I've finally got round to doing it - that is, judging for the competition. (I judged last year, come to think of it, but only four games, so I don't really count that.) Below are my comments on the games and the scores I gave each one. (Note: because I'm using an Acorn, I wasn't able to run the TADS, ALAN, DOS or HTML entries, which left, er, Inform games only. This is unfortunate, but if I ever get access to a PC, or up-to-date Acorn interpreters, I will endeavour to play them and include them on this page.)
"Calliope"
Fairly solid but inconsequential. Technically suffers from a few flaws (the television in particular doesn't appear to have been implemented despite suggestions to the contrary, and the Mac can be lifted up with the greatest of ease), and the game could do with more synonyms. Doesn't sparkle or gel particularly, but certainly nothing for a newbie author to be ashamed of.
Score: 4
"Hunter, in Darkness"
An effective hunting tale, with the sparse descriptions serving to enhance the experience. The writing is, on the whole, very well done, and there is a genuine sense of panic when the player character seems to lose his/her sense of direction and go round and round the same passages. The formidable prey, barely seen but often heard and smelt, is well conceived. There are occasional lapses, however; at one point, a fairly obvious (to me, anyway) synonym is omitted, resulting in a guess the verb scenario in order to solve a crucial puzzle, and some of the descriptions are a little disappointing (eg "Dull room\ This is a dull room. <etc>"). However, the latter is a small point, as I suspect this game is meant to be played in the same frantic manner as I played it, with little time for studying room descriptions.
Score: 8
"Jacks or better to murder, Aces to win."
Certainly an interesting little tale, although the title is somewhat cumbersome. The puzzles are relatively easy and don't form much of a barrier, which I believe was intentional. Perhaps not entirely successful, though; in some instances I felt that there was just too much storytelling (often several screens of text in one go), which at times felt overbearing. One of the rooms is purely decorative, and the description almost seems to be saying 'This room isn't important; please ignore it'. On the other hand, there were many good points, particularly the whole quasi-religious setup.
Score: 7
"Music Education"
A little too long and rambling for my liking. For some reason I could never quite manage to make myself a good mental map of the college (pen and paper are a no no except with *very* big games), and consequently found myself wandering round at random. Although the opening text gives a broad hint as to what the aim of the game is, I was never sure what I was meant to be doing, other than find money for the parking meter. A few of the puzzles are, in my opinion, unfair - particularly the whole business with the postal worker. The walkthrough says that the character Joseph is the built-in help, and that we should ask him for help on any particular topic; however, I could not get even one decent answer out of him, hitting the default reply on all attempts. Most NPCs in the game are pretty much unresponsive as well. Maybe a little too ambitious - although, again, a good first try for a new author.
Score: 4
"A Day for Soft Food"
An interesting game, with a definite charm of its own. The confusing direction system, unfortunately, completely wrecked any hope of me building a mental map, making it difficult for me to negotiate my way round. I don't like the initial time limit, either - it seemed to prohibit exploration and experimentation. And while some of the puzzles are well thought out, there are others that strike me as a little on the unfair side. I know this might sound patronising, but the words "good attempt" seem appropriate.
Score: 6
"Life on Beal Street"
I won't touch on the 'is this IF?' argument, but I will say that I recognise that this has some extremely good writing. And I didn't like it.
Score: 4
[Additional note: judging by other people's review, I wasn't paying this entry enough attention. Apparently the writing is awful. The brief comment represents the amount of time I spent on it (a couple of minutes at best, while watching something on TV at the same time).]
"Only After Dark"
This is a game that really needed a walkthrough to go with it, seeing as there are several points where the player has to die attempting things several times before stumbling on to the solution. (Yes, the solution is logical, but so were the other things I tried, and I wasn't to know that they would somehow fail.) The 'interactive' part is quite disappointing - in many cases, you have to wait for things to happen to you. On the positive side, however, I like the scenario a lot, and the writing is good. Unfortunately I couldn't finish it - I couldn't figure out what to do to save the day in day two - so I'll take a point off my final score.
