Game Reviews

MacWesleyan/PC University

review by C.E. Forman

As a result of the popularity of interactive fiction among college students, a sizable number of games of this type have been set at various universities. Let's face it, authors often like to write about what they know best. In fact, the "college adventure" could easily be considered a distinct genre within the category of the text adventure.

Like any genre, similarities among this type of game are easily identified. For the most part, plots tend to be rather simplified, frequently involving the collection of various objects or items in order to complete a college-related goal, such as graduation or the survival of finals week. MacWesleyan (or PC University, if you're playing the PC version), is no different. Set at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, MacWesleyan/PC University appears to be geared toward players whose skills range from beginner to intermediate. Aside from their names and the systems on which they run, the two games are identical.

In MW/PCU, your goal is to obtain six signatures on your Student Identification Form. The list of necessary appellations includes not only your faculty advisor, department chair, and dean, but also the autographs of the presidents of both Wesleyan and the United States! To top it all off, you must sign the form yourself, which brings about a whole new set of puzzles to be conquered. It's all quite amusingly goofy, and makes for a pleasant adventure that should keep even experienced players occupied for several days. As with all games set at universities, there is plenty of college history and some inside jokes, but MW/PCU can easily be solved without extensive knowledge of Wesleyan University.

Be observant -- when you're playing MW/PCU, you have to pay close attention, since an overlooked detail can easily halt your progress for hours, or even put the game into an unsolvable state in a few rare cases. If you find yourself stuck, it's more than likely that you missed something which could have been uncovered by a more thorough investigation of your surroundings. Basic adventuring skills, such as examining everything you come across, and reading the room descriptions carefully, are crucial to your success in MW/PCU, but to the game's credit, it doesn't complicate the matter with excessive verbosity. Players aren't forced to sift through a ton of useless text to discover what they need to know.

The puzzles, for the most part, are rather original, but they are not overly difficult once you discover the necessary items, and I even ended up accidentally solving a few of them without really trying. The majority of them are relatively straightforward, involving simple interactions with characters and objects. Others, such as the telescope and the infamous 5,000 mailboxes (see XYZZYnews #1), are quite impressive from a coding standpoint, but will probably not astound players unfamiliar with I-F design and parser writing. Virtually all the game's situations are humorous. As you attempt to complete your Student Identification Form, you'll participate in a "transliterary consciousness projection experiment," engage in a battle of wits with a reckless Domino's Pizza delivery guy, and visit with God (who resides in a blue bus in one of the Wesleyan parking lots). It all makes for a fun adventure.

The parser, on the other hand, can be a real pain sometimes, particularly with inventory management. While the game recognized almost everything I thought to try, a lot of puzzles simply cannot be solved unless the object(s) required to solve them are being carried in the player's hands. In order to carry more items, though, I frequently resorted to stuffing the smaller ones inside my character's jacket pocket. Unfortunately, when the time came to use certain items (the dollar bill in particular), I received only error messages, with no indication that taking them out of the pocket might help. It took some serious trial-and-error on my part to figure this out, so some kind of modification to the inventory recognition system is definitely necessary, especially when one realizes that other items (such as the candle) can be used regardless of where the player carries them.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed playing MW/PCU a lot. It's lighthearted, charismatic, and just challenging enough to hold an experienced player's interest while at the same time catering to newcomers. And besides, the author is distributing it as freeware. You can't beat that.