BRAINF*CK
The
Lost Kingdom BFe by Jon Ripley [This review was previously published in SPAG #43. Reprinted with permission.] I'm not sure why I like The Lost Kingdom, Brainf*ck Edition. Its parser is crude in the extreme, and when you play it, you spend a lot of time mapping out mazes. That's not exactly a recipe for success. However, within the modest constraints of what this game tries to do, it is very well polished and playable. It's also rather amazing from a technical point of view, and it comes with an interesting backstory. For all of the above reasons, I think it's worth a play. The Lost Kingdom was originally entered into the 1st Annual 1 to 2K Classic Text Adventure Competition, back in 2004. It took first place out of six games, and the competition organizer, Paul Panks, called it "head and shoulders above any game thus far!" This new edition of the game is not just a new port of the game, but a considerable expansion of it. The new version has new features, better descriptions, and one or two new puzzles, in addition to the distinction of being written in an esoteric programming language. Jon Ripley claims that this game is "probably the first ever piece of interactive fiction written in an esoteric programming language and probably one of the largest non-trivial Brainf*ck programs ever written." Indeed, the game is written in brainf*ck, which does make it rather remarkable. Brainf*ck is an esoteric programming language, a fully functional language, but one that is not at all designed to be practical, instead aiming only to be amusing to programmers due to its extreme minimalism. In Brainf*ck programs, there are a maximum of eight commands, each of which are represented by a single character. (For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck.) Thus, the first line of the source code of The Lost Kingdom BFe looks like this...
...and the remaining 29,000+ lines of code look rather similar. The code is thus nearly inscrutable, and so it is not hard to figure out how brainf*ck got its name. Obviously, Jon Ripley found a way of machine-generating all this code, but the game is still quite a piece of work from a technical point of view. The parser in this game is more crude than any I've ever seen. In the game's documentation, that author claims that a full-blown two-word parser might have made the program run too slow on some computers, given the very sub-optimal efficiency of brainf*ck. As a result, Jon Ripley has set up a system where all nouns are referred to not by a word, but by a number. Thus:
To pick up the matches, type "take 2". At first this seems awkward and annoying, but there is an advantage here. Every verb has a one-letter abbreviation, and you can issue commands of no more than two characters. "t2" is an easier way of picking up the matches. Once you get used to the verb abbreviations, the system has a kind of simple elegance. Nobody will extol the game for giving you a feeling of complete freedom -- you can't use more than 22 verbs -- but within its constraints, it works well. By the way, it is worth noting that this brainf*ck edition of this game allows you to save, making it much preferable to the version in the 2K Comp. Likewise, the game's help menus are well-designed, as are the menus that provide the backstory. Speaking of which, the backstory is another of the game's great virtues, one that is shared with the original version of The Lost Kingdom. Although the game itself is very simple, even crude, it is surrounded by a very interesting backstory that gives the story more depth. (And you should definitely read the entire backstory if you want to win.) You can read all this at Jon Ripley's web page for the game's 2K Comp version -- http://jonripley.com/i-fiction/games/LostKingdom.html -- or within the game itself, by using the "!" command. There is one other technically interesting aspect of The Lost Kingdom BFe. It is actually two games in one. When you begin the game, you get a chance to play it with either "short descriptions" or "long descriptions." The "short descriptions" version closely resembles the original 2K Comp version of the game, while the "long descriptions" version has much longer and more atmospheric room descriptions, as well as one or two different puzzles. That just leaves the game itself. Well, what can I say. You pick stuff up, you manipulate the stuff with the 22 verbs, you wander into a cave, you map out a couple of mazes, you defeat the bad guy (albeit a bad guy who is unusually well-characterized in the game's backstory), that sort of thing. The game itself says, "This game is intentionally written as a classic model text adventure game." Either you can get into that, or you can't. Anyway, in short, this game is pretty bad in some ways. In other ways, however, it's very impressive. I recommend reading the backstory, and if that sounds interesting, then this game is probably worth a play. Palace
of Shadows by Christos Stogiannopoulos [This review was previously published on rec.games.int-fiction. Reprinted with permission.] This game is best described as "short and sweet". Lonely, you have locked yourself inside your palace, but now wish to open the gates to let in your delivering hero. The small size and atmospheric language of the game faintly reminded me of The Moonlit Tower. This game was originally intended for the 2K Classic Text Adventure Competition, but, due to a miscommunication with the organizer, was not entered. Because of the size constraint, I was expecting unimplemented verbs and objects, and found a few (nothing that impeded gameplay), but I was also pleasantly surprised that things like "verbose" and "oops" worked. I found the few puzzles to be easy, but the author has included a walkthrough for those who need it. There's a surprise ending of sorts, which wasn't really foreshadowed in the game, but it doesn't seem too out of place. All in all, I didn't find anything I would consider to be a flaw. Recommended for a fifteen-minute diversion. Space
War!...and the PDP-1 by Paul
