City of Secrets

Possibly Short's most polished work, and that's saying something. In a city based on both high technology and magic, trains and robots and illusions, an innocent traveller gets swept into the center of a clandestine power-struggle which will forever change the city and how it is seen. Excellent world-building, not just in that the environment is highly explorable and implemented in great detail, but in that the city has a distinct foreign-metropolis-through-tourist-eyes flavor, and a history which makes itself known in various and subtle ways. Good sense of choice: although there's basically only one ending, much of what happens along the way is variable. Uses the conversation system from Pytho's Mask: a combination of menus and ask/tell that's sensitive to context and lets you change topics arbitrarily. Even though most characters will respond to a wide variety of topics, it's still easy to run out of things to say. Features a "novice" mode, but the standard mode is recommended for anyone but the absolute newcomer to IF.

(Source: Carl Muckenhoupt, Baf's Guide to IF Fiction Archive)