Jolt Country

Guilded Youth by Jim Munroe

I've been a fan of Jim Munroe's works for a long while, so going into Guilded Youth, I was pretty sure I'd like it. I predicted correctly, but I did see some areas for improvement.

The good-

First off, the characters are great. The game covers a pleasing range of geek/fantasy archetypes. They make me reminiscent of people I've known, yet they aren't without their own quirks and surprises.

I also thought the pacing of the narrative was handled in a clever way. As soon as I got to the second or third night where you start further away from the building just to make room for more expository talk, I thought, ok, that was pretty cute.

Last but not least, the story itself is just a fun little yarn. I liked the overall arc of the thing.

Where it could be improved-

I would have been saved myself some trouble had I read the HELP text when I first started the game. I think when I was younger, I was better about doing that. Still, I don't feel necessarily bad about losing that habit. In my older crankiness, I think a great game is good about directing the player towards successful commands. There were several times in Guilded Youth where I tried asking characters about things, only to get a reply like “There is no response.” I think such cases could be improved, if only by printing the HELP text.

There is also a mechanic in the game where you trade goods for services. If there was any kind of hint about what might be appealing to whom, I totally missed it. Once I found trial-and-error worked, I used that technique for the rest of the game, but those scenes would be more satisfying if motivations were more apparent.

I can understand why the end is the way it is, but I thought the way the game ignores my last command of the game is slightly dismissive. Such moments in games kind of tell the player, eh, what you say isn't very important.

All in all-

This was a nice showcase for Vorple and a successful collaborative effort. Yet another fun game from Mr. Munroe.

The Sealed Room by Robert Deford

As an underdog IF language, I cheer for the ALAN development system and go into ALAN games hoping for the best. I really wanted to like this one.

Opening it up, I was happy to see that it made use of ALAN's graphic capabilities for some cover art. That was pretty much the last thing I liked.

The text is overly verbose for my tastes without doing much to win me over. Right away, it is made clear that I'm supposed to talk to these two NPCs. Sure, it's kind of interesting that they have conflicting personalities, but there isn't enough being done to actually make me care.

After setting this game aside, I tried picking it up again, but it wasn't long before I resorted to peeking at the walkthrough. Interestingly, the walkthrough is practically a transcript (there's some skipped parts and some additional commentary).

At several parts in the transcript, the game tells the player what he or she should be doing next. In a limited game where all you are doing is basically talking to two things, it's a bad sign that you need to do that. I don't even think that the worry is that the game is too hard. There's just so little motivation to keep going that the game is begging you to stay by saying, wait, this is what you do next!

The ending isn't any kind of saving grace, as the whole game just turns out to be some kind of test. Despite what the game says, I think the real victory is in avoiding this one. I don't think the author is without talent, but he really needs to work on building scenarios that invest the player instead of relying on the player's capacity to investigate.

Body Bargain by Amanda Lange

Ok, Body Bargain starts off with what I would call an “unnecessary pause,” but I have to admit that I got much further down my list to see one than I would have predicted. In this case, I think having all of the text on one page would have worked fine. Separating the intro into two feels like it's going for a dramatic punch that just isn't there.

This game also does the status line thing I don't like (see the Fishbowl review).

I don't like these kind of exchanges:

>get up
An I.V. unit has you pinned to the cot for the moment. Its oppressive plastic tubing is pulling against your attempts to rise.

>pull iv
It is fixed in place.

>remove iv
With some difficulty, you yank the long needles out of your arms. Your skin looks unblemished from this assault: not even a bruise.

You drop the needles from the I.V.

Dropped.

>

Oh, so pulling isn't yanking, now? Not trying to make a big deal there, but just pointing out that this game probably could have used further betatesting with extra response support.

The writing is pleasant and does a good job of drawing my attention from one object to the next. Loved the doctor's notes.

Default messages sneak in in odd ways:

>x panel
A big window on this establishment might be a bad thing, as it would draw unwanted attention to a facility that is supposed to be for paid clients only. This is a compromise: a big flat-panel monitor on the front wall. It is turned off right now, showing only blackness, though it shows a video of a street view during the day.

Big Screen is currently switched off.

>turn on panel
You switch Big Screen on.

>

Should I, the player, really know that the tv is called “Big Screen”?


Okay, I was really enjoying this thing until I got to what I'd call the “endgame” (in quotes only because it's a relatively short game). I attacked the bad guy and was hiding out in the server room with no idea how to use any of these devices.

Looking over the walkthrough, there are several things that I think aren't clued well enough yet (gur qvssrerag ivnyf va gur fhccyl ebbz, ubj gb hfr gur freire). It's a shame because I was really getting into it.

