Two of the five scenes in East Grove Hills concern a classroom presentation, a group effort to report on an assigned book. Which book? That is the question, and by laying it at the player’s feet, the game sacrifices half a story’s worth of characterization for the sake of the riddle. The players may be “extreme introverts, people with mental issues, and generally weird,” but I still want to know how they chose the book (if they chose it) and what they hated about it (or secretly liked).

On that note, here are my impressions of this year’s field.


Like The Baron, The Blind House contrives an injustice and indicts the player for it. As your attorney in this matter, I object — even if I can’t help returning to the scene of the crime.

You’ve taken refuge with a vulnerable, long-estranged classmate. While she’s away at work, you get to nose around the house and reacquaint yourself with its owner by way of her effects. Full credit to the author for creating an intriguing character (in Marissa) and especially for letting the player be the one to bring her to life.

Sadly that process is colored by a narrator so unreliable, she’s practically schizotypal. Even the exploration is faceted; what could be accomplished in one command is divided into two — EXAMINE versus THINK ABOUT — and the player’s obligations are doubled.


If this were IntroComp, Mite would be the hands-down winner. Love this bit about the garden gnome: “It’s the most peculiar thing you’ve ever seen and you can only guess what its purpose is.”


I’ve no more affinity for zombies than I do for pirates or ninjas or narwhals, but Divis Mortis is one of the better-constructed of this year’s well-made plays. You get to shoot, bash, cut, nuke, block, and throw. Games that let you do fun things are generally themselves fun — I believe this is due to the transitive property, destruction of.


Leadlight springs over low expectations with steady pacing and sturdy design. The way the map unfolds, the way items are distributed, the way the backstory is doled out: this is a decent game.

True, the author could have used Inform, labored over the writing, collapsed the repetition, and implemented responses for everything, one of which might or might not have contained the phrase, “as good-looking as ever” — but any game with randomized combat belongs to a different tradition, and I salute the author for making the most of his exile and writing for a platform no less venerable than the Z-machine.


Ninja’s Fate didn’t need to be entered in the competition but, in true Panksian fashion, it was. An answer to Forman’s Detective.


One Eye Open in a nutshell: “Three-quarters of the map is obscured with a large bloodsmear, but the lower right quadrant is mostly visible.”

I’m not sure which is more amusing: the gratuitous gore that just keeps coming; or that, beneath and behind and wedged in among, there are journal entries. Actual quote: “In the corpse’s mouth is a wad of crumpled paper.”

After two hours I had compiled a list of the characters involved, had reconstructed the backstory, and had typed HINT in every room. Still I couldn’t steer the thing to a satisfying end.

I can only assume that somewhere, in the exploded rib cage of a victim I haven’t found, is a note that explains it all.


Oxygen is Floatpoint retrenched: one room, one puzzle, and only one faction worth sympathizing with.


I don’t want to have fun exploring at my own pace; I want to be pursued, harried, searching, pressed. Following a Star finally grants my wish: its closing sequence brings in all the characters from the game’s earlier stages and lets me flee from them as fast I can to the finale.


In Death off the Cuff, a daring premise is knocked immediately awry: in a room full of suspects, whose interrogation will be the substance of the game to come, the furniture is described first, as though the lounge were empty. Was the murder weapon a chair leg?

Solving murders is, of course, excellent, and I try to do it at every opportunity, but this investigation was a bit of a goose chase. I needed the hints to tell me what a sharper detective would have noticed right away, for example, that a suspect who had been leaning forward intently was now sitting back, arms crossed, on the aforementioned furniture.


Sarah Morayati on The Lost Sheep: “The parable of the lost sheep isn’t really about a lost sheep, but about sinners returning to grace. The moral is the point. This entry is, however, literally about a lost sheep.”

Stay tuned for next year’s installment about the evils of procrastination (as depicted in Proverbs 15): Rose, where you play a man who must walk through a hedge of thorns to reach his bride. (Walkthrough: N. N. N. N.)