What I've decided to do here is provide a few notes on some of the games that I've played. They'll be sort of mini-reviews trying to summarize the games while avoiding spoilers and they won't have star/point ratings. If you'd like some longer, more detailed reviews, try Baf's Guide to the IF Archive (a great place to get info on games in the archives and where I checked awards won), The Best of Interactive Fiction, the Society for the Preservation of Adventure Games (SPAG), and XYZZY News. Here I'm hoping to provide just enough to give you an idea of what the game is about/like and why you might like it (or in hopefully rare cases, not like it) without giving away too much of the game itself. If the game won any XYZZY Awards, the "Best X" of the year awards organized by Eileen Mullin of XYZZY News, I will specify which one(s) as well as which one(s) it was a finalist in since there's a two stage process for determining the winners: all games from the previous year are eligible, the first round selects a small number of finalists and the second round selects the winners. I will also note the game's placing in the rec.games.int-fiction organized IF Competition if it was submitted to one. See the relevant web pages for more information and lists of all past award winners and placings. Comments, questions, etc. about the games or anything else IF related can be e-mailed to me using the link at the bottom of the page.
While taking a quick look at web logs, I've noticed a number of the hits this page gets is from searches for walkthroughs, hints, or solutions. I don't plan to provide full solutions, but I'll give you a few pointers: (1) try rec.games.int-fiction, either by asking on the newsgroup or searching its archives at a place like Google Groups; (2) try the solutions directory at IFArchive.org or a mirror; (3) check the game or package you got it in -- a zip file may include a solution file as well, some games have built-in hints, and I think I've even seen a few IF Comp games that included a full walkthrough as part of the hints; (4) if you have trouble getting help by means like these, you can always try contacting the author (an e-mail is normally somewhere in the credits of the games) and asking him/her for hints, but don't expect to get a full solution. If you really need/want to, you can e-mail me and ask for help and I'll see what I can do, but I may not remember the specifics of games I played a while back and these other means are probably generally better ways of getting help. Just as a fun aside, it seems like Shade and Rematch are getting the most hint related page hits with Failsafe, Glowgrass, and Worlds Apart a bit behind them.
Quick Links: Free Games, IF Comp 2000 section of free games, Commercial Games like Infocom ones.
Quoting the author's notes, "You've screwed up on the job before, but never like this. You've overslept in a major way, and you're in for a world of trouble if you don't act fast." A rather short game that seems to have been designed for a reason and it gets its point across well. The ending will probably surprise you and that's part of the point. I don't want to give away something important, so let's just say you have to try it yourself. I think it's definitely worth it and it's short enough anyway, so why not? Search for some reviews *after* playing if you want more thoughts on the game. Oh, if you're new to IF, I would not suggest playing this right away. Yes, it is short and fairly easy, but the point it makes kind of depends on you being familiar with playing IF. Once you've played some other games and gotten used to the IF style of playing, then give this a try.
This is a bit hard to describe without giving away at least some of the story, but this is another kind of unique one. The general concept is that you're contacted by someone on a spaceship who requires help repairing damage created by an enemy attack and you need to provide instructions on what to do. I guess you're ground based help/support or something. But you don't actually do the actions yourself, you're directing an NPC to do them. Part of the consequences of this interesting set-up are that you can't save/restore or get help/hints from the game. Luckily the game isn't particularly long so not having save/restore isn't a huge issue. There is a sort of time limit on the game though, you have to complete it before events prevent you from doing so (and you lose, game over). There aren't a lot of puzzles to figure out and the ones that are there aren't especially difficult. So it shouldn't be too difficult to reach the endgame even if you don't get it the first time around (e.g., because of the time limit). It's a pretty interesting game and you could be in for a surprise at the end. Since it's not too long or hard, I think it's definitely worth a try if only to try out this implementation scheme.
Subtitled "An Interactive Short Story" so you might guess it's not a very long game. The idea is that you're a "xenohistorian" and an accident has landed you in the middle of an ancient dwelling and made you lose your tools. You now need to find a way out or you could be stranded for a long time. A complete walkthrough is included in the game, but no hints, so be careful about referencing it if you get stuck. It wasn't too hard, but I did use a couple of hints, skimming the walkthrough, in order to keep me going in the right direction when I played. It's a relatively small world here since you're working within the confines of a home, but there are a number of things to do and ancient items to find while you're there. The game often gets good reviews and it is good and does have some interesting points, but it didn't thrill me that much; other reviewers seemed to like it a lot more than I did. *shrug* It's probably worth a try to see what you think.