Score: 5
"Lomalow"
I quite like this one. I liked the way that the backstory was revealed a little at a time, until the end. I was a little disappointed, I must admit, that nothing actually happened at the end and nothing was resolved - the information stopped flowing, and that was that. (I assume it *was* the end - typing 'hint' told me that I'd won.) The game could have done with some beta testing to catch the bugs and spelling/grammatical errors, at which point one of the beta testers could have helpfully pointed out that the word 'abrupt', and any of its derivatives, were banned words for the day and that one of the descriptions would have to be rewritten.
Score: 5
"Winter Wonderland"
Definitely my favourite so far. Winter Wonderland is a well crafted, well written adventure of just the right size to be fulfilling while not being overblown. The majority of puzzles are either cute, or clever, or both, though I must admit I didn't find any mention of a stocking in the cottage, and even after reading about it in the hints, couldn't find any reference to it (apart from the fact that 'get stocking' worked). The use of colour and ASCII graphics is good too. What can I say? Like the author, I love the image of the snow-covered forest, and it is brought to life successfully here. And I only noticed one or two minor problems (missing synonyms, mostly). All in all, a very enjoyable experience.
Score: 10
"Thorfinn's Realm"
I didn't particularly like this one. I think it was the setting that put me off a little, and as I got into it, things didn't really get much better. The writing is fairly minimal and doesn't really sparkle at any point in the game, and the jokey touches here and there (such as the pizza) are more annoying than funny. After a while of wandering around and solving a few minor puzzles but not apparently getting anywhere, I began to feel that there was nothing in particular to do, and eventually gave up trying and ran through the game with the walkthrough. Admittedly this helped a bit; it demonstrated a few clever puzzles and a few nice touches here and there, but also confirmed my opinion that the game was long and rambling - spread out over far too big an area for what it is.
Score: 4
"Beat the Devil"
Happily, my adventure fatigue at this point (this being my third game of the day) quickly eroded as I got into this nicely-sized game. Everything is well laid out, with the puzzles being fun and not too challenging. The writing occasionally veers a little too close to 'jokey' but for the most part proves entertaining and amusing. I *did* need a little help towards the end, as my second hour was running out, but I'm sure I would have got there eventually if not for the time limit. I only noticed one or two small little bugs, but I was happy to overlook these and keep playing. Good fun.
Score: 9
"Guard Duty"
The mixing of a modern day element (in this case, security firms) with a fantasy setting can be interesting and funny, but this game's premise didn't really grab me. It could still have won me over by presenting an involving and lively adventure, but unfortunately its drawbacks jarr a little too much. When entering the whatsit's door and attempting to go off in a direction the author doesn't want the player to go, the game says that we should really follow the whatsit for a meeting of some sort. But the whatsit didn't go anywhere, or at least if it did, it wasn't mentioned on screen. You can end up in a pitch black room with no warning (wouldn't the player have noticed that it looked quite *dark* in that direction? - mind you, the darkness appears to be quite random), and you are expected to continue to find your way about. The author's personality quite often intrudes upon the descriptions (somewhere in the description of a painting is the phrase "Like I said"), and some room descriptions are a total waste of time (eg the one near the beginning which seems to read "This room could many things; it could be X, or Y, or Z, but it's not. It's A."). And that's not to mention the bug that crashes interpreters when you try to get an inventory of what you are carrying. Ultimately, I ended up lost and wandering around, with no idea of what I was meant to do and no sign of any characters or anything particularly interesting. It doesn't help that in some cases movement isn't linear, and that going in the opposite direction to the one you've just travelled in does not always result in you going back to your previous location. Especially when some of the problem areas are pitch black so you can't even read the text descriptions. If all the bugs were removed, and the writing polished, this could be a decent game. At the moment, it's not.
