Well, I'm excited to be playing some of the games on IFComp again. As with last year, I haven't been able to participate as fully as I'd like: there's traveling and (again) moving during October this year, so I started late and didn't get to play through as many games as I would have liked. And, again, there are a lot of entries this year, so I'm going to pick things that I think are likely to appeal to me personally.
The IFComp 2018 home page can be found here.
With so many entries this year, I'm applying some basic filtering criteria to which games I'm going to play: I'm prioritizing parser-based games that are designed with systems that have an easily available Linux interpreter. (This second criterion rules out works written in ALAN, ADRIFT, and Quest, some of which I might be able to get running with some effort and time. But I'd rather put this effort and time into interacting with games written by people who aren't making a development decision that includes a belief, however tangential to the main part of their development decision-making process, however subconscious, that they're OK with a development system that cuts off or mandates a lot of extra work for some potential interactors, including me. This criterion sometimes also rules out Windows executables, if they don't work well under Wine. When it comes right down to it, I'd rather be trying to figure out how to escape from the elven mound than trying to figure out which version of a Windows 'terp for some development system happens to work well under my particular version of Wine.) I'm going to try to get through as many games that fit those criteria as I can during the comp period. Since that's still a fair number of games (17), I'm prioritizing games based on how interesting their description sounds to me. After all, I want to play games that I'll enjoy, don't I?
None of this is meant to suggest that there are certain inherently right or wrong ways to develop IF, or that there are certain ways that IF should be
; all I'm saying is that there are works I'm more and less likely to enjoy interacting with, and I want to spend my time on things I actually enjoy. I'm more likely to judge them fairly and sympathetically, anyway.
I'm using Jacqueline Lott's rubric as the basis for my scores again this year. Thank you for a well-thought out rubric, Jacqueline!
In any case, given all of that, here's my list of longish games I'd very much like to play through:
The Magpie, by J.J. Guest.
Here is my list of longish (or length-unknown) games I'd willingly play through, given enough time:
Here is my list of shortish games I'd play through if I wind up with enough time:
And here is a list of games I almost certainly won't play through because they don't meet the criteria already specified.
Lists above are ordered according to my personal sort on the IFComp website.
These reviews are not primarily intended for authors of games, for the reasons that Sam Kabo Ashwell has explained. Some reviews are quite direct about my reactions to the games, and my reactions to pieces of IF is occasionally negative. I don't tone down my reactions to save authors' feelings; if the game is flawed, I say so, and if the flaws have a serious impact on my ability to engage with and enjoy the game, then I may have highly negative reactions to the game for exactly that reason. Authors are of course welcome to write whatever they'd like, whether I think it's good or not; but, by entering it into IFComp, they are asking for judgment on it, and my judgment, partial and biased as it may be, is what these reviews include. All of these are honest reactions to the game as it was actually submitted to the Comp. If you, author, have questions or want me to elaborate on something I said, please let me know! Similarly, if I've said something that is factually incorrect, or that is profoundly off-base, I'd appreciate hearing about that, too.
That being said, the game needs to stand on its own. I'm talking about the game itself, as it was actually published; and that may have very little to do with the author's vision for what the game could be, or should have been, or with the author's view of her- or himself as a game author. None of that is relevant to the review; the review is about my own experience of the game. I do try to engage with each game on its own terms, and I try to be explicit about my own preferences. Some games are just not for me. I try to be clear about that, too. I'm happy to elaborate and discuss, but I'm not willing to be wheedled or cajoled.
In no particular order ...
rulesare really guidelines with nearly a half-century of intense critical thought behind them. Yes, they can be bent or broken, and excellent IF often does precisely this: but it also understands why the guidelines are there in the first place, and understands what effects breaking those rules has for the player.
really intendedto make the game more
challenging—which I rarely find to be the case.)
making the mistake of obviously not giving a shit.
That's asking a lot. It's also asking the player to do something that is totally unnecessary for players of games that were written with standard IF development tools that do not themselves create Windows executables, or that have well-supported, mostly bug-free player applications for non-Windows environments. Comp games distributed only as Windows executables are always low-priority for me, even if they otherwise meet my criteria.
All of the reviews below are spoilery. You may want to avoid reading them if you're still planning on playing the game. Or you may decide that you can appreciate a text even if you know some of its details ahead of time.
That's up to you.
Good energetic comic-book adventure writing with lots of zip and zowie. The requisite in-jokes as homages (69105; violence *is* the answer to this one!
) are there, and the early puzzles are fun. The transformation puzzle, for instance, was good (I admit I went to the walkthrough to cut through to the answer after a few attempts, though): there's some lessons learned here from last year's Owl Consults, and it's done well, I think. (Though the Ray of Night puzzle was fiddly and annoying, even if it essentially had an in-game walkthrough in the deluminator manual.)
There's a lot of the feeling of Leather Goddesses of Phobos in the writing here, I think; the game as a whole really does seem to channel Steve Meretzky's cocked-hat approach to SF-based IF and his sense of wry humor pretty well, especially at the beginning.
