix pendant from his neck and snap the chain. "This? This is a lie, Charles. There is no afterlife, no soul."

"There is a God," he says, "and you can turn to Him! Walter, God loves you and wants..."
His voice dies off as I point the gun at him. I will enlighten him, but I don’t have time for debate. The device is nearly ready.

"Before the big bang, there was only God. God was without limits and without time, and was one with Himself. God knew that nothing could exist while He did, because God was all and all would be God. And so He chose to die, to explode and cast His body into the universe we know. Time and Space are the corpse of our dead creator, and we are maggots crawling within. You say there is a God. I tell you there is not, and the proof is all around you. Look upon His scattered remains and weep in mourning and in joy. You foolishly ask me to enter into a relationship with Him, but the truth is that God is a mother who died in childbirth – He never met us, never knew our thoughts or wrote books to guide us. All we can do to know Him is to look at what is left behind, the laws of physics that he used to commit suicide."

I step into the chamber. The reaction is already building, the Earth eating itself from the inside. The readings are excellent. Charles is screaming something, but I can’t hear him over the machines. They all told me it was impossible. But they never thought large enough. They need to go to a time without time, a point where no physics yet exist to say what can and can’t be done. I’m going to meet God, right now.

---

For a timeless instant God is aware of an arrival. He notes the relevant information: Elapsed time, 13.82 billion years. Complex DNA present. Method of termination? Pre-event time travel. And God saw that it was good. God ponders Himself, and resolves to try a 0.005% higher matter/antimatter ratio for attempt number 497.

A Christmas Miracle - Best Gadget Ever!

2010-11-27T18:06:00.000-07:00

Today I shook all (well, most) of the crickets out of our Christmas tree and dragged it into the house. Normally we would do this the day after Thanksgiving, but we actually hosted Thanksgiving this year and so we spent the day after eating leftovers and sighing contentedly.

And yes, I did in fact overcook the turkey. I blame everything other than myself, obviously.

But anyway, I slap the tree together and plug it in, and stand back to marvel at the beauty of our glorious fake tree. And... nothing. No lights. This is, in case you hadn't guessed from context, a pre-lit tree. We got it something like four or five years ago right after Christmas when it was on sale and we had finally had it with live trees. We actually threw the live tree out and put the fake one up so we could have some time with it before it became embarrassing to still have decorations up (Labor Day is the cutoff, I think).

We've been thrilled with it, but last year a few sections of lights were out - I didn't have the energy to search through looking for the problem and Amy didn't have the energy to make me, so we decorated in a way that made it less noticeable and ignored the problem.

But this... well, this was another thing entirely. After checking all the plugs I got one teeny section lit, which was actually more depressing than no lights at all. Amy looked, and told me I had to go buy The Device.

The other day she had called me over to ask me about something she had seen in a commercial. She always hears me complaining about the products that get sold based on absolutely nothing other than lies (Homeopathy, Power Balance bracelets, etc.) and so she wanted to get a second opinion. The Device in this case is the Lightkeeper Pro, which claims to be able to repair stings of lights through what seems like magic.

It has an explanation on the website of how it works, but at a glance it seemed to me that it was saying "Sometimes there's a clog in the electricity tubes!" which sets off all my BS alarms. Like, all of them. But Amy was impressed, and it seemed to also have the secondary feature of working as a volt detector so you can trace along and find where things went to hell, so that seemed handy.

I get to the store (Ace Hardware, in this case) and see that it's twenty-five bucks. A bit steep for something that still seems fishy, but it also has a bulb tester and a fuse tester and stuff and I was feeling desperate so I bought it.

At first I tried using the voltage detector thing, and it worked as advertized but wasn't a lot of help due to the extent of the problem and the number of overlapping wires. Amy kept telling me to use the magic trigger thing that unclogs the electricity tubes, and I eventually gave in and looked at the instructions.

So, reluctantly, I removed a dead bulb and plugged the gun right into the cord. Click. Click. Cli... oh. Lights. My mind was blown. I went from section to section, clicking until it lit and then replacing the bulb. Entire sections would light up like magic, and in just a few minutes the entire tree was lit again. Only two sections didn't respond, at which point the voltage detector and the bulb tester worked together to get it fixed.

Holy crap.

I still don't get how it works, but I no longer care. This thing is magical, and is absolutely worth every penny I paid for it. I was honestly thinking about getting wire cutters and spending a day cutting the lights out of the tree because I didn't think I would be able to fix it, and then in ten minutes (a little more maybe because I had to actually stop halfway through and call my family to tell them) it was totally done.

For a regular string of lights I might just replace it, but for a pre-lit tree it pays for itself immediately. I am so thrilled right now.

IFComp 2010: Contest Results!

2010-11-16T21:05:00.000-07:00

The contest is over! Rather than posting the scores, here is the difference between my rankings and the actual contest results. So, if it says -1 that means the game scored one place lower than I had pegged it. I was happy to see that Rogue of the Multiverse scored so well, because it was the only TADS 3 game and I happen to like TADS.

Aotearoa : 0
Leadlight : -1
Ninja's Fate : -1
One Eye Open : -1
The Blind House : -1
The Chronicler : -1
Under, In Erebus : -1
East Grove Hills : 1
The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game : 1
R : 2
A quiet evening at home : -3
Flight of the Hummingbird : -3
Sons of the Cherry : -3
Gigantomania : 3
Mite : 3
The Warbler's Nest : 3
Pen and Paint : 4
Rogue of the Multiverse : 4
The Bible Retold: Following a Star : 4
Oxygen : -5
The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep : -5
Death Off the Cuff : 5
The 12:54 to Asgard : 5
Gris et Jaune : 6
Divis Mortis : -7
Heated : -9

IFComp 2010: Final Review Scores

2010-10-24T00:01:00.002-07:00

There are a lot of problems with rating twenty-six entries in an interactive fiction competition. One is that (as with all things creative) there's no good objective measure. I can't check my Awesometer and see that a game came in at 51 kilosweets. Another problem is that you can't get rid of environmental factors - maybe I'm really in the mood for a comedic game and this one turns out to be a psychological thriller, or the other way around. Maybe I've had a terrible day and I'm not going to enjoy anything.

The third problem is luck. Maybe the game only puts you into an unwinnable state or gives that really embarrassing error message under rare and difficult to reproduce circumstances... but I may not know that and maybe it looks like it's really common. Maybe it actually is common and yet the three hundred playtesters all somehow missed it even though they were doing their best. The last big problem that springs to mind is how you combine these - If I had a good time with one game but it was buggy, how does that compare to one that I had less fun with but that was coded perfectly? What's the exchange rate between those things? Sometimes the bugs are the reason I didn't have fun, does that count differently?

None of that even touches on the fact that not all games are even trying for the same goal. The whole thing, honestly, is a mess. And so while my scores aren't arbitrary they... well, they wouldn't be the same if you wiped my memory somehow and made me do it again. That's just how it is. So... keep in mind that some of these games were awesome in a lot of ways but also (for example) had one big flaw that made me drop it all the way down to a two.

Anyway, here's my final rankings in the closest thing to an order that I can do. When the contest is over, I'll compare and see how things line up... there are a few that I know won't match but for the most part I have no idea.

10 - Aotearoa
9 - One Eye Open
7 - The Blind House
7 - Divis Mortis
7 - Flight of the Hummingbird
7 - Rogue of the Multiverse
6 - Oxygen
6 - The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game
5 - Mite
5 - Death Off the Cuff
5 - Heated
4 - The Warbler's Nest *
4 - Leadlight
4 - The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep
4 - Under, In Erebus
3 - Gris et Jaune *
3 - The Bible Retold: Following a Star *
3 - Gigantomania
3 - Sons of the Cherry
3 - Ninja's Fate
2 - Pen and Paint *
2 - A quiet evening at home
2 - The 12:54 to Asgard
2 - East Grove Hills
1 - The Chronicler
1 - R

* Entries marked with an asterisk could probably move up at least a few points with some relatively small changes.

IFComp 2010 Review: Ninja's Fate by Hannes Schueller

2010-10-23T00:01:00.002-07:00

I'm judging entries for the 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition because they'll let anyone judge and I love low standards. The rule is that you play for no more than two hours and then assign a score between one and ten.

Because I'll be writing these as I play you can expect spoilers and also some vagueness at the same time, so these will probably be most useful as something for people to compare to other reviews or their own playing experience. So, not terribly useful at all. Other reviews, most of them of higher quality, can be found by following the appropriate links on this page.

The penultimate game of the comp is: Ninja's Fate by Hannes Schueller!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a tribute game to someone who made fairly bad games. As such, it isn't a great game itself but is probably a pretty good tribute if you are familiar with the guy in question.

Spoilers follow.

Here I am, on a quest to retrieve the stolen idol and restore honor to my people! Let's do the usual: X ME (Nice!) and XYZZY (Acceptable). Looking at my surroundings, I find that the gate in front of my has writing on it. READ GATE just gives the gate description, because the correct command is READ LETTERS. Bleh. So, a museum? I like that. How to get inside? In think the truly ninja thing to do would be to ignore the obvious and use my grappling hook. Unintentional hilarity ensues:

>throw grappling hook
Dropped.

Picturing that in my head is giving me the giggles. Criticizing myself for not holding on to the rope end, I try again and this time specify a target. Much better! It doesn't work, but it has the proper response. I get more hilarity as I realize that this response is given for throwing it at everything, including random items from my inventory, myself, and THROW HOOK AT HOOK. I have just a little bit of guess-the-verb before I break in and get to start my exploration for real.

Okay, this game is having a lot of fun with the points. I get 42 points when I enter the main room, and then 203 points for examining a bust of Paul Allen Panks (to whom this game is dedicated). There's a slight problem with 'it' not updating to refer to the leaflets.

From there... well. Thing is, this is a tribute game for someone whose games I never played. I know very little about him... I just have this vague impression of a guy who is possibly mildly schizophrenic in that way that makes everyone else suspect it's all an elaborate joke. There were a lot of nonsensical things in the game that were clearly referring to equally nonsensical things from Paul's games. Going by the rankings that those games received in competitions it would almost be a way of going along with the tribute to rank this as a one, but I don't think I will. Um... three?

SCORE: 3/10

IFComp 2010 Review: The Blind House by Maude Overton

2010-10-22T12:01:00.002-07:00

Looks like... The Blind House by Maude Overton!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a psychological exploration kind of game - it's well made and well written, with a somewhat unsatisfying ending.

Spoilers follow.

This game starts with the main character coming to stay with a friend (who she actually doesn't know that well) after some sort of traumatic event. Almost immediately you start to get that 'unreliable narrator' vibe. She doesn't want to think about what happened the previous night. She wants to carry a knife around - just in case - and she hates mirrors.

I was ready to discard the idea that she was the victim from the start but after going to sleep it wasn't even a question anymore. The main character is crazy and has killed someone. I hope this was meant to be obvious, because it is. There are some mildly annoying puzzles around getting ready for bed and then bandaging yourself when you wake up bleeding in the middle of the night - not puzzle puzzles, just that standard "I can't go to sleep yet - I haven't ____!" thing.

As you play you find out more about yourself and your host, and overall I like the writing and the feel that this game generates. I know I just complained about The Warbler's Nest for not telling me things that the character knows, but in this case the character is crazy and in denial and so that feels natural; also, you know what your goal is if there is one at the moment and if you get lost the mood indicator at the top of the screen may provide a nudge. Finally, it is written in first person and that helps (as would third person, I suppose).

As I find stranger and stranger things (often involving blood on things) the tone gets more and more crazy. This is mostly done well - for example, here are two totally harmless emails from your hosts' employer:

Marissa
I am expecting some company later this week. Would you be available to come over on Wednesday in addition to your usual Tuesday?
Estelle

and:

Marissa
Thank you. I appreciate it. You are always so reliable.
Estelle

Okay, at this point it seems like she is cleaning this lady's house on Tuesdays and has agreed to an extra day. This is a reasonable and polite email exchange. Let's see what the main character thinks about it:

The tone in the emails from "Estelle" seems... condescending. I recall Marissa's painful shyness throughout her school years and feel a flicker of anger on her behalf; it is perhaps not surprising that someone so obviously vulnerable should fall victim to a dominating employer.

