A deliberate choice on my part was for the player to continue to find new possibilities in the early Attic rooms far into the game. I think this builds atmosphere, though it means there's no neat division of the prologue from the middle game.
By the new year of 1994, it had grown up into Inform 4 and could produce games twice as large.
Eventually I found it had been working all along-but didn't show anything on screen until it had the first full page of text. I inserted 30 new lines, and suddenly my toy said 'hEllO woRlD'. An hour later I understood alphabet shifting rather better!
If pushed, though, I'd say that the next stage will be reached when it it's no longer true that about 75% of the best games were written in 1980's on the way to that.
I have been working on a more serious game, called 'Jigsaw', for about 18 months, but don't hold your breath. it'll be a while arriving.
Remember that 'Curses', being free, is circulated much more widely than shareware games, so it gets more than its fair share of attention.
The single biggest is to stop the player from getting stuck and getting bored; always think like the player as well as the designer.
With 'Curses,' I had a rough design in mind already, and in about a fortnight had the attics, the Unreal City and the garden fleshed out.
Once the announcements were actually heard, there was a slow but gathering response. by the end of the first year, an avalanche.
It's frequently over-praised now, and I've enjoyed watching a generation of 'angry young men' critics beginning to say, well what's so good?