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Judges' 2003 Reviews

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Note:  Judges reviews were optional. (Some may contain "spoilers.")

Note that Fred Demul revealed himself to be Mike Sousa after judging was
over. Also, Alan DeNiro was allowed to update "Ogres" before putting it on
exhibit. These reviews are based on the original version entered in the IF
Art Show.

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Contents:

J.D. Berry's Reviews
Stephen Granade's Reviews
Jon Ingold's Reviews
Mike Roberts' Reviews
Emily Short's Reviews
Doe's (Marnie Parker's) Reviews

About the Judges

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J.D. Berry's Reviews

I've littered these reviews with my own ad hoc awards, so I think
presenting one to the show-in-general makes perfect sense. The winner of
the "Best IF Art Show Ever" goes to 2003. Top to bottom, the quality this
year amazed me. Not one poorly-written, bug-infested afterthought in the
bunch. Bravo, artists, and yay, me for the pleasure of judging these works.
The only difficulty was that each of these works is so different from the
others-who is better, DaVinci or Picasso? I therefore dub this the "Apples
and Oranges" comp.

I won't go into many of the details of the works themselves. Even more than
an IF game, a work of IF art must be experienced for itself. The following
comments are the subjective impressions I experienced while playing. And it
really was playing, like the pure fun of strolling through an art museum
with nothing real-life nipping at the back of my mind.

Ogres
Queen of Swords
Stop for the Night
Redemption
Friendly Foe
The Tarot Reading

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My vote for Best of Show: Ogres

Pablo Picasso collaborates with Joyce Carol Oates to port "Ad Verbum" to
Alan. They split a Shirley Temple and begin to brainstorm. You see a
review, a review, a review and a review here. I loved it. Check the red
judge for a completely different take.

First off, the lack of examinable items--that's the whole, deliberate idea.
I think any more than what's offered would distract and detract from the
meta-experience. Experiential doesn't necessarily mean sensual. I absorbed
the landscape through its perspective and terms, not mine.

SURREAL AWARD: "Most dogs in a single location."

Relax your mind. Let it wander, connecting with the landscape as it will.
This isn't a puzzle to be solved. You don't have to write a five-page essay
comparing and contrasting.

Encourage interaction, the Art Show's prime directive states. From start to
(relative) finish of this piece, I wanted to discover more. The refusal
messages, stark and odd they may be, but they connect the landscape. I
departed with few conclusions and yet many satisfying images.

I look forward to the other judges' comments on this. I see "Ogres"
polarizing its viewers--such is modern art--but even its detractors should
not find fault with its facility with words and ability to convey abstract
ideas. It may not DO anything for you, but admit the quality.

Engaging, imaginative writing and concept. I hope the author won't have to
die for this to be appreciated. I'm sure he hopes so, too.

Bravo.

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My Best of Event: Queen of Swords

Norman Rockwell meets Jeanne Marie Laskas at the gym. A slice of Americana
delivered with pleasant narrative--what you see is what you get.

The challenge: create something deliberately frustrating that's still
playable. The risk: you fall from the tightrope, losing the player
completely. The verdict: the author fell once or twice, but bounced from
the net and back on the line, each time.

There's good fiddly and bad fiddly. Good fiddly helps establish mood. Bad
fiddly makes you want to throw your monitor through the window.

Mostly good fiddly here. I never want to fence in my life, if this is
what's involved. But I was there, man. Figuring out how it all it
goes--more aptly, DOESN'T go--was surprisingly a lot of fun. This is a
visual, experiential piece-hey, this is an interactive art show. Lots of
detail and also details (how's THAT for fiddly?), yet near-perfect focus.

The main "bad fiddly" is the cord. I don't mind plugging it in wrong. But
once it's in, the descriptions should say it's in, and they don't. Once
it's plugged, plugging it again should fail, or at least acknowledge that
I'm re-doing it. A little clean-up here would go a long way. (Also, I got a
fatal error trying to plug cord into d-ring.)

This would be a perfect comedy sketch, where you spend so much time in the
preparation that there's no time left for the actual event. Well, here
there was a little time to fence, but none from an interactive sense. The
actual fencing is for another time and place, however, and that's fine.
This entry was just right in time-to-play.

"NOBODY ELSE CARES" AWARD: Closest setting to my house that wasn't my first
exercise in Inform coding. How weird is it to play something set three
miles from your own home? For me, this game put the spring in Springfield.

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My Best of Landscape: Stop for the Night

Johannes Vermeer mind-melds with F. Scott Fitzgerald to write a D&D module.
Impeccable craftsmanship permeates the work, but it was hard to shake the
feeling that this has all been done before. Even that feeling wasn't a
purely negative one. Artists have and will continue to paint portraits of
kings and the landscapes of France. The artist here takes the deserted
compound, evil presence trope and shows us how it's supposed to be done.
And he does this without pomposity or pretense, making this all the more
impressive.

"MINOR DETAIL THAT WON ME OVER" AWARD: The response to ride horse. After
reading that early in the game, I knew this author had "the goods."

Something hit me early during play--nothing was going to hit me. Literally
hit the PC, I mean. This was an entry in an art show-easy pace, absorb the
sights and sounds, take it all in.

PERSONAL AWARD: "'Stop for the Night' may have won the Annual IF Comp, if
entered there." I wasn't on edge, nearly as I should have been, anyway. I
didn't feel I was going to be eaten after any misstep. That stole part of
the impact, and impact plays an important role in such a work as this. If I
had been playing this in another situation, my feelings would have run
deeper.

The main reason I didn't give this Best of Show was the setting's
originality, or at least perceived originality. Perhaps, it's the same
reason "Heroes" didn't win the 2001 IF Comp--a high-quality work where the
cleverness and originality hits you a little too late.

Caveat: I didn't finish this after several sessions of play. While there
was no explicit time requirement--45 minutes is recommended--I didn't want
to spend too long on any one work. If I missed a clever twist, I apologize,
and I would recommend this work even more highly.

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My Best of Portrait: Redemption

Nicolai Fechin seduces Agatha Christie and they produce a love child.

PONDEROUS AWARD: "What if they had a portrait category and only the Mona
Lisa had been entered?" I hope the "Best of Protrait" (not necessarily
awarded, you know, but surely will be here) isn't cheapened by the
misfortune of having no challengers.

Evocative--I truly felt the emotions. Satisfying story. Elegance and
pace... er grace... er I do mean pace. Same thing, here. Because it flows,
it's graceful. Authors take note of how this was scripted, and incorporate.

PERSONAL AWARD: Most beautiful entry

Alas, I couldn't give this the top vote. I felt interactivity on most
levels was missing. I couldn't really delve into the work, the character(s)
(I evaluated this as a portrait not a story) in this case. I wasn't putting
anything together in my head, as in "Ogres" or "Tarot." There wasn't a
sensuality, as in "Swords" or "Friendly Foe." Not enough time or available
options to probe the characters to any depth.

Also, this suffered from the same "medieval"ness as did "Stop." Just as in
"Stop," this factor is a shame because of its quality and beauty. It's
really a gorgeous piece. Do play.

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Friendly Foe

A subdued Chuck Jones borrows the ride mower from Dave Barry. Lots of funny
observations in this one. I felt like my neighbor was cracking me up with
story after story. All I was missing was the can of Bud.

As to the Event portion. Well it was and it wasn't. The main event weally
isn't the wabbit hunting. It's the event of summer angst in suburbia--where
dandelions and unreturned tools may eventually pale to irrelevant in a
world of hunger and abuse, but not while that pesky rodent is hopping
around.

There seemed to be a pacing problem. But there is no pace to a lazy summer
day, you say. I agree. The task of catching the rabbit wasn't clued nor
motivated. Perhaps that's the whole idea. I'm NOT motivated. I need an
excuse to get out of the house. I would say, then, that this idea-that the
PC needs to come up with excuses NOT to do something-needs many more
refusal messages of actually doing anything remotely constructive. Circular
logic applies in these situations, I think.

HIT HOME AWARD: The response to examine bikes was brutally funny to me. My
wife has been nagging me for years to get bikes. I know she'll ride hers
twice and then the bikes will sit in our shed for all time.

The author? I've never heard the name before and it looks suspicious. Also,
this piece is too well-coded for a first-timer.

This piece is worth spending a half-hour with. Also, I wanna hang out with
the author. Tell me a story about how you removed the tree stump, won't
you, Fred?

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The Tarot Reading

Grant Wood channels Linda Goodman to produce the long-anticipated sequel to
"Shades of Gray."

This does what it sets out to do, but I wanted more. I kept thinking about
that Crystal Ball entry in the first Art Show--solid, but somewhat
uninspiring. Kind of a "hmm... yeah... ok" response. I think this
represents a good introduction to tarot reading, however. The research
shows, too.

I felt this should have gone in one of two ways. 1) Make it a more serious,
in-depth reading. Offer more possibilities and interpretations, subtly
framing the petitioner's question. Include all of the arcana, not just
major ones. Or 2) interact with the actual scenes of the cards, again
framing some kind of resolution or story. Of course, answers will always be
vague, but the important thing is to make it FEEL direct and personal. Some
interaction exists. I liked climbing the tower, for example. But there's
not enough of that sort of thing.

I played through a few times, but I wasn't particularly encouraged to try
out all the possibilities. I wasn't discouraged, either. No bugs, but no
punch. Decent writing, but nothing I'll remember.

STEPHEN WRIGHT AWARD: "The other day I was playing poker with Tarot cards.
I got a full house and four people died."

