Ifcomp games without ifdb reviews

I’ve been on a quest over the last couple of years to get every IFComp game on IFDB a review. I’ve played and reviewed almost all of the 950 games (including 330 which didn’t have any reviews before!) but there are a few that are hard to get:

https://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3Aifcomp+game++%23reviews%3A0&searchgo=Search+Games

I’d be interested in getting help finishing these off. If anyone wants to review these, I’d really appreciate it.

These include a game that was withdrawn, two games with Java (one of which I might be able to get to work with some help from an earlier poster), two old windows executables, and three games with a bunch of sexual content.

Those three aren’t all that bad. Venus meet Venus is a thoughtful and deep game about a trans woman having a relationship with a cis woman, but it has very explicit scenes as they try to figure out how to have romantic relations with each other, and I couldn’t finish it.

On the other hand, it also includes a Stiffy Makane game, which is not thoughtful or deep. I didn’t even open this one.

Stick it to the Man was just super obnoxious, kind of like Rameses without the cleverness.

Sun and Moon is lost. It was spread over websites, which are now archived, but it included a Java applet which was not archived. This is separate from the other purely Java games.

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I believe I have some sort of weird duty to play Thornton’s game. No promises about when I’ll do it, though.

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Makane authors have got to stick together, right? I think there was one last year or two even by Chandler Groover

If this IFDB list is up to date, Chandler has published one Stiffy game, back in 2015. I’ve played it, and also Apocolocyntosis and Cavity. I don’t need to play the first two games, but I’m willing to check out The Undiscovered Country. I believe it is rife with rec.arts in-jokes? I’ll probably be able to catch at least some of those.

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I’ll whip up some instructions on how to get the Java games working later on today.

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To get Goofy going:

  • Download and install the Java 8 JDK from here (required for the appletviewer executable that has been removed from later versions): https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html
  • Download both Goofy.jar and goofy.htm to a local directory
  • Execute appletviewer goofy.htm to start running the applet.
    • For macOS, I had to specify which Java executable I was using with:
      /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_211.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/appletviewer goofy.htm

I tried playing, but so far I’m messing around with a bunch of marbles and puzzling over a maze with a mouse in it. Everything is infuriatingly primitive, so I’m not sure if I’ve got the patience to work this one out.

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