Magpie Takes the Train

I played “Magpie Takes the Train”, thinking all the way through that it had been written by JJ Guest, who wrote the earlier “Alias: the Magpie”, winner of the 2018 IF competition. Only at the end, when I began to write up my notes, did I learn this was actually an authorized sequel written by Mathbrush, another highly accomplished IF personality. Maybe I should learn to read blurbs more carefully. But alas, the reason I’ve taken to playing IF is that I’m not an attentive reader; the interactive format forces me to engage more actively with what I’m seeing on the page.

“Magpie Takes the Train” shares several features in common with its inspiration: an entertaining detective farce involving frequent costume changes; dialogue with an amusing cast of upstairs-downstairs society figures (but curiously set in the states). Both games have a well implemented full parser interface.

This game differs from “Alias” in its scope. Whereas Alias was a full length game, with multiple rooms and individual scenes, “Train” is an elaborate one-room puzzle box. The goal, as indicated in the blurb, is to steal a coveted gemstone from the owner’s private train car. There is a time limit on completion, but a generous one and it may be possible to win the game in one play through. I gave myself the luxury of several restarts to experience the full space of the game. Each costume endows the player with a different set of powers and dialogue outcomes. Some of the actions are sequence and time dependent. It took me a little more than an hour to finish, checking the hints only once for a puzzle related to the Viscount. Turned out I just needed to examine the Viscount more carefully.

A delightful addition to the Magpie canon.

This game has been entered in the 26th annual interactive fiction competition.  More interactive fiction can be found at the interactive fiction database.

Sheep Crossing

"Sheep Crossing” by Andrew Geng.  Lists some testing credits, and responds uniquely to a number of my favorite IF gaming verbs. But the prose is a bit light, and I fear that this may just be a classic fox, chicken and grain problem which I learned when I was seven.  I’m carrying nothing. But when I try to feed a cabbage to the sheep, the cabbage suddenly appears in my inventory.

Restart. It appears that the cabbage, sheep and bear are all within my reach, even though they aren’t mentioned in the scene description. I wonder what else is in the scene? The best part of the game is discovering all the amusing ways to fail. Finally I check the walk through. Sure enough, there was something else unmentioned in the description which I needed to get the first passenger across the river. The rest of the problem I solved when I was seven, so I do what I need to and finish the game.

This game has been entered in the 26th annual interactive fiction competition.  More interactive fiction can be found at the interactive fiction database.

Stuff of Legend

 “Stuff of Legend” by Lance Campbell. This Glulx game came up at the top of a randomized list.  The blurb was strong enough to convice me to play. Strong opening message. Encouraging  “about” message. This first time author has been well tested by experienced writers and players. As it says in the blurb, the PC is an unemployed village idiot, working to become a knight.

The game is fun. Light comedy is a staple of interactive fiction, and is well suited for the form. The player tries various absurd things, and the game responds appropriately. In a few cases I was able to solve puzzles before even realizing they were puzzles. Several other NPC characters and farm animals with whom the PC can interact help bring the farm setting to life. The foolish PC causes a whirlwind of chaos. To become a knight, he must undo all that. I finished in about an hour, checking hints only once on a puzzle involving nest fabrication.

Looking forward to this author’s future work.

This game has been entered in the 26th annual interactive fiction competition.  More interactive fiction can be found at the interactive fiction database.

Let's Explore Geography! Canadian Commodities Trader Simulation Exercise

"Let's Explore Geography! Canadian Commodities Trader Simulation."  is an entry in the 2018 interactive fiction competition, written by Carter Sande, using an unusual gaming platform: Desmos.

The game description presents this as educational software. The title was so campy that I wasn't sure if I was preparing to play an actual educational game, or a parody. Even when I arrived at the title page, telling me to log in with a Desmos student code, I still wasn't sure.

I only became familiar with Desmos recently myself. It is becoming a popular online graphing platform for secondary school students, and also features a number of really well developed interactive activities which can be assigned by teachers. If you are a teacher, I recommend the platform. It will allow you to print out a report of the participation and competency of each student in class after an assigned activity.

Regarding this particular Desmos gamelet, "Canadian Commodities Trader Simulation" this thing is the real deal. You drive across Canada in your giant truck, buying various tradegoods or raw materials, and hoping them to sell them at a profit somewhere further down the road. The scale of this simulation is impressive. You can drive across Canada, visiting literally dozens of cities, learning about the cultural attractions in each place and buying geographically appropriate commodites. I have family in Canada (for real) and have visited almost half the provinces, so this part of the simulation was sort of fun for me.

However, as an educational tool, I'm not sure it will have much potential. I was shocked when the game allowed me to become stranded in Manitoba, my truck and cargo stolen from me in the middle of the night. Does that really happen in Canada? I was even more startled to realize that the game can be ended on the first move, simply by "going home". That will  be a game ender for many players.

The radio button interface in Desmos is a little clunky for this purpose. I doubt it will become the if comp platform of the future. On the other hand, this was the first game of the competition that drew my attention enough to write a review, and I'm glad I tried it.

not quite long enough for reviews

Following is a partial list of games I opened from the 2017 interactive fiction competition, but did not play long enough to justify a full review.

"a partial list of things for which i am grateful" is a Twine game by Devon Guinn. A sort of interactive art. Player clicks on individual letters in a word to bring up something else (starting with the same letter) for which the author is grateful. Contains hundreds of different words. A pleasant reading, but could only hold my interest for so long. Guinn also wrote "Bookmoss" another competition entry I reviewed earlier.

"The Fifth Sunday" by Tom Broccoli is one of several competition entries submitted by Chinese authors this year. The story (a murder mystery) seems to have some potential. But to advance the story requires multiple successive clicks through short lines of static text. Infuriating. The translation is imperfect, resulting in some curious choices of grammar and vocabulary.

"What Once Was" by Luke Jones is a traditional parser game set on a sprawling but weakly described university campus. Put on your pun-protective eye wear before attempting this. I love a good time-travel yarn (and the puns are amusing) but didn't have the patience for a parser game with such shallow implementation. I might come back to it though.

"Alice Aforethought" (review)

"Alice Aforethought" is a hyper-text type game written by Hanon Ondricek for the 2017 Interactive Fiction Competition.

"Absence of Law" (review)

"Absence of Law" is a parser game written by Brian Rushton for the 2017 Interactive Fiction competition. I enjoyed Rushton's previous competition entries "Color the Truth" and "Ether".
I waited until late in the competition to play "Absence" because I suspected it would be a good one and I wanted to end the 2017 season with a good experience. I was not disappointed.

Mild spoilers may follow