I guess that, all in all, I just want more game here: there are eight locations, and the right direction to move is always north. Several machines, some quite fun to interact with; but no meaningful NPC interaction. Lots of objects, but ... there's just something missing. Part of it is that the game is just too much on rails; the writing is good but there's no player freedom or character development. That's not all of it, but that's a lot of it. I want a larger world with more implementation done, not just a semi-interactive novella where I'm trying to figure out how to move north. There's more lessons that could have been learned here from Owl Consults in terms of scope and length and world construction, I think.
Lots of strengths overall; it just never quite comes together into a great game. I'd totally play another from this author, though.
the Magpieby J.J. Guest. Rating: /10. (Review based on initial contest release.)
This was a fun treasure hunt. The multiple levels of deception involved in pretending to be multiple people to various NPCs was also a fun mechanic. The multiple disguises were great, too, and most of the interlocking puzzles were wonderful (getting the cucumber and opening the safe were particularly well done). The map was elegantly designed and access control handled gracefully. In all of these ways, it feels a lot like The Wizard Sniffer last year, though with a smaller, more restricted field of action and with a larger verb set. But all in all, it's wonderful in some of the same ways.
And there was fantastic characterization in many of the NPCs. Especially excellent was the character development in Major Hilary, whose backstory is revealed gradually throughout the piece and the understanding of which is necessary to solve a major puzzle. Other NPCs are also developed very well, though without Hilary's character revelations; the backstory of Lord Hamcester is sketched in particularly good detail. The servants are hardly there at all, except for their roles in delivering items and blocking access; but then, they're playing out the stereotypical roles expected of the servants of an English country house, after all.
The writing is generally quite good—there's a lot of detail, and especially in the way that PC development occurs constantly through well-chosen POV details; pacing is also handled very well— but there are some errors here and there:
Blighter must have crawled in under the door,says the Major, prodding the draught excluder with the poker to make quite sure it is dead.tricky coves, boa constrictors.
This, so I am told, is the reason for his somewhat, erratic behaviour, sir.
My name is Hermes Perroquet.you reply.
The wording required to solve the treacle puzzle is pretty guess-the-verby. (Only with a preposition instead of a verb.) Worse, though: the exact verb SPIN is apparently required to open the safe in the wall. At least, I can't find another phrasing that works
Encountered a fatal error that forced the game to quit when I first tried to open the safe, near the end of the game. Restoring from a recent save made this a relatively painless problem, though, and it didn't recur on replay. This may be fixed in later releases, though I didn't check.
This was a lot of fun. I really liked it. Makes me want to play more IF by Guest.
I'm intrigued to see a game built using an unusual (and undocumented? and homebrew?) system using a non-IF language, but kind of horrified at its many immediate departures from standard IF conventions:
standard[crusty, old-school] IF conventions.)
--help switch, for instance). There is no SCRIPT command. There is also no SAVE (or UNDO). Common IF abbreviations (X for EXAMINE, for instance) are not supported. (Having to type GO EAST instead of E is seven times as many keystrokes for each player who plays the game; the only benefit there is that the authors save some coding keystrokes.)That does nothing.is singularly unhelpful, as it gives the player no clue why the interaction failed: trying to interact with an unimplemented object? Object isn't currently present? Typo? Action isn't relevant to the game's progress? Unknown verb? All provide the same failure message. But a failure message is an error message, both by definition (in general) and (specifically) because of parser IF's roots in command-line OS parsing, and an error message should indicate both what (specifically) went wrong and what the user can do about it. This message does neither.
Similarly, there are plenty of actual grammar errors:
But, the <ancient clock> is not ticking, and the hands have stopped.
A luxurious purple velvet blanket envelopes him.
You are in a harmonious room.(Probably doesn't mean what the author thinks it does.)
At the head of the room, sits a grand piano.
And the writing itself is dull and uninteresting, even if grammar errors are ignored.
Dunno, this seems more like a proof of concept than an actual game: all the designer really seems interested in doing is the minimal amount to implement a small virtual world. But the actual work of game polishing seems to have been left behind. There's a game, but not much of a story: the story development seems to have been left largely implicit. Character development is nil; there really is no pacing that I can see; the path forward is often poorly signposted; lots of stuff is barely implemented, and parts of objects are often just synonyms for the whole. I got stuck trying to fall asleep and gave up for precisely this reason: I made one pass back through the parts of the map I'd seen, trying to interact with everything, and got nowhere, so I gave up. I didn't want to restart and try again because I just didn't care enough. And with no walkthrough, and no substantial discussion on the Infiction.org forums, I didn't have a good way to look back and see what I'd missed, so I gave up.
But for me, even as someone currently cobbling together a long piece of IF in a homebrew system in Python, I just don't care about the programmer's proof of concept. I want a good, playable story, not something that's a pretext for writing blog posts on IF writing in Haskell. This isn't a good, playable story; it's just a bunch of objects and some sleeping people. It's another reminder that part of the reason people use IF-specific languages is because replicating all the stuff that they do automatically is a whole lot of work. But players don't care about the cleverness of underlying implementations; they care about the finished product. I don't want a proof of concept that ignores forty years of thinking about why the conventions are what they are; I want something that understands the conventions and engages with them thoughtfully.
