Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)
I perhaps should'n've written about this game as it has already gotten
more than its share of attention, IMO. It's just that I have only now
played it and read all the discussion in rgif to see what was all the
fuss about a couple of months ago, when I was very busy with other
things and couldn't play it. So this is a late, and not favourable
review of Andrew Plotkin's THE DREAMHOLD. A rant, if you like. It's sort
of a contrary reaction to all that much discussion and interest this
game then received (yes, sorry, I'm late!).
Well, I didn't like the game. In fact, it sparked in me again some
strong feelings I generally have about this sort of "IF" (it's not IF,
not where FICTION is concerned); of why it seems so DIFFICULT to get
into the hard puzzle-solving mindset to finish this kind of game
satisfyingly. And why then it doesn't seem any good for newcomers.
As I pretty much lost interest past the masks and laboratory (before
collecting the extras) I didn't bother to continue on myself; just went
for David Welbourn's walkthru instead (very good as always, btw) to see
the last parts.
Of course, I don't think The Dreamhold is a bad game. It's flawless from
a technical point of view. But it is based and resorts on things that I
don't understand how can be so much praised and considered so good by so
many (at least the vocal people who post in rgif). In a nutshell, it is
dreary, dreary: no people, no emotional interaction, only mechanical
objects; and fantasy again used as the "general solution" to
reality-bending and exotica-justification. But let's go by parts.
First, the writing. Ok it's a matter of taste, but I found the writing
in the game, which overall is just succint and correct to do its job, to
be such a stretch at many places (in its 'creative' use of words) as to
border on pretentiousness. Let's see:
"an inexplicable cut-out of a human face"
"impression of unformed childhood"
"rocks are mercilessly visible"
"jagged mountains tear the sky"
"water tastes clean as fresh-born stone"
"a black river (..), a silent street of mirror-dark water"
"Sprays of dried leaves, flowers, and seed pods"
"[branches] leap chaotically upward, spraying gold-veined leaves"
"pillars march around the edge of this circular chamber"
"notations cluster like wasps" [on a map]
"[Shelves] are obligingly empty"
"in an impossible curved sea" (impossibly?)
"a robe, richly bright-embroidered" (what?)
"Stalactites are the ones on the ceiling. Stalagmites are the ones on
the floor. You don't know how you know this" (oh please)
To be fair, I liked one or two occasional passages:
"The pen, moving across its face [of a map], annotates and speculates"
"The sky (..) stretches with broad perfection of its mountain domain"
The problem I have with many of the examples above is the emotional
adjectivizing, it's like a poor attempt at remedying something more
fundamental that's lacking: humanity, emotion. And this is my main
grudge, because the game is completely emotion-sanitized, bland. As is
typical of this author, it passes at a safe, large distance away of any
interactions with PEOPLE, at any dealing with (say) problems, behaviour,
customs, emotions, etc, of people, animated beings (not necessarily
human, if you like). Only machines and mechanical things. How dreary
things become then? How many people really enjoy this sort of thing?
I tend to think of it as the epitome of geekyness. Nah, people and their
dealings, that's all too complicated and difficult to understand! Just
objects and their physical-mechanical relationships would be ok. So it
can all be a dreary fantasy-castle setting with Zork/Myst-ish
exploration and manipulation of objects. Can it then really be generally
attractive to general people, to newbies, as is the stated purpose of
this "tutorial"? I don't think so.
Then, without people, no need to have NPCs, dialogue and NPC interaction
either, which are complicated to implement and prone to go wrong. No
plot, no events and related daemons, no nothing, just static, mechanical
objects. It's so much easier then. Okay, it's a tutorial for newbies...
People, events and their interactions are probably "advanced" matter, I
suppose. But this is only then a tutorial for newbie PUZZLE-solvers,
because it's not likely to be enjoyable by people who might come up
thinking they'll play some sort of interactive story, interactive
FICTION, which it's not.
