Ratings and Reviews by Christina Nordlander
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Punchy and evocative, December 11, 2015The plot of Jetbike Gang fits easily within the 300-word limit of Twiny Jam. It is written entirely in punchy, evocative sentence fragments, a style that reminded me a bit of some scenes in Porpentine's games. This enables a storyline that doesn't feel the least bit cramped, with many possible endings. The whole story functions thanks to a perfect choice of words, and by working from cyberpunk and teen gang tropes to fill in the backgrounds. Graphically, there are few modifications to the standard Twine interface, but they add to the ambience.
There is not much of a strategic element; choices are often a coin-toss. This would be annoying in a longer story, but Jetbike Gang is short enough that replaying is worthwhile.
(Spoiler - click to show)I played it about five times until I got to a winning ending.
Well worth playing. One of the high-water marks of Twiny Jam.
Good dungeon crawl, somewhat aimless parody, December 2, 2015TOMBs of Reschette is an approximation of an old-fashioned fantasy RPG, complete with combat, inventory and unconventional stats, in Twine. It feels very much akin to Goodness' previous RPG parody, TWEEZER: it's not a direct sequel, and does not necessarily take place in the same setting, but there are some references to the previous game, and the worldbuilding is a similar mixture of tongue-in-cheek cliché and wild originality.
In many ways, TOMBs of Reschette improves on its predecessor. The plot is more of a driving force, even if it is a bog-standard "explore the tombs and kill the final boss" (almost in so many words). The inventory adds to the retro RPG feel. Twine formatting flourishes feel less intrusive, and remain well handled (changes in the colour scheme contribute greatly to the ambience, for example). Puzzles play a large part and are nicely challenging. Combat is usually resolved in a single move and focus on a puzzle approach (choosing the right weapon) rather than repeated bashing: perhaps less reminiscent of roguelikes, but more appropriate for Twine. There is some very good descriptive writing. Despite the overt derivative nature of the game, a great deal of originality has gone into the monsters inhabiting the dungeon: you're not going to find your average run-of-the-mill skeletons or goblins here.
At the same time, I came away feeling vaguely unsatisfied. TWEEZER was a slight game, and some of its comedy was hit-and-miss, but by and large, I found it a joy to read. TOMBs, though it might be better written, never feels as funny. Some of its comedy relies on a close pastiche of 1980s computer game/gamebook writing, which is well done but not laugh-out-loud funny; some feels aimless; and a couple of stretches of the game hardly seem to be comedic at all (by which I don't mean that they're tragic or grim, simply that they don't aim for comedy). While there are some well-turned lines, the game is missing the main source of TWEEZER's comedy, the individualised narrative voice.
(Spoiler - click to show)As for one of the central conceits, "monsters are living beings who deserve to be left alone" is a subversion of "monsters should just be slaughtered for XP" that has been around long enough (the earliest occurrence I'm aware of is in the Sega game Soleil in 1994) that it's almost become a cliché of its own. This game doesn't take it very seriously; the happy endings where you spare the Wamwhateverit'scalled have an '80s after-school special earnestness to them. It's not badly handled, but neither is it a very interesting concept, in my opinion.
In short, a well-written, well coded tribute/friendly send-up of old dungeon crawls, well worth a playthrough if you like puzzles, Twine with complex world modelling, or simply want to revel in a retro fantasy atmosphere for a while. However... oh, maybe TWEEZER just primed me to expect something other than what I've got. TOMBs, despite its parodic nature, isn't laugh-out-loud funny most of the time, and perhaps it isn't trying to be. That's okay. It's got other strengths.
Good SF/horror story, but did not quite live up to my expectations, November 21, 2015In Capsule, you play a Sandman, the single person awake on board a gigantic ship freighting millions of cryogenically frozen people towards potential salvation on the other side of a black hole. Going about your routine one day, you notice an anomaly in one of the cryo-storage sectors.
