IFComprehensive

“Bi Lines” is a medium-length, choice-based game about a bisexual journalist who has the ability to talk with ghosts. After a disturbing encounter with one ghost, he has to come to terms with his shame about the encounter and his sexuality.

Gameplay: There’s not much actual gameplay in the work; there’s little state or branching in the game, and the choices seem irrelevant. The strangest thing about the game is that it buries the lede in glossing over the protagonist’s supernatural ability. It’s there as a plot device, preventing him from finding anyone to believe his story and setting up a conversation at the end of the work, but it otherwise takes the backseat to the internal monologue of the protagonist. It’s odd to juxtapose a realistic character study and serious treatment of sexuality with a profound magical ability, especially when the latter is ultimately unexplored. The climax of the game involves the protagonist confronting his mother’s ghost and addressing her bigotry, but it does little to resolve anything about the journalist’s special ability. Has he used his powers for good? For evil? For monetary gain? For espionage? What do ghosts want, and why are they still around? Why not talk to Einstein, Shakespeare, or less bigoted dead relatives instead of random ghosts at a party? This work would be better suited to a single chapter in a larger story about its main character, rather than something self-contained. 3/10.

Mechanics: There’s little to do here; few of the choices seem to matter, and most just advance the story to the next page of static text. Although a later version was subsequently released, the original version of the game contained several broken links and was unplayable. 2/10.

Presentation: None of the characters in the game have much personality; the protagonist in particular has little characterization beyond his job, special ability, and sexuality. The dead mother has more personality, but she was a one-note character. There are some typos in the text (“seen him in the hoarde” and “More misrable than yesterday,” for example), and it was a bit difficult to read because of the background and font used. 3/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You identify with the protagonist’s struggle for acceptance.

Score: 3

“Temple of Shorgil” is a medium-length, limited-parser game about solving the puzzles in the titular temple.

Gameplay: The gameplay focused heavily on the puzzles, although there are some optional diversions like making sketches of various art found in the temple. Those puzzles simply involve placing identical figurines onto or removing them from the pedestals in each room of the temple, triggering various effects. The clues for the puzzles are revealed in the legend the player encounters throughout the temple, and solving them involves mapping the details of the legend onto the setting. The game is essentially just a series of puzzles of this type, with sparse descriptions and a limited parser. 5/10.

Mechanics: The puzzles themselves are interesting but not particularly difficult, and they all rely on the same fundamental mechanic: placing and removing figurines based on interpreting the ongoing legend. The game isn’t long enough for this setup to get tedious, but there isn’t much variety in it. 6/10.

Presentation: The text is terse throughout; it just gives the minimum amount of detail necessary to support the puzzles. The author has put in considerable effort to embellish the game beyond that, though. The legend that’s developed over the course of the game is also mostly in service to the puzzles but is written in a more descriptive style. The other exception is the ending, which is clever. The sketches that appear in the game are quite well done. To avoid frustration, the author provides a walkthrough and several different in-game maps. 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like abstract puzzle games and the Infocom game “Infidel.”

Score: 6

“StupidRPG” is a light parody of role-playing games, set in a Zork-like environment with a bit of exploration and puzzle-solving. Its central conceit is that the player is in an RPG run by the narrator, with commands considered as instructions to the GM.

Gameplay: More than anything else, the game reminded me of the earliest Zork games with more role-playing and fewer puzzle elements. Its custom parser is mostly solid but lacks a few useful features, such as pronouns. It also repeatedly froze up for a few seconds when interacting with the pool (specifically, PUT ICE CUBE IN POOL, following the walkthrough); that was the only such problem I encountered, though. 6/10.

Mechanics: The game keeps a bit of state, such as the rusty helmet in the head-butting battle and a puzzle involving cask numbers. There are some easy puzzles, but the focus of the game is more on exploration than puzzle-solving. 6/10.

Presentation: The game features text on long delays, ostensibly corresponding to intervals where the GM is typing or plotting. It does nothing for the game beyond annoying me. I’m a fast reader and have 77 of these games to play and review; staring at the screen waiting for the next block of text to appear doesn’t add anything to the game. It also throws off the pacing: There’s a comedic scene involving a liar- and truth-teller-style puzzle, but the awkward delays in revealing the text throw off the timing and ruin the joke.

The text itself consistently stays in a Zork-like tone of mild humor: pleasant but not really inducing laughter at any point, and neither taking itself seriously nor devolving into goofiness. The game features music, but the captions that appear in place of it when it’s turned off are genuinely funny. 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like tabletop RPGs.

Score: 6

As a prize in last year’s IFComp, mathbrush kindly offered to write a short game set in the universe of my own game, “The Owl Consults.” The result is “The Origin of Madame Time,” a puzzle-centric parser game about saving a group of superheroes and supervillains from an imminent nuclear explosion. Since it was inspired by my own game and I was an enthusiastic playtester for it, I can’t claim to be even remotely objective about it. Instead, I’ll simply say that it’s a great game by a great author, and I happily recommend it.

