Reviews by Ghalev
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Needs a Visit to the Frobozz Magic Playtesting Company, October 20, 2012This seems like an effort in good faith, but there are no testers credited that I can find (the game doesn't respond to any of the standard information requests like CREDITS, HELP, ABOUT, AUTHOR and so on), and I think a few rounds of testing would do a world of good getting the game into releasable condition. As it is, it's a pretty frustrating experience: awkwardly implemented, marred by spelling and grammar oddities, synonym omissions, awkward formatting choices, and more. The game launches immediately into name-dropping from established Zork lore to set the mood, but if it manages to deliver on that implied promise, the delivery waits over a horizon of frustration. With a team of testers and a little more time, this could well be a worthy entry into the fan-Zork category. Here's hope for its future ... but it's just not ready yet.
The Only Question Is ..., November 30, 2010So you're this guy. On a campus. And you've decided to burn some books. And that's entirely that. There is no game, no story, no puzzle, no comedy, no action, no adventure, no sudden twist, no gentle arc, no gotcha, no gimmick, no satire, and not much in the way of character. Most verbs (even verbs that would serve the work's intent) are left unimplemented (or quickly rebuffed). Some basic nouns (for example, BOOKS) are left out as well. The environment is sparse. There are some Muslims nearby, and the protagonist, while being challenged by the work to "have the guts" to burn their holy text (among others), can't even get up the nerve to talk to them about it or ask them any questions - commands like ASK MUSLIMS ABOUT THE KORAN (or indeed, any attempt to interact with them) are refused fearfully: the Muslims are too unsettling (according to the provided response) to interact with. Comparably, while you're allowed to burn the books (any and all of them), you're not allowed to read them. You've done enough of that already, the text tells you (gently contradicting the EXAMINE responses, which imply that you've not so much read them as suffered through some slanted lectures on them).
It's details like these, and not the response to the short series of book-burnings, that make the author's position unmistakably clear, and that's where this work succeeds entirely: along with no room for gameplay, no room for comedy, no room for satire and no room for perspective, there is no room for doubt and no room (or allowance, or invitation) for dialogue. The work's one room is packed floor to ceiling with exactly one thing: the author's desire to express one, simple sentiment. And it does that.
And that would be well and good (maybe even admirable), except it comes at the expense - in absolute terms - of any experience meant for anyone other than the author. Even if you agree wholeheartedly with the work's social position, there's still nothing implemented to entertain, puzzle, excite, stimulate or amuse you. It doesn't really fail at anything, because it doesn't even (to use the game's own term) have the guts to try.
Testing is Important, August 25, 2010When the game tells us, without irony, that "this panty contains nothing edible," we can be sure of two things. First, this isn't AIF. Second, this is a game badly in need of some friendly beta-testers. And it isn't just about spelling. This is a game where things like this happen ...
The Spider eyes you warily.
>examine the spider
You can't see any such thing.
... Several things like this. It is, functionally, an unfinished work. Some of the writing seems fun; the basic old-school nature of it feels very nice (I like a bit of retro-adaptation!) and in every way it feels like the first beta of a game with a bright future ahead, given a few rounds of testing and the requisite elbow-grease. There's a real sense of simple fun bubbling somewhere in there. Author: time to recruit some friends, and don't worry: you haven't (at least not yet) written a bad game; it's just that your potentially good game isn't done yet.
My Timbers, They're All Shivered Now, August 25, 2010I like easy puzzles … the kind where you poke at them a bit, feel confused for about fifteen seconds, remember to examine something obvious, and go aha! – then move along to the next one. Every puzzle in Pirate’s Plunder is exactly like that, and that makes me a happy little buccaneer. If you’re seeking challenging lateral thinking, Loot Island is not your vacation destination this year.
Pirate’s Plunder has character … arguably, a few-dozen ye’s, thars and harr’s too much character. Despite my sincere childish love of things cheesy and piratical (and this glass house I’m standing in, with rock in hand), I admit the game gave me a fight-or-flight response with the first few paragraphs. I decided to stick with it, and was rewarded … after awhile, I absorbed the intense barrage of faux-nautical lingo, and it felt just fine.
There are a few issues that make the game feel unpolished. Descriptions never seem to change, even when I’ve taken specific and game-meaningful action to change the thing described, resulting in some moments of confusion. The game’s determination to help the player along is similarly immune to the passage of time and event, and helpful suggestions to do something you’ve already done are pretty common. I also ran afoul of one colossal (though not actually game-breaking) bug, which led me to worry for a bit that I’d need to start over: (Spoiler - click to show)you must deal with an old nemesis, "summoned" by digging where X marks the spot ... but even once you've gotten rid of him, you can seem to summon him right back again if you repeat the DIG command - and the game won't let you get rid of him again! Eek.
But such niggles feel all niggly, because the bottom line is that Pirate’s Plunder feels a lot like a near-perfect little morsel of IF … just the right number of barriers for a quick (but not trivial) game, all of which feel appropriate to the setting and genre … piratey fun and silliness all over, and a playful willingness to bend heaven and earth to celebrate a ship’s boat full of requisite cliches. This brief game delivers pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, with a hearty “harr” and a joyous refusal to take itself seriously.
Note: This review is of the Gargoyle version, which the ReadMe implies may have some small differences from the main one.
Well Worth Your Time, With Warnings As Follows ..., August 22, 2010Sand-Dancer is a good game with strong atmosphere, a well-characterized protagonist, lots of guidance for the player, and a story well worth the modest investment in time and effort the game demands. It also sports some genuine replay value, and almost demands that you take advantage of that. On the flip side, Sand-Dancer is marred by some awkward writing issues, basic implementation shortcomings, guess-the-verb, guess-the-noun and even guess-the-preposition problems, a sometimes overwhelmingly overt linearity, and pockmarked by the occasional proofing mishap.
It's the kind of game that's difficult to review because while its problems are many, my goal is to celebrate it and affirm the good bits, because most of the bad bits are easily fixable distractions, lesser parts of the worthy whole. Compounding the problem is this: most of the bits I want to celebrate are spoilers, and not the kind of spoilers I'm even comfortable tucking away behind a spoiler tag ... because I do feel this game is worth playing, I don't want to tempt anyone to shortcut its delights. But with that sincere praise on the record, I'm also here to warn you about some of the speedbumps that lay ahead.
The game setting is, in many ways, minimally implemented. A large number of the nouns offer a single stock non-description. I like that, for the most part ... it provides a crystal-clear focus on exactly which nouns are important to the character (not to be confused, in this case, with importance to the "puzzles" in play). But there are some places where the world model underperforms in frustrating ways. To pick one simple non-spoiler example: I'm here in the desert with my damaged pickup truck, but the pickup truck doesn't have a bed. I don't mean the game gently refuses to bother with the bed; I mean it's just not there, even as a minimally implemented noun. This would be only mildly jarring in some games, but here it's compounded by a host of other guess-the-noun issues with missing common synonyms, so when I'm alarmed to find that my pickup truck has no bed to look into, I feel obliged to make sure it's really not there, and to do that I have to bang my head against the parser wall a few more times, to make certain it isn't just hiding behind a synonym I've overlooked.
Nouns aren't the only culprits. I have a lighter, but I can't FLICK it ... but if I SWITCH LIGHTER ON, the first thing it tells me is that I've flicked it. At one point in the game I can (Spoiler - click to show)lift a sheet of metal ... except it doesn't understand LIFT (but when I finally TAKE it instead, I'm told explicitly that I've lifted it). To solve one of the earlier easy puzzles, I need to (Spoiler - click to show)throw something through a window ... except I can't throw something THROUGH a window or INTO a window, I must throw something AT a window, and other phrasings provide no re-direction; they leave me wondering if I've got the solution wrong (even though, as it happens, I don't). Minor issues like these are, individually, dismissable, but Sand-Dancer is dusted with them from start to finish, and it drags the experience like grit in the gears.