Wow. Okay. This same kind of crazy also shows when you discover a loose brick that allows you to spy on your host in her bedroom. Clearly, she wanted you to find it so you could keep an eye on her. Well, obviously! I liked these things because I hate it when a game or movie or television show is trying to act like it's a surprise that the main character is insane when the viewer had actually guessed in the first five minutes. Here it is pretty much right out in the open and you get to enjoy the crazy while wondering what is going on.

Right at the end you get a little bit of a view from the host's perspective but honestly I still have no idea what happened. I know some of the specific things I did while I thought I was doing something else, like dye white roses red and cover a mirror with adhesive bandages. I know that I did other things I already suspected, like removing that brick. But... what's the real story? Why did I do those things? Who did I kill? Was it Estelle? Or... her too, but in addition to someone else before the game started? Is my friend a prisoner, or did she actually leave and go to work at some point? Am I who I think I am? There are supposed to be multiple endings but I only had time to get one since I finished right at the two hour mark. I'd be curious to find out if other endings are more satisfying than the one I got.

And now the part where I get all picky.

The game had a few disambiguation problems, and a few unimplemented items (primarily they were unimplemented details - things mentioned in the descriptions of other things). I also took issue with the THINK ABOUT command for two reasons: first, there weren't enough abstract nouns coded. Second, the default response of "I don't know what to think about that" didn't feel right... I think maybe it feels too much like an error and not enough like a response. Maybe if it said something more like "I pondered the _____ for a moment" or whatever. That may just be me.

The phone has problems, because it understands CALL (whoever) but the response is "I have no idea who "(whoever)" is." Here are some of my favorite responses:

I have no idea who "police" is.
I have no idea who "911" is.
I have no idea who "marissa" is.
I have no idea who "helena" is.
I have no idea who "mom" is.
I have no idea who "me" is.
I have no idea who "anyone" is.

Marissa is your host, and Helena is you. Nope, neither rings a bell. Also, why have a cordless phone if you can't carry the handset around with you? Here are some more fun moments:

>x plasters
(the plasters on my arms)
Adhesive bandages.

>remove plasters
(the plasters on my arms)
I'm not wearing that.

>drop plasters
(the plasters on my arms)
I haven't got those.

Or:

>open purse
There are a few notes and coins inside the purse. Nothing revealing.

>take notes
I'm not sure what that refers to.

>take coins
I'm not sure what that refers to.

>take purse
I have no reason to take that.

>close purse
That's not something I can close.

Or:

>x clock
It's a plain, unattractive, ticking timepiece. The hands point to 0:12.

>t clock
Is that the time? Sometimes I wonder where the hours get to.

The clock seems to randomly pick a new time whenever you enter the room, but then it keeps time properly while you're in there. Odd. The inclusion of zero as an hour is for sure wrong, but actually after the ending I'm not sure the random time is a mistake at all. The game takes place over the course of a single day (well, maybe a day and a half at the most) but the diary at the end implies it has been much longer. So the clock might be a nod to that. That's the thing, though - I don't really know. I also don't know what the hell I did with the superglue, which vanished from my inventory (deliberately, not due to a glitch). I can't figure out what I used it on. (I know what I tried to use it on - I wanted to glue the loose brick back in place and be less creepy but... sadly... it was not meant to be.)

Some things it did well; the room description for the laundry room includes a blouse on the washing machine, which is a top-loader. You can open the lid which makes you take the blouse, but then if you drop the blouse again it mentions that you close the lid before replacing the shirt so that the room description can revert correctly. I've seen plenty of games where things exactly like this have been messed up in ways that make the room description inaccurate. There were other similar things, stuff that the author could have easily forgotten about.

Anyway... the problems weren't enough to keep me from enjoying it.

SCORE: 8/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Leadlight by Wade Clarke

2010-10-22T00:01:00.002-07:00

Our next offering: Leadlight by Wade Clarke!

Short non-spoiler summary: Leadlight is the best twenty-year-old game I have played in recent memory. It's a shame, then, that I think the modern mainstream engines have made huge improvements since 1990.

Spoilers follow.

I'm confused. Either this is an old game that is somehow just now seeing the light of day, or someone has gone to great lengths to make it feel old. It is written for an Apple II emulator and has a player guide that refers to 5.25 inch floppy drives. That guide is, by itself, about sixty percent larger than the game file for Aotearoa which I chose to use as a comparison because it is (so far) my highest-ranked game. It's a two word parser which isn't always a problem, it just means there are some extra issues the author needs to take into account. I have some high expectations for this one because I feel like if they went through that much work on the supplementary materials they hopefully polished the hell out of this thing.

But we'll see.

First thing we get is a warning for blood and gore and stuff. I have to acknowledge the warning to keep playing. Heh. After that there's a menu and I swear just looking at it makes me wonder what year this is. It also makes me picture Strongbad.

Next is an infodump, including my history and my stats. I have stats! Will my stats increase as I play? Hmm. Okay, so I wake up in the library next to a corpse and already the mystery starts. By mystery I mean, of course, that the dead girl has dropped her iPod. An iPod! By my calculations the latest this game was truly relevant was 1984 since after that Apple moved away from the Apple II and five-and-a-quarter floppy drives. Even if you allow a few years for things to settle you won't get past 1990, and the iPod wasn't introduced until late 2001 - heck, this is a pink one and while I'm not positive it appears those showed up in 2004! But I guess I should get to actually playing the game.

No real response for examining myself, and none at all for XYZZY. Bah. So I steal the iPod (what? She doesn't need it anymore!) and head to the exit to call the police or something. The windows are smashed and there's a... well, probably a zombie. I slept through this? I was really tired, I guess. FLEE gets me out of there for now and the zombie shows no sign of following. Each room here has a single purpose - the bathroom is here to show that someone hates me and wants me to die but couldn't be bothered to just kill me in my sleep, and the stacks exist to give me a weapon (justified by the presence of a catatonic NPC).

So I murder my classmate or whoever and head out into the night. My first stop is the oddly-described school (an enormous, silvery and jagged structure) where I look under a mat and am immediately and unavoidably killed by a swarm of highly poisonous and shockingly aggressive spiders. Welcome to Australia, I guess. I elect to undo and try again, and soon find a girl who I try to murder just in case she might be a zombie. Instead it is some sort of life-sized doll that turns to dust when I touch it. Sure.

I find my art teacher in the next room, and at first he talks to me but then flips out and attacks. I eventually kill him but this is one of those combat systems where you have to attack repeatedly and sometimes you miss. Also, the game is unforgiving about typos - I spelled the teacher's name wrong and so I didn't attack that turn... but he did. By the end I was in bad shape but didn't see any immediate way to heal myself. Oh well.

Trying the other direction, I pass by the area with the doll again and am surprised to see that the doll is back! I examine instead of attacking this time, and she turns out to be an actual person who kills me. There's no UNDO option so I am left with my final score:

WEAPONS FOUND: 4 /11
SECRETS FOUND: 3 /25
THE SLAIN: 2 /22
DEATHTRAPS HIT: 1 /20 ( -1 point )

Cute. I like how I lose a point for examining the mat. I wonder what the lowest possible score is? Can I trigger all twenty deathtraps without getting any other points? I might have to look into that. For now, restart. I have time and I'll just save a lot. I can't imagine anything at this point redeeming the game but I like to use my full two hours unless I win before that.

...

Okay, so the two hours is up. I am fascinated to say that I simultaneously got really into this game and also have almost nothing good to say about it. It has a strange addictive quality, somehow tapping into that part of my brain that wants to COLLECT ALL THE POINTS even when I'm not enjoying myself. If this had been made twenty years ago it would have been groundbreaking and awesome and I would have given it a ten. Today, though... not so much. There were no bugs that I saw, and it was way better than the other old two-word games as far as commands and stuff go but that doesn't mean it matches up to Inform or TADS 3 or whatever. Not even close.

The combat system is random, effectively. It seems clear that some weapons are better than others and your stats figure in but no matter what it still boils down to being random. Since you can't UNDO out of a battle you end up saving every time you do anything remotely right, and so when you fight a zombie and you get injured there's this temptation to just restore and try again; if you do this a few times you'll get lucky and finish the fight without a scratch. I personally don't even see that as cheating because without that I was getting ripped apart... there is food to heal with but you don't start out with any and sometimes the zombies get lucky too. The same applies to the instant death things - you just restore if you care about your score. Constantly saving and restoring makes it feel pointless to have the combat and stuff in there at all.

The feel of the game was really strange. I didn't finish, but I can't think of what could possibly explain anything. It's not a zombie game - there are strange black cloud things and evil rose bushes and random ultra-sharp sculptures and spiders and evil dolls and lord knows what else. It seems clear that you are somehow connected to all this but the only clues you have are downright bizarre - "BLAME BELINDA" written on a door, a file from the guidance counselor casually mentioning that she thinks you'll kill everyone in the school... I hate to criticize it on this without knowing if the ending helps but there was no way I was getting to the end in two hours while saving and restoring and fumbling with commands - oh, and looking for areas that magically become available when they weren't before, even though you didn't do anything that seems at all related.

I didn't like this game at all, and I'm really eager to play it again once I've finalized my votes. Huh.

SCORE: 4/10

IFComp 2010 Review: The Warbler's Nest by Jason McIntosh

2010-10-21T12:01:00.005-07:00

And now: The Warbler's Nest by Jason McIntosh!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a very short and emotional game. If you do things in the way it expects, you will probably like it a lot. Otherwise, you may get a little frustrated.

Spoilers follow.

Here we have a spot between the river and my cottage. As good a place as any to start. X ME and XYZZY work, so now what? I head back to my cottage and underneath the room description is says "Something is wrong". I like that. It quickly tells me what is wrong while I look around, which is that the cottage is too quiet. I try to go inside to investigate (what is making it quiet? For that matter, what sound is my cottage supposed to make?) only to get this message:

The silence is strange, all right. But you haven't been out of the house that long, and don't plan on being out that much longer.

You chose to take up this task, and you'd best see it through... before facing what's in there.

Um... what task is that, exactly? The game hasn't given me any direction. I try to poke around but if this game has a theme so far it is "not wanting you to go anywhere". Finally I get a short flashback sort of thing about a fairy circle, which doesn't seem to help. Back to the reeds, I guess.

Once there I get another flashback that seems to say (assuming this one takes place right after the other) that I should throw the mushrooms into the river. I don't have any mushrooms, so... yeah. I try to go into the river, but have no luck:

You saw to your washing and all that before you began. Best focus on your task.

I would love to! Please let me know what the hell my task is. I search the reeds and get another bit of flashback, telling me I need two empty eggs. Oh. Okay, I can do that. Try to search the reeds again, then try walking through them. Nothing. It takes a few tries to find the spot I'm looking for, and sure enough there's an egg that has been knocked out of the nest. The chick in the nest looks wrong, so I'm going to assume this is a changeling story (which means my child has been stolen and that's what I want back from the fairies who I guess live in the forest I won't go into).

For the first time I feel like I have my bearings, and while it feels good to have put that all together it also always annoys me to not know something that the character is fully aware of. I don't know, maybe this was the right way to do it. I'll ponder that. So now that I'm on board I can get into this thing. What are my current goals? Find a second egg, and get some sort of weapon because of something behind my house. I search for either object, and while I'm doing this the nest vanishes (not a bug, it was intended to vanish) which seems odd.

I have three rooms available (the beach, the reed bank, and outside the cottage) and none of them have a weapon or another egg. Because of the way the text was worded I got the impression it was two eggs, but maybe I can break this one egg into two parts and that will be enough? No, although I clean out the dead chick which I would have needed to do anyway since it did specify that the shell should be empty.