Gameplay: Fun!
Mechanics: Do stuff!
Presentation: Neat!
Tilt: It’s great!

Score: Lots!

“Animalia” is a charming choice-based game about a group of animals who attempt to infiltrate human society to thwart its encroachment on their forest. The player controls a team of four animals in a human suit who attempt to pass themselves off as an ordinary human boy, though there are inevitably complications to their plan.

Gameplay: Over the course of the game, the animals go through a normal day of a human boy, culminating in a school report on the forest in which they secretly live. The major source of both plot and humor in the game is the animals’ only vague understanding of human society, full of objects, concepts, and behavior that are alien to them. It’s full of characters who have distinct, fully developed personalities, and scenes with them feel like interacting with human (and occasionally some forest animal) characters, rather than just clicking through a bunch of options in a dialogue tree. The protagonists themselves also have distinct personalities, and their interactions with the world and with each other on their mission are compelling to watch. It’s also notable that the player gets to choose the four animals from a larger slate, and the text does change accordingly. (I didn’t replay the entire game with a new set of four animals, but there was at least substantial variation even in the first few scenes I did play through.) 10/10.

Mechanics: Unlike most choice-based games, this one involves a significant amount of state and has a widely branching plot tree. Not only do the choices the player make generate different prose (as opposed to merely advancing the plot along to the next static page of text), but they matter to the story. The animals’ relationships to the humans they encounter vary significantly with the actions they choose to take, and the status of those relationships is reflected in the game’s text and easy to track directly with the interface. There are numerous plot paths to explore, including several sideplots, but even a single playthrough has a substantial scope to it. In fact, the game is a bit long to replay in full during the competition itself (at least, if you’re playing the entirety of the games in it), but this is the first one I plan on exploring in more detail once it’s over. 9/10.

Presentation: The text is strong and polished throughout, and it’s hard not to enjoy the antics of the characters. As far-fetched as its premise— four animals operating a human suit— is, the game finds a comfortable setting and avoids being too wacky or too sedate. Its sense of humor is also solid; I particularly enjoyed the scene with the classroom snake, who was less interested in helping the animal protagonists than having another animal for lunch, and the political jabs involving the bald eagle named Brezhnev. 9/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’d like to play a well-written, polished game with lots of replay value. (That’s admittedly fairly general, but I think this game will be appealing to most people.)

Score: 9

Especially compared with other genres of games, interactive fiction has potential for flexibility in its interface and player characters. In “Terminal Interface,” the player interacts with the world by issuing commands to a robot based on feedback provided by its human handler.

Gameplay: Unlike most games’, the player, protagonist, and narrator of this work are all very different. The player issues commands to control a robot or mecha that’s physically in the game environment. The robot itself provides some feedback, but due to an issue with its camera, most of the details of the environment are provided by a human assistant. The plot of the game is straightforward until the ending, and it’s worth replaying. 5/10.

Mechanics:The game is short, with most of it feeling more like a tutorial than a full game. Judging from the game’s title, conceit, and ending, that atmosphere is deliberate; still, it seems like it would have been possible to do more with the robot. I didn’t run into any issues with the parser, though the tagging mechanic might be a bit confusing at first. 5/10.

Presentation: I didn’t notice any significant issues with the text, and the one NPC in the game is characterized well. The game might be described as a one-trick pony, but it’s a worthy trick. 5/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You enjoyed the “Portal” games.

Score: 5

“Awake” is a short choice-based work about a shadowy research group and the fallout from its work.

Gameplay: The plot of the game involves the protagonist, a researcher in the group, having to make a decision about the future of his work. It hits the most prominent tropes in this kind of horror: the researcher having second thoughts about his work; amoral superiors keeping him in the dark about the overall project; hints of stranger and more nefarious developments in the research; and so on. Given that and its length, the game feels very generic. The overall impression of the game as a work of conspiracy-based horror or cautionary sci-fi is strong, but there aren’t many memorable specific details in it. 3/10.

Mechanics: There are few genuine choices in the game; most simply advance to the next page of static text. Replaying the game, I didn’t find that making different choices had much effect on the plot. 3/10.

Presentation:The text of the game succeeding in evoking the genre of the game, but I didn’t find anything really remarkable in it. The characters were stock ones, but they seemed realistic and believable. It’s also worth noting that the game promises future installments in the story, which may flesh out the plot and characters. 3/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’re a fan of “The X-Files.”

Score: 3

Interactive fiction games have changed dramatically in form and character from the earliest Scott Adams and Infocom games to the diverse works in this competiton. “Escape from Dinosaur Island” is a game evocative of those earliest ones, with a general adventure theme and a world filled with inventory and set-piece puzzles.

