Latter-day IF has seen quite a few innovative experiments with point of view, so it's worth remembering the game that, as far as I know, started the trend, namely Miron Schmidt's Ralph, a 1996 competition entry. In Ralph, you play a dog, a thoroughly doggy dog at that-and while it's not a revolutionary exercise in PC characterization, it's a charming game that ably tackles the challenges of point-of-view experimentation.

Your task is to find a lost bone that you've buried somewhere (belying the notion that dogs can always find bones, or other things, that they've buried). The puzzles are somewhat over the top--they involve a more subtle grasp of human and animal psychology than most dogs have, and they strain the limits of a dog's physique--but they're not bad puzzles, on the whole. On the other hand, the puzzles are probably the least doggy thing about the game, since they don't involve thinking like a dog as such, nor are the limitations of inhabiting a dog's body particularly limiting. (Compare A Bear's Night Out, where being a teddy bear was an obstacle to overcome on several fronts, and A Day for Soft Food, where puzzle solutions reflected housecat thinking in several instances.) They're perfectly good human puzzles, but they don't exactly fit here.

What does fit, however, is the Easter eggs, of which there are many. Doggy verbs implemented include BARK, BITE, GROWL, SCRATCH, PEE ON, LICK, SMELL, SLOBBER, WAG--and when the verb is transitive, there are logical responses for most of the objects in the game. Particularly amusing in that respect is Christopher Robin, your family's two-year-old, with whom you can interact in a wide variety of levels; likewise, the cat offers amusement opportunities. Beyond that, the game does capture the single-minded psychology of a pet--you note humans' frustration or anger with you casually, but you really only care about that bone. The setting is less than vividly rendered--this is a suburban yard with basic suburban-yard objects--but you're afforded quite a variety of things to do in that suburban yard. Truth to tell, if Ralph had skipped the puzzles entirely and simply devoted itself entirely to Easter eggs, it would have been-well, a pretty aimless game, but possibly quite a lot of fun.

Ralph illustrates nicely the challenge faced by concept games, games where the gimmick is the raison d'etre: while it's one thing to think of a good idea that translates well into the IF medium, as this undoubtedly does, it's another thing to convert it seamlessly into puzzle-based IF. This sort of thing can, of course, work both as concept and as puzzle game, as later attempts have shown, but Ralph doesn't really work on both levels (partly because it's so short). The concept, however, is great, and as implementation of the concept this is quite good, more than enough to make it worth playing. The lesson, perhaps, is that the best games are those that marry up high concept with a high level of interactivity (in the form of good puzzles, perhaps, or something else), and Ralph isn't quite on that level, pioneering as it was.

At any rate, if you either like dogs or enjoy laughing at dogs' foibles, Ralph is worth a quick look-see; it's got enough funny lines and knowing references to doghood to make it enjoyable.