And the winner is...?

Playing Game Hints
1

In case the subject line doesn’t make it clear enough, you really shouldn’t read this until you’ve finished voting!
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For me, the winner is Lost Pig. In terms of writing, characterisation, polish and humour, it’s head and shoulders over any of the other games this year. I’m a little surprised myself at this pick, because I tend to favour serious, story-heavy IF with easy (or no) puzzles. I don’t think Lost Pig has any of those attributes - but gosh, it was fun! (I am, however, a sucker for great characters, and the characters in LP are fantastic.)

Other games I liked a lot were Deadline Enchanter, Varkana, Ferrous Ring and A Fine Day for Reaping. None of them were anywhere near perfect, but when they worked they worked brilliantly.

Overall, I’m pretty impressed with this year’s competition. Lost Pig was the only real stand-out for me, but there wasn’t a single game that I felt had absolutely nothing to recommend it.

And now, because everyone else is writing reviews and I must join the party, I present you with my (occasionally VERY spoilery) Haiku Reviews, organised roughly from least favourite to most favourite game.

The Lost Dimension
A monster is here.
Where did the aeroplane go?
I need more hit-points.

Adventure XT
Die, monsters, die, die!
I feel very thirsty and
I cannot go on.

Jealousy Duel X
Must make Ex jealous.
Oops, I made a mistake and
I have no saved game.

Eduard the Seminarist
I thought I must save
my friend from a madman but
we just read poems.

Packrat
I try to acquire.
But the puzzles make no sense
and it’s too buggy.

Reconciling Mother
There are many rooms
and characters and items.
I don’t understand.

Press [Escape] to Save
I am in prison.
Pressing Escape does nothing.
It just gets weirder.

Beneath: a Transformation
Nifty status line.
I go to the walkthrough and
I never come back.

Gathered in Darkness
Ev’ryone is dead.
My captors take no notice
when I escape them.

The Immortal
I have a sword that
I never use. Goblins kill
me from a distance.

Orevore Courier
I lose. I lose again.
I will never get this right.
I blow up the ship.

Slap That Fish
Take that, evil fish!
Violence is the answer to
this one. And puzzles.

Wish
This is silly but
I finished it without hints.
I don’t see the point.

Fox, Fowl and Feed
I know the answer!
Oh wait, no I don’t. I go
to the hints once more.

My Mind’s Mishmash
I start at the end.
I must take off my ghost cap
and wear it again.

My Name is Jack Mills
My name is Jack Mills.
I say yes to ev’ryone
and find it mattered.

Lord Bellwater’s Secret
My lord’s dark secret
is hidden in compartments.
But he left me clues.

An Act of Murder
Someone is guilty.
I try to find whodunnit,
But I can’t do maths.

In the Mind of the Master
I break down a door
and become someone else. Then
I get stuck again.

A Matter of Importance
I’ll break the Guild’s rules
to get even with Alice.
But first I’ll play ball.

The Chinese Room
Philosophical.
I get some of the jokes but
the puzzles stump me.

Across the Stars
Deserted spaceship.
When I escape, the planet
is extremely strange.

A Fine Day for Reaping
I am Death, but I
am bumbling and have a lisp.
This is not funny!

Ferrous Ring
The prologue is cool.
But then I need the walkthrough
to use the 'dozer.

Deadline Enchanter
I don’t see that here?
Under-implementation
Could be delib’rate.

Varkana
I must save the Book.
But first I’ll have lunch and then
I’ll change politics.

Lost Pig
Grunk must find lost pig.
Grunk solve puzzles underground.
Grunk play with fire. Yay!

Disclaimer: I never played Ghost of the Fireflies or Vampyre Cross. I don’t have or want a C64 emulator, and GotF refused to run on my computer for some reason. (So did Adventure XT, but I played it on another computer.)

