Merk's Review: Deadline Enchanter

[Merk]

The “official” version can be found at my website:
sidneymerk.com/comp07/de.shtml

Game #14: Deadline Enchanter
By ??? (Writing as “anonymous”)
Played On: October 21st (1 hour 10 minutes)
Platform: Inform 6 (ZCode)

“This is where I end and you begin. That, at least, is what I want to think. I don’t know you. Perhaps one day I will. But this Implementation–rather, its copies–are my seeds blowing to the wind. The palm-parsers, their oak gears whirring, will be pressed into hands long after I finish this.”

So begins Deadline Enchanter, an anonymously-entered game that falls 14th on my randomly-selected IFComp 2007 play list. As with the others to this point, I have played and will review it without the comments or opinions of others. That’s intentional. I want to vote based on how each game affected me personally, without the influence of knowing how others were affected. I’ll hunt for opinions afterwards.

This is tough for a game like Deadline Enchanter, because it’s either incredibly brilliant or it’s trying hard to seem brilliant. An author can play games with perspective, be it a switch in person or tense or a twist on the narrator-PC-player relationship. Anonymous goes for the latter here, in a very self-referential game-within-a-game. What starts out with confusing narration begins to make more sense later. It seems offputting and disconnected in principle, but it works here. I felt more involved and immersed in the story than is usual for me.

Really, it’s a story in the guise of a game – and a seemingly linear one at that. That’s intentional. The puzzles would be impossible, except that the narrator doles out a walkthrough, requiring that the player simply follow along and take a few additional unprompted but obvious actions along the way. That’s intentional too. It lacks a deep implementation of the game world and generally doesn’t reward straying from the intended path (unless I’ve missed something, which is possible even though it seems unlikely). But yes, that too is intentional. In these ways, it is a brilliant approach to game design. The few typos I found might be intentional. Minor implementation issues (such as “violence isn’t the answer to this one” when indeed it is, just with a different verb) might be intentional. Anything can be deemed intentional when the author assigns his or her creation as the rushed work of the game’s narrator – an NPC.

So let’s take it as a story told in this medium without ever meaning to be difficult or hindered by puzzles. It’s not a story about writing games. It’s a story that is a game. Hmm. That sounds like nonsense. As I said, though, it’s very self-referential. As a gimmick in IF, it seems like an original one. (I’m sure to be proven wrong with examples, but it’s original in my experience.)

It’s also highly imaginative, where coffee has become magic powder and Earth shares its resources with alien visitors (or perhaps alien invaders). I went in expecting it to be a tongue-in-cheek hybrid of two Infocom classics (neither of which, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve ever played), or maybe an honest homage to the same two games. From a quick read at Wikipedia, I don’t gather that the plot of Deadline Enchanter mirrors or merges those games. Rather, it seems that the game’s title is in support of its self-referential nature. Even the built-in help and version information stays in character.

The narrator is interesting, opinionated and emotional. That’s good, given that the focus of Deadline Enchanter is the narration. A favorite example from near the start:

“Northwest is Ghazal Street and east is the ruins of an Al-Mart. You don’t really need to go to the latter but I thought I’d point it out. Because it was a hellhole and it’s better ruined.”

Is it a good game? It’s definitely a good story, where “what’s going on” begins to make more sense as the narrator guides you through it. I emphasize “you” because it could be said that the player really is the PC in Deadline Enchanter. Or is the player a hidden middle-man, with you playing as the player? That probably makes more sense. I think this is the kind of question that will spark discussion among players, especially after the competition ends. It could end up with a pretty high standard deviation in votes, being a game that will probably “wow” some while leaving others cold and confused.

Deadline Enchanter is pretty short. Five or ten minutes of my time were spent afterwards, checking to see what would happen at what appears to be the game’s only decision point (and it seems to lead to a slightly altered ending). The hour it took to complete was partially spent fighting against what the game wanted me to do. If there are divergent paths or extra content, it all eluded me. In retrospect, the game can probably be completed from start to finish in only a few minutes.

That leaves me in a quandary. It’s an imaginative and entertaining story told in a unique way. It’s an engaging mystery of circumstances built up around a pretty cool sci-fi scenario. At the same time, it’s pretty short, offering a sparse implementation (even if intentional). The detail has gone into the narration and the setting envisioned by the author in “simulating” the game’s world on behalf of the narrator, rather than in actually simulating the game’s world. It’s perfectly reasonable that it should be this way, yet it does let the author off the hook for any flaws that aren’t directly related to the telling of the story on his or her own terms. This makes it a tough game to rank – for me, at least.

So, I have to go with my gut. It’s a very good story, recommendable for the unique way in which it’s told. My score is “X”, without any bias to give it a plus or minus.

Now, to go see what others are saying, and possibly learn just how far off I am with this seemingly ill-informed analysis…

[Emerald (Emily Boegheim)]

Of the games I’ve played so far, I’m tipping Deadline Enchanter for the Golden Banana of Discord. Like you, I was pretty impressed (though not blown away), but other reviewers seem to have found it too pretentious.

