Evolution and Djinn Reviews
            (including solutions after a fashion)
                (Both part of Disks 1224a/b)

                      From Nick Edmunds

Djinn and Evolution are brought to us by a team called Textfire.
According to the "about" file, Textfire Inc. are a group of authors
who have come together with the aim of keeping interactive fiction
alive. Sounds familiar enough so what do they have to offer?

Evolution
---------
Evolution begins at the dawn of creation, with you, a single celled
creature given the chance to evolve.

Not the most thrilling idea for a game, but one with unlimited
potential that at once had me intrigued.

Solution as far as I got:
>Move toward bitter
>Eat crumb
>Move toward sweet
>Eat crumb
>Split
Which gave me a final score of 4 out of a possible
1,000,000,000,000

Djinn
-----
You begin this game afloat in a bottle.

Solution as far as I got:
>X bottle
>Taunt eel X3
>Look
>Wait
>Reflect haze at fisherman
Which gave a score of 6 out of 333

While I found both Evolution and Djinn to be well written and
unflawed, there was very little I could do as a means of testing
these games as both are limited-move demo versions.  The idea is
obviously to tantalise a registration out of the insanely involved
adventurer, but rather than becoming so embroiled within the games
that I needed to finish them at any cost, I just felt as if it was
all over before I'd even started.

The limitations imposed by the demo version were a little extreme
in this case and while registration should be possible through
their web site, it was still under construction at the time of
writing and all you get, ironically, is a demo version of a web
site.  The website is at http://www.textfire.com.

Thus, I don't really know what to make of these two games or if
they are even games.



                              - o -