The Dreamhold is a Myst-like mechanical-puzzles game that probably
would've been best realized graphically but was implemented in text. In
this sense, it seems like a "worst use of medium"-prize candidate. I
like Myst and derivatives (I especially enjoyed Lighthouse and
Timelapse), but not in text medium. It's just not my cup of tea. In
text, I want to see (but maybe that's just ME of course!!) at least some
story, plot, characterization and people, besides objects. The Dreamhold
has none whatsoever. It has a vague static backstory that is left
intentionally unexaplained so that players (the fans) can have endless
speculations as to the secret "symbolisms" and "meanings" behind it.
Which the author probably never bothered to come up with, or in any case
is likely to be wildly divergent and simpler than the discussion it
generates.
A rant about genre. This use of fantasy again and again always seems
more like a convenient way to do away with all those pesky restrictions
of reality. As if reality is too limited, too difficult to come up with
new puzzles integrated to a story. With a fantastical or surrealist
setting, on the other hand, everything is possible and anything goes,
for "it's all magical", or "it's all a dream". So it's a whole lot
easier, you can have all sorts of appearing, disappearing, transmutating
and transmogrifying (sp?) things, that need no explaining why they are
there. It almost seems like we are in 1980 talking about Zork.
I'm sometimes more than bothered by this LAZY use of fantasy as a crutch
(no pun intended with the game) to inspiration and skill, or lack
thereof, in coming up with stories and puzzles. This is more of a
general rant than specific to this game. I understand, we are all
amateurs, etc, except that many other amateur IF authors have come up
with great plots and coherent puzzlefests that don't need to be
explained by "magic". And don't get me wrong, I do like fantasy and
surrealism (I'm a big fan of Tolkien since the late 80's and have even
enjoyed some B-rated D&D-ish fantasy and magic surrealism novels), but
not when it's this kind of emotionally-sterile mumbo-jumbo.
The implementation of the game is, of course, technically flawless.
There is only very rarely some unimplemented skies in outdoor locations
and other nouns like passageways, not really important. (And they're
probably less the author's fault than the anachronistic Inform library,
which is not adequately OO. Yet an author this experient should probably
know better as to have classes of locations and outdoor objects with
default floor and sky messages so that you couldn't get "I don't see any
such thing" for 'x sky' at any outdoor places at all.)
The place descriptions change impecably and correctly as the author has
well known to do since his first work. Objects cannot be lost and the
game made unwinnable, they are all recoverable and limitless. Many
actions, verbs, and command possibilities are anticipated. There is a
proactive tutorial voice teaching the basics of look, examine, take,
undo, dying, etc (just the very basics, though). This is all laudable.
There are also hints, although they are too sparse and only helpful to
the first "part" of the game (collecting the masks). I can't understand
why they can't be called by a simple intuitive "hint" or "hint
<object>", rather than "help hint". But this is nitpicking.
All these things I mentioned above add to a smooth play which is
supposed to help newbies. Or does it? The problem with this game as an
"introduction" to the uninitiated, newbies, lies not in those things,
which are all cosmetic, interface features. The problem is more general:
in the lack of more clued messages (and hints) as to what to do to solve
the harder puzzles; the lack of any motivation to continue playing
beyond "explore and solve the puzzles!" (that stems from the amnesia
cliche); the lack of any direction to go without a story, people or
events to guide; the need to have extra concentration in visualizing the
places and objects and come up with the correct guesses or intuition of
what to do: which, for some puzzles in this game at least, are
inevitably trial-and-error no matter what (unless there is more explicit
clues in the descriptions).
In sum, it's the lack of the game holding the attention and interest of
the player (beyond the fans of this author and hard-core puzzle-solvers)
after s/he's explored most of the map. EASIER puzzles would help: ok,
it's all more or less easy in the basic tasks; the extra tasks of the
game are the difficult ones. But it's just not satisfying to reach the
first, easier ending and read "But there are various other secrets and
endings!", endings which are MUCH more difficult, and are in fact for
veterans, not newbies. This is one thing that (IMHO) does not work, not
in this game at least: trying to cater for both total newbies and
hard-core puzzle-solvers.
