IFComprehensive

“Iamb(ici)” is a choice-based game showing the interactions among the denizens of an online poetry forum.

Gameplay: Gameplay is straightforward, with the player visiting different boards and navigation a few interactions there. There are numerous endings based on the character’s actions, and the game is short enough to replay to find more of them. The main plot point in the game is the real nature of one particular forum member, but I didn’t find that revelation surprising. 4/10.

Mechanics: It’s unclear how exactly the choices made determine the ending, even (at least in its initial stages) for the one labeled the “true ending.” There are some genuine branching points, but many of the links just advance static text. 4/10.

Presentation: Although I played through the game three times and found a different ending each time, none of them were particularly memorable to me. The idea underlying the game is solid, but its pacing is a bit slow, and when the revelation is made, it isn’t deep or shocking enough to be a satisfying resolution to the game. 5/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You write poetry and have struggled with writer’s block.

Score: 4

I’ve posted well over a hundred reviews on this site, in addition to playing a large number of interactive fiction games on my own time, so it’s refreshing to encounter a creative game with an experimental structure that I’ve never seen before. “Flight of the CodeMonkeys” takes places in a Jupyter notebook, with the player tweaking and running code to interact with the story.

Gameplay: As a programmer responsible for making small bugfixes and running tests in the code for machines maintaining the sci-fi setting, the protagonist gradually uncovers more details of the setting and gains the ability to change them. The first few tasks are trivial changes and validation tests; after that, the plot and code changes become more complicated. No actual coding is involved (and there are in-game reasons for that); gameplay is a decision of what changes to make, rather than a coding puzzle of implementing them. 5/10.

Mechanics: The fundamental concept is brilliant: The player edits a Jupyter notebook just as the protagonist does in-game, and the plot of the game progresses as the protagonist changes the code running the world. The code itself is a plausible representation of the sort of odd, obfuscated code that such a system would involve. In addition to the code itself and instructions from the system on how to modify or verify it, there are conversations with similar developers that move the plot along. 7/10.

Presentation: More feedback on the ramifications, or even the nature, of the changes made throughout the game would create a strong. As it stands, both the player and the narrator feel remote from them. The setting is well-conceived, though, and the game gives a satisfying explanation for why and how the coding system which the narrator is involved functions. The Jupyter system itself is a bit clunky for this sort of interaction (and I’ve used it for the usual sort of technical projects), but it’s the price to pay for such a novel medium. 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’d like to play a game with a clever and original interface.

Score: 6

“Treasure Hunt in the Amazon” is a revision of an interactive-fiction game released in 1985. While it’s interesting as an artifact from that era, the old-school design of the original game makes it difficult to enjoy for its own merits.

Gameplay: The original game was squarely in the first generation of interactive fiction games, and the updated version preserves the hallmarks of games from that era: a desultory plot, unfair randomness throughout, harsh inventory limits, hunger and sleep timers, and so on. Keeping those features in is an entirely reasonable design to choice to make, but the author kindly provided options to disable them for modern players. (I appreciated them, having died four moves into the game in my first attempt.) There are puzzles throughout the game, but gameplay is more about exploring the setting and managing supplies. As such, turning off the randomizer and removing the various timers substantially change the player’s experience. In either case, the game itself is simple: use inventory objects to kill off a few animals, use other inventory objects to solve some basic puzzles, and then grab the treasure. 4/10.

Mechanics: Even knowing that the game is a remake of one from the mid-80s, I find it difficult to put up with the most egregious features of interactive fiction from that era. Some of those can be turned off, but the game also contains a maze and a few bizarre, unmotivated puzzles (for example, killing a jaguar and eating it in order to find a key that’s in its stomach for some reason). 3/10.

Presentation: Like most games from that era, descriptions are sparse throughout. One typical room description, for example, is simply, “The ruin consits of a of a few walls here and there. There is some graffiti on one wall.” The Amazon could be an evocative environment, but the description of a jaguar is the terse, “It is a huge jaguar. Unfortunately, it looks very hungry.” The cartoons in the game, however, are entertaining. 4/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’d like to try a Danish interactive fiction game from the mid-80s.

Score: 4

While there are a few interactive fiction games in the style of a atmospheric board game like “Arkham Horror” or “Agents of Smersh,” “Cheftain” is fundamentally an abstract strategy board game about resource management.

Gameplay: The player takes command of a burgeoning village, making decisions each turn about what resources to collect and what items to construct with them. The game feels like a single-player board game, and it’s hard to play it without thinking that a physical board would be a better fit for its style of play. There are a few random scenes with some desultory descriptions, but they’re not interactive and have little color. The central concept of the game is similar to that of the computer game “King of Dragon Pass,” but there’s far less to do here, and the descriptions of what you can do are sparse. 4/10.