I hope that in the future, this game is cleaned up further, but more than that, I hope that the author applies this kind of imagination to her future works, too. This could be the start of something nice.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I decided I should go back and add author names to my reviews. So, thanks, Tdarcos!

Two things: how do I enter the game I wrote (the one I did for Jonsey, Commander TDarcos' Patty Flinger, and are you going to review it?

Tdarcos wrote:

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I decided I should go back and add author names to my reviews. So, thanks, Tdarcos!

Two things: how do I enter the game I wrote (the one I did for Jonsey, Commander TDarcos' Patty Flinger, and are you going to review it?

If you're talking about the IF Competition (which this thread is about), no, you cannot enter your game, as there is a requirement that all games must not be previously released. If you're talking about the HugoComp, we won't be collecting games until December. The competition doesn't officially start until November, even.

As far as your second question goes, sure, I'll review it. I'll do it sometime after December 21st when the comp is over.

Yeah, Paul, this is for a general text game comp that launched September 30. I have had a lot of stuff going on but I will run through Patty Flinger for you ASAP and give you the transcripts.

A Killer Headache by Mike Ciul

The first time I read the first line (“Ever since you died, the migraines have been getting worse.”), there was a moment of crippling fear where I thought, oh great, this is going to be one of those games about the mundanity of the afterlife- you know, the ones that start off in waiting rooms and so forth. When I read on, I was so glad that it wasn't that I was excited to see that, no, it's a zombie game despite their overpopulation in pop culture these days.

Where zombies are concerned, it's quite good. The zombie protagonist has to deal with crooked, broken limbs (when they're not falling off completely) and other tropes that we know and love, peppered with flashbacks all the while that remind us of the humanity that has been lost.

As a game, though, it is an ungodly (the game tells us God is dead) mess of ideas. The ABOUT text describes itself as “Nasty” on the Zarfian scale, but I would substitute that with “Unplayable.” After being defeated by the first major puzzle of the game and turning to the walkthrough, I was killed every few moves until I eventually learned my lesson and just typed in the walkthrough command for command.

Also terribly, game events are triggered by unrelated actions (like the aha jub fubjf hc nsgre lbh fgneg svyyvat n tnf pna). I feel game design should be somewhat like monkey bars; the player should see the next rung, even if it's unclear how to get there.

In this case, it's not entirely clear why the final goal is even so appealing to the protagonist. I mean, n tnfbyvar-eha-trarengbe jvyy eha sbe ubj ybat orsber gur CP unf gb tb bhg va gur jbeyq ntnva whfg gb or zber gbea hc ol jvyq qbtf?

Just listening to the recommended soundtrack (http://bit.ly/youtube-killerheadache) implies an inconsistency to the design, IMO.

Anyhow, there's an interesting story there, but the game design gave me flashbacks to playing bad Angelsoft games (and it definitely isn't one little thing here and there). Before I'd recommend this to anybody, I think it needs an overhaul. Too bad.

Murphy's Law by Scott Hammack

Now, I'm a fan of Scott's earlier work, Chunky Blues, so even though the title tells us this is going to be one of those “Bureaucracy”-type games where everything goes wrong (which is a notoriously horrible genre, IMO), I thought I'd go into this one giving it the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, within a handful of commands, I was literally bleeding to death from a papercut, and the game did the UNFORGIVABLE thing of making me wander around MY OWN HOUSE THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE ANYTHING IS. I found the kitchen right away, where it wouldn't let me wash the cut. After I died wandering around looking for a Band-Aid TM, I looked at the walkthrough to see where it was. Turns out it was in the bathroom attached to the bedroom, which I never found myself.

As such a scenario is completely unforgivable, I stopped playing right then and there.

God, all these games suck!!

Escape from Summerland by Jenny Roomy and Jasmine Lavages

First thing, when I read the first billed author's name, I thought it was singer/songwriter Jenny Toomey and was like, no way, she writes IF?! But yeah, I just got her name wrong. Also, these seem to be pseudonyms.

The introduction really had me optimistic. This passage was great:

I have always slept like the dead. The distant air raid tinkles beyond the drone of my tinnitus, but it is the bomb blast that draws me from my corpselike slumber. The moon struggles behind dark clouds, but my caravan is easy to make out for it is on fire.

I have always lived a charmed life. Sometimes I sleepwalk and tonight I seem to have sleepwalked right clear of the caravan. It's half-destroyed by scattered shrapnel from the fights above.

