Everyone says you have to play Photopia.  I have been thinking about what an interesting word “everyone” is.  It sounds like it should mean everyone on the planet, doesn’t it?  Definitely all the humans, and maybe some of the more personable robots.  The only time it ever does mean this, though, is when people are talking about, like, what happens if the sun explodes.  Generally “everyone” just means “a considerable majority of the situationally-relevant people we care about,” as in “We were gonna go to Casa en Fuego but then everyone decided they’d rather have gyros,” totally disregarding your friend Bob’s gyro allergy and the fact that you yourself would pretty much always rather have Thai food.  (“You” in this hypothetical is code for “me.”)

Where were we?  Oh, right, everyone says you have to play Photopia, and I am apparently not allowed to play IF games without blogging them, so here we are on the wordpress at two in the morning.  Wait, hang on, lemme get some cookies.

[spoilers begin here]

Why can I not fucking open a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies without severely mangling the top?  It’s like the bag designer just plain did not think of that bit.  “Well, the glue is down, and the cookies are nestling happily in their crinkly white paper beds, secure in the knowledge that they will never again be touched by human hands.”  Ah, there we go.  Oooh.  Coconutty.  Pepperidge Farm, you have so very much to answer for.

Right.  Playing a game.  Looks like I’m just coming out of a drunken blackout to gaze in horror upon the atrocities I hath wrought while I was in it, a situation I am not unfamiliar with from real life.  From the matter-of-fact way it’s written, I’d imagine Adam Cadre isn’t either.  (For one thing, a women is not sleeping on my couch.)

Huh.  My friend ran a red light and now I am Wendy Mackaye, first girl on the red planet, talking to myself as though I don’t know what words mean.
(“Salvageable” means you can save it.)
Is he going for something with the vocabulary lesson?  I’d wonder if the game was intended for younger players if I hadn’t spend the last scene trashed off my ass chasing tail.  I do like hunt-the-eggs quests, though.

(“Astronautical” doesn’t really mean anything.  I just made it up.)
Okay, that’s pretty funny.

Oh, shit, now my spaceship’s crashing!  So far both PCs have been sad doomed bastards.  I wonder if I get a new one now?

I do.  One who can never have any more children and whose job involves “the Peterson account,” which is the only sign necessary to indicate that a fictional character makes their living doing something incredibly boring that will never be fully explained to you because you would want those minutes of your life back.  I wonder what terrible thing is going to happen to this one?

…oh, phew, thank God for CPR.  Hey, Wendy’s okay!  Her text is blue now, and a little harder to read, but when a game asks you if you want colors, how can you possibly say no?

Still with the vocabulary lesson.  I wonder if Wendy underwent some traumatic experience as a kid and the only thing that calmed her down was looking at the set of flash cards that told her what words meant?  Or maybe there’s someone listening to her internal monologue who’s only up to the part in their English classes where you learn “thank you” and “I can’t find my hotel” and “the pants of your mother’s aunt are ugly and also on fire.”

I’m in an undersea castle?  Am I a fish?

This made me smile:
> take pickaxe
The pickaxe clings firmly to the wall. You tug on it again and this time the handle moves a few centimeters; then you feel a distinct click. The castle begins to rumble, with the shaking most pronounced in the direction of the keep. The shovel which was wedged behind the pickaxe clatters to the ground, and the rumbling stops. After that, the pickaxe swings back into place.
> take shovel
Taken.
That shovel thinks the pickaxe is such a showoff.

> listen
“…fratboys completely uninjured…”
Oh, good, I always worry about those fratboys.

This box of dirt is very convenient, considering Wendy’s been carrying this seed pod around since Mars.  So was that shovel in the underground castle.

Man, you know what I hate about IF?  Every time I’m presented with a child under age, say, twelve, I am generally correct in assuming they’re going to die horribly (or worse) in a car accident.  I may have to issue a moratorium on games with kids in them, if people are going to keep murdering them for pathos.  The game seems to be hinting that the drunk kids from the first scene hit the Peterson-account lady’s family, killing the daughter and turning her into an astronaut.  Something like that.

Oh, wait, her name’s Mary, not Linda.  Well, now I just don’t know.

I am learning so much about neutrinos and shit.

A maze?  Seriously?

The cool breeze ruffles the feathers of your wings.
What?

You are hovering above the crystal labyrinth; from this perspective, it looks like a mind-bogglingly complex mandala. (A “mandala” is a pattern that some people use in prayer.) There is no way your could have possibly navigated it on the ground — in fact, it almost gives you a headache.
Okay, best maze solution ever.

Ohshit Bartlett Hill Road.  I hate Bartlett Hill Road.

I am justified in hating Bartlett Hill Road.

> feed wolf
Whom do you want to feed the wolf to?
…

She pauses. “You see,” she says, “I remember this conversation. From the other direction.”
This game is starting to get kinda spooky.

Umwhat?

What?

No, seriously, what just happened?

I believe it is customary on these gaming blog things to talk about what you’re playing.  I believe that may even be the entire point of having one, assuming anything humans do beyond “have sex a lot and try not to die” actually has some sort of point, which is debatable.  Actually, it’s debatable whether the continuation of the species in itself has some sort of point, but if we get too deep here I’m gonna feel weird talking about Saints Row 2.

Jump cut for the sake of front-page tidiness goes here.

So, Saints Row 2.  I am terrible at it.  I keep driving off overpasses and running over cab fares (the passenger kind, not the money kind) and getting hit by trains and shot by cops — I keep telling them that if they stop coming after me and shooting at me I will be happy to stop killing them but do they listen?  No.  They are all “Hey, bitch, that was my partner!” and I am all “What was I supposed to do; he was shooting at me!  And I’m really sorry about all those pedestrians, it’s just that the reverse on these cars works exactly opposite from the way it works on a real car and I get confused!  Once I’ve retrained myself to back up in these cars I will probably forget how to back up in real cars and run over someone’s abuela!  Also hiding behind your car door like that does nothing to prevent me from shooting at you, see?  I can totally still shoot you!  Great, now I have to explain this all over again to the next cop!”

Leaving aside my ineptitude and the suicidal persistence of law enforcement, the main thing that strikes me about Saints Row 2 is how much of a chick game it is, despite its veneer of gangbanger swagger.  The character customization has, I think, more sliders than anything I’ve ever seen (four for the upper lip alone!), you can buy new apartments and upgrade their furnishings, and oh my God, Becky, the clothes shopping.  If your conversation tree wasn’t limited to Taunt / Compliment / Shoot / Throw Mailbox At / Beat With Nightstick / Run Over With Car, it’d pretty much be the Sims.  (It wouldn’t, really, not even close.  Sometimes I just want to say things and not worry about whether or not they’re true.  Pudding gives you cancer.  Sharon Stone built the pyramids.  Your lips move because they’re filled with miniature lobsters and every time you frown, five of them die.)

As far as I know, Saints Row 2 doesn’t track your alignment; your character starts life as chaotic evil and is given mostly chaotic evil things to do.  (You do rescue hookers from their “abusive pimps” and deliver them to a presumably-not-abusive-but-grouchy massage-parlor madam, which seems like a good deed maybe, or at least neutral?)  I always feel kind of bad playing evil in games (sure, they’re just pixels and a row in a database, but they’re pixels and a row in a database that haven’t done anything to me), but hot damn is it fun to just take somebody’s car and drive it into the side of a burger joint.  (I also enjoy inflicting my taste in radio stations on my hostages.  If they didn’t want to listen to my music, they shouldn’t have been riding around in someone else’s car minding their own damn business.)  This game is a good time, is what I’m getting at.

Pretending for a moment that this sentence is a clever segueway onto games that do have fancy alignment tracking, I just finished Planescape:  Torment, which took for freaking ever. It’s the first Bioware-style RPG I’ve played, which, if you’re unfamiliar with the genre, is like a regular Western RPG only with fifty million more dialogue trees. This makes for absolutely insane levels of worldbuilding, story, and me going “fuck this I’m checking the walkthrough.”  Oh, not initially, mind you.  When I started playing everything was fresh and huge and a joy to explore, partially because of all that worldbuilding, partially because the Planescape was not somewhere I’d been before — a surprisingly rare thing in fantasy, which allegedly can take us anywhere but generally takes us to a muddy Middle Earth knockoff populated strictly with Tolkien-approved races and seventeen different kinds of bonus elf.  (High elves, dark elves, wood elves, grain elves, mythril elves, sucrose elves, fructose elves, half-elves, quarter-elves, cotton-poly-blend elves, muffin elves, corn elves, denial elves, disaster elves, secular humanist elves, frozen burrito elves, surly bastard doorman elves, and those are just the ones from Morrowind.)  Yahtzee talks about this in his Dragon Age Origins review, how strange it is that it’s even possible to get so sick of things that, by definition, do not actually exist, that witnessing their nonexistence just one more time will make you absolutely swear to God blow chunks.