I examine everything, try every direction. Nothing. No hints available, and no walkthrough included or mentioned in the ABOUT. I guess I could take a shot in the dark and try the WALKTHROUGH command in case it's implemented... it is! Note to authors: mention that kind of thing somewhere, I almost just gave up. But fine, let's see what the walkthrough says. Fill egg with water? Why? I can't see anything at all that would make me want to do that. Whatever. The rooms haven't changed and I can't see what to do with the water. I try to use it on my garden since that seems like the only logical thing other than drinking it which didn't work.

No, what you've been told to do with the water is clear. Best to not spoil it.

No. What YOU have been told was clear. Sadly, you didn't pass that information on to me. Just to make sure I'm not making an ass out of myself I comb through the log and confirm that I have exactly zero instructions for this situation. Grr. Okay, back to the walkthrough I guess. Oh, you can take a stake out of the garden. Sigh... look, in my defense everything else I tried was part of the thing it was described with. The thatched roof IS the cottage, the flowers ARE the reeds, the vegetables/plants ARE the garden. Once I saw that the plants gave the generic garden description I moved on.

Whatever. So, now armed I can go behind the cottage. Sure enough I get the other egg and once I have it I get the flashback that tells me to fill them with water. I notice there are some graves here, and it's pretty clear that one is a child. So the question is, did my baby just get swapped out as is traditional, or did the baby die and get replaced, or did I have two kids? There's also a larger stone which may be my husband. This woman has been through some rough times and I'm going to go ahead and guess because of that that there's no changeling and she's just a little crazy. A note to anyone who didn't clean out the egg prior to looking at the small stone here: do that.

So, I do the ritual... kind of... and the baby doesn't show any real indication of being a goblin and I'm thinking I was right and the character may just be having a mental breakdown. I get the baby free with... cold iron shears? Well, I know my folklore well enough to play with that. Touch baby with shears? Put shears on baby? Show shears to baby? Hmm. Nope. Examining them seems to tell me I should open them, which I do. Once open, I show them to the baby again.

I should also mention my attempts at positive interaction, which had mixed results. Trying to kiss the baby, put the baby to bed, or feed it had scripted replies, but other commands like touch baby (Keep your hands to yourself!) or talk to baby (That's not a verb I recognize) were disappointing. So... back to being out of ideas. Glancing over the text, it looks like there might be an error; opening the shears appeared to have no effect, but that was the ambient noise triggering. Trying again reveals that it is doing nothing at all - it just gives me the prompt back. Missing text, maybe?

If I try to leave the house more than once the game ends with me tossing the baby in the river, but I think there's a better ending than that. Trying KILL BABY has a fascinating effect, solidifying your opinion and making it so that now the baby is referred to as a changeling. I don't know whether or not you can back away from that, so for now I UNDO.

Sigh.

Forget it. Walkthrough time! Hug baby? Is that somehow better than the other things I did? Well, it gets even less of a response than the other attempts at affection so I guess not. Next the walkthrough says to say YES, which is nonsensical and treated as such. Ah. I see. Earlier some commands (but not HUG, maybe because it already triggered with KISS) had said "Is this really your baby?" but I didn't think I was supposed to answer. Bleh. The real key seems to be saying the name, but I don't know that that was properly hinted. Let's see something...

Okay, if you repeat the same command a few times it prompts you for a name. That's good although I know after seeing similar replies from multiple commands I wasn't as likely to repeat myself as I might be in other situations. Still, it's good to know that the author thought to nudge things along.

So I get the good ending (the final command can vary and that changes the text slightly but not the basic message). Overall I'm pleased, but I want to mention again the two areas that caused me trouble:

1. Having the plot revealed bit by bit can be good for the literary side of things, and this was certainly a game that was trying more for emotion than strategy. That being said, it is frustrating to get ahead of that narrative and feel like you are stuck waiting to be granted more information that the character you are playing already has. It also makes me more prone to give up - if I can't figure out what I am meant to do I am likely to decide it is because the story hasn't caught up even if in actuality it is because I overlooked something. I guess what I'm saying is you shouldn't do this unless you can ensure that the player always knows what the current goal is.

2. I stand by my justification for not finding the stake; the other components of things weren't items unto themselves and the message that sends to me is "this is just scenery". So I felt that I had determined the scenery status of the garden and moved on. It was also frustrating that I knew there were probably plenty of weapon-worthy things in the cottage and the forest but I wasn't allowed to go either place. Either the rest of the world needs to be more implemented to encourage detailed searching, or the stake and rocks need to stand out more. Either works, though generally I prefer the former.

What this game did right was all the small emotional things. I know the feeling you get when a baby just. Won't. Stop. Crying. I felt for this woman when she looked at the graves and found the memories of her stillborn child mixing with the imagery of dumping the unborn bird from the egg. I really did feel that she was tired, and alone, and... yeah. I think if I had gotten the flashbacks in the proper sequence and had found the stake I would have rated this really high despite the incredible shortness of it. As it is, I do feel I need to ding it for ticking me off.

SCORE: 4/10

IFComp 2010 Review: The 12:54 to Asgard by J. Robinson Wheeler

2010-10-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

Next game: The 12:54 to Asgard by J. Robinson Wheeler

Short non-spoiler summary: This starts as a fun and well-written game about fixing a leak, and turns into a badly-implemented wreck.

Spoilers follow.

I love the writing and feel of the opening and initial room description. Spirits are high. X me gets a nonstandard response, and XYZZY.... um. Well. I think I just won the game, or lost, or something. That was unexpected. UNDO, I guess.

My third command (third REAL command, after X ME, XYZZY, UNDO, and VERBOSE) is SQUEEZE SPONGE which gets exactly the right response. Nice. So, on to the job at hand which is fixing a leak in the roof. Right away I decide to try and get myself killed and fail, jumping up and down on a rain-slick warped wooden plank suspended high in the air. What can I say, the game dared me to! The response is detailed but does not involve my death, and so next I attempt to leap onto the lighting grid. The game replies:

>go to grid
Treacherous. Dangerous. Mad. Okay.

On the truss of the lighting grid
You're of two minds about this. One is that it is absolutely crazy to be crouching here on top of the burning lamps themselves, the other is that it's really exciting and interesting, something you never get to see. Particularly thick rivulets of water cascading over the backs and faces of burning hot lamps, breaking into sparks of color and light.

I'm really having fun here. Okay, get a whole pile of junk and then up to fix the roof. Damn. And again... damn. And now... um... well, I'm dead. It takes me a while to type the proper command to get back to the game, and then on instinct I try to kill the grim reaper and end up in a room that I suspect has no way out. UNDO UNDO UNDO. On to the plot, I suppose...

There's a mildly annoying useless NPC, and some turnstiles to explore... First real stop in the afterlife is You Bet Your Afterlife, where I cause a minor error as the result of GET ALL showing me objects I'm not supposed to see yet.

>x cuecard

[** Programming error: tried to find the "child" of nothing **]

[** Programming error: tried to "give" an attribute to nothing **]

[** Programming error: nothing (object number 0) has no property mytopic to write to **]
You don't see any cuecards at the moment.

The next area provides some oddities too:

>take key
(the bronze key)
The bronze key clinks onto the keyring.

>n

You run off after Polly, who is proving to be maddeningly fleet, and unfazed by the thick heat of the air or the smoke that depletes it of oxygen. She is within 50 feet of the beast. With one backward glance you see the bronze key being gobbled into a pincer-lined maw.

Before the great oven
The great oven is the size of seven huts, made of clay bricks and sandstone. At the edges it is a sinister cherry red, but near its belching, windy core it is yellow and fire white. To the north is the long road home.

There is a great snapping sound, and a hush falls over the landscape like a shadow of silence. The dragon, loosed from its bonds, rears up, stretching its neck and shoulders, and spreading its scaled wings to their full span.

Polly says to the dragon, "Be free now! I've freed you!"

First of all, yes I have the key - so I don't think the insect got it. Second of all, I followed Polly without examining the oven and so this was the first mention of a dragon - a tad confusing. Neither is a big deal of course, but still. The next spot has something as well... I'm cold and it's snowing and I knock on a door until it opens but when I try to talk to the person on the other side I get this:

>hello
There's no one to talk to.

The host ignores you and glances up at the audience, which begins to giggle. "Well, you know what they say, the absurder changes the conditions of what's absurd."

What audience? Am I back at You Bet Your Afterlife? Hmm. Let's try that again.

>hello
There's no one to talk to.

"The moon? Well, which moon do you mean?"

Yeah... I think that's the game show. Somehow. Anyway, if I'm so hungry let's see if I have food. Ah! Those wheat tips from the last area! Not great, of course, but when you're starving it will do.

>eat wheat tips
(first taking the harvested wheat tips)
You slice the stalks off, letting them fall into your bag.

Slice off... what? This is getting on my nerves. Also, the door is both open and closed. I try to go inside and they slam the door in my face, and I resort to trying various other things that don't work - mostly because the scenery isn't fully implemented. The windows, the fence, etc. I wander around for a while but I can't find anything to do so I check the walkthrough which is no help at all, referring to things that aren't there. So... yeah. I play with that 'HELLO' glitch again for a while until the message starts repeating.

I think I'm stuck. Earlier I died in the snow and had to return to this place again, but now that's not an option as far as I can tell. My supplies are limited but I should be able to kill myself with the sickle. Nope. Yeah, this really appears to be an unwinnable state. That combined with all the other little glitches and oddities and the fact that there are no hints and the walkthrough is worthless once you are already playing (I guess there was some way for me to keep all of my stuff?) means that this game is not going to be getting a good score despite how much I enjoyed the first part.

In fact, here's a rule: if your entry has a game-ending glitch or has something where there's absolutely no conceivable way that you could do it without the walkthrough, and that glitch or whatever is something that any playtester should have run into on a normal attempt... you cannot get more than two points. Previous scores may be updated as needed when I do the big post-judging calibration.

SCORE: 2/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Death Off the Cuff by Simon Christiansen

2010-10-20T12:01:00.003-07:00

Looks like we're getting: Death Off the Cuff by Simon Christiansen!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a conversation-centered game where you try to get someone - anyone - to confess to murder. It's worth playing but has some issues.

Spoilers follow.

Death Off the Cuff starts with that final triumphant scene where the detective gets everyone in a room and announces who the killer is. The trick is that you have no idea, and are just relying on the standard trope where the killer confesses and spills everything. That... is fantastic. I love to make fun of that cliche, and so any game that not only acknowledges it but makes it the goal wins instant points in my book. That being said, I just finished talking about how the implementation matters to me more than the concept so let's get playing and see...

First things first: because I always do this with whodunnits, I'm making a call right here and now with no evidence whatsoever. It's the other detective. Betcha five bucks. Now that that's out of the way:

I decide to start with the basics, and discuss the motives (or lack thereof) for everyone in the room. Then I go around the circle again to cover alibis, and finally some miscellaneous observations as my well runs dry. It would be faster to do one person at a time and is probably the same as far as game mechanics is concerned, but this seems more dramatic.

Out of people and still with no confession, I start talking about random items around the room. Just as my desperation is starting to show through I comment on the Count's beard and - gasp - he is revealed to be someone else entirely. I'm pretty sure he didn't do it but I accuse him anyway just to see what happens - you "win", because everyone is so in love with you that your accusation is enough to ruin him and drive him to suicide even though he is never convicted and is probably innocent. Wow. So, UNDO.

I get another shocking revelation, and a smaller non-shocking lead, and... and... getting desperate again. I wait for fifty or so turns just in case the silence drives them mad, but no luck. This game is going downhill; at this point I'm just grasping wildly at any nouns so I can talk about them. I notice that the description of the doctor has changed, but I can't figure out why; the new item is his clothing which was surely there before. I ask about it, and he breaks down crying. It's not him either though, I'm sure of it. I find some other nouns that get a minor response but I'm missing something.

