<img class="alignleft" title="Gigantomania" src="http://www.biggles2k.com/images/blog/posts/ifcomps/stalin.jpg" alt="Gigantomania" width="175" height="175" />I appreciate historical fiction, so I was pleasantly surprised after I started playing <a title="Gigantomania" href="http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ag55g7h8p1gwc7ol">Gigantomania</a>, a piece set in Stalinist Russia, written by Michelle Tirto and programmed by Mike Ciul. Divided into four acts, the game has you jump up the food chain of the Stalinist caste system, following the exploits of a lowly peasant worker, a patriotic industrial laborer, a dutiful government bureaucrat, and finally the thoughts of the grand master himself. Unfortunately, it's a technical decision in this fourth and final act that unhinges what is otherwise a very solid game.

I am no scholar of Russian history, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the game's portrayal of this time period. Suffice to say, the overall experience fits with my personal impression of the time, and since the game appears to have been inspired by a history class, I can only assume the game's setting is not just the product of the author's imagination.

The opening sequence is brutal, and sets the tone for a dark exploration of the period.  As you migrate from one social class to another, the game underscores the unsavory elements of life that are common to each. As a peasant, do you choose to steal your neighbor's most valuable possession to bribe the local Collector into letting you give away less of your precious grain? As the laborer, how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to leap ahead of everyone else in the bread line? And as the bureaucrat, what name do you give the local officials in order to not to implicate yourself in the latest scandal?
<blockquote>"Hitler is excruciatingly sensitive with that black comb on his face, and I have him to thank for those Polish officers." <strong>--the mind of Stalin, as portrayed in <em>Gigantomania</em></strong></blockquote>
Uncommon to interactive fiction, the authors take the approach of telling the tale from the first-person perspective. This approach sometimes doesn't work in IF, but within Gigantomania, the format helps convey the narrative. Each character is effectively shown to have his own motivations, his own trials to face. The prose also successfully immersed me in the day-to-day activities of each personality: I felt the grunge of a daily harvest, the grind of the iron and steel works, the urgency to conceal contraband items, the lunacy of a leader.

As for the gameplay, there is little to do in terms of puzzles. The narrative progresses through either (1) a series of well-defined, if sometimes repetitive, tasks; or (2) a nodal conversation system. As mentioned before, you are offered choices, but their impacts are localized to that particular act of the game. Thus, although your decisions are important to understanding the mindset of the characters, they are little more than window-dressing. They offer no ramifications to the overall conclusion of the game.

The downside to Gigantomania is the implementation of the fourth and final act, which you complete by electing one stream of conscious over another via the conversational menu system. Not a bad concept at all, and it was quite effective at first. Unfortunately, I ran into something that looked like this:
<pre>Yet, Hitler doesn't really need Poland - it was a just plaything, a dollhouse for him. Whereas we need access to sea that isn't ice for nine months of the year. 

1) Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. &lt;Nbd7&gt;

2) What would be the point? &lt;Nbd7&gt;
</pre>
I wasn't certain what to make of the "Nbd7" tags. When I selected option 1, I was presented with another option that consisted solely of one of these tags:
<pre>&gt;&gt; 1
&lt;e4&gt;
</pre>
My additional interaction went like this:
<pre>1) &lt;dxe4&gt;

&gt;&gt; 1
&lt;Nxe4&gt;

1) &lt;Qc7&gt;

&gt;&gt; 1
&lt;Nc3&gt;
</pre>
What to make of it, except to think that I had uncovered a bug where perhaps the internal tags that marked points in the conversation were accidentally being revealed. Fortunately, text eventually returned, interspersed with these odd tags. I was able to complete the game, but the appearance of these oddities took me out of the immersion, and I noted them as a really, horribly huge bug that prevented me from enjoying the game's climax.

I learned later from <a href="http://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/if-comp-2010-gigantomania/">another reviewer</a> that these tags actually represent the moves of a chess game in which the character is supposedly immersed. This knowledge would have added a whole new layer to the fourth act, but, unfortunately, the implementation leaves those of us not familiar with the game's dialect in the dark. Since at least two players did not pick up on the symbolism, I can only assume that there were other players confused by these tags as well. It's a bit sad, for this particular design decision ruins what is otherwise a very solid game. Should the authors chose to update their game, I strongly suggest they reconsider how they implement their closing act.