As the game progessed, it seemed the “I have always lived a charmed life.” was not written as ironically as I first interpreted it, as that protagonist is this weirdly enthusiastic British guy who says things like, “My giddy aunt!” (which I had only previously heard intoned by this semi-unbalanced German guy I know). Knowing now what I didn't know then, I'm kind of disappointed that stereotype-British-guy's-bushy-mustache isn't a fourth character that we can switch to at any point.

So yeah, this game has character-switching. Between the aforementioned British guy, there's also a monkey and a robot. The monkey's narrative performs the herculean (King Kong-esque?) task of making me hate monkeys through the use of almost useless text coupled with annoying emoticons. The robot, in what I saw, was more interesting.

For a game that is obviously going to compared to Suspended, it is apparent that more care needs to be taken when describing rooms through different eyes under different circumstances. One of the first puzzles of the game is bringing a light source to a dark room, yet the room description doesn't change at all for some of the characters when there is additional light; they still complain about the darkness.

A puzzle after that involves tricking the robot into opening a mirror-fronted cabinet. Instead of allowing me to >PUSH it, I have to hit it with a stick. I'm sorry, but I just wasn't envisioning a military-class robot needing a stick to attack things (there's an additional element where you have to trick the robot into thinking an opponent is in the room).

Another quibble involves the ABOUT text, which starts with:

This is a game with multiple perspectives in which three unwitting comrades must work together to escape a mostly abandoned fairy themed fairground.

You really shouldn't have to explain what your game is like that.

Anyhow, there are elements of the premise I dig, but I think the game would be helped by a hefty serving of grativas and some deeper implementation.

Living Will by Mark Marino

Living Will is an Undum game where, as the title implies, you read over a will. Through your choices, you determine which recipient you are, how much you are entitled to, and where you are in the grand scheme of things.

If you've been following my reviews so far (and are aware of the games in question), you've probably come to some conclusion about my appreciation of certain levels of text. The truth is, the legalese of Living Will was beyond me and enough to dissuade me from deciphering the underlying story.

Sure, that's laziness on my part, but I'm not sure how I feel about works that require replaying to get the full story. I think replaying should be a reward for a story that's intriguing in the first place. As it is, I chose the role of some servant, wasn't too impressed with the result of my outcome, and didn't feel compelled to explore other results.

I think I'll leave this one to the scholars.

In a Manor of Speaking by Hulk Handsome

This is the other Comp 2012 wordplay game. It took me several attempts to get into it, as, unlike Shuffling, there is no tutorial to get you going. Several rooms in, I still didn't have exactly an idea exactly what kind of word play the game was looking for and was fairly certain the game and I would never see eye to eye. Even having beaten the game now, I'm not sure if much of it can be really called “wordplay.”

The hardest part of the game is just being able to distinguish “puzzles” (some of them can hardly be considered such) from some of the silly prose. Once I discovered that >HINT told me if there was anything else to do on a room-by-room basis, I felt much better about my progress in the game. Still, I think even that could be improved by having some kind of signifier in the status bar indicating if a room has secrets/puzzles yet. Like, maybe a checkbox or something.

The puzzles are mostly easy, where solutions are often almost spelled out in object descriptions or what have you. I was quite happy where I guessed a successful command after seeing a metalhead, only to that the answer was also in his description. Just the same, this might be the best way to handle a game like this, as some players are obviously going to be unfamiliar with some turns of phrases. A player can challenge himself or herself by guessing answers without examining everything first while players who need more can use that safety net.

I was stuck the longest in an area where I was missing one particular exit in a room description. Besides that, part of me thinks that the game could be more efficient room-number-wise, as lots of rooms have nothing to do in them and it was just large enough that I had to go over some areas several times just to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Originally, when I was having trouble getting into this game, I was pretty certain I hated it. It ended up being worth a second chance, though. It is not mind-bending or gut-wrenching or anything that approaches the heights of IF's potential, but it is a cute little ride, once you give it a shot.

The Island by Old Andy

This is some kind of homage to old school text adventures. It doesn't seem to be betatested. Several synonyms and obvious actions aren't implemented; I really only got as far as I did just from being familiar with 80s text adventure cliches.

The fact that UNDO has been disabled when the player dies was the final straw. Why do old-school “text adventure” enthusiasts resurrect the worst parts of 80s text games but not the best? Like, do something cool like forcing a fullscreen, 80 column display or something (in some system that'd allow that). Don't bring no-UNDO back.

I actually did restart and get a little bit further, only to run into a game-stopping bug. Oh, well, at least I didn't waste as much time with this one as I did with some of those terrible 80s adventures...