RIGHT WORK, WRONG TIME AWARD: This would have won the first two Art Shows.
We've come a long way, baby.

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Stephen Granade's Reviews

Friendly Foe, by Fred Demul.
The Tarot Reading, by Michael Penman.
Queen of Swords, by Jessica Knoch.
Redemption, by Kathleen Fischer.
A Stop For The Night, by Joe Mason.
Ogres, by Alan DeNiro.

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Friendly Foe, by Fred Demul.
(Event)

This iteration of the Art Show included a new category: Event. It is an
interesting and tricky addition. The IF Art Show has been about exploring
interactivity rather than story, with a heavy emphasis on the exploration.
Some prior entries have taken familiar modes of interaction and pushed them
further than before, as Emily Short's "Galatea" did with the ASK/TELL system
of conversation. Others have played with the substance of interaction. In
J.D. Berry's entry "Ribbons," the in-game interaction is limited to
examining objects, yet the layers of detail build up in your memory,
resulting in an extremely interesting piece.

An Event, though, tempts authors to fall back on old modes of interaction.
An Event is meant to focus on an activity rather than on objects, scenery,
or NPCs, making it the most like traditional IF. Given that, why not write
an IF entry that plays like an excerpt from a full game?

This is precisely what "Friendly Foe" did. It is a single puzzle, dressed up
somewhat by a backstory and a plethora of objects. The Art Show rules state
quite firmly that "tricky puzzles, even if highly interactive, wouldn't
really EXPLORE interactivity -- as that is the form that we are all already
familiar with." "Friendly Foe" hews strictly to traditional IF puzzle
conventions.

The setup: you are a homeowner, extremely proud of your lawn and garden. A
rabbit has made its home in your yard, digging up the grass, eating the
leaves of your strawberry plants. You must dispatch the rabbit using only a
net, some carrots, and a pile of tools available to you in your shed. As
the intro text plainly tells you, "You're determined to get [the rabbit].
Yup, you are."

This immediately points out one of my major problems with the game. There
is a lot of exposition available, most of it appearing when you examine
various objects, but all of it is delivered in the same heavy-handed
manner. The writing is weak, both in tone and grammar. Coupled with this is
the game's ambivalence about how I am to deal with the rabbit. The garden's
description tells us, "Of course, that damn bunny doesn't care for the
strawberries, it prefers the leaves, the same leaves that the damn
strawberries need in order to grow. Damn that bunny. Damn, damn, damn!"
Both that passage and the introductory text about how determined I was to
get the bunny led me to believe that my character would do most anything to
get rid of the rabbit. But then consider some of my early attempts to deal
with the rabbit:

     >THROW NET AT BUNNY
     The bunny continues to nibble on its carrot and doesn't notice
     you -- that would be very cruel.

     >HIT BUNNY WITH HOE
     Attack an innocent bunny rabbit? With a hoe no less? What will
     your family think? Not a good option, you'll have to find a
     better way.

The piece's puzzle is moderately clever, and has two possible solutions.
But in terms of interaction there is nothing new to "Friendly Foe." The
puzzle, writing and exposition all fail to lift "Friendly Foe" above the
level of a standard IF game, and as such I find it very out of place in the
Art Show.

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The Tarot Reading, by Michael Penman.
(Event)

The "Tarot Reading" is more what I was hoping for from the Event category. In
it, you take part in a very unusual tarot reading. As my friend David
Banner would undoubtedly say, the concepts embodied by the cards have
themselves been reified. You walk through rooms that are perfect cubes,
housing representations of what the cards depict. Some representations are
direct: the Tower is represented by a physical tower, the Hanged Man by a
man on a gallows. Some are more oblique: Justice is represented by the
statue of blindfolded Justice, scale in one hand, sword in the other;
Judgement, by what appears to be the Sword of Damocles.

You may walk in any direction, each step representing the next card in your
reading. There are four steps, labelled the Recent Past, the Present, the
Near Future, and the Goal. Only the Major Arcana are used, and there are no
inversions or reversals in the reading. I know next to nothing about tarot
readings, and only a little more about the cards, but I enjoyed how the
various cards were represented.

While "The Tarot Reading"'s strength is its concept, its execution is a bit
rough around the edges. Its writing sometimes mixed pretentiousness with
earnestness. Its reply to the command >SCORE is, "In a total of 16 turns,
you have done plenty - don't concern yourself with scores." Some NPCs are
not as developed as I would have liked, as in the hermit who, when asked
about himself, replies, "I do not know about that, yet."

These quibbles aside, I found The "Tarot Reading" to be an interesting take
on an event.

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Queen of Swords, by Jessica Knoch.
(Event)

Jessica's entry gets my nod for "most intricate bit of simulation" in this
year's art show. It's not as stuffed full of items to play with and things
to do as 2001's "English Suburban Garden," but within its limited scope of
fencing, it has plenty of details. Unfortunately, like Cedric Knight and
his "English Suburban Garden," Jessica Knoch's reach has exceeded her grasp.

In "Queen of Swords," you and your husband David have taken up fencing. In
preparation for a practice bout with David, you must put on all of the
apparatus involved with fencing. And so much apparatus! I had no idea how
much clothing was involved in fencing. Your fencing bag contains a mask, a
jacket, a body cord, an electric foil, a lam�, a glove, a plastron, and a
chest protector, all of which you must put on in the proper order and hook
together correctly. And that's ignoring the secondary equipment David sets
up, such as the floor reel and cord, so that the scoring equipment can tell
when you or David score a hit.

Simulating the real world through text can be a difficult task. We have to
build up a picture of what's going on, and how everything fits together. In
larger works of IF, this is most visible in how we construct the map in our
heads as we learn the game's layout. If we have too much trouble holding it
all in, there is a standard way of noting rooms and their connections down
on paper. Not so with fencing gear. Fortunately, "Queen of Swords" did a good
job of describing what each bit of equipment was, and gave hints about how
it all went together.

Unfortunately, the game failed to give enough feedback for me to truly
picture what I was doing. Item descriptions didn't mention what they were
connected to, so I had to keep track myself. This wasn't helped by how I
could repeatedly connect items without having to disconnect them first.
Default responses weren't tweaked to help me stay on the right track.
>ATTACH BODY CORD TO THE FOIL netted me the response of, "You would achieve
nothing by this," but specifying that I should >ATTACH [the body cord's]
TWO-PRONG CONNECTOR TO THE FOIL worked. David, who was supposed to help me
when needed, was not always as forthcoming as I might have hoped. His
default response of, "You're cute, you know that?" to my pleas for help
made me wonder if he thought we were starring in "Nothing More, Nothing Less
II: And Now We Fence!"

Most disappointing was that, after the game's buildup, I didn't get to
fence. Once all of my equipment was on properly and I typed >FENCE, a
cut-scene told me what happened, ending the game. Everything had been
leading up to the point when I could fence...and then the game ended,
leaving me unsatisfied.

What "Queen of Swords" simulated, it simulated well, but the lack of
feedback, guidance, and any real pay-off lessened the game's impact. My
recommendation to Jessica would be to hand the game to several new
beta-testers and tell them to keep session transcripts. Those transcripts
could help her knock many of the rough edges off of "Queen of Swords,"
resulting in a better entry.

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Redemption, by Kathleen Fischer.
(Portrait)

I'm of two minds about "Redemption." It does a good job of presenting an NPC
and that NPC's relationship to your character. I admired how the game was
structured, and how information was given to me through a restricted
conversation menu. But then there's the way the restrictions bound me
tighter and tighter, until I was thrashing around at the end, kicking
against the game mechanics as hard as I could.

Metaphors are threatening to drown me. Let me step back. You are Sir
Garron, imprisoned by Marcus. He's -- to be honest, I'm not really sure
what he is. Grand vizer, perhaps, or prince. Someone important, at any
rate. And you have angered him and been thrown in the dungeon, where a
friar has come to talk to you about your actions. You're left to find out
what your connection to the friar is, and what it all has to do with your
current situation.

The conversational interface has been pared down to two possibilities. One,
you can >TALK to the friar. The game will give you a list of possible
topics to choose from. Two, you can >ASK ABOUT a specific topic, with the
hopes that your character will say something having to do with that topic.
That's it, really. The only other thing you can do is occasionally
>REMEMBER certain things when the game notifies you. Since you're chained
in a dungeon, there's not much else you could realistically do. It's a neat
way of keeping you focused on the game's one NPC.

As the game progresses, the topics you can talk about change. And therein
lies the first problem. I was often in the situation of knowing more than
my character, who would only mumble something incomprehensible when I tried
to get him to say something I knew but he evidently did not. This was
understandable when the topic in question had not yet been raised, but
afterwards? Why would my character have something to say about most topics
only at the exact right time?

I was aware of this because of the number of times I replayed this short
entry. You can score three points, each point representing further progress
towards the one best ending. But that one best ending can only be reached
through certain conversational nodes, and those nodes can fly by without
you realizing it. I eventually resorted to a walkthrough, only to discover
that I'd missed one of the proper nodes because I always insisted on
remembering a memory as soon as it came available. The restrictions are so
tight that I played the game over and over and over without ever getting
more than two points. In fact, I just now went back and replayed it, and
had to try four times to get the optimal ending.

Replaying it so much gave me the opportunity to realize how thin the story
was. I mentioned that I wasn't sure who exactly Marcus was. I was only
slightly more aware of who I was. I had a better picture of the friar by
the end, but the picture was painted mostly in generalities. The story and
characters lacked specifics that would make them come alive. I felt like I
was taking part in a generic medieval story. The lack of details was in
part to protect the plot twist and deus ex machina that ended the game, but
since it took me so long to see the ending, by that point I didn't much
care. For me the game became an extremely constrained maze, one built of
topics instead of passageways.

