Merk's Review: A Matter of Importance

The “official” version can be found at my website:
sidneymerk.com/comp07/matter.shtml

You know what – I wonder if the author, not being a native speaker of English – meant for the Thieving Guild to be more of a Thieving Organization? Or a crime syndicate specializing in theft? And maybe the testers just never questioned it, because it seemed intentional. Anyway, that’s my theory.

Oh – and I liked the response to “sing.” Clever!

Nestor is Valentine Kopteltsev. I have no idea why the thought didn’t occur to me before. Makes sense now!

Nicely done, Valentine. It ended up being 8th on my list of favorites, but that’s more to do with the strong competition than anything else.

Merk, thanks a lot for the review! BTW, if there was an award for the most useful review, you’d probably be the first candidate for it (and I’m sure not the only author who thinks like that). I certainly owe you one. The more so as AMOI contains a feature directly inspired by (that’s an elaborate way to say “stolen from”) The Traveling Swordsman - you’ll notice it if you start it now, after the Comp!

A few comments on the review:

Aaaah, few things are as satisfying to an author as seeing a player marching right into the trap you laid for him!:wink:

Good guess;).

No, it has nothing to do with Ilf and Petrov. Acutally, the game in general has nothing to do with Ilf and Petrov, except for the quote at the beginning.

That’s partly true. On the other hand, being a big fan of Unnkulian games, I also like anachronistic setting elements, so that I’d probably leave it as is even if the idea people tend to associate the word “guild” with Middle Ages occured to me.

It was great fun to read your reviews in general, and that of AMOI in particular! Thanks again!

Ah! Yeah, I started it again and I see what you’re talking about.

Before we know it, judges are going to start setting their clocks ahead next year, just to see what happens in the anonymous/pseudonym names. :slight_smile: