Pit of the Condemned

by Matthew Holland

2015

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Number of Ratings: 14
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A simple dodge-and-chase game., November 18, 2021
by Wade Clarke (Sydney, Australia)
Related reviews: fantasy, IFComp 2015, Inform

(This is an edited version of a review I originally wrote for my blog during IFComp 2015.)

Pit of the Condemned is a short Evade-The-Wumpus-like game in which you play a convict sentenced to die at the hands of The Beast. The site for your intended death is an abandoned city that's now used only to host deadly spectacles. A bloodthirsty public watches your struggles from innaccessible locations overhead.

Part of the info in the preceding paragraph comes from the game's blurb and isn't present in the game itself, a fact which accurately speaks to the minimalism of the game. The implications of the game's setting or vaguely Hunger Games-sounding society don't really come up during play. It's purely about the mechanic of moving through a large network of empty rooms and searching for a weapon or escape route while the beast chases you.

I won on my first try by setting a trap for the beast in the Royal Palace and then wiggling around a lot until the monster followed me into it. It's probably too easy to avoid the creature in general thanks to the proximity warning messages the game delivers. These are handled well technically, as is the occasional warning generated by line of sight programming.

When the beast isn't close, the game tends to dullness. Almost all locations are empty and there are a lot of them. I was tempted to start mapping, but didn't, and it ultimately proved to be unnecessary. Some obvious commands aren't covered. The very first thing I wanted to do in the game was try to KILL MAGISTRATE, the guy who had sentenced me to death. I expected that the result would be that his sidekick guard would immediately kill me. The game's reaction was to instead print the default Inform anti-violence message, 'Violence isn't the answer to this one.'

Pit of the Condemned is good mechanically, but I found it too unexciting given the premise.

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- DAB, January 27, 2018

- John Ayliff (Vancouver, BC), July 23, 2017

- EJ, August 12, 2016

- Doug Orleans (Somerville, MA, USA), May 20, 2016

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A randomized chase through an underground city, February 3, 2016
by MathBrush
Related reviews: IF Comp 2015

This IFComp 2015 game places you in a preset underground map that is vaguely maze-like, and sets a monster chasing after you.

Although the map is preset, there are many doors that are locked, and the keys randomly distributed. Also randomly distributed are items to set traps with to kill a monster that is chasing you.

It is a fun game, with good atmosphere, but over pretty quickly. It would be fun to see the author add a version with multiple monsters, where you have to work harder to evade them and need to set multiple traps.

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- Edward Lacey (Oxford, England), December 20, 2015

- Aryore, December 12, 2015

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Foreboding, intriguing, well-designed, poorly executed dungeon game, December 3, 2015
by strivenword (Utica, New York)
Related reviews: IF Comp 2015, blog rerun

(Originally published on the reviewer's blog.)

At the conceptual level, Pit of the Condemned is a refreshing find. A parser game, it selectively incorporates a variety of tropes from different kinds of old-school adventures, cutting out the irrelevant details from each trope and uniting the gameplay around one strongly implemented mechanic. It clothes the experience with an internal mythology reflected by the setting, allowing it to portray a serious and earnestly sincere fiction side despite being a more mechanically oriented variety of IF. The strength the concept is paired with a well designed map layout, but the novice implementation prevents the game from rising above the level of a generically old school novelty.

The part of the concept that is executed best is the central mechanic of fleeing from a Wumpus-like monster. The resulting dynamic feels somewhat like a board game and also evokes the spatial maneuvering from the original Hunt the Wumpus. Like in the classic, the player must determine the location of the monster from atmospheric messages and use the terrain against it. Unlike in Hunt the Wumpus, this monster stalks the player character through the map, at times following closely behind until shaken off the trail.

Instead of allowing the monster's seeking code to run every single turn, the monster puzzle is based on a unit of "actions." As explained in a brief meta message appearing discreetly when the mechanic becomes relevant, actions are mainly restricted to the travel commands and to waiting. (I suspect game-critical commands such as those for shouting to alert the monster or setting traps are probably also actions.) The monster only moves when the player performs an action, leaving other commands in a timeless limbo. While not advancing the turn counter for looking and examining is precedented, Pit of the Condemned also suspends time for taking objects and using the ASK/TELL conversation system. This causes a huge discontinuity between the player's commands and any sense of coherent reality about the game world. The resulting board-game-like feeling is consistent with the overall focus on the monster chase mechanic as well as with the sparing use of randomly placed elements. Jarringly, a 12-hour clock is printed in the status line, suggesting a closer association with narrative continuity than the rest of the implementation supports.