Mechanics: The simulation seems to have some complexity to it, but the rules and precise effects of actions remained opaque to me in my playthrough. The results of the choices I made felt completely arbitrary. It was unclear how the larger numbers and better equipment for the village’s soldiers raised the success rate of their excursion, and at one point I summarily lost the entirety of my large army from a random event. The game also contains numerous bugs: warnings of a “bad conditional expression” as early as the second day, markup errors, and a dead end on one turn. 3/10.

Presentation: The game’s white-highlighted text on a grey background is unattractive and awkward to read. Events have sparse and repetitive descriptions, effectively being the sort of text on a small card from a board game. It’s even unclear what the proper title of the game is; it’s listed as “The Chieftain” on the IFComp site, but the title in the game itself is “Something Good” (or “Something Good Copy”). 3/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You liked the old “King of Dragon Pass” game, but want a simpler and shorter version of it.

Score: 3

“De Novo” is a choice-based game in which the protagonist considers appeals of capital punishment cases in an alternate-universe Britain.

Gameplay: The game runs slowly until the cases appear; at that point, the protagonist must decide which one— always exactly one— of three people sentenced to death he will appeal to a higher court. The goal of the game is to raise questions about the morality of the death penalty, but it’s unclear what those questions even are, let alone what answers the game suggests. The two NPCs with whom the narrator interacts are his unsympathetic wife, who is flatly against capital punishment, and his oily boss, who makes some tepid defense of it but mostly emphasizes the future job prospects for the narrator. If there is a dilemma in the game, it’s whether opposing (in some way that’s never specified) capital punishment is worth jeopardizing the protagonist’s career. That could be an interesting problem, but it’s not one the game develops. 4/10.

Mechanics: In order to decide on which cases to appeal, the player reads through short dossiers on each of the sets of three defendants. There aren’t any suggested criteria to use in evaluating them, and there’s little feedback after doing so. Even ignoring how contrived the setup of choosing exactly one per set to spare is, I’m not sure what the exercise is trying to demonstrate. It’s simultaneously vague and ham-fisted. 4/10.

Presentation: The art style of the game is impressive. Aside from minor typos (e.g., “seperate”), the text of the game is solid, although there’s a lot of unnecessary padding in the introduction. 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’re interested in how the legal system in an alternate universe might play out.

Score: 5

“Enceladus” is a medium-length game that, despite containing a fair number of puzzles, is about the interactions among its characters.

Gameplay: The game is a broad farce in space, with the ridiculous premise that a werewolf is on board the protagonist’s spaceship. There are some complications to that plot that arise later in the story, but the main appeal of the game is the interactions among the ship’s crew, with the lighthearted and almost desultory plot being the means of pushing those interactions along. Gameplay is generally smooth, though there were some minor parsing issues, such as some adjectives not being recognized. 6/10.

Mechanics: Although the game is not particularly long, it does have a variety of locations to explore. The puzzles are easy and strongly clued, and almost all involve using an inventory item in the right place or invoking the protagonist’s special ability. 6/10.

Presentation: The dialogue in the game is consistently strong. There is a genuine camaraderie among the crew, and the conversations all sound genuine. It’s a funny game, but even the jokes that didn’t land for me personally still maintained that tone of light workplace banter among colleagues.

The game is also remarkable for being a space comedy but having a significantly different tone and comedic style than the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series; it is its own thing. In fact, it might be better suited to something like a podcast or short story; while the game is legitimately interactive, its main focus is the interactions among the different characters rather than the exploits of the particular one you control as the player. 8/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like space comedies.

Score: 7

Some games are based on a particular twist that makes them difficult to review without spoiling. “URA Winner” begins ostensibly a simple bit of test preparation, but it has a more interesting and creepier secret.

Gameplay: There are two halves to the game, the second of which may not be apparent to the player at the beginning (and it’s even possible to reach an end to the game without finding it). In the first, the player simply answers a short list of questions on three basic subjects, with short passages between the retests explaining some of the underlying concepts. In the second part of the game, the situation becomes more surreal and a bit creepy, even involving the author’s game from the previous IFComp. (I wonder if the latter was written specifically for that reason. If so, that’s an impressive setup on the author’s part.) 5/10.