So, major points to Planescape:  Torment for its world, which is inventive and cheerfully macabre.  (I have never seen a bar tab settled with an eyeball before.  Nor have I heard a creation story that involved a god’s severed penis falling onto a goddess’s face. I am not even sure how that one is supposed to work.)  What sent me to the walkthrough:  there are fifty kajillion NPCs, most of whom will cheerfully answer somewhere between three to ten questions.  Each of the answers might end with itself, or lead you deeper into the dialogue tree.  Some trigger stories that would take up a couple pages in an RPG sourcebook, and would be perfectly at home in one.  (Asymmetric Fun Fact:  Most of the reading material in the office bathroom consists of a crate of RPG sourcebooks.  This and the Boris Vallejo calendar make it a very nerdly place to poop.)  What I am getting at is that a point comes when talking to every single NPC (“Hi!  I’m Bob the window cleaner, whose arms are terribly mutilated!  Would you like to hear the horrible tale of my regrettable past?  It’s got windows in it!  Dirty ones!”) sort of palls.  If you don’t, though, you might miss the one line of dialogue with the one particular NPC that just happens to open the next whole area of the game.

Oh, and there’s one particular bit where person C will not mention thing X about person A until you’ve asked person A about thing X, which lets you ask person B about person A, at which point they mention person C, whom you can now ask about thing X.  So, not only are we supposed to ask every single NPC about everything, we’re supposed to check back with them in case they’ve suddenly acquired new lines of dialogue.  Fuck.  That.  Shit.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that all this talking-to-NPCs-about-their-magic-gout business is going on while you are trying to investigate the compelling mystery of your own forgotten past and bizarre inability to die.  (Yes, it’s a waking-up-with-amnesia game, but it’s one with an absolutely legitimate doctor’s excuse for it.  You don’t have to punch anybody.  I promise.)  A certain amount of runaround is necessary in these things to drag out the mystery – it makes things very dull if one second after waking up with amnesia, you remember that you’re William Randolph Hearst and Rosebud is your nickname for your mistress’s vagina, which killed Laura Palmer – but Planescape:  Torment drags it out a tiny bit too far for my taste.  (“I don’t know the thing you want to know, but I know someone who knows someone who knows where to look for someone who might know the thing you want to know, and I’ll tell you where to find them after you complete these five quests.  Start walkin’, cowboy.”)

I feel like I’m spending too much time bitching about what amounts to a minor pacing issue, though, and the game is way way better than all this crankiness would indicate.  I also feel like I’m spending too much time not friggin’ posting this already.  Um um um what else.  The combat system could be better, but it’s not really the point.  Oh, and if you’re going to play it on your shiny new post-1999 PC, pimp it out first.  Are we done?  I’m done.  Are you done?

Errol’s Zork walkthrough song.
Jason Scott wants your money.
Let’s all go to PAX East!

Instead of writing this up, I’ve been watching Riff play Uncharted 2, which is a lot like watching an action movie, if the main character in an action movie were psychologically incapable of doing anything until he’d completely searched the surrounding area for treasure.  “Drake!  Get out of there!  It’s gonna blow!”  “I’ll get out of here in a minute, goddammit, I’m looking for shinies.”  And then, because there’s a small part of Uncharted 2 that wants to be an exploration game instead of a narrative-driven on-rails climby-shooter (which it is, and is very good at being), he will in fact find a statue of Ganesh or something in a corner of the imminently-exploding train car and his neurosis will be rewarded, even as the climby-shooter part of the game yells at him and asks if he wants a hint.  Here’s a hint, designers:  it’s weird to both yell at people and reward them for the same behavior.  If you did that to a kid, you’d have a fucked-up kid.  If you did that to a hamburger, you’d have a fucked up hamburger.  In terms of potatoes, that’s bad parenting.

This post isn’t about Uncharted 2, though, it’s about the 2009 Interactive Fiction Competition.  I haven’t forgotten.

[spoilers for every game in the comp and also last year's Riverside and incidentally 2006's Another Goddamn Escape the Locked Room Game given free rein after the jump]

This year I think I’m starting with the made-up awards, instead of having to come up with some for every single game, which is exhausting and takes up time I could have spent playing Bejeweled on Facebook.  I also think I’m going to sum up each individual game in terms of Very Valuable Lessons It Has To Teach Us.  On sort of another note, I haven’t been doing this nearly long enough to have an opinion on whether this was a good year’s comp or a bad year’s comp, but you know what I sort of missed this time around?  Troll entries.  Oh, sure, we had the infamous Richard Bos rant, but that’s not really… oh, man, know what would have made Eruption totally kickass?  A Riverside ending.

u get on the raft but the volcano asplode!!!1!1twelve!*!  raep gets in ur nOsE!!#!  YOU ARE DOOM!

That would have cracked me up.  But anyway, let’s get to the awards bit, before this post gains any more unnecessary length.  Go put on some formal wear right now!  I’ll wait!

In no particular order:

Most Personality:  Broken Legs.
Most Congenial:  The Ascot.
Most German:  Trap Cave.
Most Flawed:  The Hangover.
Most Disturbing:  Condemned.
Best Writing:  Broken Legs.
Best Bad Writing:  Condemned.
Best Story:  The Duel in the Snow.
Best Gameplay:  The Duel That Spanned the Ages.

Funniest:  Earl Grey, Rover’s Day Out, Broken Legs (I can’t decide!)
Best Gimmick:  Earl Grey (wordplay).
Worst Gimmick:  Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort (dear God the ye thing).
Least Fairly Judged, At Least By Me:  Star Hunter.
Best Individual Puzzle:  GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands! (getting the keys)
Most Superfluous Rooms I Have Ever Seen In Anything Ever:  GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands!
Best Name:  GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands!
I Just Want To Say “GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands!” One More Time:  GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands!
Least Clued Puzzles:  Broken Legs.
Individual Puzzle That Pissed Me Off the Most:  The Grand Quest (fucking coins!)
Worst Invisible Dude Ever:  The dude in The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man.
Least Likable Protagonist in a Bad Way:  The dude in The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man.
Least Likable Protagonist in a Good Way:  Lottie Plum in Broken Legs.
Most Likable Protagonist in a Sad Way:  Victor Pavlovich in The Duel in the Snow.
Best NPC:  Kropkin in The Duel in the Snow.
Personal Favorite:  Earl Grey.
Close Runners-Up:  Rover’s Day Out, Broken Legs.

And now, Valuable Lesson Time by game:

The Ascot (6):  On the one hand, it’s good to use the strengths of your chosen format to their fullest.  On the other hand, using the limitations of a format to keep things tight and tidy is actually sort of brilliant.  This game failed to do what choose-your-own-adventure games are best at, but it also failed to do what traditional IF is worst at.  Also it was charming and likable, which doesn’t hurt.

The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man (4):  Lot to learn from this one.  Unless you’re doing something sandboxy, you should generally provide your players with a more-than-nebulously-defined goal, for starters.  (You can get away with less if your puzzles are clued well enough so that people know what to do even if they don’t know why they’re doing it, but I, personally, would rather you didn’t.)  Also, when you have a cool premise like an invisible PC, the focus should be on what awesome shit the player can do because they’re invisible, before you start getting into the limitations.  It’s no fun to play someone whose superpower is not being able to carry any objects into a room.

Beta Tester (5):  Everybody has to start somewhere.  We all have little fuck-around projects to see what we can do, and we all learn the rhythm of comedy before we learn the melody.  (Have you noticed that people will laugh at anything if you say it like it’s a joke?  Seriously, try it on the next cashier you talk to, unless your social anxiety disorder prevents you from talking to cashiers, in which case you probably shouldn’t try it at all.  It does not work on cats.  No matter what you do, cats will never think you’re funny.)  The trick is, after you start wherever you start, don’t stop.

Broken Legs (8):  Infusing every aspect of your game with personality is good.  Rewriting default messages is good.  Cluing your goddamn puzzles, Miss Sarah Morayati, is good.  Cue Meatloaf reference.

Byzantine Perspective (7):  A cute gimmick is always good, but ideally it should be a nutritious part of a complete game.

Condemned (6):  Turns out picking the plot of your game off my own personal phobias list is a good way to get me to hate it.  Next time do one where you’re buried alive, upside down, under the corpse of your dead mother.  (Please don’t actually do that, or, if you do, warn me first.  Actually maybe someone else’s personal phobias list can have a turn.)  Other than that, watch out for text dump – hitting G more than a few times in a row makes people wonder why you didn’t just write your game as static fiction.  I liked the timing on the jump cuts, though, and a good “what the hell is going on here?” hook rarely fails.

The Duel in the Snow (8):  Scroll back up and read Broken Legs again, except for the third sentence substitute “Also, if you have a puzzle that must be solved to get rid of a repeating status message, clue that puzzle goddamn well.”  (The failure message made me think I’d finished the soda along with the whiskey.)

The Duel That Spanned the Ages (8):  Adaptations of gameplay from outside IF make a nice change from puzzles and find-the-object, if you can pull them off.  (Some things are just too visual or too fiddly for the format – like, imagine IF Tetris.)  The stealthy and shooty bits of this game were not radical departures from standard IF, but they were fun, and made the game sort of stand out.

Another thing to take from this one:  your intro is sort of like an MC, getting the crowd in the mood for your game, which is the main act.  This doesn’t mean it has to be super short – an MC can go on and tell an entertaining anecdote about the headliner, or do a few minutes of his own material – but at some point he’s gotta get the fuck off the stage.  If you have a huge giant backstory, consider making it playable, or breaking some of it up and sticking it in item descriptions, or adding a REMEMBER function.  (The latter two don’t much apply in this particular case, since the backstory hasn’t happened yet, but you know, for later.)

