Reviews by jwhitham
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It is indeed simple and short, December 22, 2015This is a two-word parser game from 1986. I don't have much information about it, not even who wrote it, or why they gave it the same name as the game that obviously inspired it. I first played it at school on a (then-new) Master micro - it was shipped with that machine on a demo disk, probably intended as an introduction to the machine's capabilities.
The game is not complicated. Unlike the more famous "Adventure", it takes place mostly outside, though the layout of the outside world is reminiscent of Adventure. The goal is to find one treasure. The game ends as soon as you find it.
No bugs are evident, but the game is short. Descriptions are very sparse. The game is quite forgiving, it doesn't seem to be possible to get stuck. There are no difficult puzzles. It's all just a matter of finding objects and using them in the right place. This game could be a short diversion if you are looking for something simple and old-school. It's a good example of the sort of hand-crafted parser game that could be written in BASIC within a week or two.
Unconventional escape puzzle game-within-a-game, November 27, 2015In this game-within-a-game, you are one of the non-player characters (NPCs) in an online game named Age of Aeons (AoA). Think World of Warcraft and you have the idea. "Baker" is a parody of that genre.
You are stuck in your bakery in Shireton (Stormwind?). Though baking bread makes you happy, you also want to leave and see the world. But AoA's rules don't permit that. You have a fixed role, and you can't leave. In order to get past AoA's rules, you need to exploit bugs in AoA, avoid being reset by AoA's admins, and get a bit of help from other NPCs and even AoA's players.
The premise really appealed to me, as did the process of discovering what was possible within the bakery. Your escape is enabled by an unconventional puzzle, and there's a nice moment when you figure it out, because it defies the usual idea of how the game interpreter program works. I enjoyed the characters you meet in game, such as the other NPCs, who have varied levels of awareness of their world. There are also "players" of AoA. At first these seemed to be a simple satire of WoW players, but actually their role in Baker was deeper than that, and some were smarter than they appeared. For instance, (Spoiler - click to show)they recruit the baker in order to defeat a boss.
I enjoyed solving the game, particularly the early/mid-game stages. However I felt that the illusion of the AoA scenario was broken in the later stages of the game when (Spoiler - click to show)one of AoA's players talks to you directly and expects you to solve a puzzle. But in reality no-one would expect the baker to do anything other than bake bread. While early parts of the game give you the illusion of a lot of choice, and many things to try, and the mid stage rewards you with a larger world and more NPCs to meet, the later parts of the game are not so satisfying. The final parts of the game are effectively "on rails" - few actions are possible, and you are just responding to the game in order to advance it to the conclusion.
Baker is one of those competition games that was extensively tuned during the competition in response to feedback. The process of baking became easy, with minimal resource management, and the puzzles became better clued. The hints and walkthrough are excellent, and have the nice property of becoming increasingly detailed rather than revealing everything on page 1. It's nicely polished. Play it all the way through, take the time to enjoy the inane things that the AoA "players" say, and don't worry too much about being a good baker.
Large exploration and puzzle game. Collect spells and objects, go slowly mad., November 22, 2015Price of Magik is a fascinating, atmospheric horror-themed exploration game, perhaps one of the best of the Level 9 games.
It has a large, sparse map: there are probably a hundred rooms, maybe more. The detail is quite low, but you don't have to thoroughly investigate the scenery, as all of the important objects are listed separately. This is completely unlike more modern IF games, which tend to take place in smaller, highly-detailed worlds, and exploring scenery can be important.
The game environment is varied: the parts I liked best were inside the decaying, sprawling mansion where the game starts. Even within the mansion, the layout of the rooms is somewhat surreal, with secret passages and connections to the cave system below. Portals lead to entirely different worlds, including a peculiar "hyperspace" which you find about halfway through the game. Don't attempt to store all of this in your head!
Progress in the game involves collecting spells (each is a three-letter word) and their corresponding objects. Most spells require a specific object in order to be used. Often you will find one before the other, and then have to solve a puzzle to get both.
You "level up" by going mad. This allows you to cast more complex spells. Myglar, the antagonist, has gone completely mad and is therefore a powerful wizard. In order to try to beat him, you must be almost as mad. This is a good idea, but the madness did not appear to come with any disadvantage: it does not prevent you perceiving the game world or acting within it.
You cannot explore entirely freely, as there is a turn limit imposed by ageing. (The magik ages you rapidly.) There is a way to reset this, but it's limited, and you have to plan your moves. This gives the whole game a sort of "restore puzzle" character.
I thought some of the individual puzzles were a little unfair, as they did involve hidden rooms (not listed in EXITS) or hidden objects (which were non-obvious parts of objects that were listed). There are also some NPCs in the game, other than Myglar, and if you make a mistake while interacting with them, they will come back to haunt you. It's not obvious this will happen, but once it has, your only real options seem to be restart and restore.
Despite these downsides I found the game enjoyable, atmospheric and challenging. Persist with it, and refer to the clue sheets if you get stuck.
Short and exciting, November 21, 2015You 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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