What I'm beginning to learn about art show entries is that the devil is in
the details. My image of what I needed to do in "Queen of Swords" was
hindered by a lack of feedback, while here my progress was halted by
failure to hit my mark and say my lines at the exact right time.

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A Stop For The Night, by Joe Mason.
(Landscape)

Good grief but I'm dizzy now.

A bit ago on rec.arts.int-fiction there was a discussion about spatial
cognition and how IF players form a mental map. To test a hypothesis of
his, Mike Roberts wrote "Rat In Control." In it, you can navigate a maze
either by compass directions or by relative directions, the relative
directions being related to how you enter a room.

"A Stop For The Night" is like the relative direction version of "Rat In
Control," with one terrible twist: the directions are relative *to a fixed
point in each room.*

Let me pause while you think on that.

I didn't realize this at first. I originally thought the directions were
given relative to how you entered the room. Based on this assumption, it
appeared that one room's left door and right door were mislabelled. I
discussed this with Joe Mason, who explained what was going on. The room's
concept of left and right were based on me entering the room, then turning
around so that I was facing the room's central entrance, making them
oriented 180 degrees from those of a previous room.

If you are now confused, you have me for company. This strikes me as taking
the worst feature of compass directions -- its arbitrariness -- and
coupling it with the worst feature of relative directions -- a changing
reference frame. It would be as if north, south, east and west changed
orientation from room to room, with no apparent rhyme or reason. I wandered
through the keep in which "A Stop For The Night" was set some five or six
times before I began to have an idea of where things were. Even now, a week
after I played the game, I doubt I could retrace my steps through the keep
without several trips to refamiliarize myself with the landscape. This, I
thought while playing, must be how birds feel near large rare earth
magnets.

Only the automatic listing of exits and the addition of path information
saved me. "A Stop For The Night" lets you navigate by doorways, stairs, and
other passageways. By default it lists these exits at the end of each room
description, letting you know where you can go. If the list says, "You can
go to the forest, the road, and the gated arch," then you can >GO FOREST
and the like. Then, when you enter a new room, the direction from which you
entered is appended to the end of the room name. For example, one room
might be " *Within the Arch* (emerging from the outer gate)". Using these two
features I staggered drunkenly from location to location, barely able to
keep track of where I just came from and where I wanted to go, let alone
the overall layout of the keep.

Matters weren't helped by the nondescript and symmetric map layout.
Granted, the map is small, and keeps are generally symmetric, but the
combined result was a map with no notable features to help me fix the
layout in my mind. The center courtyard and the temple at the end of the
keep opposite where I entered were the most unusual, and because of this I
ended up with a mental map in which the temple was to the north of the
courtyard. Everything else's location is vague and tends to shift about in
my mind.

What was so disappointing about this wretched navigation system was that it
was coupled to a highly polished entry. The game's story unfolded at a good
pace, and left me interested in what horrible event had befallen the keep.
Room and item descriptions are well crafted. After playing several entries
where the details were not well handled, it was a delight to play one entry
where they were. If only I had been better able to navigate it!

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Ogres, by Alan DeNiro.
(Landscape)

The writing in this game is viewed through a funhouse mirror. It makes
"Phlegm" look coherent. I approve.

I mean, how can you not like a game that uses the word "tatterdemalion"
correctly, or says, "Once an ogre gave birth to an axe"? The description of
one window—that you're carrying, I might add -- is, "It's for
emergencies, holistic as vengeance. But you don't have a window."

The whole thing lurches crazily from room to room, scattering odd phrases
in its path. The landscape in question is the city of Panoptika. You
actually get to see it three different times, as "Ogres" comes with three
separate game files, labelled red, black, and white. "Ogres" also comes with
a text file that claims the game was originally written in BASIC back in
1988, and oh, one of the game files might be CURSED.

It's all rotated about twenty degrees out of the plane of reality. Some
exits don't work right, and there's not a lot to do. There are only a few
changes in each game file's version of Panoptika. I can't really recommend
this game, but it has its own bizarre charm.

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Jon Ingold's Reviews

The following reviews are more or less written-as-play. I've marked my
votes alongside, (though if this is against the spirit of the thing, then
hopefully the Editoress will remove them before posting. -- It isn't, so
she didn't. Doe ;-)).

Queen of Swords
Redemption
Tarot Reading
A Stop at Night
Ogres
Friendly Foe

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The Queen of Swords

(A tarot reference? Good to see Curses still lingers in the memory)
Ha. So, several objects and a lot of fiddly fiddling to do. This is the
sort of thing that usually makes players complain, but of course, this is
an *art* show, so we're supposed to look out for this sort of
self-awareness. So the point of the piece is a semi-exercise in frustration
(and, we hope, eventual satisfaction) - it is a fiddly process after all,
with a very strong temptation to just give up and let David (the game's
NPC) do it all for you. I like that - I can choose whether my character is
stubborn and just a touch proud, and go through all the zipping up and
down, or I can be weak and puny.

(Now, perhaps even the stack-overflow error I ran into is an artistic point
as well? So fiddly a process are we experiencing here, it over-fiddles the
very universe we are playing the model within? Or no, I was just doing the
wrong thing.)

In the end, however, the thing had me help up the longest was not noticing
an object had a zip to close. I thought David had done it all for me! So
clearly I am playing weak and puny here, and was therefore justifiably
pummelled in the actual fencing. (Not that the game covers that bit; I just
know).

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Redemption - BEST IN SHOW

(Not the point of the Art Show perhaps, but what a wonderfully-written
prologue.)

Beautiful - rich - subtle. "She was standing in her chamber, one hand
behind her back. At the time you hadn't thought about that much, its
significance coming to you only much later," (quoted because it meant
something different to me the two times I read it). A sure-handed feeling
that I was having a story revealed to me in the right order, regardless of
my path through... that is extremely adept. Both interactive and narrative.
A portrait? Maybe; though I'm not sure who of, the player's character I
suppose, though its more a portrait of a feeling. What matters here though
is that the characters feel real, as does their story - with one major
reason I think, being that as things are revealed you realise that you
already knew, somewhere in your brain. There's a certain attractive
inevitability about the unfolding situation, which in scriptwriting circles
is known as "progression", and is something IF tends to get wrong all the
time.

Flaws? The game is too hard; it is too easy to stop the conversation before
you really understand what's going on; before the painting is complete.
That encourages me the player to use UNDO and then the interactivity is
lost (interactive, to my mind, has always implied responsible) - not to
mention, the text at the ending of the game gets rather overused; good
words they are but I stop reading them after the third or fourth time. But
in a game of this structure I think the problem of curtailment is the
hardest to avoid - as a designer it invites heavy-handedness or
multifold-paths, neither of which is an elegant solution.

When I finally restarted and began again I couldn't remember how I got
through the first section, and in fumbling around trying to regain my place
the mechanics became more clear. The first playthrough was evocative,
emotional - a feeling my IF playing has been without for a long while - but
the second felt much more like I was on an exhaustive search: something
that tends to happen with Art Show entries, as the gamer decides to
"complete" a game not designed to be completed. There is the conflict here
between the brief experience - the conversation with the pretty woman on a
train, where you say the wrong thing almost immediately and you know you'll
never see her again or know how long it might have lasted - and the child
listening to his father read a story, demanding to know how it ends long
before the book is over. A game should pretend to be the former and
actually satisfy the latter; or otherwise we know that the pretty woman
will always be there the next time we want to have a crack at her, like
some digital Groundhog Day.

But I'm glad I replayed because I unearthed the crucial factor that makes
this game stand out for me as something rather wonderful: there is a point
near the beginning of the game where I wasn't stuck first time, but was
stuck second time. Why? Because the first time the right action was the
clear and natural thing to do, so much so I didn't notice I had done
anything myself, rather than going through the conversational options. And
the second time I didn't think of it, because I was conscious of "success
by future knowledge" and assumed it couldn't be correct - and it's a
necessary step. So I "solved a puzzle", without noticing there was a
"puzzle". Mimesis. Excellent.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tarot Reading - BEST EVENT

I don't know much about tarot - I wonder how accurate all this is. I'll
need to play it again to see if it's random but...

...holy shit...

..yup, tarot works, it just read my future. I mean, it really did. Bugger
me with a stick. I'm actually feeling quite shocked.

So, art: yes, this is a nice piece, well written if sometimes a little
sparse (unsurprising, if it really does contain a full deck). As a work of
art I found it engaging and fascinating; but perhaps like a true tarot
reading those who have no interest in such things will not gain any
reaction from it. But art is supposed to produce reactions and this piece
did, by divine intervention or me being a plain old sucker for the concept
of destiny. Either way, it's a good idea that's never been done before, and
though if it were richer in interaction it would benefit enormously, the
event is the progression, and I'm going to go away and gibber.