EDIT: It turned out that I had not run into a game-stopping bug. I just had been under the misunderstanding that the pnaaba jnf nyernql ybnqrq. Sure, it's not often that you find a ybnqrq pnaaba in IF, but I thought that was my reward for the guess-the-verb-ness of RAISE-ing the bucket.

It didn't help that I could see that svevat gur pnaaba was attached to an "unsuccessful" verb. Undoing shows that the >SVER PNAABA was never properly understood as a command (as an aside, I think showing the-command-being-undone-while-undoinog is great, but attaching important outcomes to unsuccessful verbs leads to the above). In the end, I just assumed there was a bug keeping the right things from triggering.

Since I had to play the game one last time just to make sure I hadn't missed an obvious passage telling me that the pnaaba was ybnqrq, I thought I'd mention two other things about the game.

Didn't like- I don't like tacking on atmospheric prose to the end of command responses as one additional sentence. I feel such atmospheric text should get its own paragraph. It feels kind of jarring when done the one-additional-sentence way.

Liked- I liked when I couldn't pick up the ebcr after using it (and especially liked that I was given a good reason for it, other than "You don't need that anymore.". There's a certain satisfaction of things-clicking-into-place when objects are handled that way.

Castle Adventure by Ben Chenoweth

Speaking of terrible-80s-adventures-I-spent-to-much-time-with, fortunately, this is not a remake of the Castle Adventure I used to play on my C64 (or the handful of similarly-titled games released over the years). Interestingly, it starts the same way (wandering an Adventure-like forest), but as far as I can tell, there's no mention of “IVANHOE.”

This game does the status bar thing I don't like (see my “Fishbowl” review). It's kind of strange to have no score in a game that will obviously draw old-school comparisons. I imagine there's some profound reason for this.

* * * after playing it a good deal * * *

Ok, this game is just way too old-school for me. I think what bugs me the most is the overabundance of rooms. If I didn't give up and just read the transcript eventually, I'd definitely have to map the thing- which isn't bad in itself- but more than half of the rooms are useless and only there to give some sense of scope, I think.

Some of the puzzles seemed fun enough, but this kind of game isn't going to stand up well to your average comp game. Maybe old school enthusiasts should get together and start their own comp. I mean, I don't even consider myself an enemy of all-things-old-school. I don't hate mazes as long as there is some kind of “enchanted wobblefiend.” This game tests my patience by providing mazes in the dark that must be completed within a timed number of moves and such.

This game wasn't for me.

Sunday Afternoon by Virgil Hilts

“Virgil Hilts” is a pseudonym, but to anyone who has followed the IF Competition for a while, the true identity of the author is pretty obvious. This review spans two releases of the game.

The first release:

I played this game early on. I enjoyed the premise and the exploration of the Aunt Emma's past through questions about knick-knacks and people she has known. Unfortunately, once I found a way to sneak off, it wouldn't be long until she found me, and I couldn't find a place or object to save me.

After several attempts, this brought up a clever scene change where we jumped to the future, and it is revealed that the protagonist is sharing a story from his youth. Less cleverly, the dialogue admonished me for not finding anything useful in another room yet, which made me think, hey, I'm trying here. Also, as cool as the flash-forward was, it also was a bit sad, as future-self is not in the greatest of predicaments and one can only assume that loveable Aunt Emma has passed on by that point. It kind of takes the wind out of one's boyish-mischievous sails.

Having spent far less than two hours but still undecided about how I feel, I put the game down for a while.

Release 2:

By the time I picked it back up again, there was a new release. This time around, I found the method that buys the PC more wandering-around-freely time. It's unclear whether the hint flash-forward scene is still in there as I solved the problem before it was triggered, and so far, a different one hasn't been triggered in my playthrough.

Unfortunately, I didn't get much further before getting stuck. Considering Sunday Afternoon has built-in hints, I found myself in that annoying situation where the hints jump from things I've already deduced to objectives that are still beyond my reach. In these circumstances, it's always hard to know if the “missing link” puzzle is something the author thinks no one would need help with or if it's some prized puzzle for which an answer won't come freely.

Whichever the case, I'd contend that the game needs help in this department. I am guessing that I am supposed to incite a conflict between the two NPCs, but even after manipulating objects to get them in the same room together, getting one to admonish me for something doesn't result in a reaction from the other.

* * *
Ok, I did eventually figure out what my problem was. Unfortunately, some time later, my interpreter gave me this:

>–> The scene change machinery is stuck.
>–> The scene change machinery is stuck.
>

Knowing the author, I'm sure this game will be great when it's done, but there still seems to be some bugs to iron out.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this game also does the status line thing I don't like (see: my Fishbowl review). Now, this game has a lot of daemons working, so keeping track of time/turns is very important to the player. Still, in a case like this where you do want to see the turn count, I'd still like to see that section of the status bar turned to "TURNS: #" or something. Just having the counter there all alone just irks me.

