JON INGOLD'S REVIEWS

Flotsam - 

Premise:- A sketch of an Irish pub.

Good. Well-written, a lot of it is quite funny. Interesting. 
Not very deep. Like strategic use of the word "oirish". This 
was the first one I played, and on reflection it's the only 
one (discouting the Knapsack problem) that starts somewhere 
and really describes something in totality. The other games 
wander and roam, which is - well, it's not better or worse, 
it's just different, and it's pretty inherent in the CYOA format.
 This one is well-drawn and together. I like the ending especially.

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Knapsack -

Premise:- Solve a 10-dimensional optimisation problem/rescue 
treasures from a genie's cavern.

Sigh. I admit, it bugged me till I got a perfect score. Then,
 when I did, it said I hadn't got the optimal solution and 
told me the optimal was... the one I had. No winning message here.
 However, the treasure-name generator is wicked. What can I say? I
 enjoyed playing it. But there's no way I'm voting you any 
prizes. Does that sound fair?

Oh, yes, I though something cunning was going on when I wasn't
 able to type xyzzy or plugh. Then I worked that one out.

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One Week -

Premise:- Another sort of optimisation problem:- juggle that factors
 important in a teenage girl's life, in the week of the Prom and a
 major exam. (First I played I didn't get a prom dress at all because
 I didn't realise they'd cost more than $20, which just shows I'm (a)
 English and (b) Male.)

God I found this depressing. Partly because the morning of the Prom 
the character chooses from a list of seven men, partly because on 
every time I played it I ruined my character's life. Well, that is,
 until I took sensible decisions, like working and studying and not
 just watching TV. Which is fair enough. 

Actually, I quite liked this thing. It was fun to read, and quite
replayable. Lacked some options I would have liked to choose ("Insult
Kyle in front of all his friends").

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Monkeys -

Premise:- Random sci-fi covers it, just about.. 

A brief adventure ("romp") which wanders the player onto a planet
 with some monkeys on it. It's pretty random, but a lot of it is very 
funny. I especially like the very 50's scene with a broken-down car. 
The alarm sound (HTML-tads rears its head) is scary, as is, erm, every
 other sound effect in the game. But the game is fun, though playing 
Nim with Bob annoyed me as it took me far too long to work out the 
strategy to use. Anyway, yes, I liked this.

The dialogue is especially entertaining, and even if the game doesn't 
really go anywhere it's good fun to toy around with. Let's see -- I 
especially like being given a choice of two planets - one of monkeys,
 one of rabbits - even though the game is called "Escape from a Planet
 Filled with Monkeys". An exercise in less-than-subtle cluing, but it 
worked. Is it wrong that I pictured Princess Vanilla as Marilyn Monroe? 

Did I mention the dialogue is great? Yes. Well, I'm out of things to
 say then.

[The game crashes on asking about the Monkey of Liberty].

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Stormy -

The premise:- well, that's the point, really. "You" are a writer, writing
 a story. You choose options, lines, and a story gets written, or it 
doesn't. Basically, it's just a hugely entertaining series of option-boxes.
 It's not a story, but my verdict is:

Applause. A game that leaps and switchbacks all over the place;
 with different avenues to explore. It's not exactly fair; you 
pick options randomly and sometimes it just stops, other times
 you get long sequences, others you get gags. But it's fun, and
 takes quite a while before you run out of options totally (but
 it's that sort of thing, really; you play again and again to go
 through all the possibilities). The only thing that irritated me
 is that my very first choice ("Io in the style of Dr. Seuss" didn't
 go anywhere, as that's the most up my street I think). Sometimes ponderous
 - the tongue-in-cheek sections work better.

However, there is a problem - this sort of thing has been done before,
 and this game doesn't leave me with anything new. It's a toy, it's
 not a game; it doesn't involve me in anything other than reading.
 If one were to play it from the start every time maybe it would work,
 but my mindset still wants to cover every paragraph, so I played with
 liberal use of UNDO. No, hang on, that's not the problem. The problem
 here is that this sort of thing is deeply unsatisfying. If everything
 added up, if all the strands did as promised and revealed something
 about our author-character (which some do, sure, but they're loose)
 and finished somewhere, it would work. As it stands, this game has
 no ending, doesn't quite have a message, doesn't quite have something 
to say. My main enjoyment was the humour (though RAIF injokes do tire,
 honestly) - the game was very entertaining. But at some point I have
 to walk away from the game and I have nothing to take with me. Don't
 get me wrong here - it's an excellent piece of work, I enjoyed it; 
and a lot of people will love it. But it lacks the subtle scaffold of
 structure which could complete it as a work. So fun - but vaguely
 tiresome.