...And then return, with a heavier heart, wondering if it would have been
possible to take this idea and weave a narrative through it - if the Hermit
could have been the Magician, if I could have learnt a history of someone
as I travelled through the cards (and not just, speculatively, of myself).
Layers, I suppose, are what I would have liked to have seen.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Stop At Night - BEST LANDSCAPE

A gothic horror setting and a slow process of exploration. Although I
wonder if this wouldn't be better suited to the IFComp proper; there is an
art-point to discuss. The game has achieved a nirvana: it has entirely
removed compass directions, in a way many people have suggested but few
have tried, by making every movement through a door and asking the player
to communicate directions via which doors he chooses. It's a nice effect,
of unfixing the landscape from the standard chessboard arrangement and into
something more realistic, with small spaces and long corridors, that lap
over each other, curl and fit snug as Soma cube. Perhaps building up a
mental map as a player is harder - especially in the wide environment
provided - but its not that much harder, and indeed, for a more compact map
would be just as easy. And the extra thought necessary from the player to
construct a true map of the place - rather than the "set of instructions"
one normally builds (N, NW, N, N, W, W to Jemima, and so forth) - means
that once the learning curve is finished I have a far stronger, visual
impression of the area being explored. It's rather like coming away from a
graphical game, where each area entered is scouted round until you learn
its parameters, and all the stairs an ramparts and passages-over-passages
fit into a 3D shape.

So how is this attractive, organic world used? Well, the game has a plot of
sorts, and a puzzle; and it is perhaps a shame that this puzzle does not
lead to the transformation of the landscape which it appears to promise.
Having had the player build a convincing mental map it would have been nice
to apply this under more fraught conditions (indeed, as many 3D games do),
having to dart round corners of some horrific maze of passages, stairs and
collapsing ceilings.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ogres

Hm. Freaky.

But then, having wandered through its various incarnations a few times, not
that freaky. I don't get it - I don't get it even enough to try to comment,
really. Some fun wordplay, but that's got to be missing the point. In fact
the writing is overall good; I just wish I could tell it was for. Somehow
there's just not enough of anything there to actually impact me. It reminds
me of "House of Leaves" for some reason (though I've never read the book);
only that thing is an enormous tome stuffed with information to connect,
and this is three short games with little between them but some frankly
charming word-shuffling, and a few different takes on the same idea.

This is entered under landscape and it describes such a thing, in a broken
style; not a large landscape and not a coherent one. I'd be tempted to
class it as Portrait instead, indeed "self-portrait", of our nominal
"artist"; but again there isn't enough that to get under my skin that I
would understand it then either.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friendly Foe

I have to quote this, though it is utterly, completely, unfair of me; and I
apologise immediately in advance to the author.

"...out of place like a boat in a dessert".

Right, anyway, a review. The implementation is deep; we have a garden with
its myriad little tools, we have radios that move through daily programmes
and background noises and events, all of which are reflected in the object
of protagonist's hatred, this rabbit that I've now spent an hour trying to
take dead or alive and failing. (I did manage to get him eaten by a dog,
but it seems I felt guilty about this). The level of "aside" is quite
splendid - though it detracts from the aim in hand, if indeed there is
really an aim; if this bunny is actually conquerable or whether it is just
a red herring to act as a motivation to play with the toys and bits and
bobs that fill this little world. The implementation is deep verging on
pathological, and I do not believe for a second that this was written by a
beginner because the coding is deeply, deeply sharp.

The game commits the sin of actually including a puzzle, which is something
of an Art-Show faux pas but something of which I hugely approve; I'm just
disappointed that actually the solution is quite simple and doesn't involve
nearly enough permutations of the objects, tools and bits of hardware that
are at my disposal. I didn't even need to use the chainsaw for what I, um,
used the chainsaw for. But it was still an entertaining play. I'd call it
"Landscape", not "Event"; but like with "Queen of Swords" I think what's
really called for is a "Finickity Objects" category specifically for
implementation of things that are finickity. Like this bloody rabbit, who
refuses to eat carrots that are lying in front of a tractor wheel.

(A final note: last time I played a game and thought it was under a
pseudonym I based that decision on the author's spelling of the phrase
"color grey". This time I'm basing it on "Mailbox. Remember the mailbox.")

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mike Roberts Reviews

Friendly Foe
Orges
Queen of Swords
Redemption
A Stop for the Night
The Tarot Reading

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friendly Foe
by Fred Demul

Unlike most Art Show entries, this piece is a lot like a traditional IF
game, in that it's centered on the puzzle of catching a bunny in the player
character's back yard.

The setting is small - three locations - but compensates by having lots of
detail. Lots of it; there are practically as many takeable objects in these
three locations as there are in a typical medium-sized adventure game, and
most of them have full descriptions that fill in background details on the
player character. This one could easily have been entered into the Art Show
in the Landscape category.

Purely based on the rather cartoonish premise, I had expected a sort of
Babel-fish-like puzzle of incrementally escalating complexity, as the bunny
we're supposed to catch would escape each attempt at capture in a clever
way that suggested the next refinement. That doesn't seem to be the game
here, though; despite the focus on the bunny, I wasn't able to do much to
interact with it. The best I was able to do was frighten it with one of the
many objects, but this didn't seem to be helpful to the overall goal. I
never did manage to catch the bunny. It's quite possible that I just got
caught up in looking at all the detailed scenery, and just never got around
to attacking it as a game.

This piece is nicely implemented and full of detail. I just wish I'd
figured out if there really is a way to capture the bunny.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ogres
by Alan DeNiro

It seems to be a tradition in IF competitions that there's always at least
one really weird, abstract entry. "Ogres" fills that niche for this year's
Art Show.

"Ogres"' weirdness starts with an included README-type file, which offers a
rather cryptic history of the game and warns that part of the game might be
"cursed" - echoes of the recent movie "The Ring." (The README is in some
binary format, despite a ".txt" suffix, but I'm not sure if this is an
intentional part of the weirdifying; my guess is that the file was prepared
on a Macintosh and wasn't properly converted to plain text.) Then, we find
that there are actually three separate Alan game files here. Each of the
three games is basically the same as the others, except for a few changes,
some subtle and some obvious.

As for the contents of the three games, that's where things *really* get
strange. They're reminiscent of Ryebread Celsius, but without all of the
misspellings (there are a few, but nothing like a Ryebread game) or all of
the bugs. The writing is interesting and often rather visually evocative.
The interactivity is pretty thin, though; very few of things mentioned are
actually implemented, and those that are implemented don't tend to do very
much.

I never know quite what to say about these games that seem deliberately
impenetrable. I suppose that's essentially tautological; if I were able to
understand one, it wouldn't be in the "impenetrable" category any more. I
want to give the author the benefit of the doubt, that they're trying to
convey something and I'm just too dense to get it, but I always have to
wonder when puzzling over one of these if it's just bizarreness for its own
sake, constructed to give the appearance of a deeper meaning without
actually having one. Sort of the IF equivalent of the twentieth-century
*avante-garde* music that used randomness to ensure that the music was freed
of the composer's pre-conceived notions and traditional western musical
conventions.

That's how this piece appeared to me, anyway. I tend to find these sorts of
games interesting, since I enjoy for a while the intellectual challenge of
puzzling out what the author is trying to convey; when I come to the
conclusion that I'm not going to figure it out, though, and when I start to
suspect that there's nothing deeper to figure out in the first place, it's
a bit of a letdown. The prose and imagery in this game are certainly
interesting enough, though.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Queen of Swords
by Jessica Knoch

This piece is a simulation of the process of suiting up for an "electric
fencing" match, which is a fencing match using electronic equipment that
detects contact between foil and fencer. The piece is implemented in
considerable detail; unfortunately, it's a bit too much detail for my
tastes.

The problem with this level of detail, to my mind, is that it doesn't adapt
well to the command-line user interface. This is one of those cases where a
picture really is worth a thousand words; for the kinds of physical details
involved here, words are just terribly inefficient. Text games, like
anything in text media, work best when they're dealing in something other
than geometrical detail. There are good reasons, besides the high cost of
translation, that instructions for assembling Danish furniture are mostly
pictorial. The task of suiting up that requires dozens of turns here would
amount in the more typical IF conventions to WEAR FENCING OUTFIT.

Reducing the game to WEAR FENCING OUTFIT obviously would have defeated the
whole purpose of the work, though. Taken on its own terms, the piece is
implemented pretty well. The writing is smooth, and the implementation
keeps track of a lot of details. There are a couple of shortcomings that
add to the too-much-detail problem, though.

First, a relatively minor problem but fairly noticeable, there are a lot of
"You have to <do something> first" messages. From the programmer's
perspective, it can be hard to eliminate those messages. From the player's
perspective, though, they're just plain annoying; if the parser can tell
you that you have to do this thing first, why doesn't it just do it
already? To the player's reading, these messages just make the parser look
intentionally obstructive.

Second, and considerably more important, the game doesn't provide status
information about a number of key objects. Part of the step-by-step
breakdown of the WEAR FENCING OUTFIT operation that we're tasked to perform
involves putting various pieces of the outfit together in the correct order
and manner. However, after putting pieces together, examining the pieces
offers no indication that they've been assembled, or how they're assembled.
This means there's no way to find out where you are in the process, and if
you do something wrong, it's extremely difficult to figure out what.

Apart from these usability issues, the implementation seems pretty solid.
Taken on its own terms, this piece does what it sets out to do, but overall
it didn't hold quite enough interest for me.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Redemption
by Kathleen M. Fischer

This piece uses dialog to gradually unveil a mystery. Part of the mystery
is just in learning what the player character already knows: learning who
the player character is, learning about the events that led to the present
circumstances. Eventually, we realize that there's a deeper mystery,
though, a matter that comes as a surprise to the characters themselves.

This work's strong point is its writing. The dialog is consistently
effective, and the gradual revelation of the background and the events
leading up to the story's present time is expertly devised to keep us
guessing, and to keep us interested. The game is also strong technically;
in particular, it uses an innovative conversation system that isn't
perfect, but does a lot of things right and looks very promising.