Eurydice by anonymous

First off, it doesn't seem like the quote box code at the beginning was inserted into the game as well as it could be. In Gargoyle, the game doesn't recognize the true status line height until the second turn of the game, and in Frotz, the quote box overlaps the game title text and initial room description. Shows the importance of testing on several interpreters, that.

Also, some text in the help menus suggests that the game is based on a real loss suffered by the author, so I hope my criticism of certain aspects of the game can be regarded as separate from actual judgments of character.

What I liked-
I really liked that there were progressive responses beyond just talking to people. Examining people and things often gave several responses, making extended scrutinizing worthwhile.

I also really liked the ubfcvgny-nf-uryy metaphor, and I especially liked the representation of Crefrcubar. In general, I'm not a fan of Greek myth stuff in IF, and this game obfuscates it all nicely.

The room layout was also intuitive enough; some smaller-sized games manage to make themselves harder to navigate than they should be just because of weird direction choices.

What I didn't like-
Eurydice is one of a handful of games this comp where, while it was betatested, I got the feeling that the betatesters were largely friends and family (and therefore likely to miss things that a “hardened” IF player might find). There was the hospital with the distinctive smell, where >SMELL gives you, “You smell nothing special.” There were the NPCs who keep on hugging you, yet >HUG is not an understood verb. As it stands, the level of implementation is not especially bad, but it just really shows how much work goes into a well-implemented game (to the point, sometimes, where I wonder if it really is worth it).

Overall, the writing is good, so when it fails, I found the failure pretty glaring, like the kitchen that my character speculates would be good to cook in, right after reminiscing about the many cooking adventures that had taken place there.

There was another thing. When I was in film school, we watched this documentary called “Seventeen” that followed some Indiana kids around in the early 80s. At one point, one of their friends find out that a friend died in a drunk-driving accident. They honor his memory by requesting a Bob Seger song from a radio station and getting really, really drunk. Anyhow, as I watched them drunkenly listen to this Bob Seger song on the radio, part of me was enraged that we can demean something as important and profound as a life by attaching it to something as ephemeral and bland as pop culture. I mean, I love pop culture, but I think it's really depressing to use it to define somebody.

Anyhow, Eurydice pushed some of those buttons for me. There were several great anecdotes about the personality that this deceased Celine had, but then there were a handful of geek-pop-culture namedroppings that furthered my disdain for the PC. I would have liked to have seen more of the former and less of the latter.

So, there was that, too. I didn't really like the main character. It's like, sure, on some levels, I'm not supposed to like the PC, as he is antisocial due to his grief, but by the end of the game, I felt like it should have rewarded me better for walking in his shoes as long as I did. If anything, instead of just finding solace, I think the hardest-to-achieve ending should also have involved the PC having a revelation about himself and maybe growing up a little.

* * *

Considering I have more to say about theme-related stuff in Eurydice than I do for most of the Comp games is probably an argument in its favor. I can understand why others have been so touched by this work. Still, I feel like I don't see eye-to-eye with this piece and hope that there are future revisions that bridge the gap some.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:"Virgil Hilts” is a pseudonym, but to anyone who has followed the IF Competition for a while, the true identity of the author is pretty obvious.

WHO IZZIT!!?!?!!

pinback wrote:

Roody_Yogurt wrote:"Virgil Hilts” is a pseudonym, but to anyone who has followed the IF Competition for a while, the true identity of the author is pretty obvious.

WHO IZZIT!!?!?!!

Hint: It's someone who has a predilection for writing games about (or referencing) a fictional late-nineteenth-century reverend.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:

pinback wrote:

Roody_Yogurt wrote:"Virgil Hilts” is a pseudonym, but to anyone who has followed the IF Competition for a while, the true identity of the author is pretty obvious.

WHO IZZIT!!?!?!!

Hint: It's someone who has a predilection for writing games about (or referencing) a fictional late-nineteenth-century reverend.

That is only a hint to people who already know the answer.

pinback wrote:

Roody_Yogurt wrote:

pinback wrote: WHO IZZIT!!?!?!!

Hint: It's someone who has a predilection for writing games about (or referencing) a fictional late-nineteenth-century reverend.

That is only a hint to people who already know the answer.

Yeah, sorry. It'd be kind of assjack-y for me to say who he is. I can't imagine the Comp has that many days left, though, so maybe in a week or two.