Here's where you'll find reviews of all the non-comp IF games of 2005. Yes, all. (Well, okay, with a few exceptions, concerning which see Footnote 1.)

This is the second year of this project. It was started in 2004.

A brief backstory. Back in 2004, I was playing all the IF Comp games, but couldn't summon the enthusiasm to review them, because I knew so many other people would be reviewing exactly the same games. What to do instead? Well, what if I reviewed all the non-comp games of the year? It seemed a bit far-fetched, but I made a list of all such games, and after I made a few exceptions, it wasn't as big a list as I imagined. So I sat down to write two or three dozen reviews. However, very shortly I realized that this was not so easy after all, with no two-hour playing limit or anything. So I panicked, wrote to a few people, got permission to reprint some previously published reviews, and even got some collaborators to write a few all-new reviews. It turned out pretty well. But I ended up writing 23 of the 32 reviews. It took most of my spare time for about a month.

This year I decided to do things a bit differently. I put up a web page with a list of the year's non-comp games, and instead of privately emailing just a couple of people for help, I publicly begged for as much help as possible. I also decided that I personally wasn't going to spend time reviewing any games that had already been reviewed (though others were welcome to do so for the project). By doing it this way, I was able to assemble a far greater collection of reviews than before. As a result, I ended up deciding to cover not only the year's non-comp games, but also a few comp games that had previously received little attention. All told, there are 62 reviews in the Non-Comp Review Project 2005, compared with only 32 reviews in 2004.

I hope players enjoy reading these reviews, and I hope authors get a little more feedback because of them.

It's hard to know where to begin when thanking people for this project.

I owe a huge thanks to David Whyld, Jess Knoch, Dan Shiovitz, Aaron A. Reed, Daphne Brinkerhoff, Neil Butters, R. N. Dominick, Victor Gijsbers, and David Welbourn, all of whom wrote new reviews for this collection. In addition, I'm extremely grateful to Robert Street, Stefan Donati, Paul Lee, Carolyn Magruder, Jimmy Maher, William McDuff, and Laurence Moore for letting me reprint their reviews.

Besides that, I'd like to thank Jimmy Maher of SPAG and Robert Street of The Reviews Exchange for putting up with my email regarding this project. And thanks to David Welbourn and all the other contributors to ifwiki.org for helping me assemble this list of games. Finally, thanks to anybody else who I may have missed.

In short, a big thanks to everybody who helped out with this project. Without your help, I couldn't possibly have done half of this.

This project contains errors. I've worked as hard as I can to make it perfect, but I know I must have missed a few things, considering the huge size of this project.

To correct any errors, or to contact me for any reason, write to:

________gregboettcher_dot_com
greg_at

Another brief note: In case anyone is interested in seeing the original version of this web page, the one I posted while I was still soliciting reviews, I have preserved it here.

Z-CODE GAMES

Book and Volume, by Nick Montfort
Building, by Intaligo Productions
Conan Kill Everything, by Ian Haberkorn
The Corn Identity, by Carl Muckenhoupt, Serhei Makarov, Tama Wise, J. Robinson Wheeler, Alexandre Owen Muñiz, Admiral Jota, Andrew Schepler, Jacqueline A. Lott, Sam Kabo Ashwell, Dan Shiovitz, John Cater, Duchess, and Mark Musante
Dawn of the Demon, by Paul Drallos
The Great Machine: A Fragment, by Jonas Kyratzes
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, by Benjamin Mullins
Things that Don't Exist, by Nicholas Matteo
txt adventure, by Mr Pants
Wumpus 2000, by Muffy St. Bernard

TADS 2/TADS 3 GAMES

All Hope Abandon, by Eric Eve
Finding Martin, by Gayla Wennstrom
Meine Dalix, by Alice Merridew
PTBAD5, by Jonathan Berman as "Xorax"
A Sugared Pill, by Colin Borland
Die Vollkommene Masse, by Alice Merridew

ADRIFT GAMES

The Adventures of Space Boy! Volume 1, by David Parish as "thatguy"
The Annihilation of Think.com 3, by Adam Dundas
Can I Do It? by chillindawg
Crazy Old Bag Lady, by Sprite
In The Claws Of Clueless Bob, by David Whyld
Laboratory R.A.T.S., by Christy Henshaw
Marmalade Skies, by evil_flagpole
Provenance, by Corey Arnett
Showtime at the Gallows, by The Dominant Species
A Spot of Bother, by David Whyld
Veteran Knowledge, by Robert Rafgon
A Walk At Dusk, by Eric Mayer
The White Singularity, by Irene Villanueva
Wizards Playground, by evil_flagpole