Conversation has always been one of text IF's weakest points. Ideally,
given the free-form command-line user interface, we'd like to be able to
simply talk to characters in plain English (or plain Latvian, or plain
whatever else). The "natural language" problem turns out to be the Fermat's
Last Theorem of modern computer science, though: simple and obvious at
first glance, incredibly subtle and difficult on closer inspection.
Fermat's Last Theorem might finally have been proven, but the solution to
the natural language problem is still nowhere in sight, so IF has to resort
to less satisfying substitutes. The ASK/TELL system of the earliest works
still stands as the most widely-used convention, but it's so limiting, so
incapable of creating the illusion of an actual conversation, that authors
have spent a lot of time over the past five or ten years experimenting,
trying to find better alternatives. No one approach has emerged as the
clear winner yet, so we continue to see games that introduce new techniques
or new variations.

This work's approach is a sort of hybrid of the plain old ASK/TELL system
and a more menu-based system. To converse with a character, the player uses
a TALK TO command, which shows a list of possible topics and a special
"talk mode" prompt. The player selects one of the topics by typing a word
or two from the desired topic in the listing, and this causes the player
character to ask a question or make a statement suggested by the topic.
It's different from ASK/TELL in that we're given a list of possible topics
to choose from; this eliminates the feeling one often gets in a plain
ASK/TELL system of flailing around in the dark trying to guess which magic
keyword a character will recognize. It's different from the more common
menu-based systems in that it doesn't present us with a list of actual
quoted text to put in the player character's mouth, but just with a list of
topics.

The topic list has a couple of subtle but important benefits over the usual
kind of menu system. For something so basically similar, I found it rather
surprising how much smoother it felt than typical conversation menus.
First, it just looks better. A typical conversation menu shows a numbered
list of complete sentences, so to make the list readable, it's typically
presented with one item per line; the topic list typically takes up just a
single line. The usual conversation menu looks like an obvious user
interface gadget; the topic list looks like an ordinary paragraph, just
like the surrounding text. Second, the topic list somehow seems more
consistent with the level of detail used for normal command input; there's
something about selecting from the actual quoted strings that seems much
too specific.

Overall, I really like "Redemption"'s conversation system, but the execution
has a few aspects that I think could be improved. First, TALK TO and ASK
ABOUT are both used in this game, but they're too separate, given how alike
they seem to the player. At any given time, ASK ABOUT fails to recognize
most of the topics that TALK TO will accept. For most of the TALK TO
topics, ASK ABOUT ought to work equally well; the fact that it doesn't
draws undue attention to the mechanism. What's more, ASK ABOUT *does* work at
times with topics that are *not* available via TALK TO. I'm sure this was a
deliberate decision to work around the main thing a lot of authors (and
even some players) don't like about menu-based conversations: what should
have been a puzzle can turn into a simple exhaustive search of the menu
tree. But this strikes me as just blatant hiding, akin to having to
remember to LOOK UNDER and LOOK BEHIND every random object in a puzzle-fest
game. Overall, the non-overlap between TALK TO and ASK ABOUT seems to
violate some user interface principle that a given task should have a
consistent expression in the UI; from the player's perspective, TALK TO and
ASK ABOUT are the same thing.

Second, the TALK TO command as implemented here is too modal. Since the
conversation is practically the entire story, we have to type TALK TO for
almost every turn. You can abbreviate it to T, so the amount of typing
isn't really the problem; the problem is that the repeated T commands make
the mechanism too apparent. I think it might work better if once you
entered conversation mode, you'd stay in conversation mode until further
notice. So, as long as the conversation continues, after each topic
selection, we'd automatically get the next topic list and prompt, without
having to type TALK TO again. This raises the other half of the modality
problem, though: we have to type an explicit command (NONE) to *exit* TALK TO
mode. I'd suggest eliminating the special TALK TO prompt entirely, and
instead handling TALK TO mode the same way that most games handle the
similar situation of questions asked by the parser, such as "Which do you
mean...?" and "What do you want to open?" prompts. In other words, there
would be no special TALK TO prompt, just an ordinary prompt; if the player
enters something from the current topic list, then it's interpreted as a
topic, otherwise it's treated as a new command. So there'd be no need to
explicitly exit TALK TO mode; we'd just type any ordinary command, and this
would automatically terminate TALK TO mode and execute the command.

One more UI quibble, somewhat along the lines of the off-menu ASK ABOUT
topics. The story has a REMEMBER command, which becomes available at
certain points (such as when a particular person or event comes up in the
conversation). The fact that there's a topic to remember is made known to
the player via a status line marker, telling us how many topics we can
remember right now. This is less hidden than the off-menu topics, but I
don't really like this way of showing the information. The status line is a
user interface gadget, not part of the story proper; putting vital story
information up there just doesn't seem appropriate. It's a little like
providing a clue for a puzzle by changing the room title in the status line
to read "type FREBOBBLE now" for one turn. It's not *quite* that bad, since
we're told about the "memories" counter up front, and because the counter
persists until we REMEMBER something; but this weird mixing of UI parts is
bad, in my opinion, in exactly the same way that the topic menus are good
in comparison to typical conversation menus.

Finally, an observation on the overall structure of the game. This work has
numerous alternative endings. Depending on how you go through the
conversation, you get to one of the many endings. A lot of people like this
sort of thing, because it makes them feel like they're in control of the
story. I personally don't like this kind of structure so much. To my mind,
even though there are lots of endings, there's clearly one ending where
you've solved the game; until you reach that ending, you haven't really
finished playing, you've just reached a dead end where you have to go back
with RESTORE or RESTART to try something else. This means that RESTORE and
RESTART become conspicuous parts of the flow of the game, not just
meta-game operations you perform when you want to stop for the night and
return to the game the next day. This work has so many dead-end paths that
I found myself using RESTORE every couple of minutes once I got going. The
thing about this I don't like is that it destroys the illusion of a story
for me, and turns the whole thing into a mechanical puzzle-box: okay, last
time I chose "agree," so let's RESTORE and see what happens when I choose
"disagree," and so on. The illusion works so much better for me when the
author finds a way to make the dead ends loop back into the main branch of
the story, rather than forcing the player to do exactly the same
looping-back manually with RESTORE. It's a superficial distinction, I know,
because there's no actual difference in the path we're taking; but by the
same token, if there is no actual difference, then why shouldn't the author
choose the approach that hides the seams, rather than putting the seams on
vivid display with a dead end and a RESTORE prompt?

I seem to have gone on a bit, especially about things I didn't like, so let
me reiterate that I really liked this work overall. The only reason I've
spent so much time criticizing it is that it seems to be getting so close
to the kind of free-flowing, natural conversation I'd really like to see
more of. I feel as though the conversation system implemented here is very
close to what could become the first fully satisfactory IF dialog system,
so I'm trying to explain - actually, more to figure out - why this system
is so close but not quite exactly there.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Stop for the Night
by Joe Mason

This "landscape" positively oozes atmosphere. The setting is essentially
medieval, but in a slightly different universe than our own. Not quite a
fantasy setting, not quite Middle Earth; more like Arkham, circa 1600.

I don't want to go into any details about the setting or the story, since
the fun is in finding out for yourself what's going on. But I will say that
classifying this entry as a landscape for the purposes of the Art Show
doesn't quite cover it; there's an event here as well, and that's a big
part of what makes it work. The setting would have been moderately
interesting on its own, but apart from the slight weirdness of the parallel
universe, the setting would have been a bit too quotidian to hold one's
attention for very long; but with the addition of the event, there's an
element of mystery that makes the work pretty compelling.

I've prattled on quite a bit recently in rec.arts.int-fiction about the
long-standing IF convention of using compass directions for navigation, and
why I consider it a good convention even though it's not quite like real
life. This game uses an alternative system that's based on a more relative
model. When bearings are described at all, they're described as left or
right, ahead or behind; but mostly we refer to exits by name rather than
bearing: ENTER KITCHEN, or GO THROUGH INNER DOOR.

Personally, my experience with this game and its custom system bears out my
feelings about the natural superiority of compass directions. I'm not
saying this game's system is awful - my experience wasn't all that bad, and
the implementation is solid technically. But where the system failed me was
in providing a clear overall picture of the layout of the setting, the
relative locations of things. I found the overall layout very confusing,
and needlessly so - the same set of rooms would have been easy to picture
if described using the usual conventions. In real life, that kind of
big-picture comprehension comes naturally just from walking around and
letting your visual and spatial senses piece things together; without the
visual input, though, it was extremely hard to form the same kind of
overall sense of location and orientation from the local descriptions. With
the more standard compass convention, that big picture view is conveyed
directly, since there's never a question of the orientation of one room
relative to the next. So, paradoxically, even though the relative
directions might give the *appearance* of greater realism, the overall effect
was actually *less* realistic than games that use compass directions, because
compass directions would give the player the same sense of the area we'd
have in real life.

A few other aspects of the direction system are a little strained. The
supposedly relative directions really turn out to be just a different set
of names for an absolute direction scheme, inasmuch as any given room has a
certain fixed orientation - or, rather, the player character has a fixed
orientation in each room. In other words, you're always described as facing
the same way within a given room, no matter how you got there or what
you've been doing there. This makes descriptions awkward in places; each
time a room description said a door is "behind you," I couldn't help but
picture myself standing there, straining to rotate my neck 180 degrees
while keeping my feet planted for some mysterious reason. Likewise, a given
feature will be described as "to your left," and it stays to your left no
matter how you entered the room. Compass directions strike some people as
awkward in their own way, but they do have the good feature of freeing the
descriptive text of any dependence on the particular orientation of the
player character, which in turn frees the player to mentally picture the PC
coming and going, walking around within the room, and otherwise doing
whatever comes naturally from moment to moment. The need to orient features
relative to the character's orientation really calls attention to the
graph-of-nodes aspect of the text adventure world model, and I found the
effect jarring at times.