Really clever small game with two parallel changes in viewpoint: the PC(s)', and the player's. The disorientation in changing viewpoints that I initially found objectionable (and thought to be clumsy) turned out to be motivated and to pay off in the end. The fact that the player has to do something difficult early in the game makes this one of those games that really exploits the moral possibilities of IF: it's not an in-game choice, exactly, since nothing else works; but it has heavy repercussions throughout the rest of the game, and making the player type CUT ROPE makes the player complicit with the PC's actions in much the same way as the player is responsible for killing the skink in Trinity. (I wish there had been more of this, actually.)
The progressive disorienting revelation in the latter part of the game is handled well and is difficult to map ... and yet, the new layout maps on to
the old layout perfectly neatly, and there's an in-game rationale for why this is. PC character development (for both PCs) is done so well that I didn't realize until the end of the game that there are no NPCs at all.
The fact that this is also a demo for the soon-to-be-documented Dialog
system is icing on the cake. I'm looking forward to hearing more about Dialog when the comp is over. (Edit: here.) Which isn't so far away now. And there are other technically impressive feats, such as a well-implemented rope.
I almost wish I weren't playing this as a comp entry: if I weren't trying to press on, I might spend more time playing with the world model. Maybe I'll come back when the comp is over. (Yeah, right. But a guy can dream, can't he?)
Another really excellent comp game this year.
Well, the doggerel blurb for the game doesn't inspire confidence, both because it's doggerel and because it clearly isn't formatted in the way the author intended it to be formatted: the poetic lines have been collapsed into a single paragraph without breaks, and there's a weird hyphen, presumably left over from a line break. Maybe those are signs of an author who just doesn't give a shit about writing. Maybe they're a clever attempt at misdirection. Maybe it's about time that I ran across a terrible entry, and Fate agrees. Guess we'll see.
At first glance: it's an adventure in positive psychology
, according to the opening text. Ugh. By Christ, let's not be honest or insightful; let's just disregard the facts and feel good about ourselves! And yes: the story blurb consisting of a poem collapsed into an undifferentiated paragraph is in fact directly copied from a very-early-in-the-game bit of verbiage, where the hyphen turns out not to be from a line break, but is apparently intended to force pronunciation to make it rhyme, which is part of what makes it doggerel in the first place. I wonder if the whole game is going to be one long series of awkward incidents awkwardly forced into a structure that doesn't fit them. We'll see.
On reflection, after I'd given up on solving the underclued puzzles and interacting with the underimplemented NPCs or even on completing the game, I think that the most notable thing about this game is yawning ironic gulf between what the game sets out to demonstrate and what it actually demonstrates. As an adventure in positive psychology
, according to the opening text, the game seems to conceptualize itself as explicitly proselytizing about the kind of feel-good new-agey mindfulness
horseshit, and being a demonstration of the benefits of grateful living
and positive reinforcement and what-have-you. The problem, of course, is that the game actually demonstrates something else, by virtue of the fact that it is a terribly implemented piece of interactive fiction: it demonstrates just how far positive psychology
won't take you. Because releasing a paean to positive psychology isn't enough to carry a good IFComp game, and this game is full of terrible writing (grammar errors, dull abstractions in place of vivid writing, repetitive sentence structure and diction), underclued puzzles that can only be solved by exhaustively trying everything possible, undeveloped NPCs, poorly thought-out descriptions—a whole bestiary of game design problems, in fact. But I kind of suspect that the author's emphasis on positivity
blinds her to the game's many faults, such as its hazy, happy-go-lucky obfuscation of the kind of privilege that the mindfulness
idiots pretend they don't have.
So for instance: yes, the story blurb on the IFComp website that consists of a poem collapsed into an undifferentiated paragraph is in fact directly copied from a poem that appears on a piece of writing very early in the game, where the hyphen turns out not to be from a line break, but is apparently intended to force a certain syllabification to make it fit both meter and rhyme, which is part of what makes it doggerel in the first place. It is in fact the player's first clue that the whole game is going to be one long series of awkward incidents awkwardly forced into a structure that doesn't fit them.
A lot of the game's issues seems to be a conceptualization problem: the game author has written about the development of (perhaps an earlier version of) the story, which she does not ever refer to as a story
(though she frequently uses the word game
); instead, she frequently refers to it as a product
. The players are often stakeholders
. This kind of jargony business lingo as a basic approach to the story wounds it, I think: it might be offered for free, but it's still on the model of a capitalist product, and has the kind of basic pandering approach to its users that the large umbrella term positive psychology
suggests it has. The game also has the same kinds of abstract-instead-of-concrete writing problems that are in the blog post. (One might note that the blog post is also full of the same kinds of basic grammar errors that the author hasn't bothered to clean up in the Comp-entry product.
