Roody Yogurt Reviews Interactive Fiction

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Whoa, this is dynamite. Can I put it on the front page so it will show up via Planet IF?

[Roody_Yogurt]

Sure, go ahead. It didn't even occur to me to put it there.

[pinback]

That's what she said.

[Flack]

I recently tried playing a couple of old school text adventures on the C64. Both were non-memorable, and the parser was so frustrating that I now remember why I quit playing text adventures back in the day. Sure, Infocom's games were slick, but there were so many horrible ones that made the signal to noise ratio a million to one. I should make transcripts of some of them and post those.

[Roody_Yogurt]

<b>Endless, Nameless</b> by NamelessAdventurer (Adam Cadre)

This write-up doesn’t aim to be a proper review. The first bit is just some hints for people who have already begun the game but are a bit stuck. The second has some thoughts about the game but doesn’t try to cover it exhaustively. I’d only recommend the second block to someone who has played most- if not all- of the game.

<b>Gentle hints</b>
Interestingly, early on, I determined that some of the hints at the “vacation house” were not relevant, and figuring out the replacement solution was one of my earlier (but most satisfying) accomplishments of the game. On the flipside, though, I was too quick to write off many of the other hints (and I didn’t happen upon the correct path on my own), so I’d recommend to anyone who’s stuck to pay closer attention to the hints than I did.

<b>Overall thoughts</b>
I think this was a very enjoyable game. It has some nicely distracting gameplay, sure, but I really like ideas it suggests. I love how the other player avatars at the vacation house are hipsters- that as time marches on, a game genre’s earnest player archetype is inevitably replaced by ones jaded by age and experience. In the vacation house, they drink White Russians, the drink indelibly associated with The Big Lebowski, which, given its longevity, is as good to blame for the modern hipster as anything else. Of course, at the house, the White Russian drink is a Rocky IV joke, but that works with the analogy, too, as Rocky IV is the kind of flawed but earnest 80s movie that has aged about as well as a BBS door game, so it makes sense that they’d be there, making fun of that, too.

The other suggested theme that I enjoyed was the importance of creativity. The hipster’s worst offense is that it is a passive, ineffectual force. Especially as represented by Lebowski enthusiasts, it is easy to see how creation gets replaced by sheer consumption (and how the in-game virtual world feels somewhat forgotten and in disrepair). Worse yet, the game suggests creative stagnation can lead to one becoming a community’s worst member, a troll. I enjoyed the sense of loss that these ideas produced.

I’m not the most critical of readers, so I feel like I misinterpret almost all games that do clever literary things. I think <b>E,N</b> had a lot of ideas that I just didn’t fully grasp. I think there were some points made about the imperfections of the medium (and in that regard, the pointlessness of it), and that stuff is okay but eh. The defeatist attitude doesn’t sit well with my worldview.

Mainly, I felt the game was better when it <i>showed</i> these things, but at some points, I felt like I was being <i>told</i> the way things are (in terms of players, creators, and trolls) and my gut instinct is be contrary. Adam’s a genius (compared to me, anyhow), but I’ve had this kind of problem with his games in the past. His game, <b>Shrapnel</b>, just out and asks the player, hey, want me to explain everything to you? I’m not sure if I’m the kind of person who’d ever have the will to say “no” and walk away, so of course, I looked at the explanation first time on my first playthrough. While some elements of the full explanation were cool, it still felt kind of disappointing just the same. The chasm between the explanation and the player’s playing experience was just too great.

Of course, <b>E,N</b> doesn’t explain everything the same way, but just the same, without being able to remember particular lines that irked me, I would’ve liked for the curtain to be held back a bit more. Who knows? Maybe it’s just the way that doom and gloom explanations are just so <i>calculated</i> (you: “<something> is so terrible!” game (all-robot-like): “Things are terrible because this is the logical conclusion of <other>.”). I dunno. I’m trying to put a finger on something which I figure that comes down to personal taste, so who knows.

Those thing I liked, though, I liked a lot, and in that regard, I think <b>E,N</b> is a nice love letter to creativity and youthful spirit. I’m sure some of these notions will be dispelled as more explanations make their way into the world, but I’m sure that even at the end of them, <b>E,N</b> will still be a game worth playing.

