The Gostak

by Carl Muckenhoupt profile

Wordplay
2001

Return to the game's main page

Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(54)
4 star:
(22)
3 star:
(6)
2 star:
(4)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 86
Write a review


Showing All | Show by Page


- Xavid, March 6, 2024

- Max Fog, February 23, 2024

- DignitySquared, January 3, 2024

- joes, January 2, 2024

- Tabitha / alyshkalia, December 25, 2023

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

I was shocked at how quickly and easily I found myself typing commands like "doatch at droke about calbice". However, the whole experience was completely cerebral, with little of the emotional catharsis I associate with successful storytelling. I felt this effect when I played Dan Schmidt's For a Change, but it's ten times stronger in this game, where words aren't simply rearranged but actually replaced wholesale. Consequently, while playing The Gostak was a strange and memorable experience, one which will surely elevate the game to the rarefied level of For A Change, Bad Machine, and Lighan ses Lion, I found it a somewhat strained sort of fun. Great for a puzzle-solving mood, and certainly worth trying if you're a cryptography buff, but not terribly involving as a story.

You wrote this review - Revise it | Direct link | Add a comment

- oscar-78, November 22, 2023

- EJ, August 25, 2023

- Bell Cyborg (Canada), July 21, 2023

- aluminumoxynitride, July 18, 2023

- pieartsy (New York), June 22, 2023

- rabbitking, June 22, 2023

- biscuit, February 15, 2023

- ilyu, January 14, 2023

- Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid), October 21, 2022

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
I think I should have made a better glossary…, July 4, 2022

…because you ABSOLUTELY MUST make one to play this game. Also, it may help to know what I found out only after the fact: "The gostak distims the doshes" is a linguistic joke, illustrating how humans can derive meaning from syntax even when the words themselves are nonsense. And that, indeed, is a driving feature of this game.

To wit: You are the gostak. (Whatever that is.) You have come to the doshery to distim the doshes. (Whatever that means.) However, the doshery is blocked off by five glauds (whatever those are!). To win the game, you must remove each of the five glauds and successfully distim the doshes. But first you'll have to figure out the made-up vocabulary for virtually every important word in the game, including how to look at things and move around! The help page and error messages, which are also written in Gostakian dialect, are very helpful for deducing that first handful of words. Then you'll spend a lot of time working things out from context. Some words have relatively clear meanings, but others are best defined with other words from the conlang and may not even HAVE English translations. What's a gostak? Well, it's a being that distims doshes. What's distimming? It's what gostaks do to doshes. What are doshes…? Well, you get the idea.

What all this means is that figuring out commands can be fun on an intellectual level, but I had no investment in any of the characters. I didn't like that about the game, but I'm also not sure it was that kind of game! Although I think in a larger version of the Gostak universe, the worldbuilding would have been as rich as it was inscrutable. I did run into some frustration with the final puzzle: even the hints told me to do something I didn't know how to do until I looked at David Welbourn's glossary. In hindsight, I'd missed a couple of key words: (Spoiler - click to show)At one point, you encounter a machine that you can play with and even get an inconsequential item from but that otherwise doesn't help you much. However, the machine uses a few words in its description that are found in only one other place. Had I taken the time to work them out, I would have known how to activate a DIFFERENT item in the endgame. I didn't, so I got stuck.

I personally didn't find working out the vocabulary as fun as I expected to, but others might! The same goes for the game.

I have to say, though, it IS pretty fun to say things like "The gostak distims the doshes."

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- rowan.du, April 30, 2022

- Titania Lowe, January 24, 2022

- Zape, August 30, 2021

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A Real Treat, April 17, 2021

I thoroughly enjoyed this little gem. As remarked in other places, this should NOT be the first interactive fiction or adventure game you play. With some experimentation, I was able to figure out the gist of the words. I love that much of the game is left nebulous, so the player can interpret it according to his imagination. After playing, it took some effort to not say to my fellow human: "Just rask the chalm from the hoggam." Wish there was a sequel.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- Jonathan Verso, April 11, 2021

- TheBoxThinker, March 4, 2021

- Pinstripe (Chicago, Illinois), December 30, 2020

- William Chet (Michigan), July 20, 2020

- Blind Assassin (Illinois, United States), July 12, 2020

- Cosmo42, May 28, 2020

- Dan Fabulich, May 12, 2020

- IanAllenBird, December 11, 2019

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Language, meet Logic, December 2, 2019
by Rovarsson (Belgium)

It is very tempting to try to translate The Gostak. I've found different versions of the, no, more accurately I should say a story on the internet. I too have created a story based on my understanding of what things and what actions the strange words in this game refer to.
But as Chase Entwistle put it so well in his review: "Distimming the doshes could be the most evil thing imaginable."

