Category: IFcomp2017

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”

Alice Aforethought is a hypertext IF that leverages characters and some of the otherworldly mechanics of Wonderland. According to the splash screen, it is written in AXMA Story Maker, a system unfamiliar to me, but one that seems promising in terms of capabilities. The core of the story is told in prose, with highlighted hyperlinks either leading to other pages or bringing up floating text boxes in front of other text. To the side of the screen, there are other areas with clickable text, for example, inventory.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Alice Aforethought”

With a name like Off The Rails, I was prepared for a screwball comedy, but that’s not what is in store for this relatively short Twine work. That’s not to say the author doesn’t have a sense of humor or at least irony: the story begins on a train, and if you don’t get off the train, the story is entirely linear, i.e., the player is railroaded to a quick but not all that enlightening end.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Off The Rails”

Fake News was a fun piece, made even more so by the way it was written. Anyone who blows past the ABOUT at the start of the story may miss the author’s explanation: this was written in SpeedIF style by taking the top headlines for one day and building a story around them. The quality of the writing and certainly the editing are far beyond what you’d typically find in a SpeedIF, but this work captures some of the zaniness of having to weave together these otherwise unrelated headlines into one relatively cohesive rollercoaster of a story.

[I don’t think any specific spoilers follow]

Continue reading “Review: Fake News”

Nightbound is a fairly direct implementation of tabletop RPG in Twine. The initial screens conscientiously provide a warning about browser cache refreshes, conventions used in the game, and some background that will inform the player’s choice of character class. After picking a class and gender, play starts immediately.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Nightbound”

Never have I wanted to see a Breakfast Review of a game more desperately than for this one…

Let me start at the end, and say that my preliminary score for this game is “wow”. I would need to move to a logarithmic scale to rate the quality of writing in this game and still be able to see my scores for most other games in this competition.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Eat Me.”

A Beauty Cold and Austere is a very well crafted game, but it did not keep my attention. It started off with a promising premise, but I ran out of steam about midway through the story.

The author’s intent was to present mathematical concepts in a way that the player could directly experience rather than to present them in formal but less accessible language. By encountering examples within an IF simulation, it would make sense that players, even those without a mathematics background, might gain an intuitive sense of some of these concepts.

The author came up with some clever ways of demonstrating these concepts and framing them as IF puzzles, which I recognize is a difficult task. In almost all cases, when I came upon a puzzle scene, I understood which concept was being addressed, but often it wasn’t clear to me how to demonstrate that “I got it” and move on to the next part of the story. I stuck with the game as long as I could because I enjoyed the writing and attentiont to detail, but I just could not maintain forward momentum in terms of game play.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: A Beauty Cold and Austere”