[Roody_Yogurt]

I recently tried playing a couple of old school text adventures on the C64. Both were non-memorable, and the parser was so frustrating that I now remember why I quit playing text adventures back in the day. Sure, Infocom's games were slick, but there were so many horrible ones that made the signal to noise ratio a million to one. I should make transcripts of some of them and post those.

This post did actually make me break out the C64 emulator and try out some of the games on the IF Archive. I mean, I've tried them before, but there's always the nagging feeling that I may have let a good one slip through my fingers. Anyhow, I wasn't able to play many games before I had to give up since, yeah, they were pretty bad.

I think my favorite text games on the C64 back in the day were Trip To Atlantis (which is available on the IF Achive as a BASIC game) and Mission: Asteroid, mainly since they were two of of the few I ever beat. Neither are especially good from a puzzle or story angle, though.

[Flack]

Text adventures on the C64 were ev-ery-where. I just picked up a disk the other day (one of those magazine-style disks) and there were two on there that I couldn't find in Google. And yeah, they were horrible, both in writing and in coding.

I still haven't figured out a good way to transcribe them other than manually. Maybe I'll end up doing that.

[Lysander]

Haha. Hiya everyone!

Rooty, if you would review my intro of Obituary sometime, that would be very nice of you. I am kind of irritated that that thing will probably never get finished but then again I could always go learn I7 myself if I cared enough, so, obviously I don't. In any case...

Considering that we don't have the ability to program through voice commands,

The hell is this we shit? Look pal, until your corpulence reaches the point where the only thing you can see is your own swelling, mammoth teets, then don't go putting yourself in a group with me. Kthx.

e.g., to write programs if you're not sighted, it is very hard without expensive software (or having a sighted assistant) to work on a program to run on a machine if you actually are blind.

Two things.

1:

http://www.nvda-project.org/

2: Shut it.

Seriously? Don't, like, tell me what I can't do, okay? Because you know nothing about this.

Or the guy would have to find someone who is blind and run the game through him and get his comments.

Sure, but that'd never happen. Blind people are a skiddish lot, always scurrying from shadow to shadow for fear of being squashed by Big Sighted. Capturing one in the wild may be difficult; bring tranqualizers, as their bite will infect you with blind. It is known.

I mean, there are a lot of things I know only as a result of being in a wheelchair that I otherwise wouldn't realize. There are also things I know as a powered wheelchair user that I did not know during the two years I was using a manual wheelchair

That's great, Paul, and exactly how much of that time did you spend being blind? You're right, up there--you don't know what it's like until you are actually in that situation. That seemed to me to be the gist of this paragraph, right? Which is fine, apart from it completely invalidating the entire rest of the goddamn post. What is, like, wrong with you?

Again, considering that the amount of money available for developing a text adventure is essentially zero, someone is only going to do this because of their love of the genre. I mean, at least writing fiction has lots of paying outlets, writing interactive fiction has almost no paying outlets except perhaps for games written for cell phones and tablet computers, by purchasers interested in a text-type adventure, a very small market. Regular games have much larger markets and there is a much bigger range of targets for those apps.

Which is why there are so many mainstream games that have the thoughts of the blind in m--hahaa, just kidding. There are actually 0 mainstream games that have any interest in courting the blind community. The lazy, fat and immobilized market, on the other hand, seems to be the only demographic mainstream game developers appear to care about--lucky break! Blind people play text games because blind people can play text games. This makes them a larger percentage than normal. I don't know why you seem to think that blind people can't also love the genre, but, uh, you're wrong. About this, and so many other things.

So again, given this, to be able to actually develop in such a manner that the way the game operates shows descriptions in a way that a blind person would, would require that the author find a blind person and ask them if the descriptions were good or if they would use different descriptions, presuming the person was able to do so.

Again! Yeah, it's true, blind people are very difficult communicators in person. I was born blind, understand, so I never saw how to make the mouth sounds that form human speech. I had to learn to speak in mime, which is fuckin' retarded, because I can't even see my own motions. So for all I know i'm giving everyone the jerk-off gesture when I'm just trying to say hi. What can I say, inner city school disctrict sucked.

And unless they are going to pony up money out of their own pocket to do so, they'd have to get this blind person to do so for free, too.

Are you... suggesting blind slave labor? You are a truly horrible person who should have died of cyphalus . Good DAY, sir!

[Tdarcos]

The hell is this we shit? Look pal, until your corpulence reaches the point where the only thing you can see is your own swelling, mammoth teets, then don't go putting yourself in a group with me. Kthx.

