Reviews of text adventures

So, now that the if comp is over, I thought I would post some thoughts about some of the games. Actually, I didn’t get a chance to play most of them. There will be spoilers in the reviews, so beware!

Rover’s Day Out

I liked this game a lot and I was pleased that it won the competition. It’s not perfect; at times I found it very confusing, and I don’t like sci-fi in general (or dogs). However, it’s very clever and well-programmed and it is at all times aware that it is a computer game, which I think is a nice touch. Worth playing.

Broken Legs

This game came second, but I haven’t played it very much. It has a very distinctive narrative voice, and is quite funny in places. It also has a wonderful idea for a hint system. Unfortunately, even with the hints, I was unable to solve any puzzles. I then tried the walkthrough, but after diverting from the suggested actions, I couldn’t work out how to get the game back into a winnable state, so at that point I gave up. Apart from the ridiculous difficulty level, another problem I had with the game was that it is over-written. I don’t want two paragraphs of text as a response to anything I might type in. The verbosity does work well with the main character, who is supposed to be a bratty teenager who babbles a lot, but it’s exhausting to read (in my opinion, at least).

Having made those criticisms, it’s obvious that a lot of care has gone into the game, and it got a lot of testing. There’s going to be a post-competition version, and I will definitely give it a try. Hopefully it will be kinder to the player!

Overall, I still think this game finished higher than it deserved.

Snowquest

What an awful title! However, I really enjoyed the beginning of this game. You are stranded in a snowy wasteland and have to solve a series of survival puzzles, and they are just easy enough that they are solvable, yet you feel clever for being able to solve them. If this had been the entire game, it would have been my favourite of the competition. Unfortunately, the game is let down by an awful twist involving a hypnotic crystal, the whole thing turns out to have been in your imagination, etc. etc. The ending was dull, silly and didn’t make sense. Having said that, the game is beautifully-programmed and, unlike some reviewers, I think it deserves its high placing.

The Duel that Spanned the Ages

On my first attempt, I gave up after the opening text. Later, I tried again and overcame my scepticism and began to enjoy the game. This is very much not my sort of thing (it is sci-fi again). However, the author has done an incredibly good job of making a text adventure out of the kind of game that you wouldn’t imagine could be made into a text adventure. I gave up at some point and don’t really feel motivated to go back to it. However, I admire the game and I think it deserved to finish high.

Earl Grey

This game had the best writing of those that I played in the competition – it makes wry observations about the player’s actions, which are often funny. The mechanic of the game is also very original (although similar to some parts of the Infocom game “Nord and Bert”). However, the actual gameplay reduces to scanning each individual word in the text to see whether some word could have a letter added or deleted from it. In my opinion, this is not fun. Nevertheless, I have to admire the talent of the programmers. I certainly couldn’t do anything as complicated as this.

Resonance

I gave up after driving my car into my house and being unable to get out again. I’m baffled by the positive reviews this game has received. However, I didn’t see much of it, so I expect there is a lot here that I am missing.

Interface

This game was plagued by spelling errors and little things like that, but, unlike Resonance, it was free of game-killing bugs, and therefore should have finished comfortably above it, in my opinion. The puzzles in this game are wonderfully fair and the minor cosmetic blemishes are easily fixable. A very good game.

Byzantine Perspective

My favourite game of the competition. It should have finished in the top three, in my opinion. Why should a game be penalised for being too short? How could anyone think this game would be improved by the addition of fluff or superfluous backstory? I suspect that the real reason why this game finished so low was because the reviewers were annoyed by being outwitted by it. Well, I was outwitted by it, too, but I feel I just have to admit that the game was cleverer than me.

Eruption

Even I could finish this game. It is thoroughly inoffensive. Apparently it was written in order to be better than all the bad games that are usually entered. However, there don’t seem to be any really bad games this year.

The Ascot

A very clever game which finished much, much lower than it deserved. What a pity! It accepts only the commands “yes” and “no”, and yet it features a satisfying puzzle. My second favourite, after “Byzantine Perspective”.

Spelunker’s Quest

Well-programmed but rather dated and unfair. I didn’t like it, although I did get to the end.

The Grand Quest

Under-implemented and not much fun, but better than…

Gleaming the Verb

Pointless and boring, but better than…

zork, buried chaos

Bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, but still better than the two worst games from last year.