Just noticed a Russian IF Forum’s thread on IF Comp, alongside those already noted.
I can’t read Russian, but Babelfishing provides at least a general outline of what the reviewers thought, and gives their criticisms a curiously evocative quality. (One game is criticized for its “indistinct, greased finale”, another because the player found himself “breaking teeth against ferroconcrete pazly”.)
Sadly, there are not too many games reviewed this year (exactly three so far, to be precise). I hope there are more to follow. Anyway, if there is any interest, I’ll talk to Zer about translating his reviews into English after the Comp. IMHO, they’re absolutely worth it, but that’s my IMHO:).
Have there been any/many games actually written in Russian thus far? My wife Mary is a former Russian translator, and, though she is up to her ears and beyond in obligations at the moment, at some future date she’d probably be willing to translate into English a Russian IF vetted by the Russian IF community as high-quality.
What little I know about this comes from the SPAG article on Russian IF, http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag48.html
In addition to the games mentioned in SPAG # 48, may I suggest The Weapon Of Li Guan by Korwin (http://chico07.land.ru/games/weapon.zip). It’s a bit buggy, but has great writing and nice puzzles nevertheless. It’s written in TADS 2, so that you avoid most problems you might have with Russian-only interpreters like URQ or QSP. Also, there is Under The Wall by Xlomid and Masterofshadows: http://urq.allquests.ru/upload/under_exe_patched.zip. This one was initially written in URQ, but compiled to a stand-alone exe file, so the rate of potentional problems installing it will probably be reasonably low. It’s a short CYOA cave crawl, most bugs should have been exorcised, since it’s an updated version.
Both games have been written for the China Mini-Competition 2007, hence their dominant theme.