Your inability to engage in a rational discussion without resorting to personal attacks shows that your intellectual capacity, and the validity of your opinions, is zero.

I did not make any statements criticizing other people or insulting them. Your inability to do the same means that I won't even bother trying to respond to your incompetence.

I made statements about something, and if you disagreed, the answer would have been to say where you thought I was wrong, not to try to claim my opinions are wrong because I'm overweight.

Are you... suggesting blind slave labor?

I never said any such thing and you know it. I find your vapid and sophomoric commentary to be at a minimum ridiculous and more likely, intentionally disingenuous, bordering on libel.

You are a truly horrible person who should have died of cyphalus . Good DAY, sir!

Look who's talking. I have done nothing but state my opinions, you on the other hand have thrown ad-hominem attacks at me, and wished me dead of a horrible and sickening disease, while I have done nothing to you. If my comments make me a horrible person then your comments make you a creature I must exclude from the class of entities known as human beings, and as that creature you are at least a thousand times worse.

And yet, another example of your incompetence is shown by your misspelling of what I believe you meant, the word 'syphilis', a type of venereal disease.

I think I was wrong; I make jokes about the 'cretinous reprobates' on Caltrops. Looks like at least one has infested his inability to think upon this community.

I don't bother with and stay away from incompetents; I have enough brain damage to deal with from environmental causes; I don't need to acquire more by responding to them.

[Lysander]

Your inability to engage in a rational discussion without resorting to personal attacks shows that your intellectual capacity, and the validity of your opinions, is zero.

Okay, if you have a problem with personal attacks, then you really should leave this board because that is kind of all we do around here. But more to the point, the -point- goddamnit, which you seem to have missed despite me saying it 6 ways, is this: with that "we," you claimed yourself to be suffering from afflictions you do not in fact suffer. As one who does, I find that offensive. And DEMAND an apology!

I did not make any statements criticizing other people or insulting them.

No, you just insinuated that blind people: can't use computers without someone helping them, can't type at all, are unaproachable, unable to communicate, penny pinch worse than the jews, and oh, yeah--can't love art. But that's not insulting *people*, because--

your comments make you a creature I must exclude from the class of entities known as human beings, and as that creature you are at least a thousand times worse.

--We're actually inhuman. Nice, guy. Really nice.

if you disagreed, the answer would have been to say where you thought I was wrong, not to try to claim my opinions are wrong because I'm overweight.

I did say where your opinions were wrong, you just chose not to quote them in the message responding to me to say you're not responding to me. What I didn't say, is "you are wrong because you are fat." What I actually said was more along the lines of, "you are fat, not blind, and also wrong about blind people. So stop pretending otherwise."

I never said any such thing and you know it. I find your vapid and sophomoric commentary to be at a minimum ridiculous and more likely, intentionally disingenuous, bordering on libel.

Wow, you threaten me with lible the very next sentence after making up shit I said, that's fantastic. I'd give you a golden statue of internet douchebaggery, but fear you'd think it was delicious chocolate and hurt yourself.

I have done nothing but state my opinions

You said that blind people can't code without expensive software. That is not an opinion, you were stating a fact. And it's false. Hense, I corrected you. You're welcome.

And yet, another example of your incompetence is shown by your misspelling of what I believe you meant, the word 'syphilis',

Did... you seriously just... on purpose go "hurr durr that blind guy can't see the words, he is so stupid! Durr durr hurr."? You know what else is hilarious? You, trying to escape an earthquake.

I don't bother with and stay away from incompetents; I have enough brain damage to deal with from environmental causes; I don't need to acquire more by responding to them.

Well you just did. Neaner neaner!

[bruce]

Wow, you threaten me with lible the very next sentence after making up shit I said, that's fantastic. I'd give you a golden statue of internet douchebaggery, but fear you'd think it was delicious chocolate and hurt yourself.

I've missed you, Lysander.

Bruce

[RetroRomper]

Okay, if you have a problem with personal attacks, then you really should leave this board because that is kind of all we do around here.

Isn't the unspoken pact we have to leave Tdarcos alone, based on the fact his arguments are too easy to invalidate and numerous enough that to refute him, is a complete waste of our time?

[Lysander]

Probably, but I don't recall signing anything. Unless someone slipped me something and signed for me while I was asleep, and that'll never stand up in court.

Besides, hey--content!