I know this review sounds very negative: why criticizing negatively
isntead of just ignoring games you don't like and reviewing the ones you
do, I hear you say. It was sort of a negative reaction to all the
automatic praise and adulation that this game has received while the
rest of (recent) IF goes much less considered or is at any rate always
much more critically reviewed. I found many other recent games I played
last year much better than this: The Act of Misdirection, Blue Chairs,
All Time Devours, Sting of the Wasp, and Square Circle, for example.
Even the last one I was playing but haven't finished, Chronicle of Play
Torn, which is somewhat similar in genre and old-school feel, I found
more interesting than The Dreamhold! I haven't played yet, but I bet (by
some reviews) that I'll like Isle of the Cult and Enterprise Incidents
at least more than I did this game, even if they are less "technically
perfect".
To be fair to the author, who has done much good free work and is always
a very common-sense and good-sensed voice in raif/rgif discussions
(whereas I'm just being a whining critic here--"yes, criticizing is
easy, why don't you do it better?" I hear you thinking--who rarely
participates in discussions, though I have been in and out lurking for
many years), I want to say that I have actually appreciated some of his
other games. I found "Hunter, In Darkness" terrific, harrowing, the type
of game that causes an emotional response in the player that The
Dreamhold absolutely does not. I also somewhat enjoyed "So Far" and
"Shade" (but, on the other hand, I was bored to death in the much-touted
"Spider and Web" to the point of not wanting to continue playing even
past the beginning of the game).
Remarkably, those are all games without NPCs and NPC interaction
(significant interaction, at any rate: what I saw of "Spider and Web"
and "So far" had some limited or rare interaction). It's just
manipulation of objects and scenery. That's again probably my main
dislike of this sort of game: the lack of people and interactions with
people. And again it's just an opinion.
Emiliano.
(ps.: I won't be reading newsgroups for quite a while as I'm moving back
to Brazil tomorrow, after 4 years of a PhD in Edinburgh, so don't expect
any response from me soon.)
I perhaps should'n've written about this game as it has already gotten
more than its share of attention, IMO. It's just that I have only now
played it and read all the discussion in rgif to see what was all the
fuss about a couple of months ago, when I was very busy with other
things and couldn't play it. So this is a late, and not favourable
review of Andrew Plotkin's THE DREAMHOLD. A rant, if you like. It's sort
of a contrary reaction to all that much discussion and interest this
game then received (yes, sorry, I'm late!).
Well, I didn't like the game. In fact, it sparked in me again some
strong feelings I generally have about this sort of "IF" (it's not IF,
not where FICTION is concerned); of why it seems so DIFFICULT to get
into the hard puzzle-solving mindset to finish this kind of game
satisfyingly. And why then it doesn't seem any good for newcomers.
As I pretty much lost interest past the masks and laboratory (before
collecting the extras) I didn't bother to continue on myself; just went
for David Welbourn's walkthru instead (very good as always, btw) to see
the last parts.
Of course, I don't think The Dreamhold is a bad game. It's flawless from
a technical point of view. But it is based and resorts on things that I
don't understand how can be so much praised and considered so good by so
many (at least the vocal people who post in rgif). In a nutshell, it is
dreary, dreary: no people, no emotional interaction, only mechanical
objects; and fantasy again used as the "general solution" to
reality-bending and exotica-justification. But let's go by parts.
First, the writing. Ok it's a matter of taste, but I found the writing
in the game, which overall is just succint and correct to do its job, to
be such a stretch at many places (in its 'creative' use of words) as to
border on pretentiousness. Let's see:
"an inexplicable cut-out of a human face"
"impression of unformed childhood"
"rocks are mercilessly visible"
"jagged mountains tear the sky"
"water tastes clean as fresh-born stone"
"a black river (..), a silent street of mirror-dark water"
"Sprays of dried leaves, flowers, and seed pods"
"[branches] leap chaotically upward, spraying gold-veined leaves"
"pillars march around the edge of this circular chamber"
"notations cluster like wasps" [on a map]
"[Shelves] are obligingly empty"
"in an impossible curved sea" (impossibly?)
