[You can get all of J. Robinson Wheeler's SmoochieComp reviews through this link.]
Subtitled "An interactive romance," this is, like 1981, another black romance, if there is such a term. All of the love and romance ends up skewed and twisted, and above all, judged.
The author's afterword explicitly stated what I had inferred from the game's content, which was that it attempted to answer the recent newsgroup discussions about Christian IF, about whether such things can be done with all of the good qualities of secular IF. Naturally, the answer is yes. The author also wonders whether "a non-Christian author can be an asset to such an endeavour." The answer to this is also yes. The author's being a non-Christian is readily apparent. I would be hard pressed to imagine a Christian author being so bold as to write a scene in which the player takes on the role of God, and is forced to make one of God's decisions in answer to a petition. Despite the frank and uncynical portrayal of Jeanne D'Arc's unspoiled faith, the overriding perspective of this story is that of accusation, of the dispiriting questions that mankind is moved to shout at Heaven.
This is a daring venture, with some particularly devillish twists at times. The deck is stacked; anyone playing this game will be hard pressed to steer the outcome to any but one which defends Satan's sneering cynicism. Non-believers will probably think this is fair enough; Christians will probably scoff at the inherent authorial bias. The questions the game raises and the charges that it makes are by no means unfair, however; and as an answer to the newsgroup debate, this work of IF is quite a good show.
Leaving that aside, there are no bugs that I know of, although the options are limited enough that I certainly wouldn't expect there to be any. A good deal of the game is conversational text; it has a few typos, but what troubled me more were anachronistic phrasings and word choices: "so darn pious," "Yeah," and "stuff," to name three. I haven't studied the history here (in a way, this also like 1981 in being interactive non-fiction, a mini-biography), but the details seem studiously researched.
Interaction at game's beginning points out the unique relationship between player and parser, PC and narrator; it took some experimenting to figure out, but it does follow a logic that can be quickly mastered. Once you become accustomed to it, it turns out to be a very good authorial device for telling this particular story. The author's high esteem for Adam Cadre's Photopia is well-known and definitely on display, here, and to good effect.
Overall, this entry is engrossing, challenging, and remarkable. Let the discussions begin.
Email me at: katsaris@gmail.com
Last updated: 01 Apr 2002