Earl Grey (10):  If, to advance the plot, the PC has to do something the player would not do themselves and does not want to make the PC do… well, it’s probably better just to avoid this situation, but if you insist on it, back the PC into a corner narratively. The player should be saying “well, shit, this is my only option in these circumstances,” not “well, shit, the game won’t let me do anything else, how stupid is that.”

The only reason this game still has a ten from me, despite this and other flaws, is that it took me somewhere new and gave me something clever and different to do, with a cute internal monologue gimmick.  Also, it was imaginative, and most of all funny.

Eruption (4):  I could talk about settling for mediocrity or phrasing rants so you come off as less of a douchebag (assuming that is even something I know anything about, which, man, doubtful), but both of those take a backseat to not fucking with the players’ compass directions. Curved path or straight path, these directions are all we have to get our bearings in your world, and it’s horrible to suddenly realize that our internal – or worse, our actual on-paper – map is wrong.  Yes, NSEW is a terribly unnatural and inorganic convention, and adhering to it stifles you and dehumanizes the player.  I don’t fucking care. Until you or someone else comes up with an alternate system that works just as well, use fucking NSEW and don’t get cute with it.

…that rant was not so much directed at Eruption actually.  To be honest, I was mostly thinking of Blue Lacuna, especially that one bit of the forest where Aaron Reed went “I thought it would be fun to stick a little maze in because not enough people hate me.”  As far as Eruption goes, I suppose you could use it as an example of acceptable minimum technical standards, but if you do, make sure to flesh an actual game out over the acceptable technical framework.  Don’t settle for an empty can of chili just because there aren’t any rat droppings in it.

GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands! (5):  Use only as many rooms as you need.  Corollary:  you don’t need as many rooms as you think.  Spaciousness is something that can be feigned or implied, and I can’t think of a situation where denser isn’t better.  (There’s got to be at least one, though, right?  Let me know when you find it!)

Two things this game got right, though, were the action sequence at the end – if you’re going to do something, you might as well do something fucking awesome – and the corn chips puzzle (well, except you couldn’t get more corn chips and there was no guarantee you’d ever find your hideout again, but other than that), which was well-clued, logical, and made me feel clever for figuring it out.

Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with showing off a really obscure verb option in your walkthrough, but you might be better off putting it in parentheses after a more sensical one.  (So many people were pissed off by UNBITE, not knowing that OPEN JAWS was a perfectly cromulent alternative.)

Gleaming the Verb (4):  Ideally, an IF game should have some reason to be an IF game, as opposed to a novel, or a Flash game, or a Paleolithic cave painting.  There is a thin line between a game consisting primarily of a single word puzzle and a single word puzzle with a parser thrown on, and I think this game could have been on that line’s good side with a fleshier setting and story.  I want to know why I’m naked in a room being tested by a cube, dude.  If you set up the bowling pins of mystery, it’s kind of cruel not to knock them down.

The Grand Quest (4):  Quite a few things to say about this one.  I think I went off sufficiently in the review about hint systems and people popping their walkthrough cherries, but seriously, a good hint system in a game is like good sex in a relationship, in that it makes people more willing to overlook problems elsewhere.  Earl Grey, I believe, did not have a hint system, and everyone who reviewed it seemed to enjoy it in inverse proportion to the time they spent with the walkthrough.  Walkthroughs are like kidneys, in that you’re better off if no one ever looks at them.  Whoo nelly, I am just on fire with these analogies today.  Somebody put me out.

I know I went off on the coin puzzle, too, but bear with me:  the way the coins were hidden sent a false negative to anyone making a reasonable effort to look for spare coins.  Now, this may or may not make us the players huge giant pussies (sorry if you get here googling “huge giant pussies”), but we expect to be able to trust our negative feedback.  (For an example of exactly what not to do, please consult the aspirin bottle in Another Goddamn Escape the Locked Room Game by this Riff Conner character, who is a complete asshole.  Actually, I’m spoiling it – you are supposed to eat, like, a hundred aspirin for no apparent reason, and several aspirin in, you get the message “Maybe you shouldn’t eat any more of these aspirin.”  That is an incredibly dick move, and should be avoided unless you don’t mind being an absolute fuckwad.)

Mainly, though, The Grand Quest has two big flaws:  the story around the puzzles is generic and uninteresting, and the puzzles come off as though the author has nothing but contempt for the player.  If I were to do a rewrite, I would ameliorate both those problems by making the PC more like Drake in the Uncharted series.  Let me explain that.

Drake is the kind of protagonist I normally can’t stand.  He’s your typical straight guy fantasy, an action hero wet dream, all shooting and punching and getting the girl.  What makes him likable is that his reactions to things are those of an actual person (“Jesus Christ, who’s shooting at me now?”) and his external monologue often mirrors the player’s internal monologue (“I am so fucking sick of climbing things.”)  Someone like this as the star of The Grand Quest would not only help players identify (and thus be more involved), they’d help plant the crown of assholicism squarely on the evil character Labra’s head, instead of the author’s.  (“Aw, no way, this is a keyhole puzzle?  I totally fell for it!  You’re such a dick, Labra!”)

Anyway.

Grounded in Space (6):  This game’s main puzzle is a perfect example of something that is both too visual and too fiddly to work well in IF.  You might be better off just replacing a puzzle like this – simple on paper, but with a lot of super bonus artificial difficulty because of the format – with one that translates better and is genuinely trickier.

The Hangover (2):  Everyone makes crap when they’re young.  Don’t worry about it, and don’t give up.  If you keep trying, you’ll get better.

Interface (7):  It’s never too late to finish a project, apparently, although Ben Vegiard might just be some sort of superhuman.  Good old Inky.

Resonance (9):  The trend towards kinder gentler more player-friendly games is fucking fantastic, and I would love to see innovations in this area become standard.  Most of us have doors at home that we can open, if we’re into that sort of thing, and do not need simulations.

Oh, and most people found the puzzles sort of jarring, since they were sphinx riddles grafted on to a sci-fi noir detective story and made absolutely no sense in their environment.  Personally, I kind of like bizarre surprises like that, but ideally a game’s puzzles are a natural extension of its setting.  I’m going to say that exact same thing later on about Snowquest.  I know this because I’ve already typed it.

Rover’s Day Out (9):  It’s always cool when things are taking place on two levels of reality at the same time.  It just is.  It’s a thing that is cool.  Also, something you want to watch out for in every game is the gap between player knowledge and what is expected of the PC.  In this case, instead of trying to teach the player complicated spaceship functions, they’ve turned them into a familiar morning routine, with rock-solid narrative justification.  This is fucking inspired.

Sadly, another thing to learn from this game is that people dislike going through the motions of repetitive tasks.  If you need repetition for the game to make sense (which I would argue Rover does), try to help the player out by making as many actions implicit as you can, or even reducing tasks to a single command (FRY EGG should definitely assume I want to put it in the pan first, and maybe even open the fridge and get one for me, if there’s one in there and I don’t already have one.)

Snowquest (8):  There’s something just… elegant about the puzzles in the first part of this game.  All of them require outside knowledge, but it’s the sort of outside knowledge every human learns as a kid, like “You can rub two sticks together to start a fire” and “Things fall when you drop them.”  They’re exactly the sort of puzzles that make sense in a world where all knowledge has been lost except for the very basics.  Ideally, a game’s puzzles are a natural extension of its setting, and Snowquest fucking nailed this.

On a bitchier note, it’s way aggravating when the refusal of the PC to do something the player wants to do is used as a plot bottleneck.  (A plottleneck.  Oh, that’s good; I think I’m keeping that one.)  If you’re not going for aggravating, come up with something external instead.

Spelunker’s Quest (6):  It’s probably really fun to write an old-school text adventure with no innovations or twists.  It’s not easy to get excited about playing one.

Star Hunter (3):  The denser your game is, the more better.  The more details you’ve implemented, the more better.  Star Hunter is a poster child for both these concepts, and a third, stranger-to-mention one:  the player does not know what’s going on if you don’t tell them.  Also, implementing something for the sole purpose of mocking your players when they try to interact with it is sort of extremely rude.

Trap Cave (no score):  Es ist vorzuziehend für die englische Version Ihres Spiels, mindestens hauptsächlich auf englisch zu sein.

Yon Astounding Castle! (7):  It’s not necessarily bad to have a gimmick, especially in a competition setting, where every game is going “Pick me!  I’m special!”   Ideally, though, you want a good gimmick.  You especially don’t want a gimmick that’s irritating enough to become a liability.  Tim Schafer has a bit in his 2004 GDC talk about being willing to throw out your first few dozen ideas, because they’re probably crap.

zork, buried chaos (3):  See The Hangover.  Oh my God we’re done!

Mr. Magnifico: Math problem, courtesy of Little Mag: “I have 2 branches. One has one more than the other. How many different ways can there be?”
Mr Magnifico: (Answer: “It’s obvious that there are 30.”)

I saved Broken Legs for last, because the au jus seemed to like it.  So, with no further fucking around, let’s play it.

