Game of the Month: August 06: The Baron by Victor Gijsbers

Given that the idea for the Game of the Month (GM) started in the thread about the upcoming Spring Thing 2007, I feel it’s only fair to pick the winning entry from this year’s Spring Thing: The Baron by Victor Gijsbers.

So, what’s this all about? The idea is to pick a new game every month, give everyone some time to play it through and then review and discuss the game. This way we can ensure that (hopefully) enough people actually play the game to have an interesting discussion going on, open to all aspects of the game - story, technical implementation, etc. As the Game of the Month is open to all Interactive Fiction games, it is also a good starting point for discovering overlooked gems, as well as games from systems you maybe wouldn’t normally play.

For this month’s game, I ask everyone who’s interested to play and finish the above mentioned game by 31 August 2006. You can download The Baron by Victor Gijsbers from http://www.springthing.net/2006/files/baron.zip.

Starting September 1st, 2006, this thread can be used for discussions and reviews. If you write a review, please consider posting it not only here (either to this thread or in the designated Reviews section) but also to some of the following sites: SPAG, Interactive Fiction Reviews and Baf’s guide. Also worth mentioning are the InsideADRIFT newsletter (esp. for ADRIFT games) as well as the Spanish SPAC e-zine. Shorter reviews may also be placed at Interactive Fiction Ratings.

Also, feel free to ask for help in this thread if you get stuck, but please mark your post with an appropriate spoiler warning.
Games for next month’s discussion can be suggested in this thread.

Edit 15-08-2006: Added links to some review sites, reformatting of the text.

I’ve started this thread to keep the idea going on…
Is the Baron fine by everyone? What about the time frame? Any other suggestions?

Regarding on how we decide on the next game, I thought of an extra thread at the beginning of September, where everyone (can suggest a game, which then gets voted upon in a poll.

Also, in my opinion, an open discussion is fine. Or do you want some kind of moderation, eg. recommended talking points for each game?

“The Baron” is fine by me. It’s one I already played and reviewed, so there’s absolutely no reason I can’t join in the discussion at the beginning of September.

Here are some things I’d suggest.

At the beginning of the new month, post your reviews to the “reviews” group (in a new topic, in reply to other reviews for the same game, or whatever). By waiting, it gives others a chance to play before seeing those reviews. If willing, also send your review to the one or two review archive sites out there (anybody have links?)

Also at the beginning of the month, we decide on the new month’s game (to be discussed the following month). This could be one person picking, voting, or whatever. Doesn’t matter to me. The important thing would to be decide within a few days.

Once the next game is decided, make an official announcement on this forum. We can make it “sticky” the rest of the month.

Even before deciding on the new month’s game, we should “unsticky” the one from the prior month. Reviews and discussion will begin anyway, and it might confuse people for the original game announce to stay stick-posted.

Other than that, I don’t think there needs to be any formal guidelines for discussion, except maybe put “[spoilers]” in any topic heading you start which will or can contain spoilers. Even that might not be necessary, since we’re assuming the discussion is going on from people who’ve played last month’s game.

I don’t have a problem with “The Baron”. In fact, I even started to write a review of it once around the time of the Spring Thing, but for some reason never got round to finishing it (the review, that is, not the game). I’ll have to play it again to refresh my memory.

Sounds good to me!

Here’s a couple of links for everyone to get started:

Mark Musante’s IF Reviews site: http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-review/

The ever reliable Baf’s Guide: http://baf.wurb.com/if/

SPAG: http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/

The IF Reviews Organization: http://www.ifreviews.org/

Spanish IF review zine SPAC: http://usuarios.lycos.es/SPAC/ (for those who can read/write Spanish)

Thanks everyone, I’ve added a couple of links and made a new thread for making suggestions for next month’s discussion. I’m happy with the way the main post currently looks, so I’ve removed its draft label, although I’m still open for any suggestions.

And now let’s hope this will lead to some interesting reviews and discussions :slight_smile:

You might change “September 1th” to “September 1st”. I kept reading it as the 11th. :slight_smile:

Well spotted and duly corrected. Good thing this forum has an ‘edit’ option :slight_smile:

I must say i’m glad I got around to playing this one. Can’t wait for the discussion!

I don’t think Shaurian has been back since the post was first started, but I assume it’s still a go.

I’m still all for it.

(Note to self: playing the game would be handy. :slight_smile: )

Don’t worry, I’m still alive! I usually don’t login unless I have something to post. And given my current workload, this means I’m more or less a sunday-only forum member :slight_smile:

As we’re now at the end of August, is it okay to post my review of the game or shall I wait for tomorrow till we can kick off the discussion?

It probably doesn’t matter. I’ll post mine tomorrow, even though it has been up on my website for some time now.