It's not the world's most original plot, but I'm a sucker for abandoned spaceship horror (well, not abandoned in this case, but you know what I mean), and it's a powerful story, well told. The strengths of all of PaperBlurt's games that I've played are writing, coding and artwork, and this game is no exception. There are even extremely attractive animated graphics at crucial moments. Background colours are used as a simple but effective way to evoke a mood.
In terms of style, the writing may not be the best ever, but it has a vivid, slightly unpolished strength. Unfortunately, there are a couple of typoes, too. There are several moments that ring psychologically true: for example, the protagonist's musings on how the administration went about choosing porn for the ship's entertainment sector. There is a lot of good comedy, and the horror is almost always well-written with exactly the right amount of detail, rather than relying on schlocky effects.
PaperBlurt's trademark style swings strongly, and sometimes that results in a miss. For example, the description of the fate of your predecessor does come off as a bit too try-hard, going for either horror or dark comedy but only achieving cheesy. Similarly, the narrative voice doesn't veer away from all-too-human things like bodily functions; mostly this works, but a gratuitous bit of scatology in an otherwise effectively horrific scene brought me out of the moment. Style is ultimately a matter of taste; perhaps that scene works for other people, but it didn't for me.
My main problem was with the endgame. (Spoiler - click to show)While it doesn't come out of nowhere, it has no organic connection with the plot that has come before (the tribe of awakened passengers). Ending a piece of interactive media is hard; it may feel like more closure is expected from a game than from a piece of static media. The various endings of Capsule all have definite closure, but the story still ends up feeling slightly disjointed.
Also, I felt the game wasn't clear enough at one point: when the computer said that there was a 98% risk of fatal outcome on entering the Loop, I assumed that that referred to the ship as a whole, not to me personally, which predisposed me against the game more than a bit: I have nothing against unhappy endings, but I do have a problem with being given three choices of endings, only to find out that all resulted in a negative outcome. My assumption was wrong, but I still think the writing could have made this clearer.
Also, other reviewers (mostly for the sequel) have pointed out the lack of realism in having only a single caretaker on board the ship. I'd like to add that certainly, some future technology should be able to protect that caretaker from almost certain doom, too.
Again, the writing in some of the endings was a bit swing-and-a-miss, feeling more silly than anything else.
It feels like I've just been listing a bunch of problems with this game, and that is unfair. The writing is very good (bar one or two glitches). Technically, it's a masterpiece. The mood is abundant, and there is a sufficient amount of interactivity, even if it felt like most of the meaningful choices were clustered around the very end.
Recommended to everyone who enjoys dark, ambient spaceship thrillers.
On to Capsule II - The 11th Sandman.
Decent implementation of a classic game, October 29, 2015David Griffith has adapted the 1987 graphic adventure game Shadowgate, by ICOM Simulations, Inc., for Inform. I have previously played the graphic game in its NES port. In this review, I will start with addressing this version as an adaptation, and then move on to the qualities of the game itself.
In Shadowgate, you are a warrior tasked with entering the eponymous castle and slay the evil Warlock Lord before he can summon the Behemoth, a huge monster of immense power. While the plot is slight, the game is large, with dozens of rooms and a wide range of items to collect. Puzzles are of the use-object-on-object variety. There is a time limit, in the form of the torch that provides you with light: as you progress through the castle, you find fresh torches.
The NES version of the game had good graphics: perhaps not by today's standards, but good enough to provide ambience, in addition to the clarity required to solve puzzles. Unfortunately, I don't think the writing in the IF adaptation is up to replacing them. It expands on the text in the original, giving the detail required to interact with the game world, but is mostly bare-bones and functional. The text has some old-school features that have moved out of fashion in parser games: for example, listing important items on a separate line. I also came across some cases where objects are listed twice, in the running description and on said new line. From a purely adaptational perspective, I felt that some of the flavour was missing: for example, I missed the grates in the Epor room, behind which the player could smell the stench of an animal and hear claws.