Mechanics: The mechanics of the game are straightforward, even if the game itself isn’t. The method of passing into the second half of the game is well-clued and fits the style of the game. There are a few clues foreshadowing it, and it’s entertaining to discover. The second half is similarly straightforward, even if its content is more surreal. The only unexplained thing I found was that some of the math questions seem genuinely incorrect, even taking the underlying secret of the game and the mechanic in the first section into account. (On the other hand, like most other mathematicians, I can’t do simple arithmetic.) 6/10.

Presentation: The revelation in the game is fun to discover, and the steps leading up to it are clear without dragging the player along. The point of the game is that trick, and it’s executed well. 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like creepy games that have some underlying secret to discover.

Score: 6

Each-uisge is a choice-based game about the narrator’s interaction with a kelpie, a mythological water spirit that can take the shape of a horse.

Gameplay: The game uses the Choice of Games engine, with the player selecting an option from a list of about four or five at each decision point in the game. The story is a straightforward one with elements taken from Scottish folklore, and its ultimate resolution depends on the player’s actions 5/10.

Mechanics: There are several options presented at each decision point throughout the game, leading to multiple plot branches and endings. There are a few stats listed for the character, but they seem (or, at least, did in my playthrough) to be more of an indication of the protagonist’s state of mind rather than a factor influencing his or her current actions. 5/10.

Presentation: The game embellishes the folklore off which it’s based with more setting and character details. The writing is solid and matches its folklore background, but I didn’t find the story itself particularly deep or compeling. 5/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’re interested in Scottish folklore.

Score: 5

There are surprisingly few spy-themed interactive fiction games. The most familiar subgenre of that kind of theme is the Bond-style spy thriller, which has almost become a parody of itself through media like the Austin Powers series of movies and the “Archer” television show. “Jon Doe – Wildcard Nucleus” is still fundamentally that type of work, but it’s more of a pastiche than an overt farce.

Gameplay: The game begins with the tradition Bond movie pre-credit sequence, written in screenplay format. After that, it settles into a standard puzzle-based adventure game format, hitting the beats of a Bond movie: the initial mission briefing, the meeting with the equivalent of Q, the first meeting with the villain, rescuing the Bond girl, etc. Some of the scenes are taken less seriously than others, but the game is a coherent whole rather than just being a series of parodical scenes. 6/10.

Mechanics: None of the puzzles are particularly involved, and their solutions are generally well-clued. Even though some of them are standard inventory- and set-piece puzzles, they largely fit in with the theme and have some underlying motivation to them. The obligatory Bond tech gadget, for example, is useful in dealing with multiple obstacles throughout the game; on the other hand, the puzzle of finding the password to a computer system would be a better fit for a generic puzzle game than one with this strong of a theme. There wasn’t any puzzle I found particularly memorable or clever, but I also didn’t find any that were egregiously broken. 6/10.

Presentation: There are numerous instances of odd word choices (or translation errors )in the game: some sort of art scultpure referred as “a modern plastic” (with the descrption, “The plastic is made of steel…”), an NPC granting the protagonist’s request with, “Okay, but only exceptionally,” and so on. There are also some guess-the-verb or -noun difficulties, such as SHOOT not being recognized and the protagonist’s weapon only recognized as a PISTOL rather than a GUN. Aside from those issues, the text established the setting but wasn’t particularly evocative otherwise. 4/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You like Bond parodies but want one that isn’t a slapstick farce.

Score: 5

I have fond memories of playing board games like “Arkham Horror” or “Agents of Smersh” that are essentially multiplayer versions of gamebooks. That is, they’re similar to old Choose Your Adventure Books, but with some sort of RPG-style stats, more state, and significant random elements. “Skybreak!” is a charming space adventure written in that style.

Gameplay: The goal of the game is to acquire certain kinds of items (or abstract things like scientific data) by randomly travelling through space. Exactly what kinds of items are needed depends on the details of the initial character construction, and the stats chosen at that point also affect how the later vignettes on each planet play out. None of them are particularly complicated, but they’re enjoyable and play smoothly. 6/10.

Mechanics: The encounters on each planet are similar to those in the two board games above. They’re straightforward and designed well, although they get a bit repetitive over the course of the game. There’s significant state to the game (enough that the author provides a printable character sheet for reference, although all that information is also easily accessible from within the game), and there are opporunities for exchanging or otherwise taking advantage of items that the player has collected. 6/10.

Presentation: The lightly comedic of the game is consistent throughout, and I enjoyed the scenes that played out on arriving at distant planets. There’s a large roster of skills, character backgrounds, and other embellishments to add variety to the gameplay. 6/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You’ve played and enjoyed games like “Arkham Horror” or “Agents of Smersh.”

Score: 6