This is an interesting D&D fantasy style game because you get to choose which one of five characters (adventurer, enchanter, thief, royalty, dragon) you use to play the game. However, in order to completely win the game you have to accomplish the same basic task with all five characters in a single game. You can still save and quit, just don't restart between stories. For example, when you finish one, pick the next, then save and quit. This could get a little repetitive, but the stories and descriptions change from character to character. This also means that the puzzles and solutions are at least somewhat different for each, so you have to think in different ways to solve each story. All of the stories take place in the same smallish world so you don't have to worry about getting lost or travelling all over the place to solve the game. It's neat because you're seeing the same basic story from five different points of view. I finally finished playing through all five stories and it was pretty good. As I recall, the royalty and dragon ones are probably the hardest, requiring more unique thinking than the adventurer, enchanter, and thief ones.
A kind of unique game in that you don't use the traditional directions to navigate the world; you use things like ahead, forward, left, right instead of the usual compass directions. The basic story line: you're a hunter going after your prey (a wumpus). Once you adjust to the new commands, it's not too hard to get around. The world isn't very big, but the maze can be tricky; that's what earned the individual puzzle award). A little tip that really applies to all games -- pay attention to all the descriptions you get, e.g. from examining things. They often have important clues hidden in them. Not a bad game and it does have an interesting non-standard interface which is worth trying out, but it didn't do much for me overall.
This is a really large/long game with tons of puzzles. I first played it a few years ago not long after it came out and stopped before finishing. The huge number of puzzles can cause frustration, but it's a really good game. Solving some puzzles will send you to some other little world via some means and solving that new area sends you back again to the main world. You end up with various ways to connect to different areas or times, which is cool. This game isn't big on plot, but you do get some new insights to the story at different locations in the game. Another nice thing is that the puzzles tend to group into sections that can be solved pretty much independently of other sections. Not always true, sometimes you still do need to do one thing before another, but for the most part you can choose the order you go through the game. With some hints to help you make progress when you're really stuck it's pretty enjoyable, but try to avoid overusing hints because the puzzles really are the game; there's not much plot. The game is pretty big and *very* heavy on the puzzles which can be hard, but are generally fair. I did use a walkthrough to completely bypass one puzzle near the end, but I saw what needed to be done and just didn't want to spend a lot of time figuring out exactly how to do so, so I saved myself the time and effort. If you don't like puzzle-fests you might want to pass on this one. Otherwise put on your thinking caps and go for it. :) There's a sort of sequel called The Mulldoon Murders which I may get to eventually now that I've finally finished this game.
As you might imagine from the title, your character in this game is prone to falling asleep anywhere, anytime. Interestingly enough, the dream sequences you get now and then are like little mini-games in themselves and written by a variety of other IF authors. One of the few non-Inform, non-TADS games I've played, the interface was the first thing that struck me -- two windows, one with the main game play and the other shaped like a thought bubble telling you the exits and giving you choices of things to say when applicable. Giving commands was a little unusual: you had to do things like "go X" and "say #" when having just the place or number work would have been more convenient. No verbose mode and decriptions of rooms after the first tend to be *very* brief. Also no hint system. Interesting writing (note it won an award for this); it gives the feeling that the PC is talking to you, describing things (often jokingly) while you choose the actions, but a lot of the time I played I didn't really know what to do. I kept wandering around hoping to stumble on something. The author's web page uses this to classify it as easy, but as one reviewer noted, that's kind of misleading because the game splits into paths at the start and initially you have no reason to suspect this. I've read that there are three main paths to this game, at least 16 ways of reaching endings (though rumor has it there are more if you prepare in advance), and 17 dream sequences. So it's got pretty good replay value if you want to see everything. The first ending I got wasn't too exciting, the second was more interesting, but that's all I've done so far. It took long enough to wander around getting those two that I haven't tried looking for more yet. Not bad and I may try playing some more to see additional endings, and at least some parts of it are amusing and fun to read, but it's almost totally a story, nearing Choose Your Own Adventure style, and not really a favorite of games I've discussed here.