2

Emerald’s reviews
are much more fun to read than:
“well implemented”

3

In terms of the fun factor, I have 3 games tied for 1st. But I agree with you and think Lost Pig could very well be the winner. It’s hard to see anyone giving it a low or even mediocre score, whereas some of the other games that I though were a lot of fun had issues which many people will give stiff penalties for (bugs, etc.)

This is my first IFComp. How does it compare to previous competitions?

4

Well, this is only my second comp, so I don’t have much to go on in the way of comparison. But I think last year’s comp was much more diverse in terms of quality. Last year, there were quite a few games that I was really, really impressed by, but there were also a lot of games that I found absolutely nothing to like about. This year, on the other hand, my only real stand-out was Lost Pig, but I found something to like about every game I played.

5

Try to move the game file to a directory that’s up several levels (to c:, for instance). Old DOS programs have a stricter limitation to the length of the full path of the program being run than more modern Windows versions.

6

I’m done playing! WHEW I just barely made it!

I feel much better about this year’s batch now than I did early on.

My prediction is:

1st - Lost Pig
2nd - An Act of Murder
3rd - Lord Bellwater’s Secret

From there, it’s foggy. That’s not exactly the order I’ve ranked them (2nd and 3rd are swapped in my rankings, and they’re actually 3rd and 4th with a different game in 2nd place).

A really strong showing by Adrift authors this year. I can see one or two making the top 10, if not all three. No joke entries this year, thankfully. There are a few bad games, but they weren’t entered just as jokes.

I still need to write and post my final review. Then, I’ll be adding everything to a “2007” section of the www.sidneymerk.com website later tonight. I’ll go ahead and post scores when I do that, in case anybody is interested.

I’ve decided not to review the Commodore 64 game, Paul Panks’ other disqualified entry. I’ll go ahead and include Adventure XT in my official review set, although it’s dead last in order by score.

(Nice Haiku reviews by the way, Emerald!)

7

cheers

That sounds about right to me. I wasn’t particularly enthused by Lord Bellwater’s Secret (I thought it was mostly well-implemented but rather dull) but I certainly see it placing highly. Looking at my scores this year, I seem to have been more likely to give a high score to an interesting, ambitious game that missed the mark than a well-implemented but less interesting game. Last year, on the other hand, I was much readier to mark games down for implementation problems.

Which game do you think will get the Golden Banana? I’m still tipping Deadline Enchanter.

I’m looking forward to it. I’ve really enjoyed reading your reviews over the comp period. Even when you were critical, you were always gracious and constructive about it - something I’d really appreciate if I were a comp author. And your thoroughness blew my mind!

Thanks!

8

That, or maybe Ferrous Ring.

My Mind’s Mishmash and The Chinese Room seem like contenders too, although that’s just a gut feeling. I haven’t gone around trying to figure if there was a big and even split between like and dislike among reviews that are already posted.

9

I’m an author, but I presume I’m allowed to post now that the voting period has ended?

Yes, of course I am. Well, like Emerald, I found something like about every game I played (which was all of them except the Windows ones), so I really enjoyed it.

Instead of rating the games as I played them, I tried to think about the minimum rank that they’d get. Then I put them in some sort of order afterwards. The top three according to me turned out as Act of Murder, Lost Pig then Lord Bellwater. Fourth, Chinese Room; fifth, Varkana. But since this is only my second IFComp, I could easily be way out. I gather that Merk is something of a prediction extraordinaire.

10

No, I never have been in the past, but we’ll see how it goes this time.

11

You were exactly right with the top 3, and one Adrift game did indeed make the top 10.

(And yes, I loved the Haiku reviews too!)

12

I guess there really is a first time for everything! :slight_smile:

13

If he does this twice in a row, that will be scary. :laughing:

14

Would that make me a prediction extraordinaire, for predicting Merk would be a prediction extraordinaire?

15

Maybe next year I’d do another one of those Luc French-inspired lists of predictions – things like “5 game titles will mention colors” and “3 games will have rabbits as NPC’s.” It didn’t turn out so great last time, though.