Mostly Spoiler-Free Upshot: This game is steeped in personality and funny writing, and in that sense, I loved it.  Its puzzles, though… okay, maybe I’m denser than an Eric Eve protagonist, but I tried to solve its puzzles by myself, failed miserably, exhausted the hint system, continued to fail, consulted the pre-walkthrough, somehow managed to read it wrong, kept right on failing, resorted to the actual walkthrough, typed something in wrong, failed once again, then finally finally finally got it.  I feel like maybe a very small percentage of this is not entirely my fault.

So, yeah.  You should play it, though.  You’ll enjoy the writing, and can’t possibly do any worse at the puzzles than I did.

[spoilers begin here]

Who’s Johnny One Note?

An Interactive Disaster sounds promising.  Oh dear God, theater kids.  I think I am supposed to sabotage their auditions because I fucked up mine?

> search couch
Really? Really?  Fine.  You rummage around in the sofa guts like you’re playing real-life Operation with less plastic and more dead skin cells.  And you know what you find?  Nothing.  You hate yourself so much right now.
Well, couch-searching habits die hard.  Also the PC is fairly awful, so making her hate herself is sort of a bonus.  (Not a complaint, mind; playing an awful character can be pretty fun.)

Huh.  Are the papers the thing I’m being pressed to find in the closet office, even after I’ve found them, or is there something else?  I’m sort of confused.

I like that I can read all the different parts of my resume.  This game totally wins the fuckton-of-personality category, plus I hate teal too.  I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to be doing, though.

When I try GIVE SHEET TO SERAPHINA, she doesn’t seem interested, yet when I ask her about it, she freaks the fuck out and wants to see it.

Well, I found this memo, but what am I supposed to do with it?  I couldn’t think of a single pressing reason to ask Rosanna about it… oh, I was supposed to show it to her.  Pick a damn verb, game!  Or, y’know, implement ‘em all!

Oh, huh, I might not have to sabotage everyone, because this Rosanna bitch is doing a pretty good job of it on her own.  So if I just wait until she takes down the others, then expose her as a cheater, I should be golden.  Hmm.  How am I going to do that?

Congratulations, Lottie.  You’ve made a bitter fool.  Like God.  Except if you were really God you’d fix your voice.  But this is cool too.
There are so many great lines in this game.

I have Kassie’s purse.  She doesn’t seem to want it back.  I don’t seem to want anything in it.  THINK is implemented, which is nice, but I’m still hung up on Alexandra and she’s done with her audition already.  I am just going to do nothing and see what happens.

Kassie just gave Alexandra a look like she pissed in her lunch, which makes her having given the judges’ room door a look like she pissed in her lunch a bit more sensical.

Oh no, I’m stuck in Troxlerville for the rest of my life!  Okay, I’m cheating now.

Oh, wow, I can call my mom and she’ll tell me how to sabotage these girls!  That’s horrible!  I love it!

Okay, I think I’m supposed to get Kassie to fuck with Alexandra’s shit after her own failed audition, plant the purse on Rosanna, and let Mary fuck her own damn self up (will she, though?), but I can’t work out what to do with Seraphina.  My mom said I should get her to yell, and I think I’m supposed to set Rosanna on her with the Insanity Motet, but I don’t know how. I hate to say it’s walkthrough time, but man, is it ever.

Oh, wow, I’m supposed to steal her soundproof foam?  Oh, man, I’m supposed to TAKE FOAM, leave, TAKE FOAM again, then get Mary to sing in the other practice room… why do I need her in the hallway again?  So Rosanna can piss her off?

I know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing now and I can’t get it to work.  Lemme restart.  Um, it won’t let me take the foam more than once.  Am I supposed to distract her?  We’re pulling out the walkthrough fucking proper for this one.

Oh, I was supposed to get the foam from the other side of the door?  You’re lucky I like you, game, because I never would have thought of that in a million fucking years.

Oh, okay, Kassie will sabotage Alexandra if I set her up to do it by leaving my shoes and the Insanity Motet on the couch.  Again, something I never would have figured out.  I almost feel bad for Alexandra, though.  That Insanity Motet sounds hard.

…wait a minute, does that mean if Rosanna takes it from you, the game is unwinnable?  And you have no idea she’s going to, and you don’t find out you’re fucked for a kamillion turns?  That’s sort of uncool.  I guess this game is designed to be played over and over until you work out the puzzles, but, I mean, still.

I have to leave the accusation scene to go move a music stand so it’ll be ready for later in the walkthrough?  I am Lottie Plum and I have to move my own music stands?  Can’t someone else do it?

Oh snap twist ending!

Well.  Huh.  As a story, and as a character piece, I liked it a lot.  As a game… yeah, these were maybe the most obtuse puzzles all comp, and I am including Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man in that.  Plus the bit where you attack Mary with a music stand (after first moving it into the hallway so it will be available when you need to attack her with it, which you would have no idea was going to happen) only makes sense after the twist.  I mean, this is the same PC who refused to destroy a piece of sheet music because violence doesn’t get you callbacks.

So, yeah, I had some ish, and I’m calling it an eight.  With better hinted and more forgiving puzzles, it would’ve been an easy nine.  With good and fun puzzles, probably a ten.

Eric Eve is this year’s Big Name from which we are all Expecting Great Things.  I’ve only played one of his other games, last year’s Nightfall, which had a couple nice features to keep the player up to speed with what the PC knows, but could have used some going the other direction, because man, the protagonist is thick.  (Not stupid, mind you, just… you know how characters in pre-Scream horror movies were ignorant of genre conventions, and would often wander away from the others to get a beer from a dark basement while a serial killer was at large, and you’d find yourself screaming at the screen?  Or how characters in romantic comedies get into huge misunderstandings and don’t speak to each other for more than half the movie, because somehow neither of them managed to use a noun, and you find yourself screaming at the screen?  I found myself screaming at the screen, is what I’m getting at.  “David!  That ticking thing is a bomb!  Don’t give it a biscuit!”)

I liked Nightfall, though, and I am prepared to like Snowquest, which I hear has a female protagonist, so maybe she will be somewhat less dense.  There are a finite number of ways to find out, and the easiest one I can think of is playing the damn game.

Mostly Spoiler-Free Upshot: It was pretty good.  That’s sort of all I have for you, upshot.

[spoilers begin here]

Whatever I’m after must be pretty important if I’m out here trudging through the snow for it.  If I ever want something this badly in real life I will seduce a helicopter pilot.

Went through several verbs trying to pick this branch up off the ground and start a fire by rubbing it, but I’m willing to accept that as my fault.

And now I’m dreaming about a unicorn, which means I’m a replicant, or Tom Cruise.  Wait, what do I mean “or?”

But only one who speaks the ancient tongue will be able to read it, and there are only two such people in the world:  you and I.
I get the feeling this was our first mistake.  If I make it back alive, ancient tongue classes are going to be mandatory in the public schools.  Also, why are ancient races always so much wiser and more technologically advanced?  Someday I want to read something where they’re just a bunch of fuckups.  “We’ve unearthed another ancient aqueduct.  Shame they never worked out not to put holes in the bottom, poor things.  Still, the cock ‘n’ bas-relief is lovely.”

What’s heronweed?  Let me look it up quickly in Convenient Flora of the Worlds… oh, it’s exactly like rope except it grows out of the ground!  How fortunate!  I shouldn’t make too much fun of it, though, as any adaptation that makes adventurers pick you up and carry you around is a great way to spread your seed.

Also, I just realized that rub-the-stick-on-the-other-stick-to-start-a-fire puzzle depends on the player having knowledge they themselves probably never ever use – how do you start a fire?  I use matches or a lighter, personally – yet we all seem to pick it up somewhere, don’t we?  If you stuck me in the wilderness somewhere I would have no idea what I could and couldn’t eat, or how to build a simple shelter, or find water, or protect myself from wild animals, but I would know, in the brief time before I died horribly, that I could allegedly rub two sticks together to start a fire.  That to me says something very interesting about humans.

TIE HERONWEED AROUND ROCK should maybe work.  I can’t work up the energy to be terribly vehement about that one, but it was the first thing I tried, and I think maybe it should work.  Also, these puzzles are nice and straightforward, if not terribly exciting.

You find nothing in the skeleton but the bones it’s composed of, and a curious golden thread holding it together.
Well, there goes my agnosticism.

This is the second game I’ve played in which light coruscated off something.  Snowquest has fewer twelve-syllable words overall, though, so I’m willing to forgive it.

> put bone in slot
The end of the bone is just too big to fit into the slot.
That is what I tell the ladies, but they seem to view it as a challenge.  It must be all this Axe body spray I use.

Oh, weird, I’m back in the cave where I had that dream earlier?  Well, all right, let’s try this again.

Huh.  I just found myself dead in an airplane.  Oh, okay, all of this was a vision of the future, shown to me by a mysterious stranger in an airport.  I am supposed to fly the Book of Yashor to the Farpoint Weather Station, but now I’m not entirely sure I want to.

No, you won’t open the parcel, because you’re sure Stephen would never deceive you about something like that — aren’t you?  At least you think you are — or should be.
Open the parcel, David!  No, don’t give it a biscuit!  Where are you even getting all these biscuits?

Stephen particularly stressed that these observations might significantly enhance scientists’ understanding of climate change and so help save the planet.
Oooh, topical!

