IFcomp08: interactive fiction liveblogging

I've been playing the games entered in this year's Interactive Fiction Competition because I beta tested one. I'm not really writing proper reviews, just comments as I play through them. I was mostly trying not to give away spoilers, but I've put them all behind a cut, just in case.

First, though, I'm going to plug Violet, because you should play it, even if you don't care about the competition. Violet was Jeremy's super secret hobby project and I got to beta test it, which means I'm not allowed to vote on it in the competition. It is an awesome game, though, so it's my standard for a 10 as I'm judging.

Here's a link so you don't even need to download anything to play (press enter until you can type). It's about a grad student writing their dissertation, so you're probably the perfect audience. (Unless you're just here for the reviews, in which case you should also play it. It's not just me who likes it (links contain spoilers).)

Games reviewed below:

• The Lighthouse
• Freedom
• Piracy 2.0
• When Machines Attack
• Grief
• Affliction
• The Absolute Worst IF Game in History
• Dracula's Underground Crypt
• Buried in Shoes
• The Hall of the Fount of Artois
• The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom
• Red Moon
• Snack Time!
• Riverside
• Everybody Dies
• Recess at Last
• Project Delta
• A Date With Death
• April in Paris
• Cry Wolf

Keep reading...


The Lighthouse (1)
There doesn't seem to be anything special about any object in this game. And it's over already... That was anti-climactic.

Freedom (4)
A game about social anxiety! I'm having trouble guessing the right commands, unfortunately, and there isn't enough detail in places. I'm not sure if I missed something at the bookstore. I'm attempting to talk to a young woman now, which is kind of awkward, since she just keeps listening intently and not saying anything. I couldn't figure out what else to do so I looked at the walkthrough. I was only one turn from finishing, but I wouldn't have guessed it. It's kind of sweet.
I wanted to like this, but I think it could have been much better. I'm sorry I can't give you a better score, anonymous game author, but I will send you a virtual hug.

Piracy 2.0 (7)
The intro doesn't really excite me, but it is an actual game. Things are implemented and there are puzzles and a scoring system (my standards have dropped already). I've solved several puzzles, which involved some thought, but I just got to a computer with several levels of commands and I'm not sure I'm interested enough to go through them all. Also, I've probably been spoiled by beta testing a very well implemented game, but there are some things that should work that don't.

When Machines Attack (5)
Too much text at the beginning (which unfortunately includes a "your" for "you're"), some of which could have been broken up by turns, and then I got an error message on my first turn... Not a great start, but it could get more interesting. Or not... It just told me I'm in some sort of locker room, described some lockers, then another character told me that "as you can tell, ... this is a locker room". Thanks for that. So far all of my turns but one have been entering directions to follow that character around. This fiction is not very interactive. I gave up on even skimming all the enormous text dumps.

Now that I finally get to start playing, it's not clear what to do. I just looked at the hints. Here's a hint for the author, if your game is so simple that you feel the need to patronise a player for looking at the hints, perhaps that's a sign that you should make it more interesting.
Apparently, I need to go back to one of the places on the tour. I went to see if there was a map or anything and found the walkthrough. It's six screens long! That's way too long for me to bother figuring out myself, I'm afraid. I'll see how far I get just following the walkthrough, but it's pretty tedious and the diagrams aren't displayed properly in the program I'm using.
I'm giving up. The game works, but there's way too much text and it takes too many turns to walk around between places. It's just not interesting enough to spend this much time on.

Grief (6)
This game is a relief after When Machines Attack - reasonably clear objectives without walls of text. It's an interesting idea to have to replay multiple times to see how it affects the ending. It didn't make me care enough to want to bother, though.

Affliction (7)
This one isn't bad, but it's not entirely obvious what I'm supposed to be doing at first. Oh, it does become clearer, and quite gruesome. Somehow I'm not that interested, though. Maybe my character should react in a slightly less understated way to the gruesomeness.

The Absolute Worst IF Game in History (1)
Yeah, the title pretty much says it all. I'm not sure what the point was.

Dracula's Underground Crypt (6)
This had some amusing bits, and it's reasonably well implemented, but apparently there isn't a real point to it.

Buried in Shoes (8)
This is more literally interactive fiction than game. It's more of a non-linear short story, that makes use of your actions to move through the story. Some of the transitions didn't work too well, because I was typing too fast to see some screens that were unexpected. It's an interesting use of the medium.

The Hall of the Fount of Artois (4)
This one is okay, although the lack of command shortcuts is annoying and the one joke I've come across was painfully set up. I just hit a bug that might make it unplayable, though. It's claiming I don't have something that's in my inventory. I went back and followed the walkthrough and that wouldn't let me pick up something. There's a bad guess the verb problem, too. I'm having enough trouble managing the inventory (while using the walkthrough!) that I'm giving up.

The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom (3)
The title didn't look promising, but I've only read the intro and I already have an objective, which is good. Unfortunately, I'm immediately having trouble finding a verb that is recognised. I am completely stuck, which obviously is not entirely the fault of the game, but it's hard to give a better score when there are no hints or anything to make it possible to play without getting the first puzzle.