) Too, the same kind of low-grade bullshitting approach to writing occurs in the blog post (Was I just a weak-willed researcher, unable to practice what I preach? It is possible, but based on this experience, I now think a more nuanced approach may be in order,
the author ponders, before changing the subject instead of embarking on a more nuanced approach or considering other possible non-bifurcated possibilities) as occurs in the design logic of the game (are you a joyful person, or do you need to be beaten over the head by the truth
of pop psychology for the privileged? the game itself seems to ask at every turn). I also note the frequent smugness of action failed
messages, which I doubt is unrelated:
> get flowerpot
It seems to be serving its intended purpose just where it is, thank you.
It's the thank you
that does most of the job of creating the PC voice here; but then, it's also the thank you
, which can really only be read ironically, that makes the PC's voice unbearably smug.
There's something about the parser's smugness that just begs for abuse:
Rocky Field
You are in a broad, rocky field. Boulders are scattered haphazardly all around.There is a large notice board clearly placed with more intention than the rocks. On the notice board is a pad of paper and a few notes.
Farther west, tall mountains loom over you, threatening to overwhelm the scene.>read board
A large public notice board stands in the middle of the wide field. You wonder why the builder decided to put it out here, far from any road or town. Clearly some people came here, because there are colorful notes stuck to the board, as well as a large pad of paper.Carved into the top of the board are the words:
Simply type "Today I am grateful for {your gratitude} " on the pad.
Peace and serenity are yours to be had.>read notes
You pick one of the notes to read: "Today I am grateful for new boots, shiny armor, next jousting competition".>g
You pick one of the notes to read: "Today I am grateful for my children, a morning commute free from trolls and dragons, sunny weather".>g
You pick one of the notes to read: "Today I am grateful for smiles from strangers, dragon gold, my job".>g
You pick one of the notes to read: "Today I am grateful for snuggling kittens, rollercoasters, chocolate".>g
You pick one of the notes to read: "Today I am grateful for compliments from birds, fresh fruit, hearing my favorite song".>write "Today I am grateful for games better than this one" on pad
That's not a verb I recognise.>type "Today I am grateful for games better than this one" on pad
That's not a verb I recognise.>read board
A large public notice board stands in the middle of the wide field. You wonder why the builder decided to put it out here, far from any road or town. Clearly some people came here, because there are colorful notes stuck to the board, as well as a large pad of paper.Carved into the top of the board are the words:
Simply type "Today I am grateful for {your gratitude} " on the pad.
Peace and serenity are yours to be had.>today I am grateful for games better than this one
You write "games better than this one" on the pad of paper.
Take a moment and look at the words that you wrote. Let the memory of games better than this one soak in.
When you write your gratitude note, a tiny folded paper bird flutters down from above you and lands noiselessly in your hand.
The field looks a little greener.
The colorful gratitude notes posted on the board shine and twinkle.>today I am grateful for non-smug IF authors
You write "non-smug IF authors" on the pad of paper.
Take a moment and look at the words that you wrote. Let the memory of non-smug IF authors soak in.
When you add your gratitude note, you notice other notes pinned on the board, written by people or animals before you. It almost seems like there are more than before. The colorful notes add a trendy, party atmosphere to the sign.>today I am grateful for people who fucking give a shit about game design
You write "people who fucking give a shit about game design" on the pad of paper.
Take a moment and look at the words that you wrote. Let the memory of people who fucking give a shit about game design soak in.
When you add your gratitude note, you notice other notes pinned on the board, written by people or animals before you. It almost seems like there are more than before. The colorful notes add a trendy, party atmosphere to the sign.>read notes
You pick one of the notes to read: "Today I am grateful for a warm cup of tea, house elves, catching up with an old friend".>today I am grateful for people who study genre tropes before producing works in that genre
You write "people who study genre tropes before producing works in that genre" on the pad of paper.
Take a moment and look at the words that you wrote. Let the memory of people who study genre tropes before producing works in that genre soak in.
When you add your gratitude note, you notice other notes pinned on the board, written by people or animals before you. It almost seems like there are more than before. The colorful notes add a trendy, party atmosphere to the sign.>i
You are carrying:
a round tin
origami bird and flute>x bird
An expertly folded paper bird, the GIFT of GRATITUDE. The colors seem to change slightly in the Eunice light, but you think its blue. You remember your Gratitude List:games better than this one
non-smug IF authors
people who fucking give a shit about game design
people who study genre tropes before producing works in that genre
There is also quite a slew of my first game
problems, many of which stand in stark contrast to the fact that the author has written a UX-focused article on the design of this game. The game itself is dissonant with the article about it precisely because the game demonstrates such a poor understanding of how the user experiences it: basic necessary information, like where are the exits from this location?, is often not signaled at all in the text itself, so the only possible way to move around is just to try all the directions from certain locations. This is painful in places, and it is a design fault; more, it is a fault that occurs because the author is not really interested in the tropes of the IF genre, and does not seem to understand them, nor even to know that she is ignorant of them. She's not interested in IF; she's interested in using IF as a vehicle to prove a series of points, some of which are about positive psychology, and some of which are about UX design. But UX design is (partly) about understanding existing user knowledge and how users will leverage that knowledge to interact with a piece of software, and Ryaboy doesn't demonstrate that she's thought this through at all in the context of a writing genre that has spent forty years thinking explicitly and writing in great detail about what makes for a good user experience of its works.