QUEST GAMES

Attempted Assassination, by Matt Slotnick
ESPER: The Secret of Drom Bennacht, by Ian McDermott
The Former, by DirkW
Haunted Horror, by Matt Slotnick
King's Quest V - The Text Adventure (Part 1 of 2), by Steve Lingle
The Last Detective, by Catalin
The Lazy Gun Cult, by Felic Roman
Operation: Sleepover, by Justin Bailey
Star Wars: Escape from Dagobah, by David Leavitt
Three Worlds, by Zach Kelly

GAMES IN OTHER AUTHORING SYSTEMS

BRAINF*CK
The Lost Kingdom BFe, by Jon Ripley
JAVA
Palace of Shadows, by Christos Stogiannopoulos
MS-DOS
Space War!...and the PDP-1, by Paul Allen Panks
ALLTHINGSHAPPY.COM
The Escape, by Anonymous
SMASH
Escape from St. Mary's, by Ryan Menezes

MYSTERY HOUSE TAKEN OVER

Where There's a Will, by Dan Shiovitz
Mystery House Kracked by the Flippy Disk, by Nick Montfort
Mystery House Makeover, by Adam Cadre
Casa Tomada, by Daniel Garrido
[You wake up itching.] by Michael Gentry
Glass Boxes, by Yune Kyung Lee and Yoon Ha Lee
Mystery House Remixedup, by Scott Rettberg
Mystery House Possessed, by Emily Short
Mystery House Nightmared, by Art Destroyer
Mystery House: Occluded Vengeance, by Guy Minor

COMP GAMES

SEGMENT MINI-COMP
1. Snowman Sextet Part I: But For A Single Flake, by Roger Corbol.
2. Snowman Sextet Part II, by Jess Knoch
4. Kaboot's Story, by Josh Giesbrecht
5. Fran and Bert Want a Snowman! by Tommy Herbert
24 HOURS OF INFORM
Dastardly, by Andy Chase
Within a Wreath of Dewdrops, by Sam Kabo Ashwell and Jacqueline A. Lott as "Alphonse de l'Entaille"
1 TO 2K COMP
23:15, by Jon Ripley
Smile, by Chris Molloy Wischer
LO-TECH COMP
Dog Show, by Mrs. Drallos' Fourth Grade PACE class

Footnote 1.

I said this collection covers all the non-comp IF games of 2005, with a few exceptions. Well, okay, here are the exceptions:

• No pornographic AIF games.
• No demos.
  
• No self-confessed programming exercises, unless they seem like something somebody might enjoy.
• I wasn't planning on including any games that aren't available in English, since these reviews will be written in English. (On the other hand, I'd certainly review new English translations of games.)
• I wasn't planning on including any ported versions of previously existing games, unless it is somehow exceptional. (Although, again, I'd review new English translations of old games.)
• In the past, I haven't covered games that aren't playable on a DOS or Windows platform, although this may not matter so much now that I hope to recruit others to write some of the reviews.
• As a general rule, I did not include games from any competition except for the XYZZY Awards and the ADRIFT Game of the Year Competition. On the other hand, I made exceptions in the case of certain competitions whose games received little attention.

For example, here are a few games I left out:

• The First Mile, by Howard A. Sherman. Although one person originally signed up to review this game, they later changed their mind. And, as this is a commercial game with no free demo to play or anything, I could not find anyone else who had bought the game and wanted to review it.
• Praser 5, by Andrew Plotkin. A "re-re-release" of a game originally written in 1989. Although a port of a previously existing game, it seemed interesting enough to include in this project. However, I gather that it is extremely difficult, and I knew of no one who had played far enough to be able to review it.
• Dracula: The First Night, by DEF & El Clérigo Urbatain. A seemingly very faithful and Glulx port of a game from 1986.
• Façade, by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. A 3D, graphical, non-parser-based game, which is not IF according to my definition, but is certainly worth looking at. Warning: it is 800 MB. See also the review of it in SPAG #41.
• Creepy Mansion, by Kevin Lyons. This game would not run on my computer, and given its large size, I decided to guess that it wasn't parser-based IF. If anybody knows otherwise, please let me know.
• Beethro's Text Adventure, by Anonymous. An IF game based on the classic puzzle game Deadly Rooms of Death. It was uploaded to the ADRIFT site in 2005, but it was actually released in the drod.net forums in 2004. Not really a 2005 game, so I didn't include it.
• Chasing the Russian, by Greg Brouelette. An ADRIFT game that was available on the ADRIFT site, but only for a day or so. The author removed it because he didn't like the way his game was received in the ADRIFT forums. Not included in this collection, but David Whyld did review it in the Reviews Exchange #7.
• Castle Draconia, by Paul Allen Panks. A Commodore game.
• DRAX, by Paul Allen Panks. Another Commodore game.