Uh oh. I hope this is at least half in jest. My notes on UZW were
written in haste, and don't really convey what I thought about the game.
UZW was my third favourite game in the competition, after "The One that
Got Away" and "The Change in the Weather", and it was a more solid piece
of work than either. It drew me in successfully and kept me playing
through to the end, and I enjoyed all of it.
I'm sorry if I upset you. It's much too easy to be critical, and not
easy at all to give praise where it is due.
London David <london@ERE.UMontreal.CA> wrote:
> Frankly, I found Gareth's comments about the writing in Zebulon and
> the other games to be pretentious claptrap. It's not exactly clear
> what he considers good writing, but, from what he wrote, I suspect
> that I would be bored to tears.
Well, it's clear that I consider the writing in "The One that Got Away"
and "A Change in the Weather" to be good. My favourite novelist is
Russell Hoban. Perhaps you could say a bit more (by e-mail, if you
prefer) about what aspects of my comments were "pretentious claptrap,"
so that I can improve in future.
Magnus Olsson said himself in r.a.i-f, "I tried not to be too literary;
the more flowery the prose, the more time one has to spend polishing
it." It might just be that I appreciate so-called "literary" writing.
I think that it's very hard to strike the right balance in IF between
the four P's (puzzles, plot, people and prose). Some games in the
competition were very strong on one aspect to the exclusion of the
others, such as the puzzles in "The Mind Electric", or the prose in "The
One that Got Away". "Uncle Zebulon's Will" was the game in the
competition that had the best balance between all the aspects.
-- Gareth Rees