Jolt Country

bryanb, I read your latest review and it was really good. I liked all the non-game-related stuff you wrote about (it took me a while to unball it all) but I felt like I got a good idea of how the game felt and played, too. Great job on the review and on keeping new content flowing in 2021. Here's to more reviews in 2022!

Thanks, Flack! Thanks for all your great contributions to the site over the past year, too. And Robb, I can't wait to read your new review. 2022 is already starting to look up as far as I'm concerned. Could it be about to become the best year ever? ...Yeah, probably not.

Why not??? Why not 2022?

bryanb wrote: Sun Jan 02, 2022 10:54 pm 2022 is already starting to look up as far as I'm concerned. Could it be about to become the best year ever? ...Yeah, probably not.

Don’t say that, don’t ever say that. Don't you realize? The next time you see sky, it'll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it'll be in some other school.
Our parents, they want the best of stuff for us. But right now, they got to do what's right for them. Because it's their time. Their time! Up there!

Down here, it's our time. It's our time down here.

Borrowed Time, by..... Me.

https://trottingkrips.caltrops.com/2022 ... play-1985/

I love the review, Robb! I debated whether to call out The Christmas Party for having a timer that will end the game and score you on your party whether you're actually finished with the preparations or not. The thing is I only ran out of time because I kept insisting on trying to create a fire hazard with foil instead of a coin like the game wanted. Maybe the problem was me, I ultimately decided. If I'd been a bit more reasonable when it came to extremely dangerous home repairs, I wouldn't have run out of time. In Borrowed Time, on the other hand, it's clearly all the game's fault. It wants to kill you casually and frequently. It enjoys doing it. It genuinely doesn't care how you feel about it. It has an unreasonable confidence that you're going to come back and play more no matter what. I think that kind of "the game hates me" dynamic naturally creates a somber atmosphere that fits well with our pandemic-inundated times. The game hates us in real life, too. You truly captured not just the spirit of the game but also the spirit of the times in that review, my friend. Also, life sucks.

My goal for RFTK coming up, after I get organized and calm and centered with life, is to play the new rework of Guild of Thieves. I am going through these old text adventures to learn something as a student of the genre. Many of my games are very talky and part of me wants to make a game where I focus at first on the "doing" not the speaking. The speaking for me is easy, so I want to challenge myself to where the game occupies the minds of the player with what they can do.

After Guild of Thieves (I have never finished it!) there are some comp games over the last few years I want to try.

Sounds great. I'll be curios to hear if they have improved the parser at all. I seem to remember having the hardest time trying to make a fishing pole.

Thanks for keeping the lights on and the content fresh, Flack and Robb! I should have something new posted in the coming weeks and there's a number of other semi-exciting things coming down the pipeline. Frankly, I'm not sure if the RFTK viewing audience is even going to be able to handle this level of semi-excitement.

I've never played Murder in the Marching Band and after reading the review there's a good chance I never will, but the way Flack described it reminds me of other 80s text adventures I played back in the day that seemed to offer sheer quirkiness as their only value proposition. I like quirky at times, but you gotta throw in some memorable gameplay in as well, 80s adventures!

I renewed the domain for two years at $10 a year thanks to SoonerDomains, so thanks to Flack for pointing that out for Trotting Krips!

I feel like the only thing to do at this point is pretend 2022 never happened. Any Trotting Krips resolutions I might have posted for 2022 were clearly meant to be 2023 Trotting Krips resolutions...because 2022 never ended up happening. It's crazy how years can do that sometimes!

I have a good feeling that 2023 is actually going to happen. Fingers crossed.

Agreed. I've given up thinking "life will calm down." It won't. So ya make time for what is important. Like Krips.

And I really hope I didn't use the zombieworld address for the domain name. Do domain names without real value get sniped too?

ParserComp 2023 came and went without any coverage here on JC. We can do better than this as a community. Let's bring back competition threads for IF Comp 2023 and beyond!

Anyway, there was clearly plenty of excitement and intrigue at ParserComp this year as always. Garry Francis' Search for the Lost Ark and Amanda Walker's The Purple Pearl tied for first place in the Classic category while robertgoodwin00's Cheree: Remembering My Murder took it all in the Freestyle category. Yes, Dubba Zero finally made good. Dee Cooke entered a game and it has an intriguing title, The Last Mountain...that's going to be the first one I'll play. Out of eleven entries in the Classic category, three were entered by Lazzah and they respectively finished 6th, 7th, and 9th (which is last place due to two ties). I guess it just goes to show that ParserComp is more of a popularity contest than a numbers game.

Anyone have any favorites from this year's competition?

Bump! Reminder to try them out.

I transferred the trottingkrips.com domain, as the previous company was doubling their rates and wouldn't make an https link work for it.

I am SURE that the domain is or will be broken by this. I simply do not have any faith that you can transfer a domain with no interruption in service in this country. I am writing to remind myself to check the following domains over the next few days:
http://trottingkrips.com
https://trottingkrips.com

bryanb wrote: Fri Dec 31, 2021 10:10 pm The final RFTK review of 2021 (unless Robb or Flack do something crazy!) has now been posted.

http://trottingkrips.caltrops.com/2021/ ... over-2007/

See you in 2022!

I read this again tonight and laughed and loved it.

I appreciate you, Bryan B. Thank you.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Oct 31, 2023 10:03 pm I read this again tonight and laughed and loved it.

I appreciate you, Bryan B. Thank you.

Thanks, friend! I'm glad people are still reading the classics. I have ambitions to write up a couple of comp reviews before the end of the year and end the drought. Sorry I haven't been around much recently.

We are reaching the end of the year and I really want to launch RFTK again. I think going every other month is something I could commit to, so January, March, May, July, September, November? There are a lot of interesting text games being released, too!

Sounds great! I'll take the other months. I'm even willing to go so far as to promise that no more than 5 out of my 6 reviews for the year will be of one room joke games.

I hereby declare 2024 to be the YEAR OF KRIPS.