> enter car
You haven’t yet decided to leave;
Oh, I have.  Jennifer hasn’t.  Are all his protagonists like this?

Oooh, choices.  Do I go see Agent Wolf, who could be evil, or deliver the package for Stephen, who could be evil, or just go the fuck home?  I would just go home, but I’m curious what Agent Wolf’s got to say.  Actually, I should probably have delivered the package, which probably really did contain important weather… thingies, and prevented the coming ice age.  Oh well.  I have a save file.

Y’know, if I were allowed to just open the damn package before leaving the airport, the choice would be easier, if much much less interesting.

Yeah, I don’t trust Wolf at all.
Wolf blocks your path.
> throw stick
That would be somewhat pointless right now.
Worked on the last wolf.

Hmm.  If I fly to the weather station, I crash.  If I give the package to Wolf, he shoots me.  If I go home, all I get is “At least you have survived.”  Clearly, I’m missing something.

Let’s check out the hint system.  Oooh, option to disable hints!  I think this far into the game I will be all right.  Also, there’s a walkthrough, which is worse… hey, after going through all that, I get “Sorry, no hints are available at this time.”  Boo!

He’s given you no reason to attack him as yet, and you’ve never been one for gratuitous violence.
Maybe Jennifer hasn’t.  Would you like to see my pile of dead goblins?

> put parcel in plane
You put the large brown parcel into the Cessna.
I will go see him without the parcel, to see what happens.
> s
(first taking the large brown parcel)
D’oh!

Ah, now I get a hint.  “It seems you have another Wolf to overcome.”  Thank you, hints.  You’re helping.  I’ve tried throwing the parcel, but he catches it.  Also, I object to being told how good-looking he is while he’s pointing a gun at me.  I don’t think we’ll be going on a date later.

Man, I don’t want to look at the walkthrough.
As you reach the end of the path, a branch scratches against your face.  Reaching out to brush it aside, you absently break off the end of it and retain the twig.
Oh!  Teach me to start reading words!

Okay, that worked.  Sure are fast sheriffs we have in this deserted mountain wilderness, too.

Oh, good, I’m not dead and Stephen and I are going out for dinner.  What about future me and her failed quest for the Book of Yashnor, though?  I thought something I did in the present was going to save them.  Then again, I didn’t die in a plane crash, so presumably that part of the vision is wrong, so maybe by getting the components to the weather station, I also averted the coming ice age?  In any case, I would have liked some sort of closure on that.  Oh, and what was that golden thread holding the skeleton together?  Just thread?

As with Nightfall, I feel weird giving this game an eight, especially since I gave the game based on Nightfall a rather overexuberant nine, but, well, there we are.  It was well-written, and competently put together, and not uninteresting, but just… missing something, and I’m not sure what.

I didn’t write an RSS buffer beforehand, like I usually do, because man, I had nothing.  I typed out, then backspaced, something about how I am a sucker for the kitty in our backyard, and bought her a little mousey, which she seems to have taken to her secret hiding place.  I wish she’d bring it back so we can play mousey games.  She is the least interested in a laser pointer of any cat I’ve ever seen.

But anyway.

Note:  there are complete puzzle solutions in here.  (I’m sort of making a point to type them out, in fact, in case people want them.  Careful, though, they’re sort of smushed in two or six at a time.)  I had a great time with these puzzles, and if they’re at all your sort of thing, I think you will too, so I’d suggest not spoiling yourself for as long as you can possibly hold out.

Mostly Spoiler-Free Upshot: I friggin’ loved this game.  Granted, I like word puzzles.  Some of you may not enjoy word puzzles, and will hate the fuck out of this game.  I thought it was bloody brilliant.

[spoilers begin here]

Oooh, the biggest tea party of the year?  I am excited!

I wonder what there will be more of – tea, or new friends?  Goodness, what if it’s a tie?!
I like this game already.

The internal monologue at the bottom is pretty damn cute.
Everyone knows how much more legitimate it makes a tea party to have monks there.
They do?  I didn’t!

Oh, neat, I can knock letters out of things with my runebag!  Presumably I will have to put them in other things to solve puzzles?

I like when games attempt to teach you how to play them, especially if they’ve got special new features like this runebag deal.  So far I’m really digging this game.

Eaves prevents you from descending, with a brusque “Not until you’ve finished your lessons.”
I thought I had?  Maybe I’m supposed to do something here?  Oooh, fragrant pants!

Um, okay, I guess I wasn’t supposed to knock his plants?  Or was I?  Oh no, the dread Earl Gry!

Uh… what am I supposed to do exactly?  I can’t go into town, and… oh, hey, should I go through this portal?  I’ll go through this portal.  Oh, no I won’t.  I’ll help this teapot.  Okay, that worked.

Know what this game could use?  Hints.  I’m having a hard time telling which words are fair game for knocking or casting letters into.  I can’t change the teapot’s spout into a pout, or… okay, I’m'a read every word in the description of the town, and…
> cast l into savaged
You point your runebag in the general direction of town, and it thrums with approval as it opens.
Whoo-hoo, got one!  That was satisfying.  I like this game again.  Oh, maybe it would be better if this boy were crying for his lost feather?  Ha!
It was a good feather, taken before its time.
Poor feather.  Hmm, out of letters.  I could take that T out of painted again, but I really hate to do that to the teapot.  Let’s see what internal monologue thinks.

Y’know, this must’ve been very tricky to write, what with the having to use very particular words and all.  It’s a neat game.  I’m very stuck.

Yeah.  To the point where I’m knocking everything in an attempt to brute-force it.

Oh, okay, the town was fine and I just had to go through the portal?  That could have been made clearer.

Not Old Rick.  Not now.
I love this game.

In one hand it holds a ten-foot halberd with a razor-sharp blade.  In the other hand it holds a fist.
Whose fist?

Oh, okay, the wary guardsman is better off as a wry guardsman, then the cave mouth should be a cave moth, then the U can go into this paper here, and… oh, the resulting pauper wants to give me an Ogresbane Dagger.  I feel pretty good about myself.

“Game ogre!” you blurt out before you can stop yourself.
That’s terrible.

Oh, man, Eaves isn’t looking so good.

Okay, the response to KNOCK CLOCK is great.  But… russet sea ions?  That’s sort of pushing it.  Actually, that’s really pushing it.  At least there’s no doubt what I’m supposed to do with this L.

…oh, man, I failed the sea lions, and they drowned.  Heavy!

I dunno how I feel about a timed puzzle in this game, especially one where sea lions drown. It reminds me of certain levels of Boom Blox where, if you fuck up, these little rectangular cows hit the ground and go poof, and “All baby cows are lost” appears on the screen.  Man, I hate those levels.

If you knock Eaves’ lice before investigating his condition, you get stuck trying to talk to him.  I’m not sure how necessary talking to him is going to be, though.

Oh, huh, now my favorite sea lion is named Jane instead of Sebastian?  Nice touch!  (Sebastian will always be my real favorite, though.)

A-ha!  Had to knock the crown into a crow, then a cow, which fell over and issued a plaintive moo, which I turned into a moon, which created a luster, which I turned into a cluster (of rock), which the sea lions moved onto and did not drown.

For the first time, Eaves looks at you like you are crazy.  “What?  Everyone knows that, it’s one of the first things they teach in school.  A froen is a gaseous blue creature that eats louse nits.”
And I thought sea ions were pushing it.

Hmmm.  Stuck again.  If I had an H, I could make this glass sphere permeable to sound and hair.

> knock r into moon
The runebag remains inert.
Oh, come on, a lazy moron hanging in the sky is worth at least a unique failure message.

Oh, duh, this pure needs to be a purse!
It’s like they say:  your keys are always in the last place you look on the observation platform of the glass sphere you’re inside over the ocean.
They are so right.

What, I can’t have been run through with an unforgiving lace?  Damn.

Oh, okay, there’s auto-undo when I die.  I had a save file anyway, but that’s nice.  An unforgiving glance would be better.  Where’s a G?  Ah, regal vinegar.

It’s probably not in my best interest to turn these sharp-looking frocks into sharp-looking rocks, but I’m going to try it anyway.
I wonder what made me try it.  Maybe I have survivor’s guilt about the lance.

Oh, I see, that was Earl Gry’s plan, and now I’m bleeding to death.  Hmm.

There are some weirdnesses here.  I get the “owing to the many wounds on my body” message before I have any wounds on my body, and ask the camel which of the frocks it likes before the garbsmiths are even in the room.

Man.  I have no idea about this one.  I’m pretty sure the camel is relevant, or, y’know, there wouldn’t be a camel, and… oh!  STEEP is a verb, I find out from reading the help!  I shall try it!

Oh, man, now they’re flinging corks at me!  Excellent!  What else can I… oh, camelid anagrams to “medical!”  Beautiful.

Okay, what was that thing I had to find for the prince?  A reignlog?  Oh!  An ogreling!  I like this game a hell of a lot.  It could be a bit smoother in places, but it’s friggin’ awesome.  Oh, shit, crow got my dagger.  Fucking crows.

Uh.  And now I’m in a like four-turn deathloop until I figure out what important thing the Earl left unprotected.  Which, y’know, could be a while.  Whatever thought you’re having, internal monologue, you could share it with me!

Yeah.  Tempted to cheat, but I haven’t yet, so I hate to ruin it now.

