IFCOMP2014: With Those We Love Alive

With Those We Love Alive written by Porpentine and scored by Brenda Neotenomie placed 5th in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

Porpentine is one of the few authors I know much about. I have played CyberQueen, Cry$tal Warrior Ke$ha and Howling Dogs. Those works, and Porpentine’s interviews and posts keep me thinking the relationships between the tools, the medium, the story and how these produce a final work. Hagiography over.

I particularly WTWLA for the rich symbolism invoked with small amounts of text. I like how this game looks like it could go well onto a small screen. I’m not sure if the "select my preference" purple links had an effect on the underlying game but that didn’t matter because it helped ME construct a coherent picture of the world and how the relationships within it worked.

The game invites you to draw symbols onto your skin. I did not do this but I see how it could enhance the game. It would further immerse the player into the world and fit well with the way that time passes in the game.

The game is technically well crafted as prior actions etch onto other parts of the environment. The recognition of my prior craft reinforced how much my character had supported the machine from which I wanted to escape. Going along to go on. The music and colour changes support the story well.

Overall I was interested in where the story was going and how it got there. There are some lovely symbolic moments that will mean different things to many. I particularly like the princess uprising. Beautiful.

Highly recommended.

IFCOMP2014: Laterna Magica review

Laterna Magica by Jens Byriel placed 42nd (last) in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

This work occupies an interesting place for me. I’m not sure it intends to be FICTION. I read this as a dialogue between yourself and yourself as a way of exploring / confronting your own thinking about new age spirituality. YMMV on subject matter like this... I found myself having to just buy-in to certain beliefs in order to continue. Ugh fine, it’s fiction.

As an IF-work: I like the idea of using IF in a dialogue manner; a form of education, a conversation a reader can have to learn about things. This is different to Wikipedia where knowledge is presented in chunked totality. This mode of education is an unfolding journey. I’d love to see work where the conversation changes based on what has come before – that would unlock great educational potential.

I initially couldn’t find an ending and went around in loops trying to explore as many answers as I could. I get this was the whole point; to come and go as I choose but there is no end to this quest/questioning. I’m going to admit to cheating and eventually reading the source code to make sure I got everything – ha! It turns it there is a proper ending - this is sort of a maze game afterall.

I don't recommend this game.

IFCOMP2014: ICEPUNK review

ICEPUNK by pageboy placed 31st in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

A neat post-apocalyptic loner back story and an interesting narrative where you go around slurping up data out of the landscape. The interface riffs on old text console games and features some retro ASCII art. The map is randomised. The map was a bit clunky and slow to navigate – probably a feature of my impatience and my older computer.

The task of slurping up data got a bit tedious. It became more score-keeping than a chance to revisit the items of culture the game presented as data for the taking. It became less an unfolding story than a chore to complete. I did encounter one potential show stopper bug that gave a totally blank screen. I got around this with some console tricks.

Booting up the computer gave a simple victory screen. About what you’d expect.

A story-line with the inhabitants of another bunker basically opting-out of the game wasn’t particularly well followed. Neither was the initial screens of gender selection.

I score this game well in technical merit. The back story was cool, but too much was exposed via exposition in the opening scenes rather than discovered as the story unfolded. I suspect the author had high ambitions but unfortunately ran out of time. I don’t want to sound at all discouraging, because this could be a great game story if polished and honed.

IFCOMP2014: Begscape review

Begscape by Porpentine placed 28th in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

I went for this game because of its simple aesthetic. It feels like the PeopleSoft style text games from the 1970s (e.g. Chris Gaylo’s Highnoon). Those games helped me learn to program! I have done some fairly faithful conversions of these old games to Twine and Arduino. This means I already have an affinity for the style of game.

The choices are brutal and limited; even by the standards of the 1970s games. But those limits are the story. Poverty is not only about money though that becomes the basic means of maintaining health. Poverty is about resources; health, mental, charisma, and connectedness. That this game doesn’t let PC me do a bunch of things RL me could do (borrow, ask a relative or friend, apply state benefits, work for food, etc) speaks exactly to that.