Gameplay: Although the game recreates the feel of those old-school games, it’s played straight throughout; there aren’t any sly references (that I could find at least) to specific games or jokes about the format. The fundamental problem is the games that “Escape from Dinosaur Island” emulates just aren’t very enjoyable. Despite being a fan of both older and modern puzzle-based interactive fiction, I had trouble with the unmotivated puzzles, sparse descriptions, and unfriendly parser in this game. The player can’t SEARCH WRECKAGE or LOOK THROUGH WRECKAGE; only EXAMINE WRECKAGE is productive. Similarly, TAKE ALL doesn’t work, and the parser even rejects TAKE CAT, DOG and TAKE CAT AND DOG; the player must take each object individually. Custom systems are interesting both from a technological and gameplay view, but I don’t see what this one offers that isn’t part of more robust ones like Inform. 2/10.

Mechanics: Like the earliest text-adventures’, the puzzles in this game are mostly ones of object manipulation. They’re not very involved, although some of the exact manipulations required are a bit obscure. The inventory limit is tedious to deal with, especially given the number of random objects in the game. In trying to juggle objects, the main character interpreted my DROP TORCH command as an instruction to throw that object (and not the other objects in his possession, which were just set on the ground) into a nearby chasm. The game seemed unwinnable at that point, and there was no UNDO command to continue my progress. 3/10.

Presentation: The text in the game is sparse but filled with mistakes in spelling (“wierd”), capitalization (“very dense and dark Jungle”), and punctuation (“didnt survive”). Even in the first room, the game switches from second person (“You are laid in an upturned crashed hot air balloon basket”) to first person (TAKE CYLINDER -> “It’s far too heavy for me to lift.”) Scoring seems to be broken; I heard a chime at several points in the game after solving puzzles, but SCORE still simply returned “Your score is 0” (without a period). 2/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You fondly remember the oldest generation of text-adventures.

Score: 2

To me, the most compelling works of interactive fiction are ones that take advantage of the unique features of the medium. “Tethered” tells a story that a conventional, noninteractive work of fiction would not be able to accomplish. The story begins with a woman being stranded during a snowstorm, but it quickly turns into something more unsettling.

Gameplay: The game is a classic parser-based one. Although it starts out as a standard survival adventure with some classic cave exploration, the game later explores the ramifications of the protagonist’s injuries and predicament. It’s a bit of a one-note game, but it’s good while it lasts, and it’s memorable. 5/10.

Mechanics: The game is fundamentally a simple one. It starts out in the most classic text-adventure setting possible— exploring a cave— but the real focus in on the main character’s deteriorating mental and physical state. Still, the game is more about experiencing that state rather than solving puzzles or exploring the setting. (It should be noted, however, that one of the reasons the game is so effective is that the player does have to actively participate in the main character’s self-destructive behavior, rather than just being along for the ride.) It’s also noteworthy that the author also managed to pull off the impressive programming feat of a multi-room rope that seems to work as advertised. 5/10.

Presentation: The text is consistent and solid, but its main success is simply being memorable. The game is genuinely unnerving, like a good horror game should be, and it succeeds in showing rather than telling the plight of the main character. I usually don’t have much of a reaction to works in the horror genre, but I found this one unsettling. 7/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like games with unreliable narrators.

Score: 6

I fly somewhat regularly for my real-life job, and I like bringing along some sort of mindless, grind-heavy RPG to pass the time. I happened to have a 13-hour flight this week, and that seemed like a great opportunity to try out “Forgotten Tavern,” a choice-based game that has the same feel as an old-school console RPG.

Gameplay: The idea of the game is that you run across the epoynmous tavern while fleeing from some sort of predicament, and you settle down into a routine of fighting battles to help out the tavern’s proprietors. As is conventional for RPGs, the battles get more difficult over time, but you also get access to better equipment and items. There definitely seemed to be more to the game than I encountered in my time with it, from an overarching plot to the characters of the two proprietors. 5/10.

Mechanics: Unfortunately, the mechanics of the game didn’t support the interesting frame story. The turn-based combat is simple: You can choose among a few basic commands, the enemies choose the same, and you keep fighting until one side wins or runs away. There’s little depth to it, though you do get power-ups as you fight more battles. In a game that takes place almost exclusively through combat, the combat system isn’t deep enough to carry that much of the game. Frustratingly, combat effects are communicated entirely in prose descriptions, with even basic stats like HP hidden from the player. Combat is therefore mostly a matter of trial and error, which gets tedious quickly. 3/10.

Presentation: Although combat is the bulk of the game, there’s much more of a frame story and supporting characters than in most works in this genre. Your goal is to improve the tavern; as you win more and more battles, you broaden the tavern’s dinner menu, meet NPCs who are pleased with their tavern visits and reward you accordingly, and progress on the plot. The two tavern owners have distinct, recognizable personalities— not particularly deep ones, but enough given their roles in the stroy to be interesting. The monsters have different attacks and combat descriptions, although the pacing on revealing new enemies seemed to be a bit slow (especially given that it’s a text-only medium). 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like old-school RPGs and are interested in a text version of them.

Score: 5