This is a really interesting game, mainly in the sense of figuring out what's going on. It's very plot/story oriented, the puzzles it has are pretty simple and you almost get guided through them. As such, it's very linear and you don't *really* have a choice as to what happens. However, the story is revealed slowly in fragments -- in each segment of the game you play as some character and that character changes from segment to segment. (That may be a minor spoiler, but you'd figure that out soon enough anyway.) It's not a very long story/game, but you have to piece the story together. While it is a bit confusing at first, when you finally get it, it's something of a revelation. Don't be surprised if you need to replay it in order to more fully understand it. This is generally considered one of the best written IF games and I have to admit that I haven't seen anything quite like it before. I think it's certainly worth a try. If you can, play it with color enabled; while I don't think it's absolutely necessary, it does add a nice extra touch to the game so it's worth using color if you can.
This game is pretty hard to describe without giving away too much about it. It boils down to a one move puzzle. You get to make one move and if it's wrong the game ends. However, some wrong moves will provide information that should help you figure out the right move. It's a rather tough puzzle and kind of complex, but it's pretty satisfying when you do figure out how everything links together and solve the game. This kind of situation can get frustrating, but I think it pays off in the end so it's worth a try. A little hint: as I recall, the game can parse rather complex compound commands so try out anything you think might work no matter how complicated it seems to be. If you need help, you can contact me about this one -- I just went through it again to get the details and am making some notes about it. If I get a file I like, I may link it up, but in the meantime you can e-mail me for help if you want.
Like some other games I've talked about here, this is relatively short. It's also very interesting and is somewhat eerie/creepy. I was feeling some shivers as I started to realize what was going on and what I could expect next; I was almost dreading the next step at times. Unfortunately, as is semi-common with shortish games, I can't say too much without giving things away, but as the author states in the "about" information: "This is a one-room game set in your apartment. . . . But perhaps you've already gathered that." If you get stuck, there is a way to get some hints from the game to guide you. And the ending really got me thinking and wondering exactly what it was I just experienced. While skimming some other sites and reviews on this game I've seen it classified as "surreal" and compared to Twilight Zone. I think I'd go with that. There is a twist to the ending like Twilight Zone very often has and that's what gets you thinking. The writing is well done and really helps draw you into the story. It's definitely worth a play; all the other reviews I've seen so far rate it very highly. Here's a rot13 tip for people looking for solutions: Xrrc purpxvat lbhe gb-qb yvfg; nf lbh svavfu gnfxf ba vg, vg punatrf. It's not much, but if you haven't figured that out yet, it should be quite helpful. With that and some persistence, you should be able to work through to the end.
I decided to try this game after reading a little bit about it in a web article on IF in the 21st century. I'm not sure how to describe it well. As the general hints section begins, this is a mystery, as you soon find out. The opening monologue on a phonograph cylinder sets things up -- the speaker believes he/she has gone mad and has gained some knowledge and doesn't want to keep it secret, but decides that in the end no one can be trusted with it. Fairly early on, you'll notice strange events happening and it will be up to you to explore and gather information to figure out what's going on and why. Something that also helps set the atmosphere, but you may overlook initially, is that the game doesn't refer to "you". I've read that even standard Inform language responses were modified to avoid using "you". The game has a sort of creepy feel to it because of this set-up; if you don't feel it right away, you'll probably feel it later as you start to realize what's happening. Baf's guide doesn't give it a genre, but the review there says it has "a rich Victorian steam-punk setting". There is no score, there's really no need for one here, and there are multiple endings (five total) each with its own post-game appendix and result. The endings really aren't win or lose ones since you basically have to make some moral/ethical sort of decision to determine the end result. (A list of how to get them all can be found in the rec.games.int-fiction Usenet archives.) This is definitely an interesting game and not too long since it was a comp game. There's a good set of graduated hints (which I used mainly for tips on things I saw somewhere and forgot about) and a spoiler section that can help you understand what's happening in the game, but you should wait on that until you've played through it and seen one or more endings for yourself. I think it's certainly worth a try. I know I'm saying that for almost every game here, but that's because I tend to pick the highly regarded games first and they're all good.