Other basic design faults:
what do I need to do to be able to get this object?sub-puzzles.
What do I do next?is an even bigger problem here than with many other my-first-comp-entry games. Puzzles are signposted poorly or not at all. I wound up wandering around trying various verbs on various objects until I was so bored I gave up.
Another didn't think through the implementation details
problem:
You sink a little lower into the bog, feeling the cold water on your skin. What can you do, stuck here without Hope?
> swim
What do you want to swim in?
If I'm sinking in quicksand and try to swim, what the fuck do you think I want to swim in? This is especially egregious because the nearby sign hints that swimming is something that the game author has thought about, and it is likely to be seen as a suggestion by a big chunk of players.
All of these problems reflect poorly on the article about the game, making it bullshit in Harry Frankfurt's specific sense of the term: it pretends to offer knowledge but is really just misdirection. The knowledge
that it pretends to offer is not founded in existing knowledge about the subject that it is supposed to illuminate. Indeed, it is not really knowledge at all; it is a series of personal narrative anecdotes and special pleading and grammar trouble. This is a basic problem with positivity: positivity becomes, for its practitioners, a substitute for judgment and reflection and introspection and understanding. That is, the game itself is a sort of demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's a shitty game, and it's a shitty game because it sets out to prove a bullshit point. And belief in that point is apparently what prevents the author from seeing that the game is shitty.
And, again, this is one of those things that the blog entry itself doesn't seem to realize it's giving away. Ryaboy writes about what she sees as the most interesting question
: did the game help people feel a little better?
Is this really the most interesting question that can be asked about a work of fiction? (You will note that this is a much less ambitious goal that David Foster Wallace's dictum that good fiction should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, and appropriately so: the apparent goal in this game is to comfort the people who have enough privilege to be excited about positive psychology
.) Is that what fiction is for, to help people feel a little better
? If it is, is this game really the best way to achieve that end?
I guess it is, if you're into mindfulness and all that other related crap that the positivity crowd loves: wish-fulfillment fantasies in which upper-middle-class privilege is already extended to everyone, which ameliorates their existential anguish because their privilege, no longer being privilege, is no longer a burden to them. If the kind of game you write sets up a fictitious world in which it's plausible to be grateful to the universe for an apple while silently passing by the alienated labor that actually brings actual apples to actual people gushing over the game, you know. If you're going to write a game in which you incorporate a line of Emily Dickinson and attribute it to a poem
without saying whose poem it is.
Writing problems:
The yourself receives your thanks like sunlight, in this gloomy land.)
the yourselfwind up being relatively common.
Plainfield.(One location description even says something very much like
there is nothing special about this location.Then why include it?)
The ground changes elevation drastically here, making your hike considerable harder.(Adjective, adverb, who gives a shit? Proofreading is such a pain.)
Should you take up this quest, you many want to know more about: [...]
Simply type “Today I am grateful for {your gratitude} “ on the pad.(Aside from not giving a shit about proofreading for spacing, typing is what the player is doing, not what the PC is doing. But
the padis an in-game object. The PC, out there at the edge of a forest and definitely sans laptop or phone or keyboard or typewriter, is definitely not typing on the pad of paper, though.)
So I don't know. It's a poorly implemented game that's smug about its ideas, partly because it mistakes shallow for deep. The writing is awkward. There's no attention to genre tropes or other aspects of the actual user experience, even though the game author has written a blog entry on how the game has helped her to understand UX design. It yells about gratitude without being grateful enough to its various sources to credit them by name. It preaches hoarsely at the user without having learned the lessons that it's preaching, and brags elsewhere about the end product because the author can't see its faults.
And it lectures the user at the very beginning by claiming that You'll get as much out as the efforts you made.
This is almost as pointedly ironic as the central irony of the dissonance between what the game sets out to demonstrate and what it actually demonstrates: you'll get as much out as the efforts you made
sounds good, but it's not true, because the universe
doesn't reward effort
in the straightforward way that the ostensible poem claims. Learning Inform is a huge effort, but it's not enough to make a good game. In real life, what you get out of something is a function of more than how many total hours of effort are put in. This game is also an illustration of that gap. I just wish I hadn't stayed up 'til four in the morning poking at that unintended illustration.
Edit, 2019-02-20: Aaron Reed has it right: Most of all, never assume a message is the result of the player doing something stupid or wrong: it's almost always the reverse, and any messages that are smug or chiding will be infuriating.
(That's Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7, ch. 10, p. 326 in my edition, just before Exercise 10.7.)
mathbrush). Rating: /10.
