I've also included references to reviews in issues of SPAG and XYZZYnews; these can be found in
https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/magazines/SPAG/ and
https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/magazines/XYZZYnews/ respectively.
Shades of Gray (soggy97.zip) by Mark Baker, Steve Bauman, Belisana Magnificent, Mike Laskey, Judith Pintar,
"Hercules", and Cindy Yans
Widely considered to be the best AGT game ever written. This is a 'real life' game that is concerned more with the protagonist's
ideals and mental state than with "adventuring". You open the game with amnesia and need to figure out who you are and recover
your memory. To say more would give too much away. It's a bit uneven (it was written by a team of seven people) and it opens with
an arbitrary puzzle that's a potential show-stopper, but overall this is an excellent game.
SPAG 2, 8; XYZZY 11(interview with one of the authors)
Cosmoserve (cosmos97.zip) Judith Pintar
Another strong AGT game. In it, you take the role of R.J. Wright, free-lance programmer/plumber, who is trying to finish a program
that is due the next morning. You will need to log on to Cosmoserve and interact with the other users in order to be able to do this.
It has a clever interface that really captures both the DOS command-line and life online pre-GUI. This is, however, a game you'll
have to play through several times to win since it requires tight timing to be in all of the right places at the right times.
SPAG 5; XYZZY 1, 11(interview with the author)
The Jeweled Arena (tja.zip) David S. Raley
This game is divided into four chapters; in each chapter you are a different person (although the first and third chapters share
the same main character). Games like this often suffer from a lack of unity; this game, however, holds together quite well.
In part, this is because all of the chapters take place in a single, large, setting: the city of Kumeran. You can visit locations
multiple times, as different characters. Locations that are unimportant in one chapter may be of great importance in a later
chapter. In general, the world has a lot of depth, from diaries of the main characters to newspaper articles to books on law.
On the other hand, it could have used some more beta-testing. There are several guess-the-verb puzzles and a quite a few bugs;
most of the bugs are just amusing, but at least one (in chapter 3) can cause the game to become silently unwinnable for no obvious
reason if you do a certain action in the wrong place.
The Multi-Dimensional Thief (mdthief1.zip) Joel Finch
[Summary/review by Audrey De Lisle]
You are a thief desiring to become a member of the Thieves' Guild. The test for this is to find the way out of the house.
This seems rather easy, but it's not. One feature is a visit to OZ; another feat is done while quite small. The amazing machine
is fun to use and you must learn how to use it to get in an otherwise closed room. You can order things from a catalog and part
of the game is to figure out which items you need. I would recommend this game to those who like a little humor with their puzzles.
[There is also a non-AGT version of this game.]
SPAG 2, 4, 9