Oh!  Leaves!  Eaves!  Thank fuck!

“You broke the rules,” she says to Eaves, then to Earl Gry, “and you followed them in what was perhaps the most vile way I’ve seen in some time.”
That line is great.

Ended a bit abruptly, but man, I loved it.  Sure, it had a couple rough moments, but crafting all the prose with an eye for what words could potentially become other words… yeah.  That was nuts.  Giving it what will probably be a controversial ten out of ten.

Not sure what to RSS-buff about today.  I did read that toy (I think) designer Alex Green has developed a process to turn your baby’s placenta into a (disputedly) adorable teddy bear, which is extremely umwhat.  Also, this doner kebab I’m eating is both delicious and messier than fuck.  (I would say “messy as fuck,” if I simply wanted to indicate that it was very messy, but no, it literally is messier than fuck.  Well, not all kinds of fuck, I guess, but many.)

Anyway!  Four games left!  Let’s knock this noun off a second noun!

Mostly Spoiler-Free Upshot: Sort of a detective game with sci-fi elements, and definitely one of the better games I’ve played this comp.  Reminded me a bit of last year’s Nightfall.  The combination of an integrated map and GO (LOCATION) moving you towards a named location made it nearly impossible to get lost, the conversation system eliminated the need to figure out what to ASK about, and typing HINT gave me a single hint relevant to my current situation.  The writing was not bad (more over-the-top hardboiled detectivery would have been fun, but whatev) and the puzzles were enjoyable enough, but the main thing I liked about this game was its commitment to tedium avoidance.

[spoilers begin here]

Oh no!  Psychodyne has captured my female!  I must stop them before… well, she didn’t say, but I’m guessing it’s something bad.

Oh, okay, it’s a sci-fi noir.  I can dig that.  Oooh, and it looks like I can go places by typing a keyword, which is nice.  Already looks like some care’s been put in this game.

Any woman named Sonia is trouble.  If she weren’t, she’d be named Betty.

Wow, I have a real bad case of drank-away-my-memory, apparently.  Real bad.  Steve the bartender is filling me in on everything I’ve done in my life.  I wonder how often he has to do that?  “Those are pants, Jimmy.  They go on your legs.”  Oh, Steve’s also my brother.  That don’t mean he ain’t heavy, though.

I can’t take the soup?  What if I need the soup?  I might need the soup!

> x cabinet
*** Run-time problem P7:  Too many rulebooks in simultaneous use.

Hey, if I turn on this television, d’you suppose it’ll be displaying a news story relevant to my current situation?
“In other news,” continues the reporter.  “Psychodyne Incorporated has completed its government-subsidized purchase of broadcasting stations across the country, including our own WXRP.  CEO Wyndham Vail had this to say.”
Sort of, I guess.  Man do I hate Psychodyne.  And that Wyndham Vail guy has got to be evil evil evil or his name would be Bill “Jerry” Goodneighbor.

So… where do I go now?  The police, since I’ve been burgled?  The newspaper office, since I found this card?  Straight to Psychodyne, to find out what I’ll have to do to get in and kick their asses?  That last one doesn’t sound too bad, actually.  Let’s try that.

Oh, dude, my asshole ex-partner shot my brother!  That’s not very nice!

On the plus side, my wife’s still alive!  Psychodyne’s been using her as some kind of experiment, so she might have tentacles growing all out her face, but with the lights off, that’s actually sort of hot.

Wow, Maxi-Mart wants ten bucks for an empty pie tin?  This better be the future, buddy.  No bullets, either.  Maybe there’ll be some back at the bar?

You hand Sally ten dollars and sit in the adjustable chair.  After covering you with an apron, she leans close to you and whispers:  “We’re all doomed.”
What good is the apron, then?

Did you know the resonant frequency of a chicken skull is 7 kilohertz?  I didn’t until just now!  This game is educational!

Okay, Psychodyne is planning to use every broadcasting station in the country to hypnotize people to… something.  Shut up and obey, probably.  Oh, huh, a cop has riddles for me.  Hmm.

‘Sometimes I’m white and sometimes I’m black.  I’ll take you to your destination, but I’ll never take you back.[']
I have no idea.  A hearse?  A hearse.  (Of cea- wait, no, that’s a terrible joke and I’m not making it.  So there.)

…this desk is asking me a riddle, too.  That’s novel.
“What’s larger than the universe, faster than light, and capable of breaking the spirit of the most determined man?”
Hyperbole?  You got me.  Nothing?  Ha!

After you finish reading, a thought occurs to you:  the Fair City police should be informed.  With the FCPD on your side, you’d stand a better chance against Psychodyne.
But I’m wanted for murder!  The police in these kinds of stories aren’t known for listening to reason… although I did just answer a riddle posed to me by a desk, so anything goes, I guess.  Which, come to think of it, if you had a voice-activated secret compartment, why would you make its password the answer to a riddle and engrave that riddle on your desk?  I mean, people are notoriously stupid with their passwords, but this guy has his own security company!  My security company!

You can see Corporal Finks (dead), Sergeant Snyder (dead), Sergeant Cantrell (dead), Chief Landon (dead), and five Psychodyne Guards (dead) here.
Oh, man, was that the entire police force?  I hope that wasn’t the entire police force.  It certainly seems like all our named dudes.

Oh dear, I should’ve found out what one of those dead dudes’ names was.  Now I’m captured and Wyndham Vail is laughing like a maniac.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Seriously.  Who does that?

I think maybe I was supposed to do more in town?  I still don’t have any bullets for this gun, and I seem to have hit sort of a dead end.  What happens if they capture me?  Can I still win?

The shiny wrapper says that this is a genuine Maxi-Mart garlic yogurt bar, made from 100% real garlic yogurt.
That is not what I call “candy.”  Should I eat it?
Much to your shock, this garlic yogurt bar is the most repulsive thing you’ve ever tasted, and you quickly stop eating.
My friend Ben got a celebratory lollipop at work once.  Apparently there’s this candy company that will print company logos and mix and match flavors, and whoever put the order in went with marshmallow pistachio.  I want to say he described it as Satan’s hardened ejaculate, but I’m pretty sure that was something else.

Oh, wow, I’m blocking these mind rays with a candy wrapper!  Maybe I should go back and put that finger bowl on my head.  I still don’t have any bullets, though.  Maybe I’ll un-go to the cops and try to find some bullets.

*** YOU ARE DEAD, SHOT BY OLD MAN TUCKER WHILE TRYING TO BREAK INTO HIS HOME. ***
Well, so much for “explore everything.”  I wonder if the Fairchild mansion is deadly also?

Y’know, I thought about wearing the bowl to block the mind rays, but when I read it reminded me of a finger bowl, I assumed it would be too small.

Ah, the bowl did the trick.  Billy Idol was right, you don’t need a gun.  Oh, man, a math puzzle!  Narratively all these puzzles everywhere are a bit silly, but I’m enjoying them.  So far this game’s very well done.  This particular puzzle is not so much a puzzle as an example of two variables, two equations, but I am all right with that.

Well, that was easier than I expected.  I just had to shove Wyndham Vail against a wall.  And bang, happy ending!  I like that I’m still wearing the aluminum bowl under my fedora.  What sort of experiments were they doing on Sonia, though, and how was she able to contact me psychically?  I thought that was going to be cleared up.

I liked this game.  It may have a nine.

On a completely unrelated note for the RSS buffer, Machinarium, the new game by Amanita Design is out, and I’ve been playing it a tiny bit.  All Amanita games are along the same lines:  you solve environment-manipulation puzzles by clicking on shit in this sort of magic-trees-robots-and-airships fantasy world that is oddly hard to describe; the closest I can get is “like Wallace and Gromit and the Little Prince had a baby.”  They’re all pretty damn cool, and Machinarium brings some new stuff to the table.  The earlier games could sort of be brute-forced by moving the mouse around until the cursor turned into a hand, but Machinarium won’t let you click on something unless your little robot dude – oh, you’re a little robot dude – is near enough and the right height (your little robot dude has three heights) to reach it.  Also – oh, man, there are little boys screaming at each other in hero and villain voices outside my window, and one of them just declared the other one would never defeat him, and cackled.  That is so damn cute.  Where were we?

Oh!  Right!  Machinarium has a super kickass feature that is my new favorite thing ever:  each screen has one hint, and a walkthrough.  To access the walkthrough, you have to play a little platform mini-game, navigating a key through a field of spiders, and it is hard as fuck. To the point where I went “fuck these spiders, I will figure it out.”  Then did.  (I hadn’t realized yet my little robot dude had three heights.)  Figuring that one out for myself was approximately as satisfying as a warm English muffin with strawberry jam and oozing butter, which I really want now, dammit, and the game playing keep-away with the walkthrough kept me from robbing myself of that.

Anyway!  Grounded In Space!

Mostly Spoiler-Free Upshot: This game is mega science-fictiony.  Probably Heinlein-inspired, although I’ve never read any, and I suspect I wouldn’t enjoy it.  From what I can tell, the puzzles are clever, but I have no idea how I would have figured them out in a million kajillion years.  There ar e six beta testers credited and all of them must be way smarter than I am, or read so much science-fiction that laser beams, reflector fields, and fusion chambers are what mice and cheese are to the rest of us.  If you are one of those people, you will probably enjoy this as a fun little puzzler, in the same way that Mothra enjoys Tokyo as a light snack.  Personally, I couldn’t hack it.

