Reviews by Frater
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Short, fun and polished, August 16, 2016Taco Fiction is a short (shorter than I expected) little crime story with a very polished environment. I was impressed with how well developed the setting was, with very few issues and most of the obvious things implemented. There were very few "guess the noun/verb" issues and most things were clear, straightforward and got out of the way of immersion in the story.
The writing is definitely one of the high points of the game, drawing the player in to the state of mind of the desperate, morally-challenged and generally incompetent protagonist. There are few other characters to talk to but those that you do encounter are very well drawn with quick, broad brush-strokes. The ice-cream cashier is sweet and willing to pass the time chatting to a weird stranger, the paco's cashier is a near zombie (chat to him, his response to "what do you do for fun" is chuckle-worthy) and the cops in the diner are amusing to talk to.
The puzzles in the game were all in keeping with the story and the solutions for all of them both made sense in the context of the game, and were fairly easy to determine, thus leading to a story-focused game where the puzzles smoothly propel rather than requiring you to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the solution. There were no instances of crazy logic or "guess what the author was thinking here", it's all straightforward.
The downside of this polish is that those errors that do pop up tend to stand out. There were a few parser noun issues, such as not recognising "girl" when referring to the ice-cream cashier. Not a huge issue and possibly a rebuke at my sexist word usage, but one I noticed. A bigger issue was that it appears possible to get into a state where you are locked off from some dialog choices despite meeting the pre-requisites for them. I notice this during a repeat run-through after realising that there was an additional ending to the game involving the ice-cream cashier. I ran through the game quickly, as I knew the puzzles by this point and without the need to examine and read everything it's possible to run through the whole game very quickly, but found when I spoke to the cashier after completing most of the puzzles in the game (and in possession of the item that would lead to the alternate ending), that some discussion topics that I had seen on my previous run-through weren't available.
It might be this was intentional, a sort of punishment for not speaking to her earlier about the topics, but it was disappointing and felt more like a bug.
One thing that struck as more of an issue was the fact that the pivotal item of the final puzzle, the cashbox, isn't referred to in the room description at all that I could see. In my initial play through, I didn't (Spoiler - click to show)enter the back office until the argument started, figuring I could creep in unnoticed in the commotion. I completely missed the box and thus ended up with a quite mediocre ending. When I replayed, knowing the box was going to be there, I was able to examine it (x box) but I'm not sure how I would have thought to do that if I wasn't fore-warned. It feels as though this was intentional, rather than an accidental oversight, and it's possible I simply missed examining something, but given the openness of all the rest of the game it also seems like a misstep, and one I found quite annoying.
On the whole, a quick fun if-comp style game. I prefer longer, deeper games in general, but this hit most of the marks of what I look for in a short game. It was almost a four star, but the few issues irritated and I didn't feel engaged enough to be able to overlook them.
Still, recommended for any fan of good writing, and short IF.
A good effort marred by obvious bugs and so-so humour, August 16, 2016First up, there is obviously some sort of story behind a google account name eggheadcheesybird. I always enjoy odd usernames, well done. In some ways however, that was the funniest part of this evening.
The professor was characterised very well and was quite unlikeable as was no doubt intended. I particularly enjoyed the diary, it put everything into perspective. I didn’t find a way to kill the professor unfortunately, I was hoping i’d be able to throw the flesh eating bookworms at him (also mildly amusing), but it would let me. Or stake him.
There were a few bugs. The biggest one was that the professor kept talking and moving and doing things when he was in a different room than the character, and you could lift the pillow and search things whilst the professor was sitting on it.
There was a walkthrough built in that was nearly less than useless. I needed it to get to the (Spoiler - click to show)underground chamber, given that (Spoiler - click to show)the statues didnt seem to be mentioned in descriptions anywhere, but even knowing what I had to do in there (Spoiler - click to show)(get a rubbing of the coffin lid) it still led to a painful guess the verb puzzle in which my character beat himself to death several times with (Spoiler - click to show)charcoal and paper.
(Spoiler - click to show)The ressurection pages combined with the coffin message suggest you can resserect the female vampire and yet dripping blood in the urn fails to work and I was completely unable to find any of the interesting endings. On the whole, an interesting try marred by poor execution and overambitiousness. It may have been better to ignore the open ended idea and at least implement -one- full path that was interesting.
I didn’t feel much urge to replay it, open ended or not.
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Review initially posted on Silicon Dreams during the 2008 IF Comp
(https://frater.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/if-competition-2008-review-4-draculas-underground-crypt/)
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