So do you think the underimplementation is intentional or not? I more or less assumed so at first (and it certainly makes sense). But considering the scene in the cell with the pitcher, I’m not so sure. To me, that particular scene is just badly implemented. All the text is clueing one particular action, but taking it results in a default message. (See the comments on Emily Short’s review for spoilery discussion of this particular issue, if you aren’t exactly sure what I’m on about.) I can understand that in the PC’s position, she probably wouldn’t bother to implement stuff around the edges (though in the first scene, she claims to have implemented a person “for ‘local color’”). But the actions you have to take with the pitcher are necessary to move the story forward. Shouldn’t she have made some effort either to accomodate standard synonyms or to push the player in the right direction here? This just looks like authorial carelessness to me, which undermines my readiness to believe that other underimplementation is deliberate.

Then again, it’s quite possible that the author deliberately underimplemented some parts of the game but left unintentional problems in other parts.

[Merk]

I’ve given this some thought. I think the story would have worked just as well with a better implementation. Perhaps the narrator could be technologically advanced enough to still “create” a rushed game with polish. A lack of synonyms does seem lazy, when I think about it. This narrator’s game could have been written based on a more advanced framework and default libraries, right? It’s apparently created “on top of” an existing game (there is a “Dragyr” or something – A dragon? I forget – that’s said to be a left-over from another game).

The walkthroughs given out in-game sure discourage any kind of experimentation. Is there any reason to implement alternate verbs and nouns when you’re supposed to just follow the instructions? So… hmmm. Is it underimplemented to support the story, or was the story devised to explain away the underimplementation?

Here’s one way of looking at it. Whatever the reason, the author was able to spend his or her time writing the story instead of programming complicated game logic. If you look at games like… well, all three of last year’s winners are great examples… there is a good story at work with a well-implemented, detailed game world. In a way, that makes Deadline Enchanter feel a little like… I don’t know… like it cheated. But still, I was really drawn into it, and so I rated it well.

I wonder who the author is? It could be somebody we’ve never heard of before, I guess. The style doesn’t seem recognizable to me (based, anyway, on the games I’ve played from the last few IFComps). I wondered if maybe Kevin Venzke was back, but he writes in TADS (and this seems too linear and underimplemented to be something I’d expect from Kevin). Sara Dee? Same doubts (except for the TADS thing). Or was it entered anonymously not so much to hide the author’s identity but to support the concept that this game came about as the narrator’s creation?

[George]

Without referencing my notes, isn’t the cell scene also in the walkthrough? Though as I recall it took me a few turns to find or look at the walkthrough to know what to do with the pitcher. I remember being a little annoyed at the ‘under-implemented’ pitcher as well.

You know, for authors, the first one I thought of was Plotkin. But now I’m wondering if it wasn’t Jason Devlin?

[Merk]

I talked to Jason in email a little before the competition, and he said he wasn’t entering this year. I don’t really have any reason to doubt it. I don’t think it’s Andrew Plotkin either – just doesn’t seem polished enough.

Has anybody’s review indicated they were a beta-tester? I haven’t checked a few of them (like Inky’s, which will list the “highly recommended” games first and I don’t even want to know that much yet).

[emshort1 (emshort)]

Yeah, I can’t imagine zarf being that careless about implementing obvious actions. The writing isn’t quite his style either.

I do have a theory about who it is, but it could be wrong.

[Merk]

Well, since I’ve pretty much ruled out either of mine, it’s bound to be a better guess than what I came up with.

[unigon]

I guess this is a litmus test for how entrenched the IF community is…when something interesting and unique shows up, it obviously must have been written by an already established author, right?

Though I come from 4chan, a place where releasing one’s works as “Anonymous” is a sign of community pride, and not of preventing user-bias.

[George]

@unigon

I guess this is a litmus test for how entrenched the IF community is…when something interesting and unique shows up, it obviously must have been written by an already established author, right?

Though I come from 4chan, a place where releasing one’s works as “Anonymous” is a sign of community pride, and not of preventing user-bias.

You have a good point there. Especially since part of I7’s mission was to make more writers into programmers and programmers into writers, right?

[Merk]

@unigon

I guess this is a litmus test for how entrenched the IF community is…when something interesting and unique shows up, it obviously must have been written by an already established author, right?

Not necessarily. However, I can’t remember there ever being an IFComp entry by a first-time author entered anonymously. I’ve seen pseudonyms – generally online handles – but never one purposely entered anonymously. Anybody here remember otherwise? I missed several of them over the years…

Is it entrenchment? Seemed like deduction to me. The biggest reason to enter anonymously is to avoid a bias. There are others – perhaps to see how well a game will rank as an anonymous entry. But sure, these reasons are still within the scope of what the IF Community understands about the IFComp. Now, if somebody were to bring some other community’s standards into it, as you suggest, then all bets are off.

If thirty ducks walk by, who’d expect the next one to be a chicken?

Are you – or do you know – the game’s author? Or was that a general observation? If the game is by an anonymous first-time author, then obviously guessing is pretty pointless.

[Merk]

So was there anything to that, or was it just a hit-and-run advertisement for “4chan?”

[George]

It worked, because I had to google it to realize how huge 4chan actually is.

[Merk]

Me too. Or he might just be slow in making it back this way. I would think, though, that if he were the game’s author, he’d check back more frequently for new comments. So who knows. I’m making more assumptions, though, and it has already been pointed out that that can be a mistake.

[unigon]

Nah, I know the game’s author as much as you. I just like randomly musing

And I didn’t mean it as advertising, just comparative study of internet-based cultures…or something like that.