A rather interesting game, it's almost more story than game. The basic concept is that you have died and are being given a second chance at life. You must now choose whether or not to make the same decisions the second time around. The choices you make this time will lead you down one of three paths. You don't replay your *entire* life of course, just three major events. I should point out that these are life and death events and choices and as such this game might not be suitable for everyone. You can relive the events in any order you like, but once you've made a choice of path for one event, you can't change it for the other two. No mixing and matching here, once on a path you're forced to stick to it through all events. The game isn't too long since it's relatively easy to figure out what to do for each path, but you'll probably be enticed to play it three times and see each path's results. There are sections of the game where you do more reading descriptions and/or listening to other characters than interacting and making choices in the game, but that's part of the whole story. I thought it was pretty interesting, especially after playing it the three different ways and seeing how the events and epilogues turned out. The different paths let you see the events and people involved in different perspectives and I like the way each viewpoint was done. It's worth a try if you don't mind the life or death theme to the events you relive.
The author's subtitle for this game is "An Interactive Fugue" and the general background is that you awake with some form of amnesia; to quote a piece from just after the opening, "You don't know who you are, where you are, how you got here". So as you might guess, a major goal here is to figure out all that stuff. The story comes in pieces, you learn a bit here, a bit there, as you go about exploring and doing things. Another major point here is to experience the world, not just rush to the end. There's no score and I don't think you can really win or lose the game. As the author states in the "about" information, the more you experience, the more you'll understand at the end. While not everything is vital to completing the game, it all does seem to help flesh out the world and your place in it. And it's a very detailed world, everything taking place in an alternate universe. Since the author's been developing this universe for years, it's very well done. There's a lot of good writing which really helped draw me in, but it's a bit of a cross between IF and regular literature -- there are sections where you're reading a lot of description, conversation, or whatever without a chance to interact. This isn't necessarily bad, but sometimes it's not obvious when you're in one of these stages and you're trying to do things, but can't because all commands are really just used to pass time. The game is moderately long, I'd say, with three major sections to the game, but not especially difficult and there are in game hints; not just via graduated, Invisi-clue style hints, but during game play itself. It's pretty hard to get totally trapped or stuck which is always nice. I really enjoyed this game, discovering the PC's forgotten past, experiencing things from different viewpoints (another interesting aspect of the game, but I can't say much about how that works without giving away something), and exploring the world. When a game has done so well in an awards competition, it's hard to go wrong with it. Definitely worth playing, probably more than once to see if you missed anything the first time around that can help deepen your understanding of it all. BTW, you can find some more information at the author's Worlds Apart page.
An interesting idea for a game, base it on word play. Unfortunately, verbal games are not my strong point. :) It was kind of fun, but I did feel like I was relying on hints a bit too much. That could have been just because I'm a bit weaker on word games though. I was interested enough to try to get through it, but didn't finish; unique idea and good play.
Subtitled "An Interactive Hallucinatory" and it looks like the hallucination feel is set up through the descriptions which misspell like every other word. Maybe that's supposed to add to the atmosphere, but I found it a major distraction; I didn't like having to spend time interpreting everything the game's telling me. At least the goal is clear "find the BLUE RASPBREY" and the game doesn't force you to misspell things to have them recognized. The game is very short though and can be solved in 10 moves and you win the game with 0 of 0 points, but end up dying anyway. I didn't really like it, but it did take me a little while to solve one puzzle.
The game has since been removed from the IF Archive by its maintainers because "it didn't even pretend to be a game, it only displayed the DeCSS source code for playing back DVDs. Since this code is the object of several pending law suits, and since its value as an IF game is zero, we decided to remove this item."
Playing a female character is different, but this sort of real-life game isn't the sort of thing I go for in IF. And being male, it's a bit hard to relate to the situation in the game. :) The game itself seems fine, but it just wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention.
This was a nice short game. Playing a djinni character was unique and kind of fun. I was able to finish this game rather quickly, but I did use some of the walkthrough to help. Even so, the game was interesting enough that I was a bit disappointed to see it end so soon. I probably would have enjoyed it even more if it had some more scenarios/parts to extend the game.