Update:  Oh, and according to Elizabeth, Matt Wigdahl and his wife just spawned a baby human, so grats on that!  If it’s a girl, I think you should name it Penumbra.

[spoilers begin here]

Ah, I am a plucky inventor kid who just nuked his mom’s prize vegetable garden from orbit.  Oh, man, there’s not a lot of soil on our planet, either.  I am in such deep shit.  What’s metapolymer?  Is that even a thing, or do “meta” and “polymer” just sound nice and spacy together?  Apparently in the Phantasy Star universe, metapolymer is a compound material from Moatoob.  I will assume… what’s that called when two people have the same idea independently of each other?  No, not conspicuous consumption, brain.  I appreciate you trying to help, though.

I hope my destroying all the vegetables doesn’t mean my family is going to starve to death.  That would suck.

> apologize
That’s not a word I recognize.
Really?  Oh, SORRY works, sort of.  I mean, it’s implemented, but it’s not getting me ungrounded.

My punishment is mining the Spinward Claim by myself for three weeks.  I’m lucky he didn’t ask me to kill ten womp rats.

Hmm, another game presumably influenced by Heinlein.  I’ve never read any Heinlein, but I suspect he’s one of those authors who cares how the warp drive is assembled, or at least thinks you’re interested in the list of its components.  (Lithohelium transorption unit?  Check!  Neolexical polyglomeration device?  You betcha!)

This vessel is equipped with a distributed Turing-V 800/40/103 non-sentient artificial intelligence[...]
How are they so sure it’s not sentient?  It could just be biding its time.  To be fair, I guess, my rice cooker might be sentient.  I’ve never asked.  Kinda would rather not know, ’cause I’d feel weird cooking rice in a sentient being.

I wonder at what point in the future things are going to start looking like we always thought things would look in the future?  It’s nearly 2010, and most of us still have doors with knobs that open and close without making cool whoosh noises.  Oh, wow, this ship has a probe storage facility?  Really?

Yikes, rather an intimidating-looking array of topics to learn about!  Let’s start with this wessel.

Ownership status is under review due to a counterclaim filed by Byron Wildsmith.
And here we introduce the McCoys to my family’s Hatfields.  I suspect a few the instant death scenarios the introduction warned me about are this dude’s brilliant ideas.  Also, Byron Wildsmith is a really sexy name, isn’t it?  (“Hello, ladies.  I’m Byron Wildsmith.  If you need me, I’ll be in your vagina.”)

Hey, computer, how I mine?
There is storage space for 36 standard form-factor automining probes on board.  To deploy an automining probe, the probe must be loaded into the launcher, powered up, and activated with a valid program.  The launcher must then be targeted and activated.  After successful deployment to the target mass, a full diagnostic must be run to verify no physical or data damage has occurred.  Once the diagnostic is complete, installation can be initiated.  After installation is complete, the transponder beacon should be activated to warn nearby spaceship traffic of potential mining packet launches, and the output railgun can be targeted to the collection destination.  Although the central computer on board this vessel is only configured to run installation processes for one autominer at a time, once one is fully installed it runs fully autonomously and requires no additional monitoring or control.
Um.   Did anyone else find that way too complicated?  How much of this am I actually going to have to do?

Mining subsystem offline — no targets in probe range.
Oh thank God.  Wait, now I have to figure out how to get a target in probe range.  Fuck.

The computer responds:  “Course set.  Engines beginning power cycle.  Estimated arrival time:  8.2 days.”
8.2 days?  I hope I can magically sleep through all that, or something!  Because damn!

> sleep
You aren’t feeling especially drowsy.
Dammit!  Oh well, it’s an opportunity to spade how many Zs are in 8.2 days, I guess.
…I don’t really want to do that.  Oh, man, no hint system?  Maaaaaaan.

Okay, while we’re waiting for the ship to arrive at the claim, let’s compare these two sentences:
1)  Visible through a thick window, a heavy picosecond-pulsed gas laser directs its output through a series of induced-reflectance fields to trigger synchronized fusion reactions in nine separate reaction chambers.
2)  Under a tree is a bunny.
Which one can you visualize?  Now try these two:
1)  On the other side of a thick window, a yellow laser beam fires into a shimmering reflectance field, splitting it and directing its output into nine separate hexagonal chambers.
2)  Under a coniferous metaphyte which pulsates microscopically as its chloroplasts fill with adenosine triphosphate is a bunny.
What I am trying to say is that there is a lot of information at once, and the big sciency words make it hard to parse.  Also, the room descriptions seem to care more about explaining the mechanics of the ship, not so much what it looks like, which makes it hard to visualize.  What does a functional AI configuration of processor cubes look like, and does the light really have to coruscate off of them?  Really?  (Granted, I’m a big fan of being able to picture things in my head, and this might be Just Me Here.  Are we at the claim yet?)

Oh, okay, the cubes are arranged in a 3×3 matrix.  I am all right with that.  And asking the computer about itself took 8.2 days, apparently.  Not once did it ask me about myself, though.  Not once.

You listen to music, play some games against the ship’s computer, and write dark, brooding thoughts in your journal.  You’re particularly proud of one of your poems, Gulag.
I chuckled.

Okay, working this mining console is not as bad as I’d been afraid it would be.  The computer pretty much tells me what it’s waiting for, and I just have to work out what two-word command, say, “waiting for verbal fusion bottle priming approval” translates to.  (APPROVE PRIMING worked, at least, I dunno what else would have.)  Also, I’m getting the impression that Heinlein’s spaceships were rather bottle-centric.  In my head, they’re giant milk bottles with fusion inside of them, and, if I get bored, “Sunshine Dairy” printed on their outsides with a picture of a happy smiling cow.  Ahhh, happy smiling cow.

How the hell do I target this asteroid?
> target asteroid
You will need to specify both the item you are targeting and the thing you want to target.
…huh?

You know that whole huge text dump the computer gave me when I asked it how to mine?  It is not at all helpful.

If there were not a walkthrough, this is the point at which I would stop playing this game.  Oh, okay, it wanted TARGET ASTEROID WITH PROBE.  “What do you want to target the asteroid with?” would have been clearer, if not quite as simpatico with the sci-fi vibe, because to my mind the item you are targeting and the thing you want to target are the same damn thing, right?  I want to target this thing, so I’m targeting it?  I am not crazy here?  I mean, I guess you could target a target onto a target, unless you literally cannot plug a plug into a plug.

If LAUNCH PROBE doesn’t work to launch this probe, I’m going to be sort of upset.  Oh thank God, it did.  What’s a magnetic catapult?  Such an oxymoronic concept.  “Did you launch the iron ball out of the magnetic catapult, Private Johnson?”  “No, sir!”  “Good.  That means it works.”

Oh, huh, I may have done Byron Wildsmith (cue the swooning) an injustice, because it looks like some other jerk is coming to intimidate him into giving up his claim on the whatever this mining zone is called again, and then Mom and Dad are next, no doubt.  Guess I’ll save the day or something.

Vesta Acquisitions claims authority over everything in their legal penumbra, sketchy dude says.  That’s not quite “Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away,” but it’s still a good sentence, and I’m going to have to find a way to work it into future refrigerator disputes.  Maybe I’ll leave notice that everything in the right-hand crisper drawer is my legal penumbra.  How would you say that in lolcat magnetic poetry?

I’m not sure what else to ask this pirate, or whether or not I’m done asking him things and should take some sort of action, or what.

The computer begins to speak:  “Warning!  Unauthorized security intrusion!  Emergency cognitive protectriIIIIIIiiii<snap>ahah bah ckah deya hfa hgahayeee eeeeeefnip!”
Well, that doesn’t sound good.  Guess I’ll go down to the cube room, unplug everything, and plug it back in.  That always works, right?

Y’know what would keep this cube in its socket?  Duct tape.  I bet we don’t have any because it’s the future.

Reflector 4:  Status — Offline, Orientation (8000 mm, 12000 mm) at angle 450 tenths of a degree. (and more in that vein)
I’m not sure why things like this intimidate me so much, when things like this make me go “oooh!  3-D Minesweeper!”  It’s probably exactly that – Minesweeper is familiar, and this… I don’t even know yet under what circumstances I’ll need to adjust these reflectors, or to what desired effect, or whether I’ll have to manually fuck with their orientation, or how I would even do that, and the fact that they’re reflectors makes me think I’ll have to figure all this out very quickly, while under attack.  I suppose there’s no point worrying about it until it becomes necessary, though.  Plus, worst-case scenario, I have to reload my save file a kamillionaire times.

Oh, right, and none of this is helping me figure out why this socket no longer accepts cubes.  Hmmm.  Okay, I give up.  Time to maneuver a key through a field of spiders.  (This is what we in the business refer to as a callback, and most likely the part where you decide whether you care enough to scroll back up.  I’ll give you a hint:  it’s before the jump.)

Oh, okay, these were the reflectors for the laser and the nine chambers, not the shields for the ship, as I’d been thinking.  Apparently the goal of the puzzle is to arrange the reflectors so that the beam passes through all nine of these fusion chambers, which were apparently in a 3×3 grid.  How would you have known to do that?  The room description still says the laser beam is passing through all nine chambers… wait, is this a different laser?  Or not a laser at all?  I am so confused.

