All Quiet on the Library Front

Title           All Quiet on the Library Front
Game Type	Adventure
Author		Michael S. Phillips
Players		1
Compatibility	All (with interpreter)
Submission	dledgard@hotmail.com

Review
This game was entered in the 1995 Interactive Fiction Game competition,
and is a good introduction to modern IF. It only has about a dozen
locations, two dozen objects, and a handful of NPC's (non player
characters). The puzzles are generally simple, but it does suffer a bit
from the guess the verb problem i.e. you know what to do, but the
computer only recognises one sentence combination to do it. The object
of the game is to find a reference book by interacting with librarians,
and get it past the electronic security gates. There are also a couple
of sub puzzles with highly dubious logic, you need to know a bit about
IF traditions to solve them. One involves a grue, a legendary beast
that can only survive in the dark, it was introduced in early text
adventures to stop players wondering around in dark locations before
they found a lamp, by killing them. An extra point can be earned by
entering a magic word, used in another early adventure game, nose around
the IF newsgroups and websites and you will learn it soon enough. This
command has even been implemented in the UNIX and other operating
systems, as an in joke. If you get really stuck, the best things to do
are examine and search all objects and locations very carefully,
including using your senses of smell, touch, and hearing. It's easy to
miss some tiny clue, or exit to another location. It's a lot more fun
solving IF games on your own, than asking someone else for hints.

Game code available from:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/zcode/library.z5

This game requires an Inform Interpreter available from:

ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/AmigaFrotz232Std10.lha

Workbench 1.3:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/zip/zip.lha

Alphabetical list.