If Comp 2009: Gleaming the Verb

This is my first post reviewing Interactive Fiction competition submissions. If you have no interest in IF Comp stuff, you can skip over, since I'm going to also use jump-cuts to serve as spoiler space. Reviews of IF Comp games will generally have spoilers, so be advised before clicking on the jump.

First Review is of Gleaming the Verb and is practically spoiler free. I'm picking the games to play sort of randomly, to be honest, by whatever strikes my fancy and this one looked short.

Cutting mostly to practice cutting correctly. This is a test of cutting!


There's actually not much I can say about this one that hasn't been said by other reviewers. I thought it looked short but it is really short. It had no particular story to speak of. Stuff outside of the scope of the main puzzle wasn't implemented at all. Once you 'get' it, it's pretty boring. Maybe future reviews will be more interesting than this!

Shouldn't it be 'gleaning?' I thought. No, it's a reference to some movie, about a cube, that I never saw, and the title of that movie doesn't make sense either. Huh.

Interactive Fiction Comp

This post is a general state of intent - since I've been following the Interactive Fiction Competition for a few years now, I've decided to go ahead and write reviews for this year's entries. I enjoy IF and someday I'd like to learn to write it myself... that is, as soon as I have a solid idea for one I'd want to do. Good thing I also like playing it as well.

I also intend to make a post soon about my experiences with Batman: Arkham Asylum, though it also means I'm admitting to playing another new-release game! It has been a good one, though.

One smallish update to blog layout: I included a list of my frequently-visited blogs and related sites to my sidebar. I will add several more later I'm sure as they jump in to my head.