JIGSAW - an Interactive History by Graham Nelson. A Text Adventure on SynTax disk PCPD 992 Review by Bev Truter Graham Nelson, the creator of Inform, has certainly put an enormous amount of hard work, background research and sheer effort into programming this huge game. Jigsaw is huge in all senses of the word - geographically large at about 165 locations, and huge in scope and coverage of some of the major events in history in the 20th century. Written with Inform, it has all the style and ease of use that seem to be the trademark of most Inform games I've played so far. Graham obviously intended Jigsaw to be a serious work of fiction - it certainly deals with events in time in a thought-provoking way; and wanted to push the boundaries of interactive fiction beyond the usual limits. Well, all very laudable, but it does make for a rather heavy-handed dogmatic approach to some historical events; and all those Latin quotations written on various objects could be uncharitably interpreted as a tad pretentious.... There are two .Z5 files in Jigsaw, the first (jigsaw~1.z5) being a large file with menus and sub-menus covering all aspects of Jigsaw - instructions, credits, release notes, info about the author, legalities, etc. There is also a section in this file which translates all those Latin quotes, both genuine and fake, which you'll come across in the game. The most interesting section here is the sub-menu titled Footnotes - after completing each of the time zones you can read what really happened in each famous event you visited in the game, and this is where you realize the incredible amount of research Graham put into getting every detail in Jigsaw exactly right; from rooms, people, clothing, to even the most obscure little-known facts about some famous people. The second .Z5 file (jigsaw~2.z5) is the game itself, and there are no on-line hints or help - the solution I refer to later on is one I downloaded from the 'Net. This particular version of Jigsaw is the 3rd release, and although most bugs have been eradicated, one minor bug remains - HINT: Discard any uniform you might be wearing immediately after use, or you might run into problems later on. Jigsaw begins at a New Year's Eve party in Century Park in 1999 - it is 16 minutes to midnight, and you've wandered away from the rest of the crowd to be on your own away from the noisy throngs of people. A mysterious figure dressed in black suddenly appears, then vanishes tantalizingly, leaving behind one piece of a jigsaw puzzle. In a nearby chapel there's a statue of a local celebrity, Grad Kaldecki; and in a corner of the park there's a large pyramid-shaped monument dedicated to his memory. You'll have to find a way of entering the monument before the clock strikes midnight, otherwise you simply see the New Year ushered in, and the beginning of the 21st century before the game ends. Once inside the monument, you discover a large jigsaw board, designed to hold 16 pieces of a jigsaw, which is the means of travelling through time to various episodes or zones in the 20th century. It turns out that Kaldecki built himself a time-machine, with the intention of travelling to certain events in history and altering them. He died before accomplishing this, and one of his students, the mysterious Black, is attempting to fulfil his wishes. It's your task to prevent Black from fiddling about with some major historical events to change the outcome, and to ensure that history does indeed remain the same. Unfortunately, you seem to arrive in each time zone always one step behind Black - can you discover what Black has done, and rectify it so that history remains unchanged? As Graham puts it, the aim of the game is to `solve' each temporal crisis successfully. There is a rigid mathematical structure underlying this game - 16 time zones to visit, 16 pieces of the jigsaw to find and put in place on the board, and 16 animals to sketch as part of a sub-plot. The endgame takes place in The Land, which has 16 locations, and each piece you put correctly on the board opens up one of the locations in The Land. Another theme that develops through the game is the relationship between you and Black - Black's sex is never revealed, although it becomes obvious at one point that you (dressed all in white for the party) are the opposite sex to Black - bang goes one person's theory who wrote to rec.arts.i-f about it, that Black and yourself are two gay guys. Personally, I always play adventures as a male - automatic assumption, I suppose, given that most adventures are male-oriented; and I assumed Black was male as well, so it came as a nasty shock to discover otherwise, and I had great difficulty altering my perception of our genders. I simply couldn't swap my sex to female halfway through the game, and Black persistently remained male in my imagination - so perhaps the `2 gay guys' theory has some basis after all.. Although getting into the monument took me ages, the first 3 or 4 areas in time are relatively easy to solve, and the Titanic zone is particularly memorable, with incredibly vivid descriptions of the doomed and sinking ship. A sense of urgency and the need to hurry is sustained throughout the game, and the tension that builds right from the start of Jigsaw is cleverly maintained. However, my initial enthusiasm for the whole game gradually waned, as each zone becomes increasingly difficult to solve, and at least 4 zones involve those infuriating pull levers and push buttons type of puzzles that I abhor. At least three of the zones are weak on plot and puzzles, and seem irrelevant to the story development - all zones are beautifully described, well-written and painstakingly researched - but the Beatles, Suffragettes and Suez zones appear to be there simply as padding or window-dressing. The endgame, played out in The Land, also seems a weak section of the overall game - instead of being a magnificent semi-climax before the Epilogue, it veers off into an illogical Charlie Chaplinesque routine of chasing around in hot pursuit of a particular object. It looked almost as though Graham had a whole set of puzzles left over that he couldn't squeeze into the main section of the game, so decided to lump them together in a rather garbled and confused endgame. Jigsaw poses some interesting questions - if you could change history in some way, should you? Or would it be better to leave everything to repeat itself in the same pattern - even World War 1? Playing the part of White, running around after Black to make sure history repeats itself exactly as it should, I had the uneasy sensation I was somehow on the wrong side in a few instances. Jigsaw also attempts to deal with, or at least provide food for thought on, some of The Big Issues of Life, such as Art, Poetry, Literature, War v Peace, Nature v Technology ......... hey, and there was I, just thinking that text adventures were meant to be about fun and entertainment ..... Well, I'm still not too sure about Jigsaw. I have very ambivalent feelings about it. It's certainly a vast, interesting, well-written game, but is it really enjoyable? Dunno. I thoroughly enjoyed it up to 37%, struggled determinedly on minus the solution to 55% and still found it fascinating; then gave up after 2 particularly difficult and boring scenes and relentlessly used the solution to get through to the endgame. Did the Epilogue all on my own though, so ended up fairly flushed with success. To sum up, I suppose for me Jigsaw's attempt to be different is its downfall - its seriousness and sombre mood means there are no light touches, and even a few attempts at humour provide only a brief interruption to the overall feeling of worry about what mess will be waiting to be cleared up in the next zone, after Black has done his/her usual meddling. ENJOYMENT - 7/10 ATMOSPHERE - 8/10 LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY - 8/10 FINAL COMMENT - Immense, impressive and interesting. - o -