Allen Panks [This review was previously published in SPAG #43. Reprinted with permission.] If you played the games in IF Comp 2005, you may have played Paul Allen Panks' game Ninja 2, which took last place in the comp. It begins with a dragon who is programming a PDP-1 computer and shouting "Spacewar!" If you looked at this and thought it was sort of weird and irrelevant, then you may not have realized that the "Spacewar!" remark was a reference to this game. Well, okay, it was still pointless and irrelevant. Nevertheless, just in case you're interested, it was a reference to this game. So what is this game like? Some people complain that Panks' games are all full of generic fantasy clichés. If you are among these people, then you should know that this game is not in some castle or dungeon, but is set solidly in the real world -- specifically, on the M.I.T. campus in the year 1962. The goal of the game is to locate a tape of the then-new computer game Spacewar and find a way to play it on M.I.T.'s PDP-1 mainframe computer. Of course, to do that, you have to kill a dragon that inhabits M.I.T., and maybe deal with the campus werewolf too. But mind you, such combat is only the means to an end. The main purpose here is to play Spacewar. In such a way does this game depart from the usual dragon-slaying conventions of Paul Allen Panks. Oh yes, and I forgot. In this game, you are Master O'Ryoko, a "ninja of peace." Also, sometimes another ninja will come from out of nowhere to fight you. Therefore, let no one say that this game does nothing to escape from the drab, boring atmosphere often to be found in games set on college campuses. I wish I could say that this game is better implemented than many of Panks' earlier efforts, but I'm afraid I can't. Few verbs are recognized, and none of the items mentioned in room descriptions can be interacted with at all, unless they are listed individually as something "you see." Basically, if you can't take it or kill it, you can't do anything with it, with only two exceptions. This is a step down from the likes of The Golden French Fry, which Panks at least had beta-testers for. Maybe the weirdest thing about this game is the scoring system. Sometimes your score goes up or down based on your achievements, but more often it depends on verb usage. If you want to boost your score, just take something and drop it repeatedly. Each time you do, you get ten points for taking it and four more for dropping it. Taking inventory gets you two points every time, and examining anything is good for three points (even if you just type "examine asdf" or just "examine"). However, be sure not to use a verb the game doesn't know, such as "wait" or "listen" or "put," because then your score goes down by ten points. In conclusion, if you liked Ninja 2, you'll probably love Space War!... and the PDP-1. But, oh wait, based on IF Comp statistics, there is roughly a 0% chance that you liked Ninja 2. Well, anyway. The
Escape by Anonymous An online HTML game. I'm not too keen on the interface which displays the current text at the top of the screen, then the room description and a list of characters and options further down. I seemed to spend a while every time an option was selected scrolling down the page past the room description that I'd already seen a dozen times to get at the new options. Wouldn't it have been better to stick the room description, once its been seen for the first time, down at the bottom of the screen and have the options displayed at the top? Other than that, the interface is passable although as with the other online games I've played there's a noticeable lag between clicking on an option and the screen displaying your results. The puzzles were of the sort that probably seemed incredibly inspired to the people writing to the game, but to the poor player they were so vague as to be almost impossible to figure out without the hints. [Begin spoiler: Highlight the following paragraph to read it.] Other times, the way the game's set up helps you with puzzles you might otherwise not even be aware existed. I found a crowbar in one location and then noticed somewhere else that an option opened up to use it. At the time, it hadn't occurred to me to even try to use the crowbar in that way... a clear indication that this format is never going to be as good as any of the standard text adventure systems you'd care to name. Overall the game seemed pretty much bug free and I didn't encounter any error messages popping up on screen like with the other online game I played recently. The main annoyance were the constant reminders littered through the story of the wonders of the system used to create the game, like "look at the amazing things you can do with this system! Isn't it brilliant! Isn't it amazing!" Er... it's just about adequate for getting the job done, but I'm sure a far more polished product could have been created with any of the standard text adventure systems. How this one is supposed to be superior I'm not sure, and I've listed above some of the ways in which it's inferior. The Escape is probably best viewed as a novelty item as opposed to a serious game. While it's certainly playable, the system's flaws prevent it ever being anything more. 4 out of 10 Escape
from St. Mary's by Ryan Menezes This was one of only a few times I'd played a HTML game over the internet (the recent IFComp being the first) and I'm still not convinced it's a better idea than simply writing the same game in a standard text adventure system. There's a noticeable lag even on a broadband connection between clicking on an option and the screen refreshing to display the next page of tag. The interface is kind of okay. It's split down the middle, with the 'happening now text' (for want of a better phrase) in a little box on the left hand side and the room description on the right, with a list of clickable options beneath. Takes a bit of getting used to but is simple enough once you've been playing for a few minutes. The aim of the game seems to be to get out of school (the St Mary's of the title), although best of luck to anyone who has the patience to figure out how to do this. Ten minutes into the game and I was still stuck in the first location. Eventually I hit upon the solution, but as this came after being hit first with several error message screens my enthusiasm for the game was seriously beginning to wane. Making progress is slow and frustrating. Clicking on the various options takes you to different sets of options, most of them almost identical to the previous set. There are constant errors popping up on screen from time to time: trying to open or drink from the bottle displays an error message page, as does clicking the 'nothing' option. Strangely, click the same options on a different page and they work fine. Then again, the whole system is frustrating. Clicking on an inventory option brings up a list of other options for that item. Clicking on some of them bring up still more options, while clicking others take you back to the main menu and if you want to go back to the item options again you need more clicking to get back there. Some of the errors seemed to occur when I used the back button on my browser to move back a screen to try a different option; others just seemed to occur purely at random. A lot of persistence is required. The game opens up and becomes more interesting once you're out of the classroom with a fairly large number of locations to explore. There are quite a few NPCs scattered around, although I wasn't able to interact with the majority of them, and the few who deigned to speak to me didn't tell me anything I found very helpful. Overall I had mixed feelings about Escape From St Mary's. The system was flawed due to the sheer number of error messages I kept encountering, and the game itself, while reasonably well written, just wasn't that interesting. More of a novelty item than something I would recommend. 4 out of 10 |