The game is linear (or at least, guided along very finite paths) in an overt way. The key character choices are so clearly marked (and in most cases, their consequences so clearly telegraphed) that, structurally, I'm comfortable considering the game a choose-your-own-adventure with bonus interactive cut-scenes. As a fan of CYOA for any game that explores really divergent story possibilities, I don't intend that as a slur, but it undermines the sense of interaction when, at times, you're given a "choice" of exactly one thing to do, and the game grinds to a halt until you do what you're told. This happened to me several times during the course of play, and it left me wondering why the game simply didn't presume the action instead of forcing me to "interact" by typing in the only allowable command. Other games, for example, also characterize with (Spoiler - click to show)triggered memories ... but in other games that rely on the same device, the memories just happen. Here, the game prods me to ask for them, and won't advance correctly until I obediently comply. Maybe that's meant to be a helpful blend of "guided" and "interactive," but there's a line between leading by the hand and leading by the nose. This game lives nowhere in sight of that line.
My biggest problem with the game is also my most subjective problem with it, so grains of salt all around, please. The writing is, for the most part, very able ... the game's authors (I'm unsure of who wrote and/or coded which bits) achieve some very effective atmosphere without resorting to bloated prose, and I can't thank any writers enough for that ... but the game makes attempts at colloquialism in a way that fails spectacularly, resulting only in that embarrassed awkwardness you get when an elderly person makes an attempt to sound 25, in that hey-kids-I'm-hip-to-your-crazy-lingo way. The parser is a smartass, which would be more palatable if it weren't so frequently (and outrageously) a dumbass ... and when on top of that it's referring to me as "holmes" and "bro" and "dawg" and "gangsta" (no, really) with all the authenticity of George W. Bush in baggy shorts making a gang sign, it's just ... it's just embarrassing. All this to emphasize that my regular-guy protagonist (the one with the grease-monkey job and the pickup truck without a bed ... who also happens to think of the world around him in flowery poetics) is just a dawg who SWITCHES HIS LIGHTER ON, holmes, that's just ... no. In these matters, the game fails not only totally, but pitiably.
But it's a good game. Smarten it up, tighten it up, ease it of its insecure pretenses and give it more backbone, and it'd be a very good game verging on great. Play Sand-Dancer, because it has qualities seldom seen and some genuinely sharp ideas, well-executed and well-implemented. Play it to be inspired to do better, perhaps. Play it for the imagery. Play it because it's fun. But don't expect a completely polished and satisfying experience, at least not until a later release.
[Review based on Release 1; some of the technical concerns (forwarded to the authors in greater detail) have already been addressed in the first days of the game's existence! Groovy.]
Out Among the Stars, June 23, 2010The goal is simple enough: you’re a restless starfarer with a fine sailing ship, in the mood to get away and see something new, deep in space. And with that, despite the game’s linearity, it satisfies what non-linear games are usually better at: the sense of exploration. If you play these games (in whole or in part) for the sense of discovery, and you avoid linear play out of habit, I urge you to let this game be an exception for you.
The writing is richly evocative without being purple or self-indulgent, and the constant sense of cosmic vista defines the game experience. There is, really, almost nothing else to it.
There are one or two times where I struggled with the game’s verbs (Spoiler - click to show)(the puzzles, such as they are, are mostly about fiddling with sails, and some nautical terms work, and some don’t, and you just have to experiment to see). There is, at one point (I believe) a kind of very important false choice, and that frustrated me a little, but not for long … the game was simply too lovely, too rewarding in its own small way, not to forgive.
It’s a brief jaunt into the wind-and-sail version of space adventure fiction. It’s very nearly a one-room game in practical terms (not entirely, but nearly). It is linear. It is predictable (the ending I got, I saw coming when the story was barely underway). But … it is beautiful, and it is everything it needs to be.