I really started appreciating this game once I let go of the assumption that the "words" had to have external referents, and instead viewed them as symbols in a logic system that could be manipulated through their interactions with other such symbols.

This brings this game very close to mathematics or symbolic logic. "Distim", "Gostak", and "Dosh", like any other "word" in this game are defined solely by their relations with other "words". Putting "words" next to other "words" makes them act in a certain way, and gives output from which the player can infer what role they have in a logical system.

But yes, of course I have my own version of the story. And my, how my doshes are distimmed by that gostak!

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- ArchDelacy, November 29, 2019

- Denk, November 24, 2019

- draziwfozo, September 2, 2019

- florzinha, July 12, 2019

- kevan, July 11, 2019

- CleverFool, June 11, 2019

- wisprabbit (Sheffield, UK), May 6, 2019

- gildedSnail, March 18, 2019

- davidar, November 10, 2018

- AKheon (Finland), September 22, 2018

- Joey Jones (UK), September 15, 2018

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), August 1, 2018

- yaronra, July 16, 2018

- mjw1007, January 15, 2018

- Greg Frost (Seattle, Washington), November 8, 2017

- lkdc, February 1, 2017

- Brian Kwak, December 28, 2016

- Oreolek (Kemerovo, Russia), October 20, 2016

- insufficient data, July 10, 2016

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A game (in)famous for its main challenge: understanding a nonsense language, February 3, 2016
by MathBrush
Related reviews: about 2 hours

The Gostak is one of those games that everyone hears about eventually. Some play it, some stay far away. I didn't get past the first room when I first played it, felt scared, and put it off for five years.

I finally completed it with the in-game hints and some of David Wellbourns dictionary.

So what is this game? It is based off of an old sentence a professor came up with, showing that you can guess a lot about words and their relationships just by their position in a sentence. That sentence was "The Gostak distims the doshes".

In this game, you are the Gostak, and you do have to distim the doshes. You have to learn how to navigate, to examine, to take and drop, and so forth. The help menu, also written in nonsense, is vital in understanding the language.

The hints were actually very helpful, although it might be possible to beat the game without them. The last hint is purposely vague.

The game has two npcs, one who is quite helpful, and one who is not. There are a variety of other objects, though.

After finally beating it, I love this game, but it sure was hard, even with all hints and a dictionary.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- Matt W (San Diego, CA), March 20, 2015

- Thrax, March 11, 2015

- Molly (USA), February 15, 2015

- Janice M. Eisen (Portland, Oregon), November 22, 2014

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A rorm and snave halpock, October 23, 2014
by Sobol (Russia)

It's tavid to doatch about this halpock without fargishing scurm-brolges; let's just doach it's very snave, rorm and dobbly... if somewhat dunmile.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
The map is not the territory, March 26, 2014

This is a game for experienced players, not just because it practically requires knowledge of genre conventions, but because the way The Gostak obfuscates its output is pushing directly against an old-school drive: the player's desire to construct a mental model of the game world. For old-school games, this often also means drawing an actual map on paper. Here, there are only a handful of rooms, but you have to start taking notes and make your own little dictionary before you can start connecting any of them, let alone visualize what's supposed to be in them. Understanding the language is the main puzzle of the game, and it's a great one. As you build your vocabulary and your understanding of objects and the relationships between them, descriptions that were impenetrable nonsense at first glance become more and more sensible until you're reading fairly naturally and typing back commands that would seem like crazy talk to anyone looking over your shoulder. It's extremely satisfying.

Of course, you have to constantly remind yourself that your model is only a model. The world of The Gostak is an alien one, and although there are many terms that seem to have close analogues in our reality or other games, there's never enough information to really know what anything is like. To some extent this is true of all text games, with many details left up to the player to fill in mentally, but in The Gostak you're painting with broad strokes. Abstract splatters, really. And no matter how vague and fuzzy you try to keep the picture in your head, you'll almost certainly over-imagine things and make assumptions about concepts that lead you astray. A particular term can turn out to be dual-purpose in a way you wouldn't expect, or a physical action may be only superficially similar to whatever you were thinking of as its equivalent. In a longer or crueler game, this tension would be infuriating. Here, the push and pull is a dual pleasure.