[Flack]

Text adventures on the C64 were ev-ery-where. I just picked up a disk the other day (one of those magazine-style disks) and there were two on there that I couldn't find in Google. And yeah, they were horrible, both in writing and in coding.

I still haven't figured out a good way to transcribe them other than manually. Maybe I'll end up doing that.

I played "African Adventure" earlier this evening. The version I played shows (c) 1985, although Abandonia has a version for the PC that was released in 1997. That version is attributed to Tony Baechler, who apparently is still active in IF circles. I believe this is Tony's blog:

http://www.inthecompanyofgrues.com

I would be curious to see how far any of you guys can get in this game without peeking at the walkthru. I read it and can't believe that anyone could possibly ever get even halfway through this game.

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/842/A ... nture.html

[Roody_Yogurt]

Huh, I have both read that blog and had African Adventure for my C64. That'd be crazy if it is the same guy.

Anyhow, without looking at the walkthrough, I remember using some some smelly balm or something to get wood without being bitten by a poisonous spider, giving some trinkets to some natives (the game is kind of racist, yeah), killing the snake in the tree, and jumping over some quicksand. I remember at one point, you "escape" the game and enter a computer world. I never got more than, say, half way through the game, though.

The behind-the-curtain computer room really broke my young mind, though, as it just caught me so off-guard that this seemingly serious game (I thought the beginning quote about Dr. Livingston had such gravitas) actually didn't take itself seriously at all.

Ok, think I'll read that walkthrough now.

[Roody_Yogurt]

Oh, you were saying that dude is only responsible for the PC port. Gotcha.

[Lysander]

These posts are making me want to get out the old, unfair IF that nobody remembers like The House At The Edge Of Time or a Conrad Button game and see how long it takes me to throw the piece of shit out the window.

[Flack]

Huh, I have both read that blog and had African Adventure for my C64. That'd be crazy if it is the same guy.

Anyhow, without looking at the walkthrough, I remember using some some smelly balm or something to get wood without being bitten by a poisonous spider, giving some trinkets to some natives (the game is kind of racist, yeah), killing the snake in the tree, and jumping over some quicksand. I remember at one point, you "escape" the game and enter a computer world. I never got more than, say, half way through the game, though.

The behind-the-curtain computer room really broke my young mind, though, as it just caught me so off-guard that this seemingly serious game (I thought the beginning quote about Dr. Livingston had such gravitas) actually didn't take itself seriously at all.

Ok, think I'll read that walkthrough now.

Oh, you were saying that dude is only responsible for the PC port. Gotcha.

I'm not sure if he's responsible for the C64 version or not. The C64 version says "Green Valley Publishing" and the PC version just has his name. I will e-mail him and find out.

You got way, way further (farther?) in the game than I ever would have. It's funny how quickly modern IF spoils you. In the first room I typed LOOK CLOSET and GO CLOSET and LOOK CLOSET again and never found anything. But I never typed OPEN CLOSET (there's no hint of a door) to get some of the things you need for the adventure.

The game revolves around getting treasure from natives, but there's no real rhyme or reason as to who will take what in trade. And not only can you get the game in an unwinnable state, but it hovers there at all times. In the beginning you find a mouse which, at some point, you let loose and an animal chases it, freeing up an area for you. Let it go at the wrong time and it disappears and well that'll be the end of the game.

I also found the map pretty confusing. At the beginning of the game you are in a boat and can only head E, to shore. Once on shore, you can go S, and then W, and repeat those directions indefinitely. And what's worse is, while on land, most of the locations repeat, so every other location has a pile of wood with a spider in it.

[Roody_Yogurt]

It's like, sure, I was able to get to "Africa" in the game and wander around and solve some puzzles back in the day, but I doubt I have the patience to get very far today. I can't even get to the island in Pirate Adventure anymore because I get too frustrated. Ah, the resilience of youth, I guess.

I know I figured out that mouse thing, though, so go me, I guess.

As far as African Adventure authorship goes, everything I see attributes the game to "R. & B. Fullerton". In fact, the 1997 PC port on the IF Archive has this note in the readme:

This is the MS-DOS port of an old Commodore 64 game called
African Adventure. This was ported to GW-BASIC, then compiled
using the excellent PowerBASIC compiler. This was ported in
September, 1997 by Tony Baechler with help from Audrey De Lisle.

[Roody_Yogurt]

Okay, Lysander, one Obituary review coming up!