Traditionally, Art Show entries are relatively puzzle-free, so most of them
don't have anything like a score. This particular work does have a couple
of puzzle-like elements, though, and it's rather large, so some sort of
progress indicator would really be nice. I ultimately finished the work, I
think, but there were several points at which I wasn't sure if there was
anything more to see or do.

Overall, I enjoyed this piece a lot. The writing is quite good, and there's
a lot of depth to the setting and story. I found the unconventional
navigation system to be unnecessarily confusing, and I would have been
happier with a regular compass system, but that's a minor obstacle. This
piece isn't fully satisfying as a complete game, since it's kind of like
the first act of a horror movie; that's exactly as it should be for an Art
Show piece, though, and I think the fact that the piece leaves me wanting
the other two acts is a pretty good measure of its success.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Tarot Reading
by Michael Penman

This piece is just what its title suggests: an IF-ification of a tarot card
reading. Rather than simulating the relatively mundane mechanics of dealing
from a deck of cards, though, this work goes the surreal route, putting the
player in an abstract, conceptual space representing the meanings of the
cards. Each location represents a tarot card, and contains a central
feature drawn from its card. For example, the location representing the
card "The Hanged Man" features, naturally, a gallows with a hanged man. The
central feature of each location has some interactive element that helps
interpret the meaning of the corresponding card.

It's an interesting conceit. The approach makes the experience a little
more subtle than just dealing cards and reading their meanings from a
guidebook, in that the interactivity is inherently more personally
involving.

The individual cards vary in their degree of interactivity, but most seem
to have one main thing that helps explain the card. The "one main thing"
isn't really a puzzle, but is fairly clear from observation in most cases.
Although it would be inappropriate for something on the scale of an Art
Show entry, I could see elaborating this piece almost indefinitely by
extending and deepening the interactivity of each card. Surely there must
be vast tracts of writing on the nuances of interpreting tarot cards; the
brief summaries that appear in the game must barely scratch the surface. It
would also be interesting to put more of the burden of interpretation on
the player, by making the interactivity provide more guidance than
explanation.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Emily Short's Reviews

My votes:

Best of Event and Best of Show: Queen of Swords

(Note that when Emily was told she couldn't vote for an entry for both Best
of Show and Best of Event, she added a vote for Best of Portrait:
Redemption. - Doe ;-))

Best of Landscape: Stop for the Night

My reviews:
Redemption
Friendly Foe
Orges
Tarot Reading
Stop For the Night
Queen of Swords

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Redemption

I do like Kathleen's method of presenting conversation possibilities.
Effectively (since one is generally limited to one of two or three
choices), it isn't much different from a menu; but I find it in some ways
more comfortable to work with questions like "do you want to reply or ask
about the past?" So the conversation system does good things for the
texture of the piece. On the other hand, I often found myself wishing it
were possible to ask about more things -- the menu-ness of the system was
restrictive at some junctures.

I wasn't entirely thrilled with the setting, which seemed to be a sort of
General Medieval. Perhaps I didn't play far enough to find out otherwise; I
got stuck, and only managed to earn a single point from the game despite
several playthroughs. From there, I kept getting the same less-than-happy
outcome. I'm sure there's more possible, but I didn't have time to pursue
hints during the judging period.

I would have liked to have come out of this with a clearer sense of the
story. Kathleen seems to be intrigued by the possibilities of exploring
memories and telling a tale through recollections (as witness "The Cove"
and "Inevitable," for instance). I think this is a neat idea, but somehow I
found this one less moving and effective than "The Cove." Again, maybe the
problem is that I got stuck and didn't get to the full conclusion. On the
other hand, what I was seeing on the way there didn't compel me as much as
it might have. For one thing, the elements of lost love and betrayal that I
was seeing initially seemed as though they might have been lifted from any
of a hundred stories: the impulse to keep things mysterious was so strong
that I was left without enough to whet my appetite for revelation.

All that said, this is a competently written piece, using an interesting
conversation system, which may well have much more to offer than I was able
to find.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friendly Foe

Early in playing this I encountered the phrase "out of place as a boat in a
dessert." This is unfortunate because the phrase amused me more than it
really should have, and because it led me to expect more technical flaws
than I actually encountered. In fact, there was clearly a lot of work put
into crafting the items in this game, as I discovered as I continued to
poke around.

I was a bit baffled, though. This game is more puzzle-oriented than I
generally expect of an IF Art piece (or at least, I assume it is; given
that I never actually *solved* any puzzles, it's possible that there's just
a lot of taunting going on.) Obviously, there aren't a lot of hard and fast
rules about the precise degree of puzzlehood permitted in an Art Show
piece, so it's not in violation of anything. I just didn't know what to do.
I poked around, examined everything, drew a few preliminary conclusions
about the elements of the puzzle, and set things up in a way that (I
thought) should guarantee my success in the near future. And waited. And
waited. And waited.

Obviously what I was trying to do didn't work, but there wasn't any
feedback about *why* it didn't work or what else I might be intended to do
-- which may be an accurate reflection of what it's like to try to get a
rabbit out of your yard, but is kind of daunting in an IF piece.

So, er, I'm stuck. Hrm.

This piece does feature a pretty accurate representation of the Stuff
Inside A Garden Shed, though. And I got to exorcise my frustration by
sawing a lot of stuff up with a chainsaw. That was fun. I need more
opportunities for sawing things.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ogres

I have to confess that this one didn't do very much for me. It's weird,
unfriendly, incomprehensible. And it seems to be doing more or less the
opposite of what the Art Show is intended to encourage. You are travelling
through a landscape so metaphorically described and so haphazardly
implemented that it's barely possible to know what's going on. Exits that
are described as present don't actually work. Things that should be there,
aren't. Things that are present, are described in ways that make no sense.

What this means is that it's nearly impossible to envision anything at all;
and that makes it fairly hard to interact. I didn't get the sense of
especially deep immersion I associate with a really well-built IF
environment (cf. Kathleen Fischer's "The Cove" from a few years ago); in
fact, I spent most of my time staring at the screen and wondering what the
heck was going on. I didn't reach any conclusions or endings, if
conclusions and endings are available.

Then there's the fact that this game (these games?) is/are three gamefiles,
which are mostly the same, but different in places. The opening text
encourages one to play all three, using a trope I consider a bit cheesy. (I
did try all three, but since I was baffled by the first game, I was really
no less baffled by the second and third; as for getting some idea of what
the differences meant, well...)

Here's the thing. I like surreal games, sometimes, but the basic
requirement is that I feel the author knows what he's describing. Maybe the
thing described is metaphorical rather than physical, but there should be
*something,* some internal logic however skewed from our own. Here I felt I
had no grasp of what was intended. Deliberate Obscurity is a risky card to
play in a genre that depends not only on the reader not closing the book,
but on the player being able to understand and move things forward. I spend
most of my time trying to make my games *more* accessible rather than less
so.

One small but important design point: I was particularly irked by the
replacement of the line that comes up after you type QUIT. In most Alan
games, you type QUIT and then a prompt comes up asking you to type QUIT
again if you really mean it -- but I'd forgotten this. When faced with a
prompt that did not say 'Type QUIT again' but something else entirely, I
became irrationally afraid that I wasn't going to be allowed to leave the
game at all. I typed YES several times in a row trying to get it to stop
before finally remembering this quirk of Alan. Making your meta-verbs
unfriendly to the user is even meaner than in-game obscurity.

Anyhow. As always, the complaint "I didn't get it!" is an especially
subjective one to level against a piece of IF, and I'm aware that this may
say more about me than about the thing complained-against.

There were some beautiful words in it. Cobalt, alabaster, stone and stars,
individually evocative. I like these things. I wish I had been able to
stick them together in a way that made sense.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tarot Reading

I basically like the concept.

I have some quibbles. There are typos and spelling errors. Not all the
rooms (that I saw) are equally interesting.

All the same, I like (have always liked) the reification of the symbolic in
interactive fiction, and the Tarot is a good, rich source of imagery -- as
we see in Curses and at least one previous IF Art Show entry. Some of the
imagery was rather neat -- the High Priestess with the star clutched in her
hand, for instance.

I think I would have liked this game even better if there had been more:
more to do, more to look at, more to ask the characters about. But I
realize that a lot goes into implementing the number of card/rooms that (I
assume) are covered in this piece. (And no, I did not try playing it over
and over to make sure that the deck was fully represented. I saw a fair
variation in the four run-throughs I did play, though.)

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stop For The Night

This game has convinced me that relative directions are a Mistake in IF. I
appreciate the experiment, and I think the effect is interesting -- but
what resulted, for me, was rapid and complete confusion about what the map
as a whole looked like. Compass directions help (me, at least) construct an
overall sense of the map's shape. Here... I was at a loss.

The more I played, interestingly, the less this bothered me. Maybe it's a
learning curve issue. I think I still like my absolute directions, though.

The writing is a bit overdone in spots.

But the good points: the game is quite effectively creepy, herding you from
one untoward discovery to another. I quit playing it the first time because
I didn't want to deal with the imagery of dark things with claws right
then. The moment where I reached for the hunk of lamb was really quite
nauseating. (If anyone thinks of Art Show as meaning "pretty things", they
need to think again.)