Authorized sequel to The Owl Consults? I said last year that I'd gladly play another game based on the idea, and I'm pleased to have an opportunity to do so. Superhero fatigue or no superhero fatigue, yes please! I'm looking forward to this one.
This was really well done, all in all. The superhero mechanics were incredibly varied, and were also basically quite well implemented, a few small non-play-affecting textual bugs notwithstanding. The in-game hint systems are well developed; they're so integral to play that they can hardly be called hint systems at all, but rather sorts of variations on LOOK that provide necessary parts of the story in addition to nudging (or sometimes shoving) the player in the right direction. None of the puzzles are exactly difficult, especially with the in-game hint systems, but they're all satisfying to solve.
As with last year's Owl Consults, what I wanted here was more: more superpowers, more superheroes, more supervillains, more map to explore, more development for the PC. (Also, more plot and more puzzles.) In fact, what I would really have liked would have been to climb back up to the Mephistopheles as it explodes and explore that with the new superpowers. And I wanted to meet The Owl, you know. That would have been fun.
But all in all, this was wonderful, and a fun hour of play. My only real complaint is that it turned out to be such a small game, because it seems like there's plenty more possible exploration here.
There's a lot to like here. The writing is rather gripping and tells a story that understands how to get a lot out of a comparatively limited (narrative; also geographical) scope, which the game itself understands and manages well. Implementation is solid in most ways, despite some minor problems here and there. The puzzles, such as they are, are small and well-clued, and there's no real problem getting through the game.
Some small problems:
You know her from the lectures, but the two of you have never actually spoken beforein the second flashback, even after you've talked to Sarah, that it gave in the first.
Out-think your opponents, and you will / out-fight them automatically) is split between two screens in a scene change.
I guess one of the things I want here is for this to be less on rails: of course part of the point of the story is that those in the near-future military have only limited practical choice in their actions; at the same time, the story itself contains many moments in which the PC takes actions that have an impact. In point of fact, the end choice that the PC makes could have been made at other points in the story: the attempted assassin could have been someone that the PC talks to instead of arresting, and that could have precipitated the later decision, for instance. Because the game is so wrapped up in its final choice, it seems to me that that should have been a choice that was more fully developed throughout the game.
In fact, story-wise, I think that there are a lot of missed opportunities here. One of the possibilities of fiction is the opening up of an understanding of other viewpoints, and that just doesn't really happen muchhere. There's the adolescent Matrix-style fantasy—once I open my eyes I am free—that believes in individual enlightenment that comes without dialogue or education or much interaction of any kind, but merely occurs as an act of grace, an epiphany, and that is the first step onto the path that inevitably rights the wrongs of the world. It's kind of disappointing to see yet another story where the very idea of ethical discussion and reflection is totally absent and the gap is filled by vague feelings of injustice on behalf of a personal friend. Similarly, the by golly, Pegasus isn't always a hundred percent morally in the right!
moment doesn't seem to extend to an appreciation of the moral wrongs committed by the organization against its mission targets, but is rather only a sense of outrage that the agents of oppression are themselves oppressed. The glaring opportunity to expand on the moral lesson is missed.
A minor quibble: with a story that starts at the beginning of the end, then flashes back and winds up at the same beginning-of-the-end point at the actual end of the story, I would expect that the decision made (GIVE REDLINE TO SARAH) would have to be repeated at the end. No, though: the action you have to take to start the first flashback is not necessarily the action you take at the end. This feels weirdly incongruous to me.
Too, I want there to be more real choices throughout—this is related to but not the same as some of the other things I've been discussing. There's no real way to influence the plot here, except for one choice at the very end that determines who escapes. This is a good start, but not enough. I want more.
But there is in fact a lot to like here.
First impression: the writing on the opening screen is clumsy. Sentence structures are repetitive, and it doesn't feel like it can quite decide whether it's a spoken or written text. And while I'm no expert on Scottish diction, whereas the author, if I understand correctly, is a Scot, it's often the case that preposition usage feels hinky and that more attention to phrasing would pay off. This continues throughout the game, where the writing is enthusiastic but often similarly clunky. Too, the detective game itself is both insufficiently directed (wander around and ask everyone about everything
being the major component of the game's action) and very much a kind of death-march: there is apparently a time limit of 120 minutes to do so once you leave your father's study, though this is not clued in advance and doesn't really give you enough time to explore, anyway. Once this time limit is reached, the end-game occurs, and a bandit demands that you make your deductive accusation to save your father's life. Whether the player guesses correctly or not actually changes very little of the game's ending text. Too, if you get it wrong, the bandit then tells you the right answer, which kind of spoils replay value.
But all the pieces of a good game are there, and in many ways it's executed very competently: a nicely designed map, well-described objects and characters, everything implemented that you would expect to be implemented (although some more of the scenery could be interactable). The people behave consistently and are characterized effectively, and even without having explored exhaustively, it's not hard to guess who the murderer is.