Nice game, but the space walk part was rather hard and I gave up pretty fast on it. It fits in the game, but I didn't want to deal with all the turning, rolling, and thrusting involved, so I went to the walkthrough to get through it. That's when I found that the trip out was correct, but the trip back was wrong and I had to figure out how to fix it (not too hard at that point, fortunately), but the incorrect walkthrough kind of turned me off from trying the rest of the game on my own. Also, there's no help on the other space walk that would be necessary if your character isn't of slim build; not good. Generally good, but the difficulty of the space walks combined with the problems in the walkthrough detracted from my enjoyment.
You're underage and have to get beer so you can hang out with the cool kids at school. *shrug* Real life type games aren't my sort of thing and I lost interest in this game pretty quickly. As with the previous RL type game, there's nothing really wrong with the game or anything, but it didn't keep my attention for very long.
The game title gave me a bad first impression [1] but as it turns out the game itself is cute. The "guess the verb" refers to a carnival/fair guessing game, you need to get Lalrry (the machine operating the game) to accept payment so you can guess a verb from the wheel. If you guess right, you get to guess again. If you guess wrong, you get sent to a puzzle section. The solution to each puzzle involves the verb that did come up on the wheel, so they get kind of easy once you catch on. Each puzzle section also includes an object you can give to Lalrry to keep playing (you go back to the carnival once you solve the puzzle). But, each time you guess right or solve the puzzle, that verb comes off the wheel, so you can't get to every single puzzle in one play of the game, thus giving it nice replay value. There's also a list of AMUSING things to do once the game ends. It was an enjoyable game, but to me the simplicity had both positive and negative points.
Pretty good game and I enjoyed it. The trasfer machine was a neat idea and it was worked into the game nicely since you had to use it to solve certain puzzles. The hint system's "last free clue" concept was very interesting. Penalizing you if you use too many hints didn't sound good to me at first, but when I saw it in action it worked out fine for me. Even though I've been using hints a bit more than normal (so I can get further through the games faster for rating purposes), this system made me stop at an earlier hint and think some more to solve the puzzle. It can be turned off and/or circumvented, so it doesn't have to affect your score. Good idea in the hint system, nice interesting game.
This was a nice game and I played part of the way through it. Maybe it would have been better had I gone further into the game, but it seemed like a classic story line. It just didn't grab me as anything really special, but the game itself was fine.
As I recall, this was a pretty cool game. The basic idea behind it is is that you play the part of an artificially intelligent computer. This is true AI, a (programmed) past, memory, self-awareness, etc. You actually believe that you're human, but the opening section of the game makes you aware of the reality that you're really a sentient machine. This certainly makes for an interesting game since you can't move anywhere. You do have control of the computer systesm and thus can do things around the lab as well as running and recording simulations of the future (actually an important part of the game). A very interesting perspective for a game, I thought it was really well done. BTW, this game's title is often abbreviated to AMFV.
Subtitled "Eight Tales of Cliches, Spoonerisms, and Other Verbal Trickery", it's clearly a game based on word play. It's more like a collection of a bunch of small games than one bigger one and each little smaller game has its own theme to it. Figuring out the theme will help you get along, but there will still be other puzzles to solve. Word games are not my strong point, but this was a pretty fun game, perhaps because of the smaller game, changing themes format.
Subtitled "A Cryogenic Nightmare" -- another interesting theme for a game. Here you play the part of the Central Mentality that monitors all the main computer systems that control a planet. Everything's supposed to run smoothly so you wouldn't have to do anything, but that wouldn't make a fun game, would it? Naturally a crisis develops and you're revived to handle it. You're only minimally revived though, so you can't do much yourself. You have to send robots around the complex to do the jobs for you and each robot you can control has certain capabilities and limitations, so you've got to figure out how to get them all working together in the best way. At least one goal is to minimize the loss of life on the planet as you handle the situation and bring things back to normal. I think I'd agree on the expert difficulty rating from Infocom. It's definitely a tough game, figuring out what to do and getting all the robots working together to do it efficiently. Still, I liked the concept and enjoyed the game.
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
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