Oh. Well, yes, fair enough. The correct thing to prod the story along is an action rather than more conversation - it makes sense in context but I had become almost hypnotized by the single command of TALK. I find some more after that, and now the only person I haven't had the chance to accuse is the other detective (which probably means I was right about him) but two breakthroughs - the reporter and the engagement ring - were actually the result of confusion (I didn't mean that beard or those hands...) so I'm not feeling particularly proud. The doctor's clothes aren't the only thing that popped magically into existence and so I have to keep checking everyone which is tiresome. Ah. The detective has buttons now!

>x buttons
That is either not here, or doesn't need to be referred to at the moment.

Oh. Well... fine then. I try some other things and it turns out I can talk about the buttons only after checking out the details of the uniform. Meh. So now I get my man, and win the game. Not bad, and I'm impressed with the level of "everyone has a secret" that was included in true whodunnit form. Still...

It felt very brute-force - I really felt like I was just hammering away waiting to stumble on the answer by chance. I couldn't ask what I really wanted to ask because I couldn't find the keyword to trigger it. Topics appeared sometimes seemingly at random. Also, why in the world did the killer stick around and impersonate a detective? Couldn't he have just left? Hell, when I accuse someone else he's the one that arrests them. How does that work? I mean, doesn't it come up at some point when the paperwork is being filed? "Hey, probably nothing but you don't seem to be a real detective. Don't worry about it, we'll lock this criminal up for you anyway."

SCORE: 5/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Pen and Paint by Owen Parish

2010-10-20T00:01:00.003-07:00

Next up? Pen and Paint by Owen Parish!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a cool idea, but it feels flaky and unfinished.

Spoilers follow.

This one looks like it will involve strange art-y stuff. There's a lot of flashy decoration in the starting room, although while all the things mentioned in the room description are implemented the walls are not. For a room where the ceiling and carpet are all fancy I would expect the walls to have some sort of description. X me works, XYZZY works. In the next room there's a diagram and the description implies that this is an obnoxious place for it. Not surprisingly, I can't move it. (NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This turns out not to matter.)

Downstairs there are paintings paired with books. The paintings have some detail to the descriptions, but the books just have an extremely terse summary both for examine and for read. That seems odd. Also odd is that this is yet another game where you can't sit on a toilet. The sink seems like it should have clothes in it, but I guess the game is just trying to tell me there's paint residue from clothes that are no longer there. Or something.

Each book requires the proper inspiration, that's clear enough (and a mechanic I like a lot). I find the two for the mine really quickly and head in, and that's when it gets rough. The mine is a single room where I'm trapped between a pit and a rubble-blocked passage. I need to get the attention of the goblins on the other side of the rubble so I decide to make some noise. I can pick up some rubble, but once I do that I can't do anything else with it because it keeps thinking that I am referring to the main rubble still in the room rather than the bit I'm holding. I also have to keep re-lifting it because you drop it every turn. The problem turns out to be that it is rubble in the room and rock in your hands, and not the other way around. Referring to rock says you can't see any such thing unless you first say "get rubble". Ugh.

There are other things that are unimplemented, and a hallway that says:

Grey Passage
This passage leads further down, incomplete.

So, is that part of the book theme? Or an incomplete game? It feels like the latter, but I don't want to make a premature judgment. Either way, I am at a loss for the moment so I move on to the forest painting. There's a non-maze there, one of those rooms that say you wander but really you stay in one spot. As is often the case, up and down work as well even though that makes less sense than the rest of it. I get out of that painting too because there's nothing I can find to do. I attempt to ask my wife about it but the game insists that I need to supply a noun - no matter what or how many nouns I give it.

The pyramid seems a bit more functional, though there's another "incomplete" area. If that's a deliberate part of the game it still needs to be handled better. Anyway, there are grave robbers to deal with and so I try to dress up like a mummy but it says I need a better costume... I must be missing some item but this place is pretty small so I don't know where I would be overlooking something. After a bit I find it, and scare away the robbers, and there's a badly-implemented machine. The description mentions hammers that aren't there, and says they didn't turn it off... but when I try to turn it off I'm told that's not something you can do that to. Whatever.

I ended up feeling impatient and looked at the walkthrough, and the command was "listen". That fits in with the sensory theme but still feels like it was a bit out of nowhere. Maybe I missed a hint, but right after typing the command I had to save and close and so I'll just give the game the benefit of the doubt since I can't scroll back to see. Anyway, cheered by the fact that this painting is finished I go back to the mine to see what I was missing. Turns out there was an exit off of the equipment room (the one with all the unimplemented boxes) which was clearly labeled and obvious and there's no good reason for me to have missed it. So, yeah, I should for sure give the game the benefit of the doubt on that other thing.

Okay, cave is complete. Some minor notes - going North in the big chamber with all the goblins says you can't go that way, but it should really have a custom message about trying to push through the throng of goblins or something. Also, I ran into that awful "You must supply a noun" problem again. Back to the forest, to see what I missed there...

What I missed was that while eight directions dumped me back in the same room and one went back to where I started, one goes to a nearly identical room (different only because of the type of plant there). This is easily missed if that direction isn't the first that you try, because it seems like they just don't want you going anywhere. There are six or so rooms as far as I can tell, each with a different landmark. There's no logic to it, as at one point you need to go South and then North.

Now I'm at one with moss, and no direction I try gets me anywhere new. The description for the moss isn't any more or less detailed than for the other landmarks and I get the same message when I try to take it. It refers to the "moss grows on the North side of trees" thing, but the trees aren't implemented (nice forest you have here... missing something, though...) and going North doesn't help. Just in case, I type LISTEN here and the game says "Mouth!" (quotes and all). I don't know what that means. I try to eat and taste the moss, but that's not it. This may just be a dead end, it's possible that there were multiple exits to one of those other rooms.

I start to follow that lead, but it's tedious and terrible. Finally I resort to the walkthrough. It tells me to go south from the moss, which gets me back to a previous room, and then it tells me to take a log that isn't there. Thanks, walkthrough. I try a few times with no success. Finally I head back to the start of the painting and follow the walkthrough again, and... you bastard. So, the walkthrough says to examine the moss but I already had and so I didn't do it again. It seems that you have to examine the moss and then go South immediately - if you try any other direction you'll have to examine the moss again or South just runs you in circles. That's... that's awful.

By the way, the last steps there were N, S, N, S... and then the forest is back to the WEST! Going North, which should be the forest, goes upriver. Screw you, game.

Edge of the Fieldand the Grey Tree
The tree is tall and, incomplete.

>

Yeah, that's not part of the game. I'm sure of it now. Also, this game is bad at single items that there are more than one of - what I mean is that if there is a pile of strange pods (just for example), it can only be referred to by pods. Not pod. Take pod? You can't see any such thing. Take pods? Oh, sure, THOSE pods! You take one.

I climb a tree, for no reason, and then wander and find a spot where the ground is vibrating. I dig, and this time there's no need to listen for some reason. That painting is done. I'm left wondering why it let me pick up a big log when trying to take anything else said I was saving room for rare specimens - is it rare to find a rotting log? Possibly, since there aren't any trees in the forest.

Whatever. On to the last painting! Hmm. This one probably needs lightning and flowers. I have a battery, but feeling it does nothing and it won't let me taste it (am I the only one who used to touch 9-Volt batteries to his tongue?) so I'm out if ideas there. Flowers are even worse - I can't find any in the house. Not really sure what to do about that, so I check the walkthrough. Huh. It seems to be saying they're just west of the paintings.

>w

Dining Room
With some difficulty, you managed to acquire a table that was precisely the correct size. Eleanor and you can quite comfortably talk across it between mouthfuls. You've filled the walls with portraits of various dignitaries in preparation for receiving guests. Under which circumstances you'll have to bring up the other table currently residing in the cellar.

Exits lead west and east.

>x table
A testament to determination and resourcefulness. It has chairs at each end..

>x chairs
A couple of ordinary wooden chairs.

>x portraits
The third Earl of Tippareth, the Marquis of the Fey, and others who lack the same significance.

>x flowers
It's filled with cloudblossoms. They're picked using very tall ladders, and they have a wonderful scent.

>smell flowers
You feel revitalised.

You feel your inspiration grow stronger.

>

Um. There were no flowers in the room description or in the descriptions of the scenery. How was I supposed to know about them? The walkthrough also provides some insight into my battery problem - I have to drop it and pick it up again. Lame.

Once in the painting I do my thing, running into more frustrating stuff. There's the singular/plural issue again:

>look in yellow cloud
I only understood you as far as wanting to look in the yellow clouds.

>look in yellow clouds
You find nothing of interest.

After that I try to take the clouds and it only works on the last one. Checking the walkthrough, it seems that's the only cloud that works (out of four different colors). That's not a puzzle, it's... like an anti-puzzle. The only possible thing that could have accomplished would be if I had given up after the first three and wandered off. So then I finish the main questy thing and am given a cannon, which I assume I need to scare the dragon away so I can get the music box. Unfortunately, there is nothing to fire out of the cannon. No scenery items can be picked up, and I have nothing in my inventory. Just on a whim I try opening the box with the dragon right there and that works. That doesn't seem right. Let's see... the walkthrough says to FIRE POT but I don't have a pot. Oh, examine rainbow. Right. Pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Durr. Whatever, it's not needed.

And that's about it. The ending feels like I've failed, like I've missed something and been given the 'B' ending. I don't think I have, I think it's just less than inspiring. This was... not great. The concept was cool, but that's just not enough - I'd rather see a really well-executed game with a tired concept than a poorly-implemented game with a great concept.

SCORE: 2/10

IFComp 2010 Review: The Bible Retold: Following a Star by Justin Morgan

2010-10-19T00:01:00.003-07:00

For today... The Bible Retold: Following a Star by Justin Morgan

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a game with a lot going on - maybe too much. Lots of great implementation and description but the sheer weight of the optional sidequests and flavor threaten to drown the main plot. Play when you have some time to spend.

Spoilers follow.

This is the second game I've played for the comp with "The Bible Retold" at the start of the title. The other one was full of cute little flavor but light on actual game, so I'm eager to see if this one is the same. Things are implemented in the first room so that's nice - examining most of it gets a response from the NPC in the room. I do the standard X me, XYZZY stuff and get responses. And then, under the bed, I find a corpse that then vanishes (not due to a glitch - it actually vanishes in the game). This feels like it is meant to be taken as a wacky 4th wall breaking joke and not a serious part of the game.

Outside, I find that I'm a little bit on rails as I listen to the NPCs. If I do it right I can be in two different places when a door is thrown open to reveal camels (Outside the Palace or Ground Level) which I think is just a minor error rather than an actual oversight since I can't get it to happen on the Lower Terrace. After heading downstairs so that I'm back in synch with the game I am instructed to get on my camel who isn't in the room description because (I think) he's in some invisible nested room. Whatever.

After some pointless climbing on and off of my camel I go into a store where there's a baby giraffe that I can't take - it seems the shop description randomly includes items from a list (that list is the same used by the XYZZY command I believe). It does make sure to have a response (You remember seeing that somewhere in the shop, but you just can't seem to find it again!) so that's not too annoying. I take a ton of figs and the shopkeeper says I can have as many or as few as I want because there are no unwinnable states - man that fourth wall takes a beating - and so I just eat all the figs immediately. They say something about taking the bags on the camel, so I do - to no noticeable effect. Maybe if I had actually done anything in the store other than eat figs? (The ABOUT for Judges warned against wasting time in there, though.)

Time to leave. The gate is closed, so I type 'OPEN GATE' and I get a point. Really, the exchange rate is that low here? Next it's a new scene and... hey, another bed! I check under this one too and the response actually makes the previous odd 'disappearing corpse' thing funny:

>look under bed
Dreading the old corpse-under-the-bed trick, you have a quick look. No, definitely nothing there.