"a robe, richly bright-embroidered" (what?)
"Stalactites are the ones on the ceiling. Stalagmites are the ones on
the floor. You don't know how you know this" (oh please)
To be fair, I liked one or two occasional passages:
"The pen, moving across its face [of a map], annotates and speculates"
"The sky (..) stretches with broad perfection of its mountain domain"
The problem I have with many of the examples above is the emotional
adjectivizing, it's like a poor attempt at remedying something more
fundamental that's lacking: humanity, emotion. And this is my main
grudge, because the game is completely emotion-sanitized, bland. As is
typical of this author, it passes at a safe, large distance away of any
interactions with PEOPLE, at any dealing with (say) problems, behaviour,
customs, emotions, etc, of people, animated beings (not necessarily
human, if you like). Only machines and mechanical things. How dreary
things become then? How many people really enjoy this sort of thing?
I tend to think of it as the epitome of geekyness. Nah, people and their
dealings, that's all too complicated and difficult to understand! Just
objects and their physical-mechanical relationships would be ok. So it
can all be a dreary fantasy-castle setting with Zork/Myst-ish
exploration and manipulation of objects. Can it then really be generally
attractive to general people, to newbies, as is the stated purpose of
this "tutorial"? I don't think so.
Then, without people, no need to have NPCs, dialogue and NPC interaction
either, which are complicated to implement and prone to go wrong. No
plot, no events and related daemons, no nothing, just static, mechanical
objects. It's so much easier then. Okay, it's a tutorial for newbies...
People, events and their interactions are probably "advanced" matter, I
suppose. But this is only then a tutorial for newbie PUZZLE-solvers,
because it's not likely to be enjoyable by people who might come up
thinking they'll play some sort of interactive story, interactive
FICTION, which it's not.
The Dreamhold is a Myst-like mechanical-puzzles game that probably
would've been best realized graphically but was implemented in text. In
this sense, it seems like a "worst use of medium"-prize candidate. I
like Myst and derivatives (I especially enjoyed Lighthouse and
Timelapse), but not in text medium. It's just not my cup of tea. In
text, I want to see (but maybe that's just ME of course!!) at least some
story, plot, characterization and people, besides objects. The Dreamhold
has none whatsoever. It has a vague static backstory that is left
intentionally unexaplained so that players (the fans) can have endless
speculations as to the secret "symbolisms" and "meanings" behind it.
Which the author probably never bothered to come up with, or in any case
is likely to be wildly divergent and simpler than the discussion it
generates.
A rant about genre. This use of fantasy again and again always seems
more like a convenient way to do away with all those pesky restrictions
of reality. As if reality is too limited, too difficult to come up with
new puzzles integrated to a story. With a fantastical or surrealist
setting, on the other hand, everything is possible and anything goes,
for "it's all magical", or "it's all a dream". So it's a whole lot
easier, you can have all sorts of appearing, disappearing, transmutating
and transmogrifying (sp?) things, that need no explaining why they are
there. It almost seems like we are in 1980 talking about Zork.
I'm sometimes more than bothered by this LAZY use of fantasy as a crutch
(no pun intended with the game) to inspiration and skill, or lack
thereof, in coming up with stories and puzzles. This is more of a
general rant than specific to this game. I understand, we are all
amateurs, etc, except that many other amateur IF authors have come up
with great plots and coherent puzzlefests that don't need to be
explained by "magic". And don't get me wrong, I do like fantasy and
surrealism (I'm a big fan of Tolkien since the late 80's and have even
enjoyed some B-rated D&D-ish fantasy and magic surrealism novels), but
not when it's this kind of emotionally-sterile mumbo-jumbo.
The implementation of the game is, of course, technically flawless.