Score: 3 (for effort)
"Chicks Dig Jerks"
Definitely not what I was expecting. Starting out and trying to work out what to do is a bit of a pain (things mentioned in the descriptions that seem fairly important or interesting are not implemented, and directions are generally not given unless you type in a wrong one), but once I started to get somewhere I found that I really enjoyed this game. The text is well written (apart from the occasional typo) and the characterisation pleasing. The puzzles are only a minor hindrance to progress, which in this case is a good move as the writing is quite absorbing. In one or two instances, I wasn't sure what the author was referring to in the text, and it took me a short while to work out what on earth a 'glock' is (the description doesn't help), but these seem fairly minor faults. Unfortunately there is one particularly large fault towards the end of the game, something that appears to make the ending impossible to reach, which is a great shame as I was looking forward to the conclusion. With the bugs removed and certain parts polished, this could be good. As it is, I think it's still better than average.
Score: 6
"Death To My Enemies"
Since this game is around 123k in size, and I've only seen stuff that would take up 70k maximum[1], I can only assume that there's a hell of a lot more to this game than I've seen. Maybe some hidden graphical treat? The idea of the game is fairly good - you've already had the exciting adventure, and now it's time for the big climax - but the whole thing is small and quite wierd. That in itself could work well, but doesn't really do much for me. It's kind of got the the feel of the Museum of Inform, where everything is disjointed and simply a display of a certain technique or idea. The implementation is a bit clunky as well.
Score: 4
[1] I've since dabbled with the latest version of Inform, and it would appear that the minimum size for Z-File games has increased somewhat since I was last around.
"Halothane"
Quite an enjoyable game. Halothane might have been hellish had the puzzles been harder than they are, but they appear to be there to give the player a bit of interaction and push them in the right direction. This is a nice approach (certainly not unique to Halothane), as it allows a fairly complex story to be told without bogging the player down too much. Indeed, this story is complex, or at least it is quite a challenge keeping up with what is going on as the scenarios change fairly swiftly. Upon finding a reference to a previous year's entry, Muse, and later a reference that reminded me of Babel, I began to wonder if this game was attempting to patch together the realities of several IF games. Apparently not, and I didn't get the hidden meaning of all this either. All in all, a solid entry.
Score: 7
"Outsided"
I have to admit that the awful title (if we're going to invent new English words, please make them sound less awkward) and the spelling mistakes in the preamble gave me a bad feeling about this one. I don't like notes from the author appearing at the start either, even if they have been put in to excuse unfair puzzles. And the first puzzle of all is *extremely* unfair, requiring the player to die at least once. How on earth is the player meant to know that they possess a particular object if they are not given enough time to check? Things went steadily downhill with the description of a female major farting, and came to an abrupt halt when the game decided to change the screen colour to black on black. I suppose I could have fiddled around with the interpreter in an attempt to make the text readable, but I decided that it wasn't worth the effort, considering.
Score: 3
"Spodgeville Murphy and The Jewelled Eye of Wossname"
One line of text in this small little game made me laugh out loud. And that can't be bad. That aside, though, I felt that there wasn't enough here to give this game a high score.
Score: 4
"L.U.D.I.T.E."
I gave this about five minutes, and couldn't get anywhere. Knowing the author's reputation, I TXDed the game to see if there was actually any point to the game and anything I could do other than wander around the four rooms with almost nothing in them. And it would appear that the answer to both questions is 'no'.
Score: 1
"Pass the Banana"
Hours of fun for all the family! (I'd feel guilty if I gave this game a score that helped it beat other (serious) entries. So I give it:)
Score: 2
"For A Change"
Impressive. I found this one quite irritating when I began, not able to make head nor tail of the strange world described in strange language. At first I suspected that I would turn out to be a small child whose understanding of his environment is still not developed enough to make much sense of it. As I played I found myself getting into it and ultimately enjoyed it a lot. It must have taken a lot of thought to distort things in such a way, and the game is fun and not too difficult too. A worthwhile experiment.
Score: 8
This page last updated 25 November 1999