The town is quite busy, and to be honest I have a feeling of dread about all the items. If I need all of these I'm in trouble, and if I don't I'm worried I'll get the wrong ones or waste time putzing around. My goals are to find gifts and sandwiches. Got it. So, first things first I buy some frankincense, but then someone wants to trade it for gold which seems like a good deal so I do that. Now I have gold but the frankincense is gone. There's myrrh, but I can't take it. Fine, let's do the sandwiches instead. Bread? Check. Honey? Check. Pomegranate? Check. I head to the tools stall and use the knife to cut bread and spread honey. Done. Now I cut another slice of bread and I grab the hammer to make pomegranate jam... nope. Fine. Let's try this in steps. First thing is to open the pomegranate, so... what? I ate it, just because I don't know how to make jam? UNDO.

So I have to sell thirty pomegranates to get jam, and I can't afford that many so it takes multiple trips, and it's not a puzzle so much as typing "SELL POMEGRANATES" at people as they walk by. Meh. Anyway, I deliver the sandwiches and get no further clues from it.

Hallway
The hallway is even darker than your room, being surrounded on all sides by other rooms of the inn. It is lit by oil lamps hanging from the walls. Some natural light does also emanate from a staircase to the south. Gaspar's room is northwest of here; Melchior's, northeast. Your room is straight north.

Gaspar is here, sitting atop Job the camel.

"Right," says Gaspar, and goes back into his room.

>

I don't know how he got the camel into the upstairs hallway of the inn, and I for sure don't want to know why he's keeping it in his room.

So, on to the Myrrh... the priest says it is for the end of the lesson, and says I should sit. No problem. I wait forever, and the talk is never going to end. Then I realize that, for some bizarre reason, I have to stand to wait. So I sit again and play around until I find a command that doesn't make me stand up but that doesn't help because the sermon is still endless. Finally I realize I missed a room (d'oh!) and find a disguise, and a spare myrrh pot, and a secret passage that leads to a study and also to a seemingly pointless area outside the city.

So, replace the myrrh and... no. I need more myrrh to get the myrrh. Crap. Okay, the game says it looks like earth and hey! I know just where to find some of that. Back to the secret passage, out of the city, and... no. What? It doesn't seem to see dirt or earth out there. Just in case, I buy a shovel and go back - but it says that it wouldn't be appropriate to dig here. Not appropriate? I'm impersonating a rabbi so I can steal from the synagogue! Fine, whatever. Let's see if this game has hints.

Hmm. It does, but you need to specify the object and that also means you need to be able to see it. I guess I won't be getting any hints about the frankincense I traded away. Okay, the myrrh says... that you can get dirt from a tree that seems totally unimportant, like the rest of the scenery. Fine, whatever. I don't know how I was supposed to know that, but I don't care anymore. Go to the tree, dig, swap out the containers. I give the Myrrh to Gaspar who is still on his camel which reminds me I'm still in the priest outfit and this is starting to sound like the lead-in to a really bad joke.

So. Now I need that thing I got rid of, I guess.

...

Yeah.

I go back to another secret passage I found earlier but didn't explore due to lack of light. The only exit puts me back in the damn vestry and for no good reason doesn't allow me to go back into the passage so I have to circle around to finish exploring. There are still a lot of things to check, though. I don't have a use for the abacus or the ornament or the language cue cards or any number of other knick-knacks laying around.

Interestingly, I can lower the rope when it isn't there. Magic! The game handles it correctly from the bottom of the well though, knowing there's no rope. So... oh. Wait. No, the game doesn't handle it well at all.

>u
The rope isn't there.

>l

Bottom of Well
You are standing at the bottom of the town's well. Needless to say, it's damp. A narrow passage leads north-west.

>nw
The rope isn't there.

Now that it has checked for (and not found) the rope, I can't leave the room even by the normal passageway. Play with it for a while, UNDO a bazillion times, and check... yeah, just entering the room traps you. Not good.

So I resort to going into the marketplace and typing HINT ____ for everything. I feel like an idiot, but I don't know what to do. Finally I hit the jackpot with the blade - the one item in that shop I almost skipped because I figured I was done with it now that the sandwich quest was over. The first hint says to ask the man about it, so I do.

>ask man about blade
"It's usually used in agricultural practices," he says. "That particular blade is exactly one step long. So, er, I suppose I could use that to measure the well, but no! Please do buy it if you want to."

Wait, we're measuring the well now?

>ask man about well
(the well)
"Oh, the well, yes." He sighs. "Ever since it dried up years ago I've been trying to convince the Romans to have another built. In fact, I'm preparing an appeal for them, to present to them next month. The only trouble is, I need to know the measurements of the well - that is, its volume. But I haven't been able to do it. Huh, oh well," he says with a small shrug and a probably unintended pun.

I... fine. This seems stupid, but fine. At least it's something I can do. But... was I expected to ask him about the well? Was that something I should have known to do? I measure the well, but now he wants me to actually do the math and write it down for him and I think maybe I hate this game. Maybe I can just look up the number in the walkthrough, because I've already spent a lot of time here. The walkthrough turns out to be a huge wall of text, some sort of formatting disagreement, and doesn't appear to be a traditional walkthrough anyway. So, Ctrl-F and "well" gets me... oh. It's optional. In that case:

>show tablet to man
"Hm, that doesn't look right. Measure the well and write the volume down for me please. And make sure it's in jars."

>read tablet
The tablet reads: "FUCK YOU AND YOUR STUPID WELL"

>

So now... back to the search? Or should I give up entirely and read the walkthrough?

For a bit I entertain myself by making a lot of money buying things; see, you can put your money in a closed container and then buy something and this happens:

>buy abacus

You also trade in four sestertii for a single denarius.
You pay 0 denarius and pick up the big abacus. The novelty woman hands you 2 sestertii in change. "An excellent choice," says the novelty woman.

Yeah, you spend nothing and you get change. I now have a pretty bloated inventory (46 unique items, some of which are things like pomegranates of which I am carrying 41) and there's no sign that all of these bags and sacks are needed for anything. (NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: In case anyone cares, you don't need to use them if you got stuff at that store at the beginning either: DROP ALL, RIDE CAMEL, W, D, E, GET ALL, W, RIDE CAMEL. Tah-dah!) But look at the time! I need to hurry this up... Walkthrough it is! Oh, no. No, you've got to be kidding me. It's that damn tree again. Oh, and the knife again which I was certain I was done with.

It seems some (all?) difficulty could have been avoided by examining the tree, but there's a lot of implemented scenery in this game and the tree just didn't stand out to me. Once I knew the earth was there I thought that was the justification for the tree and so I still didn't examine it. So, I give the last gift to Gaspar and we appear to be done in this town even though I never figured out what was going on with the rafters or the tunnel or the secret study or all the instruments or anything.

I had to stop for a bit in the middle and didn't note the exact time, but I think my two hours are up. More to the point, I hope that my two hours are up because I really don't want to spend time with an astrolabe and an abacus calculating stuff. Just for fun I restart and see how much money I'll end up with if I do the money-in-a-container trick right away... and the game crashes, probably while trying to calculate my change. I don't mean it has an error, I mean it CRASHES. There was a message, I think it was an out of bounds memory error, and the whole interpreter vanished. Gone.

There was a lot about this game that was good; I can't criticize other games for being too empty and not implemented and not praise this one for doing the opposite, but I feel like this missed the proper balance anyway. With so much going on, and so many sidequests and useless items and distractions, I lost the plot and couldn't find it. More detail, more options, more stuff - that's all good but it means you also need more direction. The ABOUT for IFComp judges said to skip sidequests, but I wasn't totally sure what was part of a sidequest and what wasn't - plus honestly I can't resist trying to take everything, I'm a terrible packrat in these games.

Man, this one is hard to score. My frustration with it is fresh in my mind, but deep down I know that if I had just examined that damn tree I would have gotten further and been less annoyed and all that stuff with the sidequests is kinda cool. I think the well thing violates my big rule about game-ending problems which would mean an auto-two but it wasn't that bad and the other stuff is good and... sigh. This could be at least a six probably, but for now:

SCORE: 3/10

IFComp 2010 Review: The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game by Taylor Vaughan

2010-10-18T12:01:00.007-07:00

Drumroll please... The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game by Taylor Vaughan!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a goofy comedy game, with some fun but simple puzzles. It has a few flaws, but is for sure worth playing. Also, that's a great title.

Spoilers follow.

The second Communist-centered game of the comp looks to be a comedy, and fortunately enough I'm in the mood for one of those. X me and XYZZY both give good answers, so that makes me happy. The first few minutes are spent grabbing everything in sight in true text adventure fashion and then being amused by some of the descriptions. After everything has been snagged, I locate my to-do list:

You look over your to-do list.
steps to glorious Revolution:
( ) win hearts of proletariat
( ) win minds of proletariat
(-) win bodies of proletariat (don't do. that is disgusting.)
( ) get parts for comrade semenov
( ) ruin the good name of a major corporation
( ) cripple capitalist government infrastructure
( ) find supplies to throw a communist party!

I think I can do that. I head out into the world and almost immediately check off the first item, then use my Communistic Converter to cripple the capitalist government and quietly worry that I was supposed to do that another way; you can only use the converter once. Still, it not only worked but gave no indicator that I was in trouble and so I continue on to the school where I find a (very minor) error:

>x box
The box is filled with copies of Marx's Communist Manifesto.

>take manifesto
Those seem to be a part of the cardboard box.

I don't think that was intended. Anyway, I fix that problem (and am annoyed I can't sell the American flag at the pawn shop, as it seems like that would be an appropriately symbolic thing to do) and that lets me check off another item on the list. Consulting that list, I see that I was wrong about having crippled the government. Hmm. I'll have to investigate. On the way I deliver the needed parts and check that off, so I guess I'm doing this in order. This is going pretty quickly; the puzzles are easy so far but fun to do anyway.

Okay, got the government thing done - so I hadn't somehow ruined everything, and I used the flag so maybe that's why I couldn't pawn it. After that I ruin the corporation (also super easy) and then try to further damage capitalism by hanging a 'Out to Lunch' sign on it, only to find that the building has to be referred to as "office building" rather than "corporate edifice" which is what the room description says. Not a big deal, but still. Oh, another bug - I just saw that I still have the flag, even though I used it to clog the toilet. I try to do it again to see if I can get infinite points, and it tells me the toilet is already clogged.

>look in toilet
There is nothing on the toilet.

Huh. Whatever. None of these are huge deals (I don't care that Comrade Jetski acts prior to the room description rather than after) but they're noticeable. I glance at the hints because for whatever reason I'm feeling impatient with the liquor store clerk, and the first (most vague) hint is enough. So, I spend a while sitting there with all the items on my list checked off... drinking vodka... waiting for the game to end... and then wander around and find that as soon as I'm away from the headquarters a plot twist strikes!

So, on to the final location. No problems at first, but at the final moment I just can't find a way to distract Chambers or kill him or anything. It won't let me kill him (how is clubbing him to death with a bottle of vodka not a good enough plan?) and it won't let me light the mansion on fire with the greasy rag, possibly because I don't have a lighter or matches or anything. It also won't let me put sleeping serum in the vodka, so I guess vodka is sacred. Bleh.

Finally I use the hints, and find that my options are to club him to death with some sort of statue (which I didn't have but is presumably way better than the vodka) or to throw a molotov cocktail at the money pit, which I didn't think I could do because I thought I needed the vodka intact and didn't think I would be able to light anything without a source of fire. But whatever, I burn the money. Then I try to dive into the money pit again using the same commands I used earlier just to see if a lack of money will cause me to break my neck or something. Instead...

>stand on board
(the miraculous device)
That's not something you can stand on.

>x miraculous device
The device is deceptively simple. It bears only a single red button.

The miraculous device is currently switched on.

>stand on diving board
You get onto the diving board.

>dive into pit
You can't see any such thing.

