Reviews by Sam Kabo Ashwell

anime

View this member's profile

Show ratings only | both reviews and ratings
View this member's reviews by tag: abuse adverbs aesthetics afghanistan aif alice anatomy ancient rome animal protagonist animals anime april fool's art atrocity baseball based on songs bdsm boardgame body parts bondage bureaucracy casual games character portrait character stats childhood children's Christian christianity classics collaborative combat comedy coming of age compulsion conspiracy constrained writing conversation cooking cryptology cyclic cyoa darkness dating sim detective developing world dinosaur discordian dracula dream easy games easy puzzles ectocomp education educational emotion environment epilogue eris ethics experimental fairytale family fan fiction fanfiction fantasy feminism fictionalised flashback flight folktale food frame-story freud frustration gender genre gimmick gods graphics guilt Harry Potter heroic fantasy historical historical fiction history hoax holocaust homeschool horror how not to do it if comp 2010 incomplete institutions intertextuality jesus kink large large map leonora carrington lesbian linear love magic magic system make-believe marriage medicine metaphor minicomp minigame miracles movement MUD multimedia multiple narrators multiple protagonists mystery myth narrative narrative structure narrow verb set noir non-genre nostalgia nouns NPCs old-school oldschool one-trick pony oulipo out-of-comp palindrome paranormal persuasive games philosophy platformer poetry polemic political politics pornographic pornography postmodernism psychology PTSD puzzles quest random religion religious remix rhetoric rhyme roborally romance rpg satire science fantasy science fiction setting sex SF simile simulation simulationist smell smut speedIF spelling sports spring thing Spring Thing 2011 spy steampunk stiffy makane superhero surreal surrealism survival horror teenage textuality theatre theology theory therapy They Might Be Giants time tone tragedy train transposition treasure hunt trial and error trophy case urban legend vampire varytale Victorian videogame adaptation Vorple wacky war wedding weird wordplay words young adult Zorkian
...or see all reviews by this member
1-1 of 1


Gilded, by John Evans

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
An Embarrassment of Sparklies, May 17, 2011

RenFaire medieval with an anime flavour; textdumps abound, there's rather flat humour and a great deal of bishounen faerie mages kissing. The world is full of sparkles and flowers and pretty details. Even if this isn't really your thing, it's an unusual style for IF; the world feels oversaturated as a Technicolor musical. What starts out looking like a standard-issue D&D quest turns into a grand struggle between high-powered mages... or, well, that's the idea.

Gilded is mainly of interest because of its horribly overpowered magic system. The player can shapechange at will, but this is the easiest aspect of its design: you can also magically create and summon objects. This would suggest a creative, simulationist approach to puzzles, but... well, imagine Scribblenauts with a plot, an antagonist and an expansive setting, but without clear, limited objectives. Now imagine it as implemented by a single author of moderate ability. You can create or summon virtually any object, but the game almost never understands the implications of this. Your antagonist is digging a hole; you summon his spade, and he keeps right on digging. You can summon the pants off NPCs and they carry on regardless. And sometimes the system just fails entirely. You're faced with an impossibly vast array of options, almost none of which do anything significant.

This is compounded by writing that doesn't always successfuly convey what's going on with the plot. The result is something that relies on read-the-author's-mind, that's near-unplayable without a walkthrough and difficult even then. Gilded isn't exactly a work of mad genius; its core mechanics are all old ideas, just hugely overextended. But it has a strange charm, and its design is a useful cautionary tale.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 


1-1 of 1