Tag: marnie parker

Carma by Marnie Parker [Comp01]

IFDB page: Carma
Final placement: 16th place (of 51) in the 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition

Gotta love those juxtapositions. Right after I write a review where I spend an entire paragraph being a Grammar Cop, including several sentences about a comma splice, I fire up Carma. This game depicts the clashes between a wanna-be writer and the punctuation that said writer has heinously abused throughout his/her career. In fact, the primary complainant is an outraged comma, and that comma’s chief grievance is, you guessed it, splices. What can I say? It’s my kind of game. Even better, it’s done quite well, on the whole.

Carma uses the graphics and sound capabilities of Glulx to delightful effect, especially in its charming illustrations of punctuation marks dressed up to suit various occasions. One of my favorite scenes occurs when you ask the comma about splices. Suddenly, the scene dissolves, to reform as the archetypal spaghetti western town. Ennio Morricone’s theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly wafts over the speakers. We see graphics of a variety of punctuation marks, dressed up as stereotypical Western characters, and the comma (in cowboy hat and serape, naturally) marches towards you, ready for a duel to the death. It’s hilarious. The graphics in Carma are very well done indeed, and the music is pleasant, effective, and not overused.

Even aside from these, there are some significant programming achievements in Carma. Animations show up here and there, never to excess but adding pleasure with their presence. In fact, one of the best of these comes with instant replay and reverse replay capabilities, so that it can be savored over and over. Finally, in the most impressive piece of implementation, the game offers a punctuation test, in which the player can deposit punctuation marks into various unpunctuated sentences via the mouse. The game even gives a little giggle when you arrange a sentence into its most clever or unusual variant. Of course, the game fails to take account of all correct variants, which diminishes the joy somewhat.

There are other implementation problems as well. In one of the only sections of the game containing significant interaction, guess-the-verb problems are rampant. In another section, my attempts at interaction ended up freezing the game completely. To its credit, Carma warned me that there might be problems with what I was attempting to do, but this is rather cold comfort in the face of a crashing game. Features so problematic that they cause fatal crashes are features that should not be offered.

As I implied above, Carma is not a very interactive work of IF. Great swaths of it consist mainly of hitting the space bar to allow the graphics to advance to their next frame, or to prompt the next piece of text. In fairness, the game is upfront about this, even going so far as to issue a stern warning before the first prompt: “This is not a ‘game,’ so you will enjoy it more if you don’t approach it as a game.” People looking for a great deal of interactivity should look elsewhere.

In addition, as the presence of scare quotes in the above warning suggests, one of the great ironies of Carma is that it is itself quite imperfect when it comes to punctuation. Aside from the fact that the punctuation test excludes valid variants, there are also occasional howlers in there like “People v.s. Wanna-Be Writer.” Fortunately, Carma‘s cheerful and self-deprecating attitude saves it from looking too ridiculous by these errors, and even if it is more of a show than a game, it’s a show well worth watching. You might even learn, something. 🙂

Rating: 8.9

Shade by Andrew Plotkin as Ampe R. Sand [Comp00]

IFDB page: Shade
Final placement: 10th place (of 53) in the 2000 Interactive Fiction Competition

Way back in 1996, I entered my own comp game. In his review of it, Andrew Plotkin talked about the fact that my game didn’t give any warning when the PC’s perceptions suddenly shifted. He said, “Maybe the author intended that effect, the world changing without any sensation of change — it’s certainly a disorienting effect when it really happens to you.” This was a very charitable interpretation on Zarf’s part; of course, it wasn’t intentional, but rather one of the many novice mistakes I made in that game and corrected in the later version based on that kind of feedback. Shade, however, does use this effect in a way that I’m quite sure is intentional, and is in fact quite masterful. It’s also rather difficult to discuss without spoilers. Let’s just say that sometimes things change absolutely without warning in this game, in fact more and more often as the game goes on. When it happened to me the first time, I wasn’t sure what to make of it — I thought perhaps it was a bug, or some kind of misguided idea of providing variety. As the game went on, I realized that every detail of it is quite deliberate, and all of it calculated to deliver maximum effect. The effect it had on me was very powerful indeed. Quite simply, it blew me away. Not only that, it’s one of those games that I wanted to restart right after I’d finished, just to try different things. When I did this, even more details came together in my head. Even now, little pieces are snapping together in my mind, and I’m getting flashes of realization about the meanings behind the meanings of so many of the game’s elements. Few parts of the IF experience are as startling or as pleasurable.

Also a pleasure is the unwavering standard of excellence set by the game’s writing and coding, especially the coding. The one-room setting is implemented brilliantly, shaping its descriptions based around what the PC is most likely to perceive first. For example, if you’re standing in the living room, the computer desk and other items on the living room floor are described first, followed by mentions of the kitchen nook and bathroom nook. If, however, you’re standing in the kitchen nook, the game will first mention the stove, fridge, and cupboard, then go on to talk about the desk and such. The mimesis achieved by this effect is remarkable, which makes it even more stunning when that mimesis is carefully, strategically bent, then broken. Even better, this kind of care has gone into pretty much every item in the game. They reveal themselves to you in ways that are not only character-appropriate, but which change to accommodate the PC’s changing situation. Shade is the kind of game that puts a ton of care into its coding, most of which the player will never notice, because the very purpose of that care is to make the experience seamless for the player no matter what order she does things in. I noticed, because I think about those kind of things, and because I played it twice. If you liked Shade the first time, play it again — you may be surprised at how well it wraps itself around your commands.

If you haven’t played it once, then for goodness’ sake stop reading this review and play it now. It’s a short game — in fact, there really is no plot to speak of, nor any puzzles. Actually, now that I think about it, Shade almost fits better into the category of IF Art (as exemplified by the entries in Marnie Parker’s periodic IF Art comps) than the category of IF game. Still, like the best art, it creates an electrifying, unforgettable experience. I have to admit that it’s an experience that shook me a little — Shade has several surprises up its sleeve, not all of them pleasant. But don’t let that dissuade you. Try this piece. I think it’ll knock you out — I know it did me.

Rating: 9.8