I gave two games a 10 in this year's competition. One of these was SHADE, an Inform game by Andrew Plotkin that has already been much praised and discussed. The other game was VOID:CORPORATION, an AGT game by Jonathan Lim. Now, if you know the game that I'm talking about, you might be asking, Why? After all, this is the game with the screwy parser, the awkward plot, the dodgy implementations and bizarre responses. Yes, that game. It's also the game with the uninhibited imagination and youthful exuberance, the delightfully skewed reality, the little surprises around every corner. For me, the game's quirks work alongside its premise to create something far more enjoyable than just another genre piece. Here is how the introduction to VOID:CORPORATION begins: December 2053 Cold night in the neon jungle. Paranoia. Steel girders. And a flash of mood music. Crowds. Punks walk past in chrome and Chameleoid leather. Silver-lensed sunglasses. And Clayman steps out. He's you. And (for the purposes of this game), you are him. A tough, streetsmart privateer, more people have died at his hands than braincells at a "Silver" party. So this game unabashedly places itself in the cyberpunk genre. While there's a certain degree of cliche and the phrase in parentheses is unnecessary, there are things I like about this passage: the cadence, the use of alliteration, the juxtaposition of images. I also like the fictitious substances "Chameleoid" and "Silver." The introduction goes on to describe the PC's mission, a contract from one Mr. Dansker to sabotage the computer network of FMI (Federal Military Intelligence). We later find that Dansker is the head of the New Sydney Corporation, a huge organization that deals in virtual reality systems. Gameplay begins on the ground floor of the corporation's massive multistory headquarters. The halls and conference rooms of this skyscraper come equipped with high ceilings, marble floors, fountains and holograms, all breathlessly described. NPC's appear throughout the building and are given the sketchiest of implementations. There is also an odd assortment of items: cube-shaped data storage units, referred to simply as "software;" a slab-shaped object that also stores some kind of data; a shotgun; a glass full of Russian vodka; genetic cultures and psychoactive drugs. What on earth are these things doing just lying around? The world's richly detailed background is communicated in a variety of ways, including a .readme file that's external to the game. Within the game, there are a virtual reality information booth and some brochures left discarded in various places. Other important information comes from unexpected sources, for example this scene in the New Sydney Restaurant: There is a drunk man here. > EXAMINE DRUNK MAN The drunk man mutters something about opening a door by turning a slab shaped key... > TALK TO DRUNK MAN That isn't animate. As gameplay continues, the PC is accosted by a sequence of FMI agents and "cyberpunks" who appear one at a time, seemingly at random. Interaction with one of these villains can be described as follows: * If you try to leave, it blocks your way. * If you don't succeed in killing the villain, then after a few turns you are told that it "seems to be getting angrier." Eventually it attacks and kills you. Combat also proceeds according to its own strange rules. For example: > THROW PISTOL AT AGENT You kill the agent; it vanishes in a cloud of red smoke. > UNDO UNDOing a turn... > SHOOT AGENT You attack the agent with your bare hands, but it evades your attack and fights its way free. > SHOOT AGENT WITH PISTOL You kill the agent; it vanishes in a cloud of red smoke. > GET PISTOL You pick up the cory-600 pistol. Evidently, SHOOT WITH PISTOL is synonymous with THROW PISTOL AT . This may help explain why your weapon drops to the ground every time you use it. The game has a scale that is quite appropriate for the Comp. Action takes place in two small neighborhoods that are connected to each other by monorail. The game quickly leads the player through one intriguing location after another. The description of these locations is at times evocative (a lighting shop features "shelves dripping with oil and graffiti"), at times funny (a genetic culture store is appropriately named "Just Genes"). Belonging to the possibly unintentionally funny category are two of the game world's institutional mottoes: FMI: WE REALLY WANT TO SERVE YOU WITH INTEGRITY ("really"?) and LYCHEE: THE GREAT SUBURB (suburbs are seldom "great"). VOID:CORPORATION has very few puzzles. This is a big plus for me: I tend to dislike hard puzzles as a rule, and I HATE getting stuck. It's true that (as Paul O'Brian points out in his review) one of the puzzles is unfair. I had to peek at the walkthrough on a couple of occasions myself. Still, for most of this game, I was pleased to keep discovering something new in every new room, WITHOUT getting stuck. And I managed to find the game's optimal ending, which is told in the same breathless voice as its beginning is. So I had fun with this game. But how much of this fun was at the author's expense? Was I simply laughing at the ineptitude of a young writer/programmer? Well, sure, to a degree. But I feel that that observation falls far short of explaining my fascination with this kind of game. Consider the following passage from Paul's review, in which he laments the game's combat oddities: [They] made me feel sure that at some point the game would have the PC "discover" that he's in a VR scenario. But no, that never happened, and the only explanation I'm left with is that some *serious* slippage into fantasy has occurred in these portions of the game. Of course, Paul is right: Combat in this game is illogical and arbitrary, nothing like what the cyberpunk genre would lead us to expect from the game world. A VR explanation would indeed put the the red smoke and other phenomena in a more coherent context. But is "slippage into fantasy" necessarily bad? Let me take a different usage of the word "fantasy:" I would say that the combat rules -- intentional and otherwise -- belong to just another LAYER of fantasy, on top of all the other fantasies associated with sci-fi and action-adventure stories. VOID:CORPORATION is unevenly executed, to be certain: If Jonathan had intended to give this game a haunting or gritty atmosphere, he surely failed to do so. But I had so much fun exploring the game world that it didn't matter. Let me relate a childhood memory from my Dungeons and Dragons playing days. This was circa 1980; I was about eleven years old. I was playing a cleric, and I was eager to try out this one spell called "Sticks To Snakes." So I was going through this one dungeon that my friend had created, when I reached a long underground hall. Even though there weren't any enemies or wandering monsters that I can recall, I asked the dungeonmaster whether there happened to be any sticks in the area. He thought about it a moment -- he might have rolled a die to decide the matter -- and then replied, Yes, the hall has got sticks in it! So I gladly proceeded to transform those sticks into snakes. That hall was thereafter referred to as the "Stick Hall." It's a great story for me because of the unexpected kinds of fantasy it suggests. Is there some desired resource which doesn't belong anywhere nearby? Maybe it's there! Moreover, not only can I imagine having magic powers, I can also imagine using them without *any compelling reason whatsoever* to do so. As for VOID:CORPORATION, how about these fantasies: Wouldn't it be fun to find valuable objects strewn around public places? Or to glance at a random drunk guy in a restaurant, only to have him suddenly give you a clue that helps you open a mysterious locked door? I enjoyed VOID:CORPORATION, as I enjoyed two of its predecessors: Outsided, by Chad Elliott, and -- yes -- Detective, by Matt Barringer. To every question you can ask about its crazy world, a game of this type tacitly gives the response that in real life we can so seldom give: Why not? Peter Berman pbNOSPAMmath@hotmail.com