All in all, though, some good ideas, and basically solidly implemented. I think there needs to be a more-developed structure on top of the ideas and that a lot of polishing work needs to be done, though.
Well, it certainly is an enthusiastic first game. Ambitious, too: I'm relatively certain that 117 rooms is the biggest map I've seen in a Comp entry.
It shares some my first game
problems with Eunice, but there are big differences here: the directions aren't adequately signaled in text
problem is ameliorated by having exits listed in the status bar (and there are fewer of these problems in the first place). The writing needs polishing
problem is ameliorated by the writing not constantly lecturing me. And maybe most substantially, all of the game's problems are ameliorated by the fact that it's so enthusiastic about IF itself, and the possibilities that the genre opens up. That counts for a great deal: the game loves the possibilities in the genre for their own sake, not because it's grabbing something it doesn't understand in order to lecture the player about a set of bullshit ideas.
That being said, it could stand to learn a fair amount from more contemporary IF: this shows a lot of Infocom's influence, and not always in the best ways possible. There's a lot of design and implementation hiccups, too: things that don't work well except under the specific circumstances that occurred in development. (Try to get Walter to take the bottle after leaving the museum vestibule. Or try to see the blue shirt through the binoculars if you're not following the walkthrough exactly.) The overall geography of the map could use some more attention, too: there are pathways that are awkward in some places, and the scale is occasionally muddy. I'm never going to love the treasure-hunt genre, and there are puzzles that are surely more or less totally insoluble without following the walkthrough—and that's not the same problem as needing to follow the walkthrough to make the puzzles available in the first place. The rescue your girlfriend
plot is more than a little tired at this point, too.
But its basic exuberance carries it forward, even if there needs to be a weird hybrid of exploration and careful following of directions to get through the game and see the major bits of content. (I note that the walkthrough misses ten of the possible points, though.) I'd love to see more from this author ... if the author gets more beta testing and develops in directions taken by more contemporary IF, anyway. And if the writing gets more attention.
Really fun spellcasting game where the magic system is worked out very well. (I'm going to go back and play with it later, when the comp is over. I want to try some of those unnecessary potions, for one thing.) The you're currently prepping for your final exams
gambit does an effective job of giving the player a reason to find the PC's learning experience plausible, and the set of textbooks is an amazingly well implemented resource. The individual tasks are fun and the game effectively breaks their execution down into manageable subcomponents for the player.
Too, the interaction with basic tropes of IF (and, more broadly, of fiction) is quite well-managed: characterization is done very well, for instance. The PC and Arthur both are given a decently developed backstory and motivations, and their responses to situations are consistent with all the factors in play. There are no real implementation problems, though the puzzle solutions are kind of fiddly at times. This is basically an epistemological problem: the game enforces the requirement that you must have learned
everything required for a spell. But this becomes super-awkward when the player knows a fact that the PC hasn't encountered, such as after restoring or undoing or on subsequent playthroughs. Having to just re-read everything to make sure the PC knows what the player knows is a suboptimal solution, I think.
But I also think that the sheer depth of the implementation and the amount of thought and effort put into executing it are more than a little amazing, especially for an author's first game.
As with other games I've ranked highly in this Comp, what I want from this game is more: interaction with more NPCs, more places to use each spell, more world to move about it. One of the more obvious ways to achieve this would be to actually have the coming-of-age exam as the last part of the game, which I think would be a lot of fun; but the game as it is is really impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing more from this author.
Another my first IF
entry ... or, at least, a translation of my first IF into another authoring language
entry. (This was originally written with The Quill? Quite an ambitious project for the system, assuming that the translation is at all a reasonably straight-across adaptation.)
So this is old, old-school IF, adapted from the first wave of hobbyist interactive fiction—if the author is telling the truth about date of composition, the first version of this was written while Infocom was still in business! Not unexpectedly, then, it has many of the shortcomings of IF (and, in particular, of hobbyist IF) that I'd expect from such a genesis. There is virtually no characterization of the PC; he is (in an apparent inside joke, also characteristic of IF-for-my-friends of the period) called the Phil
throughout (though perhaps this is a slang contraction of the philosopher
?), and has some prominent characteristics (he's chubby, and he has watery eyes: another inside joke?) but no backstory or obvious motivation. Death
(well ... awakening from your dream) happens suddenly, often without warning, and it's possible to be locked out of winning without knowing that this is the case; in fact, I suspect I'm stuck on my current playthrough, as I write this up at the end of the Comp. And, perhaps most notably, the puzzles are more or less entirely un-clued and require either a walkthrough or exhaustively trying everything that can be done. (Or, presumably, acquaintance with the author and his friends: maybe that explains why a photo of the Phil's skinny brother would frighten off a troll. Or perhaps it's just a riff on the Billy Goats Gruff
, though if so, it's not a great one.) So there were plenty of moments wandering around saying things like I wonder what happens if I ask all of the far-flung characters about this thing that just occurred to me
or let me try this spell I just found on all seventy-odd of the locations I've reached so far
, followed by long periods of testing out these ideas. (After all, it's old-school parser IF.) Similarly, NPCs are thinly implemented and have very limited conversation topics, often just related to puzzle-solving. For example:
>x parson
A plainly dressed man, of benign and scholarly appearance, and neither old nor young.Predictably, the Phil's eyes water.
