Dhakajack

As mentioned in my preview post, I had guessed that this work was written in something other than English, and it’s clear from some holdover ¡punctuation! that this must have been either written in Spanish and then translated or at least written in a word processor with Spanish language settings. Regardless, the prose makes sense although at times word choice comes across as awkward. A few passes by a native speaker would have helped, but as it is, I had no problems following the story. If this is a translation, it would be nice to have access to the original language version in parallel to the one actually submitted to the competition.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: A common enemy”

As expected, this is more or less Colossal Cave from the perspective of an old school grue. That’s a fun premise, and reminds me of John Gardner’s story Grendel, which is the Beowulf saga from the monster’s perspective.

Reliance on senses other than sight is a core mechanic in this story, since grues spend their lives in the dark. Here, the author had to make a decision: to require the player to type an action every time they use one of their senses other than sight, or to assume that these senses are always engaged and to constantly update the scene description in terms of these sensory modalities. In this game, the author went with the former.

However, because the standard turn loop for Inform games is visually oriented, without sight, room descriptions are omitted. Similarly, the room title is printed before the room description and often appears in the title bar as well — unless you are in the dark. In that case, you are just informed that you are in the dark. Entering a new room for the first fires off a description of what you see. By setting the game in the dark, these niceties are lost — but they shouldn’t be for a grue.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Grue”

Transient Skies is a space exploration game of moderate size written in Twine. It is the sort of game that should be played all the way through, because playing it only midway to a somewhat repetitive part would sell it short.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Transient Skies”

In this short Twine game, Deshaun works tech for shows on the intergalactic equivalent of the Love Boat. As the story begins, he has a few not very ambitious aspirations to improve his station in life: things like do more exercise, work out his relationship with his ex-girlfriend (or maybe find a new one), and perhaps get a better job.

The story is told through his personal log entries, which serve as a diary. The informal language, abbreviations, and content make it clear that he expects that he is the only one who would read this log, so he is honest in what he records in it. As you would expect, the reader follows the log entries in chronological order, learning Deshaun’s story as he sets down his thoughts and impressions of the day. Occasionally, there must be nothing to write about, and the date skips forward.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: Deshaun Steven’s Ship Log”

This short work is implemented in twine and is more something that you play with than play. There is no narrative thread. Unless I am missing something, this really is a list (partial) of things about which the author is grateful.

Continue reading “Review: a partial list of things for which i am grateful”

Make a note: today, for the first time, I got through an entire game by Andrew Schultz, more or less on my own. I’ve played many of Andrew’s wordplay games, and I have always had a hard time getting on the same wavelength, but in this game, the logical seemed to flow naturally once I caught onto the general scheme.

[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]

Continue reading “Review: The Cube in the Cavern”