Also excellent are the complex ways in which descriptions change, based on
what I have seen and learned so far. Unidentified glimmers and lights give
way to definite objects. The setting is quite effectively deployed for the
story it has to tell.

I've never felt more certain that I was about to be eaten by a grue.

This was my preference for Best of Landscape.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Queen of Swords

Neat implementation of a complex sequence of things.

I think I would have asked that the descriptions reflect a little more
closely what their current state was. (Eg, if the electric foil is plugged
into the body cord, I'd like to be able to see that just by looking at it.)
I got to a point where I'd done everything that seemed logical, and
couldn't figure out what to do next. I *think* what happened was that I had
actually failed to wear one of the items, but not noticed I hadn't put it
on properly, and thus I wound up "not ready" for the last phases of
preparation. In any case, I went back and followed the walkthrough, and all
was well.

I was hoping that I would wind up being allowed to actually fence at the
end of that detailed set-up. It was a little disappointing that it was all
in the form of a cut-scene, when I had been looking forward to that as the
big payoff of my careful set-up activities.

On the whole, though, this was a lovingly implemented piece, and I was
struck by the author's enthusiasm for her subject, which was infectious and
made me interested in something I know almost nothing about. It is so
exacting and precise that I mentally subtitled the game, "An Interactive
Tutorial" -- but I think there is something to be said for this, and I
found it quite enjoyable.

(You may ask whether I would like a sequence like this installed as part of
a longer game, and I confess that I probably wouldn't: if there were more
of a plot that I was anxious to move on to, I think I would have been
hopping in irritation at the prolonged guess-the-sequence-of-actions. But
taken as its own thing, where my only motivation was to find out how these
pieces fit together, it was in fact fairly satisfying.)

This was my preference for Best of Event and Best of Show.

-- Emily

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Doe's (Marnie Parker's) Reviews

I am not a judge anymore, but as host/hostess of the IF Art Show I do
usually try to write reviews. I missed for the year 2001, but hopefully I
will soon rectify that.

This year I decided to only finish the entries after the deadline and after
the judges' reviews were in. I was also a bit pushed for time. So I had the
advantage of their viewpoints and hindsight. Also, note that I have never
considered myself a very good review writer and I asked the judges to make
their reviews more critiques than reviews.

I was very pleased with this year's IF Art Show; please see the footnote
after the "Redemption" review.

The Tarot Reading
Redemption
A Stop for The Night
Friendly Foe
Queen of Hearts
Ogres

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Tarot Reading by Michael Penman

I really liked this. This is the way the IF Art Show started -- a piece
that does not attempt to be a complete story, just a close-up focus on one
thing. This is a tarot reading, and a pretty accurate one at that. I played
this more than once at different times and got a tarot reading that seemed
to apply to my current situation each time. This is a bit spooky, as Jon
Ingold said. You move from room to room meeting different cards (only the
major arcana, and it seems to be four cards maximum). Each card tells you
something, and you can ask it questions. The interesting thing about "Tarot
Reading" is that the implementation is a bit deeper than one might first
realize. For instance, you can climb the Tower, open the case the World is
in and touch it, and ask the Magician about each one of his items. Of
course, this level of implementation leaves one wanting even more, like
being able to untie or try to untie the Hanging Man. But I can understand
that there has to be a cut off point on this kind of thing, and the
author's level of implementation seems quite adequate for a short piece. (I
don't know if I should mention that the author told me he had to cut off
implementing more cards and interactivity, because he was working on it day
and night and had to stop to save his marriage. Well, I did mention it,
didn't I? So I understand not doing more.) My only suggestion for
improvement would be to do a second run with several beta-testers and maybe
add more implementation (re untying) only when two or more consistently
mention it. And I still haven't seen or explored every card.

This is an interactive experience, with no plot and no "winning," so it can
be played and enjoyed more than once -- something I am rather partial to,
myself -- just like a painting or a sculpture can be returned to for
enjoyment again and again. I am somewhat familiar with the Tarot,
especially the major arcana, but that kind of familiarity is not really
necessary to enjoy this piece. Overall, I found it quite fun to play, with
good imagery and intriguing card interpretations (such as some added poetry
that related to the objects in question, not to Tarot). Again, as another
judge, J.D. Berry said, this could have easily won an earlier IF Art Show.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Redemption by Kathleen Fischer

You are a prisoner in a medieval dungeon and being visited by a friar. Why
are you a prisoner? What did you do? And what lead up to it? I was
immediately enthralled by "Redemption," so to say I ended up somewhat
disappointed seems nasty or something. I tend to like Kathleen's stuff --
the settings, the characters, and the romantic/noble hero/heroine flavor
(though she sometimes denies she writes romances). I tend to like her stuff
more than I like the stuff of many other authors. However, I feel
"Redemption" promised more than it actually delivered.

I was seriously hampered by not getting the first point on the first play
through and not getting the second point on the second play through.
Actually, I am not totally sure how I missed the second point -- either I
didn't finish the second play through or I didn't ask the right thing at
the right time. So I ended up using hints for the first two points. This
also meant I had to play it three times to see all of it. While one doesn't
have to see all of it to enjoy it, once one is warned there are three
points one usually *wants* those points. But, unfortunately, replaying
decreased my enjoyment each time. I am not totally sure how this could have
been avoided -- if the points needed to be easier to get, or if another
type of branching system would have been better. Perhaps there could have
been no branching system at all, or a more complete branching system with
quite different endings rather than what felt like the chopped off
conclusion of the same ending. Maybe branching without a point system at
all might have been best, then, unwarned, some players would have seen one
thing and others, another. I also found the first point much too hard to
get. But when I saw the hint, it seemed so obvious (see spoiler below).

This is a conversation-driven piece. That part is done quite well, with a
convincing and absorbing conversation, one that also involved some tricky
Inform programming with a modular talk system (a conversational *style,*
which, BTW, I think T3 is going to do quite well without involving a lot of
effort and/or trickiness ;-)). But the conversation is also what, for me,
finally didn't quite deliver. Going from being quite taken at the
beginning, I felt during each replay that somehow not enough *more* was
revealed as I delved into it further. And I wanted to know more: more about
the main characters, more about the world they inhabited, and more about
the villain. I especially wanted to know more than that he *was* a villain; I
wanted to know how and why he was one. Maybe this piece was just a little
too short, but somehow I never got a really clear picture of the situation
and characters. Quite possibly if I had been able to play it only once to
see all of it, I would have felt more satisfied. I also don't think it
really needed the mental activity of a difficult puzzle to still be
satisfying interactively and story-wise. Maybe that's just me.

However, this was obviously an experiment. Since I admire and even
encourage experiments, I think on that basis that it succeeded fairly well.
Most people should enjoy the conversation, the characters, and the
lost-love-lost-is-well-lost flavor. I just wanted MORE. Kathleen could take
that statement as an indication of success in engaging my sometimes
too-fleeting attention.

(Footnote: The conversational style in "Redemption" was inspiration or
partial inspiration to Mike Roberts in developing a segment of his
conversation system in T3. Some parts of Emily Short's conversation-driven
pieces, naturally, including Galatea, were as well. In fact, I will say
here and now, that I feel that the IF Art Show has already achieved one of
its major aims -- to be a brainstorming interactivity workshop out of which
greater things might emerge. Or, minimally, it seems to be providing a
workshop atmosphere that encourages different interactive things to at
least be *tried.* And I am not saying that just because of T3, but also
because of the many experiments tried in this show (every entry!) and those
in past shows. So I am very pleased. And hopefully the experimentation and
brainstorming will just continue in future shows.)

SPOILER

SPOILER

Since this is a conversation-driven piece where the conversation technique
is modular (using a different prompt), I found it counter-intuitive to have
to switch to a verbal command in the middle to get the first point. I was
so focused on the conversation, that, in fact, it never even occurred to me
to do so, which is why I missed it. This is why I think that a lot of
people could easily miss the first point. I feel it would have worked
better if somehow the first point could have been also more clued in the
conversation or partially solved by the conversation rather than in just
the descriptions. That approach would have been more consistent and
certainly made the first point much easier for me to get. ;-) I probably
used the remember command only once. That, too, I feel, could have been
clued more in the conversation.

SPOILER ABOVE

SPOILER ABOVE

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Stop for The Night by Joe Mason

This is a medieval piece. You are a coach driver who stops for the night at
a keep where it appears something unsavory has happened. My first reaction
to this is that it did not belong in the IF Art Show (however, no entries
are pre-screened and turned away, as that would be counter-productive).
This is essentially a horror story that only loosely fits the landscape
theme. And it seemed to have a definite overriding plot. And it's not that
short. I felt it was more a traditional game than anything else. Then I
read the judges' reviews (I started before the deadline and then finished
after) and realized that it had no compass directions. Ergo, it is an
experiment and it fits the landscape scene. And how on earth had I missed
the lack of directions? Okay, I noticed there weren't any -- I mean I guess
I noticed, I'm pretty sure I noticed -- but it didn't seriously bother me.
This uses the system of listing exits and you can "go exit." I've always
been partial to lists of exits in games and also being able to go to one
when that is included. What I didn't realize was that the exits are not
correlated to compass directions. Once you pass through an exit/entrance
you may be a bit confused about which one it was because there are often
more exits on the other side and/or you get turned around direction-wise
once in a room. But I only got confused once or twice and I got a fairly
good map of the keep in my head.

