IFDB page: Ralph
Final placement: 12th place (of 26) in the 1996 Interactive Fiction Competition
The concept of Ralph is great fun — the idea of nosing around as a dog gives the author the ability to take advantage of some of the most fun aspects of the text-based interface, putting the player into the canine mindset with dog’s-eye-view room and object descriptions and action responses. Consequently, Ralph gives a hilarious rendition of the canine experience, and the little moments this provides (for example, the reactions to “examine me”, “bite blamant”, and “dig hole”) are the best parts of the game. On the negative side, however, the game’s puzzles are fairly illogical (perhaps I would understand them better if I were a dog, but I don’t think so), and one particular problem was poorly coded enough to give it a real “guess-the-verb” feeling. Ralph was fun for the first hour I played it, but I was frustrated with having to turn to the walkthrough and find that I had already thought of the solution to the problem that was stumping me, but hadn’t phrased it in exactly the way the author demanded.
Prose: The prose in Ralph is unquestionably its best feature. Lots of really clever, funny touches make the game a real joy to read, and I found myself trying all kinds of things because I knew that I would more often than not get a chuckle out of the answer. Of particular note are the reactions to “dog-specific” verbs like “scratch”, “bark”, and “wag”, which give great context-specific responses.
Difficulty: Unfortunately, I found it impossible to progress beyond 0 points without the help of the walkthrough. Even more unfortunately, this was because I had chosen the syntax “put sheet in hole” rather than “block hole with sheet” — this is the type of difficulty I don’t enjoy.
Technical (coding): Apart from the above-mentioned problem, I found the coding quite competent. Especially noteworthy was the simulated dynamic creation of objects (when holes are dug). The author smoothly created the impression of being able to dig an infinite number of holes by a combination of smart coding and a cleverly worded cap on the number of holes dug.
Technical (writing): The prose was technically very strong. I found no errors in grammar or spelling.
Plot: While the plot was quite simple, I didn’t find this to be a problem, since the viewpoint character was a very simple creature himself. The experience of commanding a dog to do random things provided a very funny perspective on animal behavior.
Puzzles: This was the weakest part of Ralph. I found the puzzles quite baffling, especially the “guess-the-verb” one but the others as well. For example, why would a human scrabbling in the ground for ten seconds be able to find a bone which had already eluded a more efficient canine nose?
OVERALL — An 8.4