Author: Jack

This appears to be one of the games developed in Qiaobook by a Chinese author and ported to English for this year’s IFcomp. I had difficulty following the writing, probably because of translation issues, but I have to give the author credit for spellchecking more effectively than many authors who use the latin alphabet day in and day out.

I can at least address one readability issue: the font. The game employs a greenish font on a blurred background image. I couldn’t find a screen setting that gave me sufficient contrast to read the text, and I am sure it must be even worse for anyone with visual impairment. While I don’t like altering the visual presentation the author had in mind, here’s how I would make this high-contrast for legibility:

Download the game from IFcomp, open the read_v2.css file in a text editor and change two things: the background and the text color. Then, launch the game from the local index.html file in a browser. For me, Firefox worked better than Chrome.

Original read_v2.css:

* {
 background-color: transparent; }

.dark .read-text, .dark .read-title h1, .dark .icon-list li {
 color: #909499; }

Modified read_v2.css:

* {
 background-color: white; }

.dark .read-text, .dark .read-title h1, .dark .icon-list li {
 color: black;
 }

As for the game itself, the lead character is a highschool sophomore a chemistry attending class, when an experiment fogs up the classroom. The lights go out and he receives a text message on his phone’s QQ app (see wikipedia article for background). Then things begin to get creepy in several senses.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – The Murder In The Fog”

The blurb describes this as an about 15 minute game, and that’s about what I found. It is presented in a fairly vanilla format for a twine story. I think this might be the first story I’ve encountered that combined magical realism with single room escape.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – The Dragon Will Tell You Your Future Now”

This is a medium-length swords and sorcery story written on the Twine platform. Unfortunately, I don’t think most players will stick with that game beyond the first screen or two. I say this for two reasons: first, at least in my browser, the black text was difficult to read towards the periphery of a radial gradient that is white at the center, but dark grey near the edges. I at least have a quick fix for that issue: go into a text editor and delete the CSS that sets the background:

body {
background-image: radial-gradient(White, Grey, Black);
height:100vh;
width:100%;
}

The other game stopper for this story is the rate of spelling errors. It’s almost like the story was spellchecked in reverse to assure one error in every paragraph. I know that some reviewers stop when they find a game that shows no signs of beta-testing or even spellcheck. Next comp, I think I’ll follow that practice, particularly if the number of entries is on par with this year. Since I had given full review to other poorly edited games, though, I decided to keep going with this one, but skimmed the text.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – Into The Dark”

This is a medium-length parser game in three acts. As he often does, this author set the story in a world that would be at home in the HP Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. I’m not sufficiently schooled in the mythos to tell whether this borrows specific elements from the mythos or just its flavor.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – A Castle of Thread”

The Wizard Sniffer, one of the longer parser-based games in this year’s competition, strikes a successful balance between silliness and game play. It checks an impressive number of boxes: Comedy, Fantasy Setting, Castle Venue, Medieval Combat, Monsters, Non-human Protagonist, Multiple NPCs, Magic, and I’m probably leaving some out.

I had a good time playing the game, but if I could offer a bit of advice to anyone who hasn’t played it yet: don’t be uptight about using the built-in clue system. It isn’t a crutch so much as an integral part of the game. One of the reasons my game session ran up against the 2-hour limit was my pig-headedness in not making greater use of this part of this game feature.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review – The Wizard Sniffer”

I think this is a serious entry, so I’ll review it in the usual manner. While the author may have put some effort into learning the authoring system and incorporating graphics, I don’t get the sense that a lot of time was spent on the writing or editing. If there was editing.

Continue reading “Review – The Adventure of Esmeralda and Ruby on the Magical Island”

If you’re judging this for IFcomp (or just playing for fun), my advice is to give it the full judging period. This Twine story can be over in a few clicks, but if you think that’s all there is to this story, have I got an iceberg to sell to you.

In an IFcomp full of RPG, evil shape-shifting wizards, goblets and goblins, this one might not get much attention. There’s goblet, there’s a goblin. Probably course of action: Take A and Kill B or, for variety, Kill B then Take A. THINK should not even enter into the equation, yet in this game it does.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Just Get The Treasure v0.9.1”

This work does is not strongly interactive, but I thought the story was strong. It was not as feared, yet another wizard’s apprentice story, nor did it turn into a dark, gothic horror.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Harbinger”

By habit, when I play a parser game, I am always in beta-tester mode and the first thing I type is “script”. In this case, the document that is produced kind of is a script, at least according to the blurb. The author nailed a classical film vibe with a twist of Latin flavor.

Continue reading “Review: 1958 – Dancing With Fear”

This is a lovely premise: what’s worse than a crime lord? A crime lord consultant! Compared to a convention of consultants, lawyers, or lobbyists, the the Mos Eisley Cantina is a kindergarten. Dr. Owl has an ideal job for someone whose stock in trade is pure cunning: he provides advice at a distance so he can reap rewards but not expose himself to danger.

The consulting mastermind does, as I had predicted, bear some resemblance to Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Dr. Moriarity, although in this case, Dr. Owl is not so much evil as amoral. He maintains a laser focus on his bottom line. He’s not out to ruin anyone’s day, but if there is some collateral fallout along the way, it’s not his problem.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: The Owl Consults”