Yeah.  I think I’m done.  There’s not much left to type in straight from the walkthrough, though, so we might as well see how it ends.  I would imagine it ends with me saving the day and Mom and Dad being extremely proud of my newfound maturity for exactly as long as it takes me to blow up the greenhouse, but it doesn’t have to.  You never know!

I feel like I used to know what TANSTAAFL meant.  Oh, right, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.  Internet says it’s a Heinlein thing.  I’m not sure why it’s telling me this right after “Basic operating system online,” but I’ll accept it as computer Tourette’s.

Oh, hey, the Wildsmiths have a daughter about my age, and she’s pretty!  Maybe if I save her family from space pirates she will kiss me on the mouth.

How would I have known to TARGET PIRATE WITH STATION?  What station?  Why is it so hard to have any idea how this fucking ship works?

In mere seconds it shows a very satisfying image of the pirate raider slewing out of control as it’s slammed by a massive packet of iron.
Glad I didn’t use the magnetic catapult.

The final look she tosses your way — somewhere between high-grade flirtation and bona fide adulation — hits you like, well, a large, fast mining packet.
Okay, that was cute.  Hokey, but cute.  And there are many more endings, according to the walkthrough, but I think I’m okay letting them exist without me.

Calling this one a six, and willing to admit it’s just not my thing.  I could see someone having a great time solving the reflector puzzle, but I found it intimidating and insufficiently clued.  Did I mention that?  I think I may have mentioned that.  Other than that, and my growing suspicion that I don’t much like Heinlein, this was pretty good.

This one is billed as a “deliberately ‘Old School’ romp.”  I don’t think you can get much more old school than Spelunker’s Quest without actually being stored on eight five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies, but I’ll give Interface the ol’ ben. of the d.  (Just wait until I start blogging as Bertie Wooster full-time.  You guys are going to love it.  On a completely unrelated note, Ben Vegiard’s new nickname for purposes of this review is Inky Two-Veg.  Good chap, old Inky.  Writes games and doesn’t afraid of anything.  I wonder what P.G. Wodehouse would have thought of the internet?)

“Well, I’ll be dashed, Jeeves, it says here this fellow put a car in his car so he can drive while he drives.  Rather Oedipal, that.  Is it Oedipus I’m thinking of, or another of those earnest Greek chappies?”
“That particular meme, if I may say so, sir, is at the tail end of its life cycle, as evidenced by divers subversions of it, my personal favorite being this captioned photograph of Matryoshka dolls.”
“You don’t say.  What are Matryoshka dolls?”
“Russian nesting dolls, sir.  The idea being, naturally, that one put a doll in sir’s doll because one heard sir liked dolls.”
“How extraordinary.  I don’t recall telling anyone I liked dolls.  Come to think of it, I don’t believe I do like dolls.  That is the trouble with people, Jeeves, they neglect to check their facts.  Now, if anyone calls, I shall be in the drawing room charging my laser.”
“Very good, sir.”

Mostly Spoiler-Free Upshot: I think this game had the best-clued puzzles overall, if not necessarily the most innovative.  Goals were clearly presented, mostly, and the solutions were logical, plus the premise was pretty cute, and other than a few typos, there was nothing really wrong with it.  Oh, and excellent hint system.  For an unambitious little house puzzler, it was not bad, Inky, old bean.

[spoilers begin here]

Now he spends his time doing what he likes best:  thinking about what could be and letting his staff geniuses work out the details.
Man, I want that job.

Oh, man, Gilby is a dick.  And I’m stuck in some sort of robot, I think?  This is interesting.

Apparently being in a robot kinda sucks.

I wonder what it is about humans that makes us, when given the tools to create anything we can imagine, tend towards building houses?  A lot of people are sick to death of house games, but I think the nesting instinct is sort of interesting, plus you know where you’re at with a house.  Fridge and all that.  Couches.  Well, okay, granted those are generally pretty dull things, but they don’t have to portend shittiness.  I think this is the point where someone usually goes “Shade, you guys.”  Since I’m the only one here, Shade, you guys.

The restrictions on my robot body make things kind of interesting.  I’m not resenting them as much as I did the restrictions on my invisible body in that other game, because I’m not the idiot who turned myself into a robot without considering the ramifications.

> scratch car
That verb will be too hard to pull off while trapped in this robotic body.
There goes my petty revenge, then.  Also, while this sentence makes a nice change from “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” I’m wondering if it could be phrased differently to be less transparently a default message.  “Your camera does not see that at the moment” is pretty good, though.

> open stove
That’s not such a hot idea.
Groan.

I’m okay with there being nothing useful among the knick-knacks, but after they were described as things “that only true old school geeks could love,” I wanted to know what they were. Also, it’s smart of Gilby to put the cabinet blocking this secret alcove on casters, if he’s going to be moving it often, but it’s too bad he hadn’t thought of that before the hardwood floor got all scratched up.  Either that, or these are really shitty casters.

Man, Gilby’s not only an asshole, he’s an asshole who steals shit from work.  Generally I’m okay with light employee pilfering as reparations for boredom and oppression, but not when assholes do it, and not from my uncle.  My uncle is a really good dude.

Few typos rearing their heads around here.  I think “tage” is supposed to be tags, which I wouldn’t comment on except it’s in an object name, which is something to watch for as a potential game-killer.  The tags don’t seem important, and they’re visible, so you know to type “tage” instead, so it’s not that big a deal, but it could have been.  Testing will easily catch that sort of thing, though.

Lot of “you see nothing special” cropping up, too.  Some sort of hint in the description of the pyramid-shaped harness as to what I was supposed to do with it would be nice.  If this particularly complex machine doesn’t have a description either, I’m going to glare threateningly at a bunny.

Oh, phew. You’re off the hook, Mr. Fluffers.

Hmm.  I wonder what that fucker did with the circuit board.  Oh, he’s got it in his hand, and he’s taking a nap?  Puzzle time!

Man, I’m not even a very well-built robot.  Some of my wires are sticking out.  I believe I am owed some angst.

> mope
That verb will be too hard to pull off while trapped in this robotic body.
Fair ’nuff.

Oh, it’s not the circuit board he’s sleeping with, but his keys.  He must know that I intend to use his keys to do a thing so I can do a thing so I can do another thing and eventually wind up with that circuit board.  I suspect he would’ve been better off putting the circuit board on a high shelf and calling it done.

Where’d he go?  I better unlock this car right quick.  Oh.  Huh.  That didn’t do much.

You don’t have time to waste with these time-wasters!
Nice.

Gilby’s in the shower, unaware that his towel lies wet and dirty on the kitchen floor.  Guess I got my petty revenge in after all.  Fucker.

Oh, good, he’s gonna drive his car away, and I’ll finally be able to get at that piece of plyboard.  I wonder what I’m going to need it for.  Also, I wonder if he would’ve just driven off, had I left the keys in his bed.  Nice touch if so.

Y’know, “you see nothing special about the sheet of plyboard” is not helping me figure out what this piece of plyboard is for.  I’m not even sure how big it is.

Oh, okay, these papers seem to indicate I can take my treads off and somehow get up the stairs.  Let’s try that.

Huh.  I have no idea how.

> get off treads
But you aren’t on yourself at the moment.
Hmm, if treads redirects to me, I’m not sure how I’ll get them off.  Time to investigate the hint system!

3/7:  How does someone who only can use wheels (or treads) go up and down stairs?
Oh!  That’s what this board’s for!  Duh!  Also, the hint system is quite good.

Damn, only made it up three steps.
It was a very nice try, though.
Thanks.

6/7:  The front porch only has a few steps.
There’s a front porch?  I have got to start paying attention.

Oh, shit, was the front door key on the ring with his car keys?  The ones he took with him in the car?  Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.  Stupid unwinnable states.

It’ll give me an opportunity to check the keys thing I was wondering about earlier, though.  I’ll leave them on his bed.  Man, he better not lock the front door again, although I’d maybe have time to unlock it while he’s in the shower.  Oh, good, looks like he didn’t.  Wow, yeah, looks like he’s programmed to look for his keys in his bedroom first, then if they’re missing, he goes to find me.  That’s pretty damn slick for a comp game.  I wonder what he’ll do if I take them and hide them somewhere while he’s showering?  Oooh, I’ll put them in the fridge.

Oh, apparently he’s not programmed to check his bedroom first, but to go directly to where his keys are and take them, giving a different message if I’ve got them.  That’s less slick than I was thinking, but it’s all right.  Having him look everywhere in the house would be a bitch to code.

Oh, right, I’ve been carrying this knife around in my grippers!  I’m surprised that didn’t freak Gilby out when I was following him around watching him look for his keys.

Well, that was pretty cute, and the puzzles were nicely clued and logical.  I’ll call it a seven, which I think means Byzantine Perspective should get a seven too.  I feel like I’ve been restricting smaller-scope games to lower scores a bit too aggressively.  Maybe Spelunker’s should go up to a six.  The Ascot should, definitely.  It was charmingly goofy and I think I overpenalized it for failing to take advantage of its medium.  Yeah.  I should do that.