Christminster -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author(s): Gareth Rees Genre: Collegiate/Mystery Language: en First Publication Date: 1995-08-08 License: Freeware Forgiveness Rating: Nasty Rating: 4.0 (based on 87 ratings) ABOUT THE STORY "When your brother Malcolm sends you a telegram inviting you to visit him at Biblioll College in the ancient university town of Christminster, you imagine that the mysterious `discovery' he alludes to is nothing more than some esoteric bit of chemistry, and that you'll have a pleasant day out in beautiful surroundings. But when you get to Christminster, nothing is as you expect. Where has Malcolm vanished to? What are the unpleasant Doctor Jarboe and the positively repulsive Professor Bungay up to? And what do long-forgotten alchemical treatises have to do with the modern day?" [--blurb from The Z-Files Catalogue] EXTERNAL LINKS minster.z5 Requires a Z-Code interpreter[1] minster.tar.gz Inform source code christminster.sol solution EDITORIAL REVIEWS SPAG > The college is populated with particularly rich characters who play their > parts well through the usual sorts of text-adventure interactions. There are > good excuses to interact with them along the way, too, provided by a plot > which twists along past different personalities. Rees has said that his > puzzles are contrived for the purpose of drawing the interactor through the > story and into contact with different characters, and that is evident in > Christminster. Areas of the setting are consecutively unlocked for > exploration, but the whole college is worked into the story very evenly, > throughout the narrative. -- Nick Montfort > > In all, though, the small cracks don't mar the soundness of the game. The > overall game design is as tight and sensible as just about anything I've > seen. Christminster certainly makes my top five of all time, and stands as a > classic. I suspect it will hold up well under the test of time. One hallmark > of such games is that they make it hard to release a new game with a similar > setting, plot, or milieu because the author has so well nailed it down. That > seems to be the case here for college campuses and Christminster. -- David > Samuel Myers Xyzzy News > There's much to like about "Christminster," from the clever puzzles to the > highly interactive NPCs. "Christminster" joins the crowded field of IF games > with a collegiate setting, but this one comes in at or near the head of the > class. -- Eileen Mullin The Rosebush Spencer’s floozie: gender and gameplay in Christminster > And yet the entire game is structured by who Christabel is. The who that she > is, however, is not so much a history or a voice or a personality, but her > relationship to the setting as a whole and to the characters that inhabit > it. As we have seen, this allows Rees to set up highly effective resonances > between story, puzzles, setting, and character. It is a design space that we > have not explored enough; and one where Christminster can still point the > way. -- Victor Gijsbers REFERENCES [1]