Obituary- (Written by Drew Mochak. Programming by Johnny Rivera.)
This review makes no effort to hide major plot points about the game. As such, it is not intended for anyone curious and hoping to play the game yet.

I'm glad Lysander called me on this. I've been meaning to play this game for a while; I was pretty bad about staying on top of the IF scene from the mid-to-late naughts.

My overall impression of this game is a mixed bag. There are a lot of elements to discuss so I'm going to have to break this down into sections.

THEME- This game has a major boner for flawed morality. Disappointingly, it attacks somewhat easy targets like drug addicts and sexual deviants and abusers. Even the ex-junkie, ex-whore protagonist, after having cleaned up her life, is living in some kind of "cautionary tale" limbo (both figuratively and eventually literally). There's some foreshadowing that the game's central issue will be the protagonist's guilt over an abortion (going for some kind of botched-childhood trifecta)- I could be wrong; maybe that is not the case. The game has some sympathy for the PC and her drug-addled friends. More than sympathy, though, it even makes that entertaining from time to time. When the game is not getting its jollies being superior to everything, it's actually quite interesting, especially since it admits that disavowing these things doesn't make automatically make life all better.

ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN- For a game with a female protagonist, it makes some odd choices, portraying the world as largely misogynistic. Take, for instance, the response to >XYZZY:

A sinister voice hisses "Wrong game, dumb bitch!"

Or when the PC herself complains about her car being a crabby old bitch needing her Midol. It's like, sure, you want to make the creepy father a woman-hater, I'll give you a free pass (although it's still a bit silly when anyone says "uppity" in this day and age), but while I can understand the reasoning for the abundance of this in the game, I think it loses its plausibility and effect when it's painted with such broad strokes.

LOGIC- Overall, logic was a bit hard to follow at points. Like, the car only starts when the protagonist doesn't want it to? When does anyone not want a car to start? The scary hicks attack because she is fixing their gate? Is that an attempt at some Southern dialect, like "she's fixing to break through our gate"? I mean, especially in the first example, the prose is trying really hard to inject humor and characterization, but that shouldn't come at the cost of total believability.

I'm also not sure how an ex-junkie working a crappy job somehow has the physique of a young Terminator 2 Linda Hamilton. I mean, it's kind of cute in its sheer insensibility, but still.

WRITING- The writing is quite flavorful throughout (something that it even comments on at one point). It's a bit more overwritten than my ideal kind of prose, but there are still a lot of good ideas in there. I'd say about half of the jokes worked for me, but some of those that worked were really funny and it casts the entire thing in a better light. I'm not familiar with the other games entered in that Introcomp, but it's easy to see how it could win over other intro games (especially if they were creatively uninspired).

IMPLEMENTATION- Despite all of the little asides and twists and turns in the narrative voice, I take issue with the level of implementation. First off, it does the I-0 thing where your car has a glove compartment that you can open. The glove compartment is not mentioned, but we can open it since we know cars have glove compartments. Anyhow, from a design point of view, I disagreed with this in I-0 and I disagree with it here.

The objects that the player can interact with is a delicate agreement between the author and the player. Encourage the player to refer to one not-mentioned object and you're basically saying, okay, refer to anything you can think of.

For a game like Obituary, where there is a lot of things mentioned in the flavor text, because of the "glove compartment incident", the player will feel that interacting with all of those things should merit responses; after all, those things were actually mentioned. It's my feeling that things like glove compartments should be mentioned so that when players run into the upper limit of things-that-are-implemented, they can shrug it off and go, "Ok, I can only expect that much."

CONCLUSION- So, all in all, Lysander, I think you are off to a good start. I think the prose could be honed a bit so it doesn't meander quite as much (so things like the protagonist's antagonistic relationship with her car don't draw quite as much attention away from the situation at hand). Scattered among the cliches (like the Nightbreed-esque beginning where the protagonist is called to some mysterious town, scary hicks, being buried alive, etc) are some really interesting inclusions, and the mere variance of ideas makes for an entertaining ride.

I don't recall if there was much debate about switching to another language or what the main holdup has been in terms of continuing its progress, but personally, I think you should maybe look into transferring the game to Undum ( http://www.undum.com ). It doesn't seem like there are a ton of choices per "scene" and with how the game's major emphasis is on the writing, I can imagine how it could be redesigned for something like that.

And that is my Obituary review!