A vaguely roguelike dynamic appears from the fact that a small number of tools are scattered randomly over the map, alongside one or two keys that might not be randomized. The map contains four or five zones that fulfill many of the stereotypes for adventure game landscapes -- vacant cities, a sewer system, a cavern containing a fairly direct reference to the old school text adventures. Based on the nature of the central puzzle and the old school feel of the zones, I assumed that I would need to create a map. However, the map is small enough and the zones integrated together well enough that I never ended up making a map and still successfully defeated the monster twice. The map feels like a dungeon in the generic sense of the word, as used in game genres ranging from roguelikes to MUDs.

The strategy behind the first actions are dependent on the initial placement of the beast, which is also random. This would not be very significant except for the fact that the player character is accompanied in his or her death-by-monster sentence by an NPC named Iza, (Spoiler - click to show)who has an injured ankle and cannot walk. Most of the time, Iza will die almost immediately, since the monster charges the starting location within a few moves. Often, it seems to be impossible to prevent her death, but occasionally the monster is far enough away that the player can go toward the monster and then go in a different direction in order to lure the monster away from Iza by shouting.

The significance of the fact that the monster is not called a "wumpus" or any other nostalgic reference shouldn't be overlooked. This is the difference between a flimsy hodgepodge of overused material and an insightful application of tried-and-true conventions portraying a creative vision, although badly implemented. A spark of brilliance lies in the way that the game rewards close attention to its world's details, implying a continuity behind the game's components without narrating any explicit backstory. (Spoiler - click to show)At one point, examining a skeleton reveals that the ancient population of the city weren't completely human. Deeper in the dungeon lies a religious building containing a depiction of some sort of deity, and its features mirror those of the skeleton in some ways. (This is not spelled out, but left to the player to infer.) The implications regarding the nature of the beast and of the beings that once inhabited the city are fascinating.

This is done without much of a narrative component. There is a brief scripted exchange at the beginning, where two NPCs -- a magistrate and a guard -- leave the player character and Iza to their fate. Beyond the few shallow interactions with Iza that are implemented, the player's decisions don't feel very plot consequential, at least partly because of the vast mechanical-narrative divide created by the separation of "actions" from other turns. (Spoiler - click to show)The end of the scripted sequence has Iza explain that it may be possible to "find a way out" if only the beast can be killed. However, killing the monster results in the immediate end of the game, presumably as the win condition. No closing text is provided to acknowledge the player character's next hurdle of trying to find a way to get out of the Pit and then to survive as an outlaw. If the player manages to save Iza by luring the monster away from her, that achievement is never acknowledged.


Although following most best practices, the implementation is uneven. Room titles are inconsistently capitalized. Many decent descriptions are provided for nouns mentioned in the room descriptions, but the mechanism for defeating the monster is so simple and so explicit that the gameplay feels insubstantial. The several very good components never come together in a solid execution. Despite all this, Pit of the Condemned is capable of delivering legitimate fun in response to reasonable gameplay. More significantly to me, it shows a rare appreciation for the power of subtle narrative implication. The sum of the whole is not what it could be, but these pieces could be woven masterfully.

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- ifwizz (Berlin, Germany), November 27, 2015

Short and exciting, November 21, 2015

by jwhitham (York, England)

You are constantly being chased, through a large interconnected map. You fear that you will be cornered somewhere, with the only exit leading to the monster. You are grateful that it's turn-based, and that you can UNDO or RESTORE.

This game is excellent and I was sad to see its low rating in the IFcomp. I enjoyed the large, interconnected map - unusual in recent games - and the setting, which I understood as post-apocalyptic: barbarians in the ruins of civilization. But with magic (or technology?) allowing them to watch you as you flee for your life. Barbarians with reality TV? It doesn't seem so far-fetched.

I wished for more to do in the game, perhaps (Spoiler - click to show)a way to save poor Iza, or escape the city, but that might be overdoing it - the game might cease to be interesting if drawn out too far. Perhaps it's better as a short game.

From a technical perspective: (Spoiler - click to show)I was not sure how the monster finds you. Can it get stuck? In one of my play-throughs this seemed to happen, and I had to SHOUT to attract it. I expected the monster to be controlled by a shortest-path algorithm, which would always lead it to you. If it isn't, maybe it should be.

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- Joey Jones (UK), November 19, 2015

- Karl Ove Hufthammer (Bergen, Norway), November 9, 2015

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), October 31, 2015


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