"Tell Me, Inspector; how did you manage it?", May 16, 2010The game begins with a simple premise rich with obvious IF possibilities: you're a health inspector, just arrived at a dirty restaurant. Explore, examine, report. Then, as early as the very first turn (if you begin with READ NEWSPAPER) all pretense of that premise is scraped away to reveal the second layer of what the game seems to be about. In fact, it isn't really about that, either, but to find out, you'll need to maintain the health-inspector pretense for a little while, and it's terrific fun to do, poking into every nasty crevice of a cartoonishly vile eatery with a critical eye and ready notepad.
Beneath the dried-on spaghetti and exposed foam padding, Afflicted offers a pulp-horror short story of great potential. It falls down a bit (a lot) at the end, with some imbecilic NPC behavior that reduces the game to broad camp (Spoiler - click to show)(the game's villain just sits there snacking while you wander back and forth around him, solving puzzles to undo him, and don't tell me I was hiding those severed limbs in my coat so he couldn't see) but along the way, some of the grisly imagery really works, and carving (and grinding) into the layers stays fun throughout. The player-character's own reason can be questionable, too (Spoiler - click to show)(after you've found the dismembered corpse flailing to communicate with you, you can still wander back upstairs and calmly tick off health-code violations on dirty dishes... seeking comfort in the familiar, perhaps).
Beyond the character logic, the game's implementation has some rough edges. Not bugs, exactly (apart from the amusingly defiant cockroaches) but constant little problems where the parser fails to understand clear and fair commands, or understands them poorly or even ridiculously. Some crucial actions are implemented to be clunky and tedious when they could easily have been smooth, and there are far too many occasions where the game demands disambiguation when it really should know better.
With a bit of fine-tuning, this game would be ideal for beginners, since it offers such rich rewards to simply wandering around using EXAMINE (then NOTE) on virtually everything in sight. That kind of constant, stimulating feedback for uncomplicated exploration would be fantastic for a first-time player, and it's set up to gently ease in the need for other verbs as the obvious sham of the "health inspection" gives way to the real story. The basic game design is sound bordering on brilliant; what it needs is a new release with the sand flushed from the gears and its full potential realized. As it is, it's still a good game for those patient with a dazed parser and a bit of gory silliness (intentional or not), and it's scaled well for portable play, too, with environment and puzzles both easy to navigate without mapping or note-taking. The game offers many variant endings, lots of fun along the way, and even a decent (only slightly dodgy) adaptive hint system. Good stuff.
A Promising Preliminary Sketch, March 26, 2009This entire review is one big spoiler. Be warned.(Spoiler - click to show)
The game begins with an opening quote by Seurat, and describes your place along a river. There are people with parasols.
It's like a post-traumatic flashback to that educational commercial I saw every Saturday morning as a kid. That same Seurat painting, that same measured voice telling me: Seurat. Knew a lot. About Dots. And now, so, do you! So, fifteen seconds into the game, without typing a single command, the foundational puzzle is solved: I'm in Seurat's famous painting. I'm sure I had this nightmare already at age 12, but I do immediately respect the notion. This is an EnvComp entry, and as "unusual environments" go, "in a painting" is groovy enough, to be sure. So, bravo.
I like this little game. What's more, I'm grateful to its author ... I'm not a comp guy myself, but I like it when comps succeed in their shared goal: to bring more text games into the world. Thanks to Derek Sutcliffe, EnvComp didn't have to limp into existence as a one-horse race.
But La Seine, beyond its clever premise, is a promising start on an unfinished work. Success is simple enough, really: solve three opening puzzles, talk to an NPC, if need be talk to the same NPC again, and type the provided command to reach the conclusion.
But this simple path is obscured, I think unfairly, from the player. First, there's no indication that there are exactly three opening puzzles, and that solving those three are the necessary milestone to trigger the next stage of progress. You can solve those three and have no idea that you aren't meant to look for more ... nothing happens, nothing is said, to indicate that the milestone has been passed.