The greater wealth of commands possible in a parser game is rather underused. For example, one location is a cave containing a chasm, with the description "From the darkness below rise the screams of the undead", but typing LISTEN gives you the stock "You hear nothing unexpected." Likewise, SMELL, which could have been used to great effect in a crumbling castle full of bones and decaying items, only seems to be implemented once.
This makes it seem like the implementation is artless, but it's not. Griffith has made some subtle changes to make the game playable as text-only. For example, where the graphical original would hint at a hidden door with a faint outline on the wall, this adaptation may contain text such as "You feel a slight draft coming from the north." There are also cases where object descriptions provide hints that weren't in the original. Map layout has been streamlined to make compass direction navigation easier: where the original might have two doorways in the same wall, the adaptation might have one to the north and one to the west.
I also had serious problems with the way spells were implemented. When finding spells, you need to use a "gnusto" spell to commit them to your spellbook... except in some cases, you then also need to type "learn [SPELL NAME]" before you can cast the spell.
The game itself... is of its era. The plot is an excuse; deaths are plentiful (sometimes fair, often not); booby-trapped objects and exits are common; when violence is the answer, only one specific weapon will do. Readers may be relieved to hear that it does not contain a maze. Puzzles are often hard, and worse, unintuitive. For example: (Spoiler - click to show)in one specific place you need to light a rug on fire, uncovering a key. At this point, the player will have encountered half a dozen rugs, and while they can all be burnt, none of the others hide anything. Others are made more difficult by the parser. The one that gave me most trouble (even knowing what I needed to do): (Spoiler - click to show)PUT BURNING TORCH ON ICE, to thaw a frozen lake.
It is the fate of early examples of media that their virtues get repeated in work after work, while their flaws are left behind. I loved playing the NES Shadowgate at an age where you could justify spending months trying to crack an (unfair) puzzle. The ambience of magic and mystery is powerful, with a wealth of spells, prophecies and strange objects; the little hints of a wider world tug at the imagination; the original writing, while perhaps not high literature, is evocative; there are enough genuinely clever puzzles and hints to make me forgive the wall-banging ones. I want to thank Mr. Griffith for porting this game to a format where more people could experience it.
But today, when the original has been emulated and can be downloaded or played online, graphics and music included, I don't believe there is a place for it.
Impressive puzzly Twine game, October 24, 2015Hallowmoor stretches the capabilities of Twine to their limits, containing a complex world model, an inventory, a compass rose showing possible exits (though these can also be accessed by clicking keywords), an automap, and puzzles that are not necessarily easier just because you don't have to type in the solution.
The puzzles are the high point of the game: there were several times when I let out an impressed "really?" upon trying some combination and finding that it was indeed implemented. The central conceit for many of the puzzles may not be completely unique, but is rare in IF, and particularly unexpected in a choice-based game. (Spoiler - click to show)You need to switch between two host bodies with different abilities and weaknesses. However, their paths may not cross, or the unpossessed one will kill the possessed one on sight. There are of course also other puzzles, involving the use of inventory items. In some ways, it reminded me of the old graphical adventure Shadowgate.
So in terms of implementation and puzzle inventiveness: full marks. Unfortunately, the story and writing don't quite live up to the technical fireworks on display. While the plot is reasonably original (you are a ghost searching for the potion that will restore you to bodily life), the setting is extremely generic fantasy standard: armies of skeletons, witches with gnarled hands, dungeon cells. I admit to a soft spot for old-school fantasy settings in games, but I never warmed to this setting: some rooms did give a satisfyingly edgy feeling of infiltrating a dark castle full of enemies, but for the most part, the world felt gross and filthy rather than frightening.
As for the writing, it's perfectly fine and does a good job laying out the rooms without making them too overwhelming for puzzle-solving; however, no passages really stand out. It's serviceable, rather than exquisite. (Also, I caught an annoying misspelling: "ode de" should be "eau de".)
The Twine format is good, and the colour scheme fits well with the theme.
Deserves to become a classic.
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