Designed and Developed by Paul J. Furio

Splashdown is a work of Interactive Fiction, and was my entry into the 2004 Interactive Fiction Competition. It was also my first completed work of Interactive Fiction ever, and thus was a little rough around the edges. However, it placed 8th out of 36 entries, so I'm reasonably proud of this game.

Splashdown was written to conform to the Infocom Z-Machine standard, a platform independent format that allows the game to be played on almost every computer in existence, using the proper freely available interpreter.

• "I liked this a lot. Challenging without being frustrating, and the hints are comprehensive. The messages in the computer were priceless." - Lord Craxton (lord_craxton@yahoo.com)

• "...This is a pretty tight game with no real issues. It's a fun romp with good writing, pacing, and polish." - Joshua Houk (jlhouk@comcast.net)

• "The author is clearly nostalgic for Infocom ... a valiant effort, fairly well detailed." - Jake Wildstrom (dwildstr@zeno.ucsd.edu)

• "I particularly enjoyed figuring out the reason why the ship malfunctioned, a comic situation worthy of Meretzky. There are a nice variety of puzzles, and they're blended pretty seamlessly into the story, which I greatly appreciate." - Paul O'Brian (obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu)

• "This is a terrific Infocom pastiche, and a good game too. You definitely need to be prepared for the old-style "run out of time, die horribly, run out of light, die horribly some more, make mistakes, die horribly, optimize, win" cycle. But that's fine. My only real disappointment was that it was Competition-sized, and I wanted more of it." - Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin (erkyrath@eblong.com)

• "Not too bad." - J. Hall (skeletonitus@supanet.com)

• "The author obviously adores Planetfall and has crafted a quite competent homage." - tzushih@gmail.com (tzushih@gmail.com)

• "...A pleasant little sf romp with a nice variety of puzzles, writing that does a good job at capturing the feel of wandering around a semi-derelict ship, and a chance to read other people's e-mail. What more can I ask for?" - Dan Shiovitz (dbs@cs.wisc.edu)

• "Back to this year's theme: astronauts awaking from cryogenic sleep. This one is really good, though. It's a funny take on Infocom's classics, with the same gentle humour and fiendish puzzles of its inspirators. Great sidekick." - Nusco (nan0744@iperbole.bologna.it)

• "Although the story follows a familiar pattern, the author manages to make it more interesting with added detail... It's a good, fun game." - Sidney Merk (sidneymerk@hotmail.com)

• "Splashdown is a pretty good game, but I can't help but think that with a little more polish, it could have been a really solid one." - Andrew Krywaniuk (askrywan@hotmail.com)

• "...a solid game with some entertaining flourishes." - Mike Russo (mar2116@columbia.edu)

• "The actual reason for the crisis had me laughing maniacally... a pretty fine and very "crunchy" piece of work." - Michael Chapman Martin (mcmartin@Stanford.EDU)

• "All in all, not a bad game. I didn't play to the end but it'll certainly be one game I'll be coming back to in the future to see if I can finish it off." - David Whyld (me@dwhyld.plus.com)

A Post Mortem - A common practice in the professional game development community is to go back to a game after it has been released and reviews have been published, and review the successes and failures of a particular title. In the spirit of Game Developer Magazine, I present my own Post Mortem of Splashdown.