I can't say why this bothered me a lot less than most of the judges, or why
it sort of made sense to me -- maybe because I am mildly dyslexic so my
head is hardwired a bit differently and maybe because I once confused my
right hand with my left (which I do rarely now). But only when I read the
judges reviews did I realize it was SUCH A BIG THING; I hadn't really,
really noticed. Doh. And I hadn't noticed that it could be a major
stumbling block for most players. So my suggestion to the author of this
piece is to rewrite it coordinating compass directions with exits. Keep the
exit system, just make one door south, etc. I guess. Maybe. But if he wants
more people to play and enjoy it, without being confused by the lack of
ordinal directions, most probably.

Once I stopped looking for IF Art Show type of things -- experimentation,
closer focus, deeper implementation, more I and less F, whatever -- that
was here but I didn't see -- once I approached this more as a *game* game, I
enjoyed it. "Stop" has lots of atmosphere and is actually a bit creepy.
Being creepy is not all that easy to pull off in IF, as one is always
somewhat aware that one is really not in danger. But despite the innovative
direction system and being a landscape entry, I think "Stop" suffered a
little too much from the wander-around-the-map-and-do-things-syndrome.
Because it takes longer to explore than one might first realize -- as I
played, I found it to be more vignette than the complete game I had
originally thought. But this slow exploration means a slow pace and that
cuts down on the creepiness, ergo, it never quite shivers. I also,
personally, would have like to have *seen* the denouement (the seemingly
promised landscape transformation Ingold mentioned -- see below spoiler).
However, this is a polished piece that only needs a little more tweaking
and horror or atmospheric aficionados should enjoy it.

One caveat though: It really is a little too long for the IF Art Show.

SPOILER

SPOILER

I wanted to see the monster. I wanted to see a slavering beast erupting on
the scene!!! Maybe it was there, but I never saw it. I also wanted to see a
clash of titans at the end. Just because. And I think that could have been
included and still have been considered a landscape entry. Using cut
scenes, or something. The clash at the end would also have illuminated the
story for me more. If the author wants to make this more a complete game, I
suggest that sort of ending. I also think that enter ___ was slightly
counter-intuitive when other directions were go exit. I know why entering
was not broadcast as an exit, but it made the solutions a bit obscure.

SPOILER ABOVE

SPOILER ABOVE

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friendly Foe by Mike Sousa

You are a proud gardener. There is a rabbit. It is eating your vegetables.
I think "Friendly Foe" is the sleeper of this year's IF Art Show. Again, I
benefited by not being a judge, so I had access to information I gathered
during my email interchanges with Mike (who I thought was Fred Demul at the
time). I probably shouldn't say this, but I think most of the judges missed
the boat on this one (and I am sorry the boat comment was removed from the
latest version). In other words, this appears to be a piece focused on one
puzzle. In point in fact, the puzzle is not the be-all-and-end-all of the
piece. I don't know, frankly, if I would have fallen into the trap of
concentrating only on the puzzle to the exclusion of everything else,
because early on a judge asked me for hints. Ergo, I wrote Mike. So, yes, I
did play through quickly trying to see if I could complete the puzzle, so I
could pass on hints (I didn't want to pass on hints for parts I had not yet
played myself). Does that mean I would have by-passed all the other
interactivity in this piece? I don't know. I like to think not. Forwarded,
I returned to replay.

Also, after reading Emily Short's review, I thought possibly "Friendly Foe"
was more successful than many of the judges might have realized. In
frustration over the puzzle, she ended up experiencing sawing things. Tell
me, what is one of the guidelines of the IF Art Show, again? That pieces be
experiential. I think "Friendly Foe" aims toward this end and often
succeeds. (Although I understand because this was in the event category, if
a judge could not finish the puzzle he/she might feel they had not
experienced the event.)

<soapbox>
Someone asked on the if-mud about a month ago if there were any games out
there that were more fun to lose than to win? When he realized that
question was not quite what he meant, not the restart/ quit prompt, he
rephrased it. Are there any games out there where winning is not the
be-all-and-end-all and where it may be more fun to play rather than to win?
I responded that I thought many IF Art Show entries were like that and
maybe he should try this year's entry, "Foe."

"Friendly Foe," by its very nature, illustrates very well one of the
contentions underlying the IF Art Show. Fred, Mike, may not have intended
this, but it gives me a chance to rant. Human beings are achievement or
goal-oriented. So when IF has goals in it, points and puzzles, that is what
most players immediately concentrate on. They zoom in on and focus all
their attention on getting those points or completing that puzzle. That
means other experiential things including in a piece of IF may be
completely by-passed. This is like life, and like art.

I asserted once, in the concept portion of the IF Art Show web page, I
think, that art is essentially goalless. Some have argued with me, but I
still believe this. The point of art is EXPERIENCE, not to achieve some
goal. Looking at a painting, listening to music, viewing/feeling a
sculpture -- all experiential. IF they have any goal the goal is
experience. But it is not achievement or mastery. For the creator, yes, but
not for the audience. So does that mean IF must always be more or less than
art? Or can IF also be art? Can IF have a heavy focus on the experiential?
Or if there are points and puzzles, will players always zoom in on that and
miss the rest?

It's sort of like the old saying -- stop and smell the flowers.

</soapbox>

I think Mike's intent here was to have a puzzle that encouraged players to
experience as many of the tools/things in the shed as they could, ergo, to
have an experience. The puzzle is just the directing force to having that
experience -- the framework that keeps them in the piece for a little
while. And sometimes it works. I will probably play "Foe" again sometime,
because I found some small gems in it and I didn't try everything. Many of
those things were humorous and had me chuckling. Where "Foe" falls down is
that not ENOUGH things are implemented, so one has to stumble around trying
thing after thing to see what will do something and what won't. I would
have preferred every takeable item in the shed did *something.* Because they
don't that makes the puzzle too hard, in essence. The other fault is, if
the player zooms in immediately on the puzzle, it will seem to take too
long and there will be too many z's (waits) the player will have to hit to
end the piece. But maybe that is also some indication to the player that
more was intended. I would suggest that the puzzle could have all kinds of
alternative endings. That would mean that Mike probably couldn't keep
players in the piece as long as he would like, but it might be more
satisfying interactively. Some players will zoom in on the puzzle and
"win," and some will experience more. Sometimes making things experiential
means leaving them open enough for different players to have quite
different experiences. Less author control, more player control.

After having finally finished "Friendly Foe" (to one of its conclusions), I
still maintain it is the sleeper of this year's IF Art Show.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Queen of Hearts by Jessica Knoch

You are going to fence with your Significant Other. But it is the future
(been corrected about this, it is the present day) and the fencing
equipment is all electrified. To be quite honest, which maybe I shouldn't
be, I was initially quite turned off by this. Reading the introduction and
getting some idea of what I, as PC, would have to do -- it looked like a
lot of work. So, daunted, I didn't even start it before the deadline, and
only played it recently. IF Art is a tough concept and it has various
subconcepts, so it can mean different things to different people. One of
those meanings can be deeper implementation -- but not always. For some
pieces, this deeper implementation can mean other things, such as my
"Carma," for example. "Carma" has no deep implementation. It has a lot of
easy visual, sound, and conversational interactivity, and some
light-hearted character development. Its major emphasis is emotional
interactivity. When deeper implementation is a major part of one's focus,
it can be done in various ways, not necessarily involving a lot of work on
the part of the player -- maybe just some. Or deeper implementation can be
optional as in "Friendly Foe" and "The Tarot Reading. "

Basically, I guess I have to admit that I am lazy -- I like some things in
IF, but not a lot of work. I like tricky puzzles that I can get after some
convoluted thought, but not a week's work of involuted, convoluted thought.
I like maps I can transverse, search, and find things in. But not maps
where have to search and dig and dig to uncover a lot of hidden things. I
like objects I can manipulate, and maybe even objects with some slightly
tricky manipulation, but not objects that I have to fiddle with and fiddle
with. Lazy, that's me. However, according to the judges' reviews, this
generated a lot of enthusiasm, so I returned to play it with as an open a
heart and mind as I could. Okay, once I played, this turned out not to be
quite as fiddly as I feared. But, oops, just about when I was almost done,
I got a stack overflow. So I had to begin again (this time with saving).
Then I never could finish. I tried doing everything on myself, I tried with
help, and I followed the walk through, but I never got the sequence right.
I never got to fence. And I gave it a fair shot -- put in a lot work ;-).
So, while not overly fiddly, it was still too fiddly for me. Although the
writing *is* enthusiastic, I lost my enthusiasm. People who get further may
enjoy it more.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ogres by Alan DeNiro

Hmmm, I am not even sure I can describe this. In three separate parts, you
get slightly different views each time of the same "city." "Ogres" was very
surreal and felt incomplete. But overall my reaction to it was favorable,
for the parts that were there. Imaginative, creative, and lyrical, it
evoked complicated imagery -- some that rang bells with me. My other
reaction -- I could be wrong -- is that this was written by a novice. If
so, I think the author is onto something, but he needs to work more on
giving the player something to do; providing more interactivity. Other than
wandering around and reading room descriptions I didn't find much to do, so
nothing directed me to focus on one thing or another. That, I think, is a
little *too* open-ended.

Also, in each part, I ended up in a room with no exit and that is how each
part ended for me. Ergo, I also had no closure. I not only think players
like a little more interactivity, they like closure. I personally don't
mind cryptic if I can unravel the mysterious a little, but this needed a
little more unraveling or it needed to allow *me* to unravel it a little
more. However, the lyrical writing has definite possibilities.

If voting, I would have voted for "Redemption "for Best of Show, "Friendly
Foe" for Best of Event, "A Stop for The Night" for Best Landscape, and "The
Tarot Reading " for Honorable Mention.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Judges

To be filled-in.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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