I do have gripes about two puzzles. One relies on a word that I felt was too obscure (it was barely present in any of the output, as far as I could tell), and another has a solution that doesn't match well with the information provided (there are sufficient clues to reach the solution through experimentation, but it was not clear to me why that particular action was necessary or why it would be that effective). I regret being so late to the party for this game--it would be interesting to play this one at the same time as someone else and see which details stuck out to them, and to have them describe the particular way they imagined this weird world in their head.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- shornet (Bucharest), March 23, 2014

- trystero, February 13, 2014

- lisapaul, January 9, 2014

- Galena, September 12, 2013

- DJ (Olalla, Washington), May 9, 2013

- Tortoiseshell Bat, March 25, 2013

- Sdn (UK), December 24, 2012

- rec53, June 9, 2012

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
More a metagame than a game, March 14, 2012
by Jeff Zeitlin (Greater New York Area)

The game itself isn't much, in the sense of having an extensive world, but I found this not to be a detraction. For me, the attraction was in the solving of the language puzzle, and led to quite a bit of reflection on my own thought processes and on language acquisition through immersion. (Spoiler - click to show)I can't recommend this for someone who is not familiar with the 'Zorkian' response conventions; I don't believe someone lacking that familiarity will be able to get a reasonable foothold into the game. For someone with that grounding though, I strongly recommend it.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- Relle Veyér, March 1, 2012

- E.K., January 11, 2012

- trojo (Huntsville, Alabama, USA), October 10, 2011

- Lea, January 7, 2010

- Divide (Wroclaw, Poland), December 3, 2009

- Ben Cressey (Seattle, WA), September 4, 2009

- googoogjoob, May 21, 2009

- Ziixxxitria (California), April 12, 2009

- Ben, February 9, 2009

- albtraum, February 8, 2009

- Cendare, January 14, 2009

- Audiart (Davis, CA), January 8, 2009

- Genjar (Finland), August 31, 2008

- aaronius, March 12, 2008

- jfpbookworm (Hamburg, New York), February 25, 2008

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
One of the finest decoding puzzles I've ever encountered, February 20, 2008
by Michael Martin (Mountain View, California)

The goal of this game is straightforward; as the gostak, you distim the doshes. Alas, the lutt to the doshery is crenned with glauds! But surely a snave gostak such as yourself can discren them.

And, I note, the entire game is like this, including very and deeply extensive meta information. At no point is the central linguistic conceit dropped. I'm a sucker for this, and indeed this is one of my favorite games as a result, but more importantly, the game is approachable in a way that most IF with a metatextual conceit is not. That said, some basic familiarity with the standard Inform library will greatly enhance one's experience with the game, as many (to me) critical clues for solving the game's language came from default responses.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | View comments (1) - Add comment 

- puzzler (Everett, Washington), February 10, 2008

- anj tuesday, November 18, 2007

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A story that could not be told any other way., November 7, 2007
by Kake (London, England)
Related reviews: Carl Muckenhoupt, *****

It's a game; it's a puzzle; it's a very, very good depiction of an alien universe from the perspective of one of its inhabitants.

The reference is to the sentence "The gostak distims the doshes", which is used to illustrate how syntax can convey meaning — we don't know what a gostak is, nor what distimming is, nor what doshes are, but we do know that distimming is something a gostak does to doshes, and we know that doshes can be distimmed by a gostak. As you play the game, you uncover meaning-in-this-sense, and you learn how things are related to each other; but there is no perfect one-to-one mapping of the gostak's language to English, and I have a strong feeling that the gostak's universe is very different from ours.

I "completed" the game a few days ago, but there's still a lot to discover and speculate on, so I'm still playing it.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- Maureen (California), November 2, 2007

- Stephen Bond (Leuven, Belgium), October 26, 2007

- Emily Short, October 22, 2007

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
My Favorite IF, October 19, 2007
by Personman (Somerville, MA)

I am not your average player of IF, it's true. The fact that this game is my favorite IF ever does not mean that it is exceptional in the ways you would expect an IF to be exceptional. The puzzles are solid, but not amazing, the plot is fun but trivial, the interface is not buggy or anything, but it doesn't do anything exciting. But the concept is so utterly wonderful that (english) words do not describe it. You'll simply have to play it.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 


Showing All | Show by Page | Return to game's main page