I'm curious as to the author (though I have a fair guess,
 mainly down to the spelling of "grey" and "color", for some reason)
 -- my standard "anonymous" guess of Adam Cadre shouldn't hold, 
since he's a judge, so I've had to choose someone else. Actually,
 I think there are several other reasons I've guessed the author
 I have.

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Kingdom -

The premise:- You play an archaeologist, driven to explore a ruin 
by yourself by a quest for knowledge.

What can I say? Four years or so ago I picked up Tomb Raider 
because I thought that would sate my love of ruins and temples
 and forgotten cities which began with "The Mysterious Citis of
 Gold" cartoon I saw as a kid. It didn't work - I just ran around
 shooting wolves. "Kingdom Without End" feeds right into what I 
was looking for though - the set-up is tomb and ruin, but above 
all the ending [I played to] was perfect. The final series of 
paragraphs are great, and I read them with something coming on joy.

To back up a bit. The set-up intrigued me; a series of three 
rooms with three "puzzles". I solved one - a set of scales - 
and felt pleased that everything had worked how it should. 
A well-designed puzzle. Not earth-shattering material, but 
satisfying. I went back and chose a new room. 

Now it should be noted this game used Adventure Book's system 
of inventory objects, allowing for "hidden options". I added 
this because I always loved it in Fighting Fantasy books when
they did the same thing: "If you think you can use the crystal
club, subtract 50 from the paragraph", or "if you see him in
the picture add 12". So I entered the second room, and impulsively
typed in the name of an object I was carrying, not expecting it
to work. And the game caught it - and it worked.  It's that moment
of perfect simulation, of immersion, of mimesis which makes these
games fun.


Anyway, so I continued, until the end. And the end wrote itself in
because the game knew I was finished (this impressed me, if only
because I know how my system works and it's impressive bit of 
engineering to make that happen). And the final sequence, which I
won't reveal, were exactly right. I write this directly to the
author: Yes. That's something I've been trying to put my finger
on, and you hit it.

Simply put - I like ruins, and this game does something new with 
it's ideas. I like patterns and they were there to draw. I like 
puzzles, and though slight those here are satisfying and solid. 
But above all I like structure, and this game has it, this games
*ends well*. The last time I said that about a game it was 
"So Far" (though it should be noted, Flotsam does pretty well
for itself. Perhaps CYOA is the format for this sort of thing.)
Interactive Fiction has an inherent problem with endings because
the structure cannot be dictated by the author. Some authors use
multiple endings and provide UNDO, so the story thread frays and
players must climb up and down each thread to understand the whole.
Some games simply stop. 

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Overall; juding is difficult - all the entries are strong.
 Well, okay, I'm not going to give a place to the Knapsack problem,
 even if it did bug me for a while. First and second are however pretty
 much set, as

1) Kingdom without End -- a game that just sat exactly at the optimal point
 on every axis for me. Very well placed, very well designed. 

2) A Dark and Stormy Entry -- because there are two endings that
 had me laughing out loud: "Schizophrenia", and "A kiss with a 
taste of cloves". If, somehow, all the threads had meant something
 (maybe they do, but as the game predicts, "my best Guess would be No.")

Third place is almost impossible, frankly. "Flotsam" is neat 
and interesting, and ends well, but is slight, sketchy. "Escape .."
 was great fun to play, but I could have done with playing 7 
games of Nim. "One Week" is also good, but perhaps I didn't relate
 to it to well. However, almost arbitrarily I'm going to choose....

3) Escape from a Planet filled with Monkeys -- "At last! I've 
found myself a human! A spineless human, but a human nonetheless."
Honestly - you don't need to steal lines from the Hitchhikers Guide;
 just write them yourself. 

Congratulations to everyone who entered!

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