I'm on a mission to get reviews of all the non-comp IF games of 2005. Well, okay, if not not all, then as many as possible. Well, okay, there are a few exceptions. I don't care to review all the year's AIF games or all the new ports of Colossal Cave Adventure; see Footnote 1 for other exceptions. But this is still a big project, and I'm looking for some help.

Fortunately, I have a plan.

September to November:

I will:

1. Recruit people to join the Crack Team of People Who Said They'd Help Out. Give those people games to review. (And make sure that no two of them are reviewing the same game for this project.)
2. Employ an intelligence agent, code-named Greg Boettcher, to monitor the Internet for other reviews of the year's non-comp games.

December:

For each of the year's non-comp games, I will:

1. Check and see if the game was reviewed as arranged by a member of the Crack Team of People Who Said They'd Help Out.
2. If not, check for any decent review previously posted online. Ask for permission to use the review.
3. If that fails, ask the Team again if anybody would like to review it. Maybe try to recruit new members of the Team.
4. Otherwise, write the review myself. I'm perfectly willing to do this; it's just that I have no intention of writing more than 70% of the reviews, as I did last year. Also, this time I will leave the year's most awful games unreviewed if need be.

As you can see, the whole centerpiece of this plan is the Crack Team of People Who Said They'd Help Out.

Do you want to join the Team? You can do that. To get involved, contact me at the email address below. Tell me what kind of games you'd like to review, and how many, and I'll send you whatever I have that best matches your interests.

My email address:
greg_at
________gregboettcher_dot
__________________________com

A few guidelines:

• It is perfectly okay for members of the Team to get their reviews published in SPAG or IF-Review before the Non-Comp Review Project comes out in January. The NCRP is not trying to compete with other review sites, and I don't mind using previously published material. However, see Footnote 2.
• Of course you can write negative reviews, but please don't waste my time with reviews that don't even try to assess the game fairly. I certainly reserve the right to veto such reviews.
• Reviews must be 750 words or less (or you must be willing to crop them to fit that length). There's no minimum length; on the other hand, use common sense. If the game is good, it probably calls for more than just a few sentences.
• The NCRP 2005 will probably appear in the first week of January 2006 (early enough to hopefully influence people to make better-informed decisions when voting for the XYZZY awards).
• Reviewers can give the game a rating if they want to, but this year's NCRP will not attempt to rate or rank all the games in a consistent manner, as I did last year.
• It's always better if you can finish a game before reviewing it, although I am not fussy about this. If you've played a game enough to get a feel for it, and if you've tried to finish but haven't succeeded, that's probably good enough for the NCRP. So much the more if it's a hard game to finish, and if you've played at least half of it.
• Of course you retain the copyright to your reviews, and can reprint them wherever you want, before or after the NCRP comes out.

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.
• No games from any competition, except for the XYZZY awards and the ADRIFT Game of the Year Competition.

Footnote 2.

Note that SPAG and IF-Review don't usually accept previously published reviews, so after the NCRP comes out in January, you can't send NCRP reviews to those sites anymore (although I certainly don't mind you doing so before January, as I said above).

Also note that SPAG's final issue of the year has usually centered around the IF Comp, so you may not be able to publish your review in that issue of SPAG. (On the other hand, Mike Snyder got around this last year. He wrote a review for the NCRP that was much longer than necessary. He then greatly abridged it for the NCRP, and then published the full-length review in SPAG a few weeks later.)