There is only very rarely some unimplemented skies in outdoor locations
and other nouns like passageways, not really important. (And they're
probably less the author's fault than the anachronistic Inform library,
which is not adequately OO. Yet an author this experient should probably
know better as to have classes of locations and outdoor objects with
default floor and sky messages so that you couldn't get "I don't see any
such thing" for 'x sky' at any outdoor places at all.)
The place descriptions change impecably and correctly as the author has
well known to do since his first work. Objects cannot be lost and the
game made unwinnable, they are all recoverable and limitless. Many
actions, verbs, and command possibilities are anticipated. There is a
proactive tutorial voice teaching the basics of look, examine, take,
undo, dying, etc (just the very basics, though). This is all laudable.
There are also hints, although they are too sparse and only helpful to
the first "part" of the game (collecting the masks). I can't understand
why they can't be called by a simple intuitive "hint" or "hint
<object>", rather than "help hint". But this is nitpicking.
All these things I mentioned above add to a smooth play which is
supposed to help newbies. Or does it? The problem with this game as an
"introduction" to the uninitiated, newbies, lies not in those things,
which are all cosmetic, interface features. The problem is more general:
in the lack of more clued messages (and hints) as to what to do to solve
the harder puzzles; the lack of any motivation to continue playing
beyond "explore and solve the puzzles!" (that stems from the amnesia
cliche); the lack of any direction to go without a story, people or
events to guide; the need to have extra concentration in visualizing the
places and objects and come up with the correct guesses or intuition of
what to do: which, for some puzzles in this game at least, are
inevitably trial-and-error no matter what (unless there is more explicit
clues in the descriptions).
In sum, it's the lack of the game holding the attention and interest of
the player (beyond the fans of this author and hard-core puzzle-solvers)
after s/he's explored most of the map. EASIER puzzles would help: ok,
it's all more or less easy in the basic tasks; the extra tasks of the
game are the difficult ones. But it's just not satisfying to reach the
first, easier ending and read "But there are various other secrets and
endings!", endings which are MUCH more difficult, and are in fact for
veterans, not newbies. This is one thing that (IMHO) does not work, not
in this game at least: trying to cater for both total newbies and
hard-core puzzle-solvers.
I know this review sounds very negative: why criticizing negatively
isntead of just ignoring games you don't like and reviewing the ones you
do, I hear you say. It was sort of a negative reaction to all the
automatic praise and adulation that this game has received while the
rest of (recent) IF goes much less considered or is at any rate always
much more critically reviewed. I found many other recent games I played
last year much better than this: The Act of Misdirection, Blue Chairs,
All Time Devours, Sting of the Wasp, and Square Circle, for example.
Even the last one I was playing but haven't finished, Chronicle of Play
Torn, which is somewhat similar in genre and old-school feel, I found
more interesting than The Dreamhold! I haven't played yet, but I bet (by
some reviews) that I'll like Isle of the Cult and Enterprise Incidents
at least more than I did this game, even if they are less "technically
perfect".
To be fair to the author, who has done much good free work and is always
a very common-sense and good-sensed voice in raif/rgif discussions
(whereas I'm just being a whining critic here--"yes, criticizing is
easy, why don't you do it better?" I hear you thinking--who rarely
participates in discussions, though I have been in and out lurking for
many years), I want to say that I have actually appreciated some of his
other games. I found "Hunter, In Darkness" terrific, harrowing, the type
of game that causes an emotional response in the player that The
Dreamhold absolutely does not. I also somewhat enjoyed "So Far" and
"Shade" (but, on the other hand, I was bored to death in the much-touted
"Spider and Web" to the point of not wanting to continue playing even
past the beginning of the game).
Remarkably, those are all games without NPCs and NPC interaction
(significant interaction, at any rate: what I saw of "Spider and Web"
and "So far" had some limited or rare interaction). It's just
manipulation of objects and scenery. That's again probably my main
dislike of this sort of game: the lack of people and interactions with
people. And again it's just an opinion.
Emiliano.
(ps.: I won't be reading newsgroups for quite a while as I'm moving back
to Brazil tomorrow, after 4 years of a PhD in Edinburgh, so don't expect
any response from me soon.)
.
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