>ask parson about church
"You are welcome here," says the Parson.>ask parson about himself
"I am the incumbent of this place," replies the Parson.>ask parson about rope
The Parson smiles and makes no reply. It seems he has nothing to say on that subject.>ask parson about grave
"The Sexton dug the grave," says the Parson, "but I know not for whom." He looks concerned.>ask parson about sexton
"The Sexton? I have not seen him for some while," says the Parson, "and his room is dark and empty. If you see him, I pray you ask him to speak with me.">ask parson about book
"I thank you for the loan of your very useful book," says the Parson. "If you require it again, you have only to ask.">ask parson about sir lawrence
The matter is this," says the Parson, "Last month Sir Lawrence went to visit his brother, in that place up in Staffordshire where men still worship the... old gods - you understand," he hesitates long before continuing, and his voice drops almost to a whisper, "Abbots Bromley. When he returned from that place, his manner was rough and outlandish. He spoke constantly of some "ritual". Now he is closeted away in his house, and seems not to come forth - but men have disappeared and I hear reports of a fearful beast roaming in the woods. Please - go to Sir Lawrence and set matters to rights."The Phil nods reassuringly, whilst wondering how this got to be his job.
>i
The Phil is carrying:
a besom
a chain
a hat (being worn)
a rusty ring (to which are attached a red ribbon and a yellow ribbon)
a purse
five pennies>ask parson for book
"Of course," replies the Parson. "Thank you again for the use of it." The Parson places a book on the lectern.>get book
Taken.>ask parson about god
The Parson smiles and makes no reply. It seems he has nothing to say on that subject.>ask parson about god
The Parson smiles and makes no reply. It seems he has nothing to say on that subject.>ask parson about pagans
The Parson smiles and makes no reply. It seems he has nothing to say on that subject.>ask parson about paganism
The Parson smiles and makes no reply. It seems he has nothing to say on that subject.>ask parson about cat
"The Shepherd, I believe, has a cat," says the Parson. "A singular animal.">ask parson about shepherd
The Parson smiles and makes no reply. It seems he has nothing to say on that subject.
And there are other problems deriving from it being old, old-school IF. Most notably, the player inventory limit is really annoying and seems to serve no real purpose: it doesn't drive puzzles, as far as I can see; it just makes it take a lot longer to try everything on every puzzle, because you have to trek back and forth to wherever all of your stuff is. Too, not mentioning exits in room descriptions, and forcing the player to try every exit in every room, is a violation of the basic courtesy that designers should really extend to players these days. (Why yes! I would like to try all twelve directions in every single one of the seventy-plus rooms!
said no one ever.) We're past the point these days where we think that mere brute persistence is a virtue for which designers should reward players, right?
But there's something about this game that kept me coming back over the last few days, despite its flaws. The writing is often quite good, if you can ignore the fact that you're probably never going to get the inside jokes, and the atmosphere is consistent throughout: dreamy and reflective, like the paradigmatic scholar the character plays. I tend to dislike the but it was all a dream!
trope, but this game handles it well, both integrating the trope deeply into the game's structural and thematic elements and hinting strongly that it's all a dream (and outright saying so, in the paratextual material). The puzzles, though hard and sometimes arbitrary, are also quite pleasing and thoughtful sometimes, and the lightning-stroke epiphanic solution moment is often quite funny. I had intended to play through this quickly and then move on to another game or two in the closing days of the Comp, but found myself drawn back to this over and over when I sat down, intending to interact with another entry: I'd think but maybe I'll see if I can draw the elves out of the forest
or If I time it right, I can get the cat to eat Tim the Tiler instead of me
, and I'd be off experimenting with it.
So I don't know. There's an awful lot to like here, and the game pays off the initial benefit-of-the-doubt gift that you have to make to get anything out of it with clever puzzles and a charged atmosphere and above-decent writing. I gave it a seven after my first two hours interacting with it, and I kept my initial rating as I continued to play, in accordance with IFComp rules; but I'd give it an eight or nine further into the game, depending on how it ends up. I'm currently stuck, but offline flashes of inspiration have gotten me past that with this game before, and maybe that's one of the better compliments I can pay this game: it sticks in my consciousness enough that I have low-grade puzzle epiphanies when I'm not thinking directly about it. That's a lot.
Divided into categories that give a rationale for each of those decisions.
… because I ran out of time, even though they otherwise met my criteria:
More often than not, this means one or more of the following things: there's no (good, easily available) Linux interpreter for the system that the work of IF was developed for, the Windows 'terp doesn't play well under Wine, and/or the 'terp is not free or otherwise comes with weird and unacceptable requirements.
LiszaWasiluk.
Many games meeting this criteria have already been eliminated by being not parser-based.