The game is under-implemented for its premise. This is a game showcasing an environment, but it offers little in the way of environmental interaction, and stymies many attempts to explore and play with your surroundings. There are two dogs and a monkey present ... but you can't try to pet them. The game takes place along a river ... but JUMP IN THE RIVER (and even the verb SWIM) falls on the parser's deaf ear. The game draws attention to a musician, but try to LISTEN to him and you earn the standard substitute for a payoff: You hear nothing unexpected. The game recommends sitting in the shade of some nearby trees, but SIT IN THE SHADE or SIT UNDER THE TREES stumps the parser once again. At another point, the game warns you not to try to take your clothes off (a tantalizing invitation to a humorous refusal response if there ever was one) but don't be too tantalized: clothing-removal commands don't parse at all (I guess I was warned). And at the simplest level: some mentioned (and potentially interesting) nouns go entirely unimplemented. On the other hand, the game does have a lovely response to TAKE HER BUTT, so there's that.
This sort of thing doesn't normally ping on my radar; I'm not one of those deep-implementation folk and generally prefer games lean and purposeful. But ... the solution to La Seine involves examining a previously-uninteresting character a second time, after you've passed the (invisible!) three-puzzle milestone. So, without knowledge that such a milestone exists, we are expected to trudge dispiritedly back toward the EXAMINE command, a command which has been miserly and unkind. The game's path isn't a difficult one, but it is left unmarked, and the behavior necessary to stumble on it isn't rewarded.
I like this game, I like this environment, I like this author's writing style, and I encourage a revised, post-comp release that brings La Seine to fruition. Bearing in mind that this is an early effort for Sutcliffe, I am impressed with him, and this is a game I'd be happy to recommend as a pleasing lunch-break exercise ... once it's finished.
Up On The Housetop ..., January 4, 2009This is a very brief, cheerful introductory IF, and the object is simple enough: you’re Santa Claus, atop your last house. Deliver the goods and you’re done for the year. This little confection can be completed in less than a dozen turns if you’re in a hurry to get back to the North Pole, and there are barely any puzzles to speak of: just a couple of straightforward obstacles with clear solutions. This (and the game’s family-friendly tone) makes the game suitable for even very young players.
I do wish a few extra commands were supported, especially those that rewarded exploration. It’s not terribly important that PUT PRESENTS UNDER TREE isn’t understood (since the required method is easy to figure out), but it would have been cool to get festive (or even silly) responses to my attempts to chat with Rudolph, pet the family dog, or even (I'm such a Grinch) steal the tree.
IF vets won’t find any challenge here, but it’s a pleasant couple of minutes. There is no heavy narrative, no mystery to uncover, and no serious danger to face. There are a few cute moments, and then it’s all done.
Bare Bones Can Still Be Worth A Gnaw, April 24, 2008In Dunric’s 8k Adventure, prolific (fringe?) IF designer Paul Allen Panks endeavors to cram a fantasy text adventure into fewer than 170 lines of BASIC code. I can’t comment on the writing in this game because there isn’t any. In very-old-school fashion (many Scott Adams titles would seem lush by comparison), the game’s 25 locations are sparsely implemented, barely described, and mostly empty ... but moving around and mapping the tiny world provided me with a genuine, if brief, sense of exploration, and the game’s few details are well-chosen to evoke a basic, unassuming trad-fantasy atmosphere. In my own imagination, these simple details took on lives of their own, and without prose to manhandle my mind’s eye, I still saw (for example) the game's forest cottage with clarity, and paused to wonder who might live there. This world isn’t much, but the arrangement is easy to explore and map, and the spare setting taps neatly into the cultural common ground of stock-fantasy imagery.
8k Adventure offers only an unadorned, skeletal game design: simple exploration, a few hit-point-chewing fight sequences, and a very basic puzzle structure of find-the-item-that-lets-you-move-onward. It is both easy and forgiving. If you've felt weighed down by prose-heavy works, this bare-bones game, unencumbered by meat or sauce, might lighten your palate pleasantly. Skeletal it may be, but dem bones (dem bones) gonna walk around.
Tiny, slight, fast, and easy: 8k Adventure makes only the humblest of promises … but it keeps them.
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