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Version 3
Requires a Glulx interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.

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Endless Sands

by Hamish McIntyre profile

Adventure
2015

Web Site

(based on 13 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

Exiled to the desert for a crime they didn’t commit, a vampire must find shelter before sunrise.


Game Details


Awards

Entrant overall; 3rd Place, Best Use of Theme ("Sunrise") - ParserComp 2015

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Grainy in places, but likable, March 21, 2015
by Andrew Schultz (Chicago)

Endless Sands scared me off with the title: were the sands endless? Algorithmically generated? Thankfully not. But it feels that way at first. You've been bitten by a vampire queen and need to find your way inside before light. You have about four hours of game time, or 240 moves. TLDR: it's a funny small-to-medium game with lots of nice big ideas that feels a bit loose, but there's no shame for a first time effort.

There are four possible endings, each with its own series of mildly annoying hijinks. When I say mildly annoying, I mean that they were just the right silliness to get under your skin without pushing you away. It was a good idea for the author to implement all four, though, as different players appear to have gotten stuck on different ones. And this provides a depth that so many other silly games don't have.

As you'd expect there's not a lot of NPC interaction, and what there is is a bit guess-the-subject. I maybe should've thought of (Spoiler - click to show)giving the werewolf something to chew. But the dialogue didn't point there, even though I found an actual subject that worked, I laughed. I think the puzzle for escaping below the surface was much fairer, and it had wacky humor and even a clever bit of programming where a radio gives static half the time. It was a nice little wait-nag as you had (Spoiler - click to show)seven colors to put in order, so when each had a 1/2 chance of appearing in a message, missing one wasn't critical. Or you could just brute-force.

This review is for version 1 of the game. The author, a first-time writer, showed interest in a post-comp release. So a lot of the cluing that's off (I assumed certain places were off-limits,) or the slapstick that misfires (though you see what the author's trying to do) or the technical stuff (command rejects can waste a minute) is forgiveable and easy to fix.

I had fun with the game, warts and all, and I hope the author writes a post-comp release. Even if they only have time to fix some of the bugs, I bet people will replay it gladly, if only to see the endings they missed.

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This is version 15 of this page, edited by Lance Campbell on 17 May 2020 at 8:20pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page