Category: IFcomp2017

This is an ambitious game with a fun style, but I consider it unplayable in its present state. There’s no hint of proofing or play testing, and the implementation is paper thin. There are confusing parser responses, logical inconsistencies, undescribed objects, narrow vocabulary for understanding objects, and I came across one run time error. Most significantly, there are guess-the-verb issues that players cannot avoid or work around. In summary, it’s a Spring Thing sized romp written to the standards of a SpeedIF.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – Escape From Terra”

This short hypertext story punches above its weight. It’s not that much to look at for the most part: the typography is unremarkable, there are the usual hyperlinks, and the text is displayed is reasonable chunks of a paragraph or two. It looks as plain vanilla as can be, and as it gets rolling, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the reader to think that this will pan out as a typical fairytale involving a witch.

However, this is a modern story; it just happens to involve a witch. I realized that we were headed in a different direction when she complained not so much about the infirmities of old age, but the coming to pass of four live action chipmunk movies. What a world, what a world.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – The Very Old Witch and the Turnip Girl”

I had a favorable first impression when I started playing from the “play online” link. The initial screen is nicely laid out in a somewhat fancy font and displaying useful info like license, version, title, and the introduction itself. I had just started playing when I got called away, so I closed the game and took it up again at home. When I relaunched offline, all the text was rendered in a monospace font. It looks like the font information must reference some web resource, so if you want to see it at its prettiest, better to play online.

Before commenting on the story, I would like to mention two interface features that I thought were very considerate: First, the prompt about whether to play the game with music or silent; glad to see that is becoming an expected feature for works that incorporate sound. Next, a hamburger menu button in the upper right corner that brings up additional options including a way to report bugs to the author.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – The Castle of Vourtram”

I have now played through and posted reviews for thirty-nine games in this year’s IFcomp. I understand that NOIR was withdrawn due to an issue with pre-comp release, so I am roughly halfway through this year’s official offering. I think that’s enough to get a snapshot of where games are falling in terms of my preliminary scoring:

Continue reading “IFcomp: Halfway There”

This is a short and sweet parser game built around a central puzzle. The goal of the puzzle is presented immediately and the player is guided through the first step towards that goal in a sort of tutorial. The first few commands in the game are essentially overridden with railroaded conversation to provide exposition. I appreciated the clear instructions about what to do, but thought that there was just a tad too much handholding in these initial scenes.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – Rainbow Bridge”

Joke entry, skipped review.

If anyone is curious, see transcript: HP

Preliminary Score: 1

Harmonia blew me away. Those with aversions to gushing reviews should avert their eyes or risk injury. Story and presentation are exquisitely united in this work. I can only imagine that back in the mid-20th Century at some think tank like RAND Corporation or XEROX PARC, where lab-coated balding men with horn-rimmed glasses were trying to imagine what “cybernetic stories” would be in the 21st Century, they might have hoped for something like this: a technologically enhanced story. Nothing so crude as hypertext, and certainly not a game, Harmonia seems like the furthest point we have reached in transforming flat text into a technologically-mediated experience.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – Harmonia”

Something is one in a series of short twine games drawn from the pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, whichever edition number they’re now up to. I can’t say that this subgenre really floats my boat, but it must have some appeal because these works keep showing up in IFcomps.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – Something”

This review does not contain subliminal messages, nor does the game.

This twine story starts from a wikipedia style disambiguation page, which collects items related to the term “322”, and the game consists simply of clicking around these links at leisure, exploring these unrelated topics.

That’s what they would like you think.

Or is that what’s going on?

Nothing. Please go about your business.

It’s time to try on the aluminium foil hats and get out the red string and white boards. Something damn clever is going on here.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – Unit 322 (Disambiguation)”

This is more or less Dr. Horrible: the IF. It’s an intentionally very short piece set in a single room, with a limited number of objects. There are a couple things to do, and I think most people will do them given a little experimentation.

Unlike The Dragon Will Tell Your Fortune Now, the point of the story is not that it is unwinnable. It can be won. But I will mention that it is also possible to put the game in an unwinnable state (which may not have been the author’s intention).

Continue reading “Review – Inevitable”