It's hard to talk about Spider and Web without spoilers, and if there is one game I don't want to spoil, it's this. Almost everything about it is ingenious. There's an ingenious, brilliant spin on the player/PC relationship. There's a simple but ingenious method of NPC communication. There's an ingenious toolbox of gadgets. And as for that puzzle -- well, "ingenious" doesn't do it justice. I would never have solved it if I was here till next Tuesday, but even seeing the solution in the walkthrough just blew me away. It's -- goddammit, it's just so ingenious.
And the really great thing is that these are not just isolated
ingenious gimmicks; instead, they're integrated perfectly, and shed light
on each other. The puzzles -- especially that puzzle -- are not
just obstacles which disappear once you've solved them. Instead, once
solved, they deepen your understanding of and engagement with the world,
in a way that would only be possible in parser IF. I've recently come to
the conclusion that IF games are all about the game worlds -- in fact,
that IF games are game worlds, worlds with which you engage on a
semantic level, worlds that you come to understand through interaction. In
this sense, Plotkin must be the best exponent of pure IF, and Spider
and Web -- even though I don't care much for its setting or story, and
even though everything after that puzzle is a slight anticlimax --
must be the single best use of the medium.
Dreamhold
I don't care much for the story (which is all backstory), but this game is really a joy to
play. It's superbly designed, always fair and logical, meaty enough to
last a couple of days, very robust and solid, and oozes quality in every
line. It's so rare in IF to proceed with absolute confidence that
everything I try will either work, or fail in a sensible and illuminating
way. The "memory palace" is a genuinely novel and interesting spin on the
old amnesia trope; and while I was rarely interested in the actual details
of the PC's revelations, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that
everything is resonant with memory. It's a game full of poignant and
quietly beautiful images, in which everything is wildly evocative of...
something. (Forget the current state of r*if: that careless trash like Blue Chairs, and not this, won the XYZZY
in 2004 is stronger evidence of the decline of the IF community.)
A
Change in the Weather
As a game, I find this next to impossible (much as I appreciate a
design which forces you to immerse yourself in a world in such detail).
But I love the writing here -- the scenery on the hillside is
alive, it has emotion, it evokes emotion. I'm generally not big on symbols, or works that depend heavily or entirely on
symbolism -- but bridges are just such good symbols, and I can't resist
this one. The PC at the beginning wants to get away from it all; he leaves
his friends to explore a hillside. Maybe there is some personal problem he
wants to escape; or maybe he is just weary of society and wants to cut
himself off, lead a solitary life (the life of an artist, perhaps?).
Whatever the case, "a change in the weather" soon strikes, and the PC
realises that he needs his friends. He goes to extreme lengths to save his
link to them -- the bridge -- and in a moving ending, he realises that his
friends need him too. Underneath that hideously difficult puzzle is a work
of rare humanity.
So
Far
I found this distant and difficult to get into for many years, with its
sparse and stylised prose, and extremely difficult puzzles. As with A
Change in the Weather, this is another work I'd find impossible to
solve unaided, and another work heavily dependent on symbolism. But damn,
it's such a good symbol. There are many images in this game that will last
with me. Some games explore a gimmick to its maximum potential; here a
symbol is explored to its maximum potential, constantly presented in new
and surprising ways, constantly drawing you in deeper and deeper. And as I
become drawn deeper into So Far, I realise that far from being
distant, it's perhaps the most intimate and personal IF work I know.
Hunter,
in Darkness
This is the Dreadnought of cave crawls: upon
its release, it instantly made all previous efforts in the genre obsolete.
Yes, Crowther may have brought his spelunking experience to bear in
Colossal Cave, but his prose was too perfunctory to raise the least
suspicion of claustrophobia. Hunter in Darkness, by contrast, gives
you a visceral sense of being there, and being stuck there. It's even more
like being in a cave than the real thing. Add to that some excellent
gameplay with intuitive, realistic puzzles, and multiple paths, and you've
clearly got a game which blows its rivals out of the water.
Photopia
Photopia is the reason I'm here talking about IF on this fine
evening, and not out chasing girls. I admit it doesn't do much for me on
the nth replay -- I tend to notice the strings being pulled, and a few
injokes getting in the way -- but even when the art doesn't move me, I can
still admire the craft. This is a really brilliantly constructed piece of
work, and the "storytelling" device is a masterstroke, which immerses the
player in a way only possible in parser IF. And I can't deny the effect
this game had on me after I first played it -- when I rushed back to play
it again immediately; when I realised how the pieces fit together and was
gobsmacked; when I spent the rest of the day reeling and delirious with a
sense of love and loss. When I played this, I knew I was hooked on IF, and
six years later, I'm still hooked.
Narcolepsy
This is the funniest IF game ever. At least 30% of the references fly
over my head, but I'm still laughing. The people who whine "but I don't
get it", well, just don't get it. Referential humour is not just about
name recognition; it's not just about the fact of the reference,
but about the sound of the reference. (And I don't know, perhaps
the colour too.) The art of referential humour is all about knowing when
"Corey Haim" fits and "Corey Feldman" just won't do. And in
Narcolepsy it is executed so well that even when I don't get a
reference, the rhythm of the language still has me breaking out in a
smile. Every gag here is told to perfection, every one-liner zings. In
fact, almost everything about this game works, even the stuff that
shouldn't. The weird and generally sombre dream sequences (by different IF
authors, including yours truly) are uneven and have nothing in common with
the game proper, but somehow they fit into the general wackiness. And then
there are three entirely different paths through the game, multiple
endings, and that "who wrote which dream?" guessing game, which should
provide hours of entertainment.
Babel
Babel is rather overwritten, with a hokey "they meddled in God's
Domain" message, and it's in the well-trodden "amnesia" and "research
station" genres. But nevertheless it's highly enjoyable. It's superbly
paced and constructed, with a map that reveals itself at just the right
rate to be manageable, shocks delivered at just the right times, and an
atmosphere that steadily rises in creepiness at the game goes on. The
narrative has drive, the puzzles are fair and intuitive and the coding is
impeccable. I really wish the standard IF game were just like
Babel; but as it is, treats like this are rare enough to put it in
my top ten.
All
Things Devours
This is basically a one-puzzle game set in a research station, and a
great puzzle it is, intricately constructed, amazingly well-coded, and
full of wonderful "aha!" moments. And as you get futher insight into the
puzzle, you get further insight into the game world. This is a classic
example of a gimmick explored to its maximum potential -- in fact, it
should be the classic example. The title isn't great, the prose is serviceable, and
we've seen the setting before, but with that puzzle I can forgive it
everything.
Anchorhead
It's no doubt a cliche to say that I found myself up at 2am one night playing Anchorhead, too creeped out to stop playing, but it's true. I was even playing from the walkthrough, but it was still irresistibly scary. So impressed was I with the game that I even rushed out the next day and bought a compendium of H.P. Lovecraft stories, hoping to recapture the buzz; but like many, I was sad to discover that Lovecraft fanfic is usually better than the real thing. And besides, what chilled me most about Anchorhead were the ghost story elements, and not the tentacled space gods.
Anchorhead is not just better than Lovecraft, which would be faint praise indeed, but it's an excellent horror story in its own right, superbly written and given a lavish implementation. It's not a game I could finish unaided, but it's definitely top-ten stuff.