So the device is somehow a board or something and the pit is gone. Lame. Dejected, I head out and look around the glorious wonderland I have created, and win the game. A message indicates that I should have found a way around using the pawn shop and buying a book since that was capitalist. Interesting!

So... that was pretty good. A bit sparse in parts, and with some really minor bugs. It was easy but the puzzles were fun.

SCORE: 6/10

EDIT: While I knew there were different ways to do the different tasks, I have found that the item most people are interested in is how I used the borscht. So, for the record, I fed it to the security guard and then waited a few turns until he became violently ill.

IFComp 2010 Review: Heated by Timothy Peers

2010-10-17T00:01:00.006-07:00

Time for: Heated by Timothy Peers!

Short non-spoiler summary: Heated is another one of those "complete some mundane tasks" games, but a decently fun one with an added frustration meter. Not bad.

Spoilers follow.

Ah! A game where the goal is to get ready for work. Let's see if this is better than "a quiet evening at home". I'm guessing it is, based just off of the opening. Examining myself tells me that I smell and am naked, and XYZZY gives a decent response.

There are more spoilers than normal in this one, just because.

Alarm won't shut up? Not a problem. I know it's waterproof, but my first instinct is still to flush it. Success! Next, grab my keys and... into the toilet, which is too gross for me to fish around in. Just to see, I UNDO and close the lid. Well, fate has it in for me I guess, because the keys still fall in... but it's not a bug, it actually jokes about the defiance of physics involved. Message received: the puzzle about getting the keys out, not keeping them from falling in.

Wandering the house, I find clothes and shoes and my lunch and an iron but can't iron my clothes because I'm already wearing them and taking them off is pointless now that they're covered in my funk. Ah, right, shower. Well, I'll get to that next time, because I'm clearly going to be too late on my first run through anyway. Find some gum, chew it, and find that it's for something else. Fine. Bathroom, use hanger to get keys... no. Oooh, hanger with gum on it? No. Let me read this more carefully. Oh, I have to bend the hanger. Sigh. Oh, and now my lunch has turned. I make it to the car, but while trying to unlock it the game ends.

FYI, it also ends if you deliberately flush your keys in anger.

This is a short game, so I'm fine with losing easily and in ways that require a restart. Once in the car you have one more problem, breaking down on the freeway. Just like with the alarm, getting the trunk open just requires me to act on instinct. So I make it in slightly early, smelling good, and not angry. I never did remember to iron, though. Crap. I back up to my last save in case I can use the steam from the radiator to either iron my clothes or heat the iron, and not surprisingly it doesn't work and so I back all the way up and this time I clearly get the "good" ending.

Not too shabby, especially when compared to the last few I played.

SCORE: 5/10

IFComp 2010 Review: East Grove Hills by XYZ

2010-10-16T12:01:00.009-07:00

Game number... fifteen, I think: East Grove Hills by XYZ!

Short non-spoiler summary: East Grove Hills should be a short story rather than being in this format, and if it were a short story it would need to be written better.

Spoilers follow.

Interesting intro, makes me eager to see what will happen. And then... I'm in school, and there's nothing I can do. We're giving a presentation and I'm manning powerpoint. I can't turn off the computer, or attack the teacher, or leave the room. This didn't bother me in "Under, In Erebus" because it was justified. This is mildly annoying. But then, it's done fast enough and it sounds like some bombs went off or something and now I'm somewhere else.

And... still on rails. I have to go down several streets and through a park to get to my destination but nothing can be done anywhere along the way and I can't make any kind of side trip. Bah. I can lose the game by waiting enough times, so I guess that's something. Once at the park I'm supposed to have a conversation but it's not a very interesting one and at least for the first few branches it doesn't matter what I say. After I've established that I just choose the first option every time; they aren't all that different or interesting anyway.

So now it's the past again I think, and I'm back in school and... wait. Something is wrong. I'm still in the conversation. Some of the choices look like they might actually fit the scene, but one is out of place. I go ahead and call... someone... a liar, and then select "say nothing" until the next scene change. After the change the menu options are gone, but I can't resist the urge to select one anyway. It works, and I use the conversation options from the previous scene. Whee!

So, trying to talk to the actual people in the scene (because yet again there's nothing it will let me do) I first get a nonsensical error message and then find that the two people in the room share the same conversation options. Also, one of the two options doesn't do anything. So then it moves to the next scene, and the game ends. So... what?

That wasn't a game, at all. It wasn't even a choose-your-own-adventure. It was less interactive than Gigantomania and not as well written. And if it had been written out like The Sons of the Cherry there wouldn't have been errors at least, and so I need to score this lower than both of those. That leaves a two and a one. I'm going to go ahead and give it a two, because I'm feeling generous.

SCORE: 2/10

IFComp 2010 Review: The Chronicler by John Evans

2010-10-16T00:01:00.007-07:00

You are... The Chronicler by John Evans!

Short non-spoiler summary: This game isn't finished, and it shows. That's really all you need to know.

Spoilers follow.

"Your ship touches down and you disembark. Just another research colony that's lost touch with the rest of humanity. Curious, though, that they seemed to have enough techies to replace a radio antenna. Whatever happened, it's your job to figure it out."

Something about that opening paragraph doesn't scan right for me, but that's probably my fault. So... examining myself gives me the default response. Not a good start. XYZZY gives nothing interesting - not an error, though. It says I can type ABOUT for assistance, but when I do so I just get some credits and "For game help, type HELP". Fine then. HELP.

Chronicler is a short game for the Interactive Fiction Competition 2010. Unfortunately, due to time constraints it's only half finished, or perhaps three-quarters. I can only hope that you'll find some amusement from the manipulations of objects it affords, while apologizing for the shortness of the experience.

Huh. That's... not a great sign. "Hey there, this game is going to suck. Rather than entering it in a later competition, I've gone ahead and submitted it anyway! You can pick up stuff, though!" Sigh. Whatever, I'll go ahead and play some. First command other than the usual is to look at the rhyolite that surrounds me (according to the description) because honestly I'm not sure what that is. "You can't see any such thing." Fine, Chronicler, I'll check Wikipedia. Volcanic rock, eh?

So, into the complex. Hallway, check. Boring plastic room, check. The only thing mentioned in the room description isn't implemented. Back to the hallway! The other direction... teleports me somewhere. There's a device here with a really interesting description. Interesting because after mentioning that it has a button it says "To press the button, simply "use" or "activate" the device". But... you would only have to say that if you were so lazy that you couldn't be bothered to actually implement a simple button.

>push button
You can't see any such thing.

Wow. Anyway, the device is probably a time machine kind of thing because when I use it the unimplimented rubble and grime vanish and I can fully explore the massive three-room complex that has no entrance or exit. What? In the future a teleporter button has been helpfully installed - no telling how they did that in the first place but whatever. That gets me to Engineering, which is filled with machines that aren't there. God, this is awful.

Okay, now I know how to get to that three-room area; there's a magical button that only exists in the past (on the floor of a hallway) that makes the floor "melt" into stairs. Those stairs then don't exist in the future (nor does the button) I guess because they've replaced them with the teleporter. A teleporter, to go downstairs. It's like twenty feet or something. The guys who built the teleporter thoughtfully left the light fixture laying in the hallway where I put it though. That was nice of them I guess. Then again, there was no need to put it back because even after being removed it stays in the room description for the closet.

Now I've found a charred uniform that I think is supposed to be mine, except I ditched my uniform a long time ago and have been running around naked. Yes, seriously. Anyway, I turn on the thingy and get an ending (then UNDO and get another) and... it's dumb. Can I give this less than a one? No? Because this was horrible. This was a non-game, and a waste of my time. If I thought it would help I would find John Evans and punch him in the nose.

SCORE: 1/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Mite by Sara Dee

2010-10-15T12:01:00.005-07:00

Here goes: Mite by Sara Dee!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a cute game, and worth playing. Feels like it needs a little polish, and it's pretty simple, but still good.

Spoilers follow.

Simple enough: I'm some little fairy folk guy out to return a gem to the prince. Sounds like fun. The response for examining myself (the first time only) contains some added exposition, and XYZZY gives a great response. Looking good, Mite.

Not a lot of notes, sorry.

Everything is set up nicely in this. The puzzles are easy but not stupid, and for the most part I didn't stumble around too badly. The game feels like the IF equivalent of a children's book but I can't speak to age levels or anything when it comes to the writing and puzzles because I'm not great at accurately pretending I'm a kid.

I think if I were qualified to do that and if this turned out to be perfect for a particular age it might be worth some extra points - not that there's anything wrong with having a game for adults that still has that childlike feel. Anyway... hmm. I'm conflicted on this one. Let's say...

SCORE: 5/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Under, In Erebus by Brian Rapp

2010-10-15T00:01:00.007-07:00

And now: Under, In Erebus by Brian Rapp!

Short non-spoiler summary: Under, In Erebus is maybe a good idea but I had trouble enjoying it. Having more of a story and less... random stuff... would maybe help guide the player.

Spoilers follow.

Okay, back to the reviews! This one is promising - a cool picture shows before the game and looking at myself not only gives a decent response but seems like it's going to be dynamic. The first few turns don't offer a lot in the way of options as far as I can tell (XYZZY replies with something but doesn't help) but maybe after I'm done I'll go back and see if there's anything I can do before the story starts for real. Just to be clear, I'm not complaining; getting shoved around for the first handful of turns is deliberate and is a nice way to get me into the story.

What's the first thing I should do now that I'm trapped underground in the dark? Something stupid that gets me killed, you say? No problem! Okay, and... done. That was easy! Nothing particularly interesting, so UNDO and let's get on with things.

If it is possible for something to be blacker than complete darkness, then this is the place. The heat also seems more oppressive here, almost compelling you to lean against a column for support. On the column is a button, which you manage to avoid accidentally pressing. Arranged in a straight line perpendicular to the tracks are six booths. The openings of the first three booths are each protected by a staticky curtain of energy that tickles upon contact. The remaining booths are securely shuttered. A retractable extension cord extends from the fourth booth. At the base of the third booth is a hole through which the cord could fit.

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's that everything is pitch black and yet I can see? Or... or am I getting that description by feeling around? Anyway, it's also that it seems like rather than describing the area and letting me find out the details this has told me what I'm doing (leaning against a column (every time I view the room), feeling the openings of the booths, assessing the possible uses for the hole in the third booth). Meh. Well, it's early yet. Let's keep going.

Okay, so it's dark but really I don't seem to have a lot of trouble getting around or finding things. That being said, this seems like the first game so far where I'll want a map because the layout is so open that stumbling around blindly might make me miss a room or miss a clue encoded in the layout of them or something.

And... no. No, not really. Huh. Well, after playing for a while I find a quest of some sort but there's nowhere to go and very few items. This is getting boring, and either I'm being stupid or I missed something or the game is bad. I'm going to get some hints.

Oh. Okay, so this changes things. I'm just going to say it here: you need to put things in the booths, but they won't accept everything. It's a spelling game. Not a terrible idea.

And now I've played with that for a while, and I think I missed something. I think I used up some one-time letters that I need back? Well, UNDO isn't a realistic option because of how much I've been wandering around and I don't feel like starting over. In the end, this is a puzzle in search of a game; that's not always bad but it's not my favorite either. The idea that it's dark and I'm feeling around doesn't come through to me, and parts of the puzzle feel more obscure than difficult. I liked the start a lot, and I like the idea a lot, but I'm not crazy about the game as a whole.

SCORE: 4/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Gris et Jaune by Steve van Gaal

2010-10-09T12:01:00.011-07:00

Okay: Gris et Jaune by Steve van Gaal!

Short non-spoiler summary: This one has a lot of promise, but isn't ready yet. It's a non-apocalyptic zombie game with some good writing, and you should probably play it if a more complete version is released.

Spoilers follow.

I think this is another zombie game, but we'll see. Even though the whole zombie thing is a little overdone these days it hasn't lost its charm for me and so the prospect of two zombie games in a row isn't a bad thing at all.