Okay, I saw somewhere that it's possible to cheat by opening the file in a text editor. I so wouldn't have got the answer without a hint. And then it turns out not to have been worth the trouble. It was very short and I'm pretty sure I dropped something and then still had it in my inventory. If it had had hints, I might have given it a 4, since the puzzles really didn't involve much interactivity, but I think a one point penalty for the guess-the-verb problem is fair.

Red Moon (5)
After examining everything in the room, I wasn't sure what else I could try. The hints made it sound interesting, so I wanted to figure it out myself, but I didn't. I don't think I could have.

Feedback for the author, since that was your reason for entering a game that really wasn't ready:

1. If you have to explain the story, in a separate FAQ, to someone who's just won, that's a sign there's something missing from your game. That information should have been incorporated into the ending as part of the narrative.
2. I don't think the goal of making the player feel "weirded out" is a very good one. I didn't feel weirded out, just frustrated at the lack of clues, puzzles, things to interact with.
3. If you want people to repeat actions, it would help to have things change the second time. Why would anyone expect a third time to be any different?
4. Unimplemented things are extra disappointing in a small, one-room game.

Snack Time! (8)
This is cute. I like the premise and the fact that the first puzzle is easy enough to get started on. Hey, I did the whole thing without a walkthrough (although I only got 40/50 points) and it kept me engaged and amused the whole time! Great game.

Riverside (1)
Things that should be implemented aren't. I'm not sure if I should be doing anything other than waiting for information to be revealed to me in text dumps. Guess the verb problems that the walkthrough gets wrong... I give up. Actually, I was only 2 turns from the end, so I finished it and now I'm dropping its score, which seems to be what the authors intended. Congratulations.

Everybody Dies (9)
I liked this one a lot. It had more depth than Snack Time, but was just as engaging and I hardly needed hints. I did get frustrated at one point when the game wouldn't let me look at something that was right there. It had a reason not to show me, in terms of the puzzle, but not in terms of the story. I really liked the illustrations, too.

Recess at Last (6)
The game worked and I finished it without needing any hints. It felt very straightforward but still took a while to work through, so the puzzles felt like pointless busywork. I guess that set the scene well, but I didn't really care about recess. Hmm, I just looked at the walkthrough and apparently I solved one of the puzzles in a way that required extra busywork, so maybe I'll add another point for having an alternative solution.

Project Delta (1)
The game is going to train me on the game interface. So, it's not even pretending that I'm a character in the game? And yet, I'm a fit, white woman. Of course. I also "wear" a tattoo and don't know who I am. Not a promising start.

I don't like only having a limited number of actions to choose from. I also don't like not being able to type more than one character.

Um, that wasn't a game; that was a tutorial. And not one that made me want to play the the actual game, when it appears, either.

A Date With Death (5)
I bet this author is a Terry Pratchett fan. Let's hope this is more in the vein of the early (but not too early) Discworld works, rather than more recent ones. Too much text already, but it isn't badly written. ASK (character) ABOUT X should be implemented. I think a character just walked into this locked room and left again, without letting in the person who's trying to get in... I'm getting bored, hiding in here. I can't figure out how to get out of my hiding place, though. I think I may have to restart. I got a bit further the next time, but I'm still just waiting around. I think I'm running out of patience, especially since the hints suggest this is a much longer game.

April in Paris (6)
Decent writing and gameplay so far. Oh, wait. Now I can't seem to move in any direction. And now I can again. That was the only problem I noticed. Aside from that, it's pretty well implemented. The solutions to the puzzles seem a little arbitrary, though. I gave up and used the hints most of the way. I wouldn't have guessed a lot of the solutions by myself and the hints didn't really help until they gave the answer away.

Cry Wolf (7)
This looks interesting. A couple of awkward sentences and unimplemented things and errors so far, unfortunately. I hope the thing I can't take isn't necessary later. I like the puzzles, although I had to use the hints to figure out how to do what I wanted to do.

Um, I'm having a bit of trouble believing this story now. Highlight for complete spoilers: You splint the wolf's broken leg and let it sleep in your bed with you (let's ignore for the moment how unwise that is), then you wake up the next morning and the wolf is gone, but instead there's a woman with a broken, splinted arm in your bed. Even supposing you think you're in the real world where werewolves don't exist, why would you not wonder where the wolf went? And wouldn't you recognise your own splint?

Someone really likes skylights. And wow is this character dense.

The transitions between scenes aren't very smooth. I can't tell if I'm meant to do something to get to the next one, or if time will pass anyway. I'm pretty sure this isn't meant to be a time travel game, but time just jumped back several turns. Aargh. Did I just make the game stuck by not asking the right questions? Apparently, yes. That is not good. I should have saved. Okay, I just restarted. Despite all the flaws, I am interested enough that it was worth replaying to continue. Um, this is kind of creepy. Do I have to pretend I think everything is fine to get her to keep talking to me?

Now I'm not sure how to rate this game. I think it's the one I've gotten the most interested in (aside from Violet) and the puzzles were good, although could've been clued better. There were quite a lot of unimplemented things and guess-the-verb problems and I didn't like how slow the player character was to get what was going on, but I think it could be a very good game with some more revisions.