Disjointed. Sparse. I seem to be a zombie. I can't look at myself, but I'm guessing that's on purpose. XYZZY? Check. Only one option available, which is to eat the food that's there. Hopefully that will get my brain working. And it does! Lovely. The game expands a little, and looking at myself again... yup. Much improved. I like this.

And I'm dead. My fault, really. I knew I wasn't allowed to eat the plants in the garden. Whatever is going on, it's not at all forgiving, which I find intriguing.

>till garden
You drag the stick across the ground like you remember, but that's not the right way to do it. It's so hard to remember, and it hurts you to. You shouldn't try to remember anything - you should learn things anew.

>till garden
You drag the stick across the dirt. It makes a smooth line. No, that's not it. You flip it, blade down. Ah, there you go. The blade of the hoe bites at the dirt, and spits it back soft and crumbling. You move slowly, but you don't sweat, you don't burn, and you don't tire.

Heh.

I've tried a few nonstandard commands and they've had perfect context-related results. All good stuff. The game (which isn't an apocalyptic thing at all, but a Vodou Zombi thing) moves on and I find some ways to not win, one of which involves flipping the whole plot off and leaving. That option appeals to me somehow (not because I'm not enjoying this, it's just that I like the idea of the main character abandoning the story), but that still counts as a loss so I undo. After a while I'm clearly getting closer to the end and suddenly I start to stumble across minor bugs. Nothing crazy, although one bothers me:

>look in safe
(the safe)
In the safe there is a large bottle of thick, paste-like brown liquid and some loose papers.

>take papers
(the papers in the safe)
The papers are just for reading.

>read them
You can't see "them" (the concoctions) at the moment.

Okay, that's an item from another area. That probably shouldn't happen. Anyway, I get more specific and am able to read the papers. But then...

>take bottle
His eyes light up, for a moment.

This is the message you get for picking up a different, small bottle. I had dropped it. So this has nothing to do with the large bottle in the safe.

>take large bottle
You can't see any such thing.

>look in safe
(the safe)
There's just some papers.

Huh. Just to confirm, I look in my inventory. I've edited it quite a bit to avoid spoilers.

>i
You are carrying:
a small bottle
bottle of Four Roses
bottle of Mao Dou

Okay, I think I had all those bottles, but... Mao Dou doesn't sound familiar. Is that the milk bottle I grabbed earlier?

>x bottle of mao dou
I only understood you as far as wanting to examine the bottle of Four Roses.

Wait, what? I'll try again.

>x mao dou
A tiny bottle, 3 oz. maybe, with a small amount of brown liquid in it.

>x small bottle
A tiny bottle, 3 oz. maybe, with a small amount of brown liquid in it.

Okay... those are two different items but with both I'm looking at the small bottle.

>x milk bottle
All that remains is a dry, cracked, brown residue at the bottom.

>drop milk bottle
Dropped.

>i
You are carrying:
a small bottle
bottle of Four Roses

>l

End of the Hall
Little more than an alcove. The rest of the hall is to the south.

The safe's door swings open on its hinges.

You can also see bottle of Mao Dou here.

>x large bottle
You can't see any such thing.

So... the milk bottle is for sure the Mao Dou even though I can't refer to it as that. The large bottle from the safe doesn't exist, and... yeah. Whatever. I don't care anymore.

I head out and try to finish the game as fast as possible since I'm pushing right against the two hour limit here. I get to a point where I keep dying and with such short time I use the in-game walkthrough. I... wait. Seriously? The correct command is "smell" when the line before specifically said that I can't do that? I'm confused.

After that the descriptions stop coming, like I'm in Terse mode. I confirm that I'm in Verbose, but it does no good. It might be that that first lack of description was somehow normal and then by using the 'verbose' command I broke it? It's not really clear, but either way. I'm out of time and the walkthrough looks like I have a while to go, so I guess I'll have to follow the rules and stop here to give a score.

This is a really good game in so many ways, but there are some glitches and issues. The bottle thing, above, and the reaction to taking things in the lab after you should be free to do so. Verbose breaking is a bigger deal than you might think; partly it's because descriptions change and partly it's because for whatever reason the room titles are gone as well. That "smell" thing is also rubbing me the wrong way, and some of the room descriptions forgot to tell me about exits. Other little things.

I think this game would be an eight or nine, if it felt finished. I'm giving it a three because I am giving an auto-two (if not one) to anything with obvious game-ending glitches or terrible verb-guessing and this has both but neither are to a large degree and I really liked the start. So I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, and I think it would be an eight or more with a few quick fixes. I would suggest playing this once it gets ironed out.

SCORE: 3/10

EDIT: I emailed with the author about the bugs I found, and he does plan on fixing all that. I asked him to let me know once he gets around to that - I'm looking forward to re-playing the game and finishing it then.

IFComp 2010 Review: Divis Mortis by Lynnea Dally

2010-10-09T00:01:00.008-07:00

Here's Divis Mortis by Lynnea Dally!

Short non-spoiler summary: A zombie game, which is pretty good and just needs some polish. Worth checking out.

Spoilers follow.

Okay, first thought is that I might be a zombie. Let's see. Hmm. Looking at myself focuses more on clothes than on, for example, a lack of pulse. While I'm at it, I XYZZY and get a decent response. Okay, what else is there? The next room has a couple corpses in it, and I figure the fastest way to determine my status is to dig in. Sure enough, it lets me feast on the woman. I'm still hungry, though.

I search the hospital (I'm in a hospital, did I mention?) and find more bodies which I now can't eat. (Note: everything after this indicates that the main character, at least, does not think he is a zombie. If he is he's not a normal one since he can use tools and whatnot. Still, I remain convinced that's what is going on even if the flesh-eating was a throwaway joke.) I grab some decent supplies, glance outside, and decide that sticking to the hospital is the way to go. There's a barricade on the stairs and because this is a game I can't dismantle it or climb over it. I need something to stand on and while there are a million things that would work I'll have to find the one that the game is thinking of.

Huh. Some luck here - one of the things I tried is too heavy to get to the barricade but just light enough to drag in front of the main doors. Hooray added security! That makes my search feel less frustrating, even though I'm still looking. The various chairs and the old microwave and other items can't be moved, but I finally find the magic object and move on. While looking, I encounter my first live zombie and discover the hard way that my gun isn't loaded. UNDO.

Upstairs I deal with another zombie in a wonderfully clumsy way and get what I need to reach the basement. Interestingly, even though there was a barricade there's nobody upstairs - just that one zombie and a chunk of someone else.

I have some fun in the basement until I find that I need a screwdriver. I search the hospital from top to bottom, trying everything, and simply can't find one. The description implies I could do it with something less specific, like a coin, but none of the likely items in my inventory do it. I feel certain at this point that I've exhausted all my options and so I check the hints.

Well, shit. It seems that I need something from outside, and now that I cleverly barricaded the front doors if I remove the barricade I die. There doesn't seem to be another way out as far as I can tell. So... I guess that's it. I don't have enough time to go back and start from scratch. Lame. The real shame of it is that up until now I was really enjoying the game. Also, I know that as soon as I close this thing I'll think of a way to get outside.

Supposedly reinforcements are on the way so I'm not really sure why I even need to do anything else. I should be able to lock myself in somewhere and wait it out. Oh, right, it sounds like someone is in trouble back there. Sigh. Altruism is hard. After waiting until turn 1001 with no result, I off myself. It lists that as a victory, since it was clearly what I was trying for. I got 69/100 points.

Well, that was a lot of fun. Fun enough that I'll go back and play again later so I can finish it for sure. The writing was good, it was well-implemented with only a few little glitchy things, and the puzzles were good with the aforementioned exception of my disliking quests to find a specific object when anything should do. I'm sure I was just a few turns from the end, so I can rate this pretty reliably.

SCORE: 7/10

EDIT: I emailed with the author to let her know about an odd glitch that was harmless but really baffling, and I asked at the same time if I had, in fact, been in an unwinnable state. Not surprisingly there was a way for me to get what I needed, and it was something I had mused about after closing the game. So that's good to know. Also, I'd like to point out that this is a first attempt. That's right - this is the very first game this author has made. I can't even imagine what we'll get after some practice.

IFComp 2010 Review: The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep by Ben Pennington

2010-10-08T12:01:00.009-07:00

Next game? The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep by Ben Pennington!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is what happens when you spend an hour making the core game and two months adding flavor. It's okay.

Fairly spoiler-free on this one, actually, but have a cut anyway.

Not unexpectedly, this starts with one of my sheep running off. I grab my crook and get to work! Sadly, I am terrible at my job. I locate the sheep immediately and it runs again, and then even though I know right where it is I can't get it. Since this is a biblical game I try praying, which has a nice response but doesn't actually help me. Still, points for including that as an action.

I find I'm getting impatient quickly; without having done much I already worry that this is some variation on guess-the-verb. That's probably unfounded, but I use the hint function anyway. Hmm. That was a bit obscure. Someone wasn't a Boy Scout.

After that it's pretty straightforward, and the game ends. I've got a lot of time left on the clock so I go ahead and try some of the things it lists as amusing. Some of them are, in fact, pretty great. That really sums this game up. The extras are all there, and it's pretty solid, but the actual game isn't really impressive. So how do I score it, considering I did enjoy the Easter eggs?

SCORE: 4/10

IFComp 2010 Review: A Quiet Evening at Home by Anonymous

2010-10-08T00:01:00.008-07:00

And now for: A Quiet Evening at Home by Anonymous

Short non-spoiler summary: "A Quiet Evening at Home" is not an ironic title. The climax of this game involves sitting on the couch and kinda zoning out. This isn't a great game.

Spoilers follow.

Okay! This one drops you right into your first task: use the bathroom. The description of yourself reflects this as well, which is nice. Some punctuation problems are visible, but not terrible. First things first, XYZZY. Hmm. No response at all... that shows a lack of respect, in my opinion. This kid should get off my lawn.

The door isn't visible even though it's in the description, but once on the stoop there's a good response for looking under the mat - so that's nice. Some great opportunities for custom verbs are missed here, most notably 'pee'. I mean, that's what it keeps telling me to do and then it says it doesn't know the word. I had hoped for a humorous message about dry cleaning bills or something.

After some wandering, it does appear that (at 6:12 pm) you will lose both your bladder control and the game. With such urgency you would think the character would point you in the direction of the bathroom; it's his house, right? Surely he knows where it is?

>sit on toilet
That's not something you can sit down on.

I wander around, surrounded by invisible items. Bad implementation abounds! The rooms are barely described, and not at all interesting. I seem to be hungry, but it won't let me eat (or microwave) my hamster and I can't get the soup can open because it's locked. I put everything into everything else, so the hamster is in the rodent ball and everything is in the trash can which is in my backpack. Then I try to do something with the ball and it says "She's not done rolling yet". So I take the hamster out and put it back in its cage. I try again, and get the same response. So the ball is empty, but I can't touch it because "she's not done rolling yet". Great. It seems to be stuck forever in the garbage can.

Checking the walkthough, it appears I have put the game in an unwinnable state.

Okay: RESTART. Grab all the items again, and the hamster ball works this time. I can now open the soup, but I need to do something else to it. Hmm. After some fumbling with the verbiage I get the soup watered down and add an extra surprise. There are some conflicting messages so I check to see that my surprise worked:

>open microwave
(the microwave interior)
You open the microwave interior, revealing a bowl.

>look in bowl
In the bowl are some cold soup and a hamster.

>close microwave
(the microwave interior)
You close the microwave interior.

>turn microwave on
(the old microwave on)
you turn on the microwave for three minutes
the microwave whirrs loudly.

Amazingly, this doesn't kill the hamster. I put the hamster in its ball instead, put the ball in the garbage can (along with the kitchen trash, which the game says is getting rank), and toss the whole thing outside. Now it says I'm bored but don't want to watch a movie, so I watch television and play on my laptop.

After that it's bedtime, so I duck back outside and throw everything I own in the trash then head to my bedroom. It seems I need to lock the doors, though, and the key is in the trash. Since the flashlight is also in the trash I can't see the trash can to open it and the game is once again unwinnable.

UNDO seems to be unlimited though, so after some trial and error I do manage to get everything in the trash AND get to bed. Just out of spite I wait until 9:00 am the next morning to go to sleep to ensure that this guy will not only be late for work but will miss any chance to salvage his stuff before the trash truck comes.

Well, that was... buggy, a little, and also just not compelling in any way. It felt like something you might make just for yourself as practice when first learning how to write interactive fiction. I'm reminded of a far better game called Kissing the Buddha's Feet which had a similarly mundane goal but was funny and interesting and everything. So it's not the subject matter, it's the execution. To the author: if this is your first finished game, it's not bad. It's just not something to enter into a competition. Do keep it up.

SCORE: 2/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Aotearoa by Matt Wigdahl

2010-10-07T12:01:00.006-07:00

Game number... seven? I think seven: Aotearoa by Matt Wigdahl!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is a great game, which takes place in a world where New Zealand is bigger and dinosaurs survive there to this day.

Pretty much no spoilers here, if you want to read on.

Okay, so I appear to be headed to an island with real live dinosaurs on it - in modern times. Sounds neat. Writing is good, and there's a really nice tutorial mode that I haven't seen before. Playing around on the boat shows that everything is fully implemented, and after the plot strikes and I find myself on the island I can quickly tell this is going to get the full ten points unless something goes terribly wrong.

> name female oviraptor Sparkles*

You address the female oviraptor. "I'm going to call you 'Sparkles'."

Sparkles seems utterly disinterested.

Oh god... I love this game. Okay. So, do some first aid and such, and then... a monkey-bat thing! I will call you Georgia. Georgia and I work together and solve a puzzle after exactly the right amount of trial and error, and my score continues to creep upwards slowly. This game is incredibly well-written; the main character is more excited by solving the puzzle than I am, and shows it appropriately.

I'll avoid spoilers here, because you should totally play this. The game moves along nicely, and while the ending feels the tiniest bit abrupt and many of the potential deaths are of the "whoops, wrong way" variety which I'm not crazy about, it all feels really satisfying. This is absolutely my favorite so far. No question. The whole thing just felt... professional.

I went back and tried to name the Captain 'Snuggles' but it wouldn't let me. Oh well.

SCORE: 10/10

* - There was another oviraptor later, and I named it Motion. Eh? Eh? I crack me up.

IFComp 2010 Review: The Sons of the Cherry by Alex Livingston

2010-10-07T00:01:00.008-07:00

And now: The Sons of the Cherry by Alex Livingston

Short non-spoiler summary: This is closer to a story in format, so less interactive than most of the IFComp games. Whether or not you like it will probably come down to if you like it as a story. I wasn't crazy about it.

Spoilers follow.

This one says it's part of a series, but I'm ignoring that because I feel like I should judge the game as a stand-alone. Still, that's something to keep in mind if it turns out to be good. Okay! So... hmm. Looks like I'm going to have a sliding scale on three stats:

Spooky / Sunlit
Preservation / Altruism
Physicality / Intellect

So, first of all, this is less interactive than most interactive fiction. It's like an old choose-your-own-adventure book, but with less options. I played through and while the writing was good it wasn't great and I was skimming a little near the end. I did it a second time to see how much my choices matter, and for the first half of the game they didn't seem to do much at all. I played around a little and determined the following:

1. The Moss/Water/Ink choice right at the beginning changes some flavor.
2. Whether or not you actually join the super-secret magic cult changes the ending.

And that's it. So, not particularly interactive. That's true for most games at the core of them, but at least they feel like you're in control. I think what it comes down to is that without the ability to look around and handle items and try stupid things I need it to be really compelling or really well written or have a lot of options with different endings.

SCORE: 3/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Oxygen by Benjamin Sokal

2010-10-06T12:01:00.009-07:00

Time for: Oxygen by Benjamin Sokal!

Short non-spoiler summary: It's short but well written. Worth giving a shot.

Spoilers follow.

Right away the writing seems solid - I'm a repairman on a mining station and something has gone wrong. Pulls me right into the action and makes me want to get moving. Also, a great response from looking at myself, and a cute effect from XYZZY. Looks like this will be a huge improvement over the last two.

Not a lot of notes on this game... not a lot in the way of puzzles, but it's good storytelling and there are some varients on the ending. This would make a really good part of a larger game. The main plot involves routing oxygen around - I had time to restore a saved game and save the fore, the aft, neither, and both. Some of the endings aren't what you would expect but make sense within the narritive (you can save people but have it be a bad ending for you personally, or the other way around).

Short but satisfying.

SCORE: 6/10

IFComp 2010 Review: R by therealeasterbunny

2010-10-06T00:01:00.006-07:00

On to: R by therealeasterbunny!

Short non-spoiler summary: It's a pirate game, but in a format that I find to be painful.

No spoilers follow, but have a cut anyway.

This one isn't off to a good start. It's in some interpreter I'm not familiar with, which only allows commands of one or two words. It lists exits, but sometimes to get somewhere you have to type "GO" followed by some inanimate object. So I can't open the trapdoor or go down, but I can GO TRAPDOOR and get downstairs. Ugh. Not surprisingly, I can't look at myself or use XYZZY.

There's not a lot of description to anything. I get that a rival pirate has stolen my stuff and my wife and ruined my rowboat. I head to the island and look around, seeing a lot of rooms with no purpose and a forest with exits that lead right back into itself. It's not that the rooms are all just labeled 'forest', because if I drop something and then head off in a direction it's still there at my feet.

This is terrible. I can't do this anymore. I'm going to just use the walkthrough.

Wow. Yeah, that... that was bad. There were several commands that I never would have typed without the walkthrough. I tried some variants to see what the game would say, and they didn't work. That would have made the game completely unplayable without the walkthrough, and to be honest it was pretty unplayable even with it.

If the author happens to stumble across this review: Please, don't be discouraged... but do use a better language (Inform seems to be the big one, TADS is decent as well) and have some people playtest so that you'll know what commands they can't figure out.

SCORE: 1/10

IFComp 2010 Review: Gigantomania by Michelle Tirto

2010-10-05T12:01:00.008-07:00

Number three: Gigantomania by Michelle Tirto!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is an artistic game, which I didn't particularly enjoy but which is mostly written well and so I expect there will be a lot of people that don't like it and a handful that think it is genius.

Spoilers follow.

Right off the bat, this one sounds depressing and serious. Not my style, but the writing is good. Nonstandard description of self and a response for XYZZY, which manages to still fit in with the feel of the game. I appear to be a poor and miserable Russian farmer. I steal some jewelry and kill my wife just because it seems like the thing to do; this game is so dreary and depressing that it actually feels like the logical choice. Then, after restarting because I took too long looking around (you're on a time limit), I do it again and hand over my grain to the collector. I've got extra food, plus some hidden at home, and I've stolen a valuable ring. Also this other guy now owes me a favor and I have one less mouth to feed. Surely, things are looking up...

Or not. Now I'm an industrial worker rather than being on a farm. I don't have the rings or the crops in my inventory anymore, and I don't think I am the same person. Huh. So I do some tedious work again (less repetition than farming though) and then go to get my bread. I get tired of waiting and steal some, which goes badly. It doesn't end the game right away but I also can't find a command that helps. It says that violence isn't the answer, and it won't let me eat the bread or give it back, and I can't run away. Hmm.

The correct answer seems to be to wait and get no bread and go back to your terrible apartment and sleep. Now I'm a bit better off, and in my office. Clearly a different person again. I'm hiding things that are not sufficiently communist. Most go into my secret wall panel, but I drop a trashy romance novel in my father-in-law's office just for fun. After that they take me away to interrogate me and it says "A fellow comrade is sitting across from me, and he's staring as if he's daring me to speak first." so on principle I refuse to say anything. I wait a full day (until... fifty o'clock? Hmm.) and this guy still isn't blinking. What a professional! "Nonchalantly creepy, with black leather gloves and a hat that casts a shadow over his eyes. He's leaning back, waiting for my first move." This guy has just stared at me for a full day, with neither of us saying a word or eating or sleeping or using the bathroom. His hat isn't implemented or I would steal it. I finally try to talk to him, and that isn't implemented either.

I wait another half a day, just in case.

Okay. So, I find that there's no table or chair (though we're seated). I can't stand or sleep or go anywhere. Let's try the HINT function. "Move some, talk some". I've tried that already, but let's try again. I ask him about a few topics (the weather, me, him) to no avail. HINT. "Be reasonable." Hah! Too far gone for that, I'm afraid. And... that seems to be it for the hints.

Oh, there it is. "TALK". Well, on the one hand I should have tried that sooner, but on the other hand the responses that I did try should have resulted in something. Anyway, it seems I've missed some items and so I blame it on my father-in-law.

And now I'm an awful prick musing to himself about military and political situations and what to have for dinner. I'm sure if I were paying any attention at all I would be able to tell you what historical figure I am. This is all conversation options with nobody else in the conversation, so it's like I am controling the stream of consciousness. After a while the game breaks and I get a whole string of blanks. All I can do is select the only option and get another non-response. Eventually this spits me back out.

It gets worse, and worse, and worse. It's absolte nonsenical garbage at some points, and then it says "checkmate" and the game ends, I guess. There's no indication that anything I did had any impact on anything. The writing was good, and I know not everything has to be a game in the traditional sense, but I still didn't really enjoy it and there were some flaky bits.

SCORE: 3/10

EDIT: Okay, so there were these characters in tags during that last part and it has been suggested to me that they are chess moves and not glitchiness like I had thought. This means all those otherwise blank options were still serving some purpose, but I still didn't particularly enjoy it.

IFComp 2010 Review: Rogue of the Multiverse by C.E.J. Pacian

2010-10-05T00:01:00.010-07:00

Next up: Rogue of the Multiverse by C.E.J. Pacian!

Short non-spoiler summary: This is worth playing, even though I have a few complaints. There are some really funny lines, and some neat ideas, but no real puzzles.

Spoilers follow.

Okay, I'm in jail. Looks like we have some non-standard replies for my description and XYZZY. That's a good sign. No inventory, but I have a prison jumpsuit. Let's see... ah! I'm not in Kansas anymore: "It identifies you as convict #76954, albeit not in human numerals." The room is sparse, but fully implemented. We're off to a good start.

Well, I have nothing to lose at this point, so... KILL GUARD. Yeah, that went as well as I expected. Okay, I'll cooperate from here on out unless something looks especially tempting. One amusing interview later, I'm ready to be sent to another world on work duty. I am assured that there is a good chance the teleporter won't kill me, which is nice. I really like the doctor.

Suddenly the game takes a drastic and unexpected turn for the suck. I arrive in a nondescript city with no implementation, and walk in one direction fifty times without seeing anything before getting zapped back. That was stupid. Upon returning, I find another stupid thing - when I attempt to hoard bananas just to play into their racial stereotype, I discover that the food dispenser just creats the SAME banana over and over. So if you take it and hit the button again it is gone from your inventory. Lame.

The missions are all like that first trip, although they get better once I remember to use my scanner. I know that with the time investment for making games there's a choice to be made between fleshing out the destinations and having a wider variety of them, and really what I want is both which may not be fair. Still, I feel like there may have been a better way to do that. It is fun though, seeing what items you can find.

So then I get an actual chase scene but it's not clear how much I'm influencing it. Hmm. I should probably go back at some point and try other options, but I don't think I have time in the two hour window because I spent a lot of time tooling around on missions. Looking at the walkthrough, It doesn't look like different choices at the end would have done a lot although there are two endings listed (and I found I could also get two varients on my ending).

All in all, not bad. The writing was very good, the implementation never made me want to cry. I would have liked some puzzles, and would have liked it if there was something to break up the text in the mission locations.

SCORE: 7/10