Perfectly sized and I love it.

IFCOMP2014: Hill 160 review

Hill 160 by Mike Gerwat placed 36th in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

This is the first parser game I've played in quite some time, so it took me a bit of getting used to things. 3 hours in and ... well I opened up the walkthru and realised I'm not even quarter of the way there. But I really want to finish this game - find out what is going on.

It's probably my noob-ness with modern parser that make things a bit slow. Getting killed happened often, but it was great I got instant retries. Some of the continuity got a bit patchy - ie I was able to put things back into a locked cabinet without opening it.

Research was generally great except that: Sargeant is a non-commissioned officer rank. The story-line assumes Grant is a junior officer. It might work better to change Grant to a Lieutenant and Grant's entry to the army as an officer cadet. I was able to overlook this slip though to enjoy what bit of the story time allowed me to play.

I get the feeling that CYOA might've suited the game better than parser because the narrative pacing could be better controlled. While parser gave the illusion of freedom, the "narrative rails" the game was on were on quite apparent. It wasn't like I had the agency to do much except what the story next required of me. Still, this is my first parser play in quite some time so take what I said with a grain of salt.

Big game. Very engaging. A bit more testing and polishing and it would be great.

IFCOMP2014: The Secret Vaults of Kas the Betrayer review

The Secret Vaults of Kas the Betrayer by A. E. Jackson placed 33rd in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

As I started to play I got the strong feeling of a Fighting Fantasy novel - nothing to do with the author's surname. Cool - I have boxes and boxes of FF books in my garage so count me as a genre fan.

There's an interesting enough back story with enough depth for a FF story. The room-with-options-that-you-return-to is common enough in FF stories but SVKB gives too much freedom to move backwards and forwards. FF generally made the PC move the narrative forward as a general rule with only the occasional looping room. The looping room having to repeat text is a limitation of dead-tree format. In SVKB looping text felt nostalgic at first but quickly became annoying. I like computer based IF because it frees me from too much looping text. I wanted a short-cut back to the poem from puzzles. Eventually I just opened the poem in another browser window.

The writing could do with edits. Coding generally well crafted. Parchment styled CSS was nice enough though the default Responsiv storyformat grey header/footer should've also been brought into theme.

I think basing the game on tightly built rooms with options made the game feel small. There are 66 Twine passages though the density of <<if>>s make comparison with a FF400 not exactly useful. However, Fighting Fantasy made the 400 paragraph limit feel like large world because the decisions had a mixture of actions that had large and small effects. FF covered a lot of ground in passages like: you walk for a few hours and ...." or "you pass through a village of nondescript buildings that look much like each other."

At times I was a bit confused which links would examine things and which would perform actions on those things. Typically an examination action does not change state (except time, or triggering something as you walk to the NOUN). FF made this clear by usage; usually clear verb phrases. I like the style where links embedded in text examine / think (don't change state) and links at the bottom of passages DO things (change state). There isn't a correct answer though; do something that makes sense!

I keep coming back to the genre thing. I wonder if a tightly woven room puzzler with freedom to move back and forth might have better suited Inform. As it stands emulating the rooms in Twine worked well enough.

I did enjoy myself. That FF nostalgia was too strong for me to resist.

IFCOMP2014: Arqon: A Criminal's Journey review

Arqon: A Criminal's Journey by H. J. Hoke placed 39th in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

You play the part of Arqon - a criminal basically forced to work as an assassin for the bureau of magic. It took me awhile to get used to which commands worked - probably my lack of familiarity with parser games. I encountered a few bugs:

In the room before meeting the hermit the description said I could go up, east and west but exits said I could only go west and up.

After killing the Hobgoblin and meeting the hermit:
*** Run-time problem P47 (at paragraph 663 in the source text): Phrase applied to an incompatible kind of value

I almost couldn't make the game work after that. #sadface And just as I was starting to have fun...

Ok, I managed to get past that bug and a misspelling of hermit as "hermet". Then the game was over. And just as I was starting to have fun.

A few things: a criminal recruited as an assassin ... yeah maybe. Your inventory being left intact after being imprisoned... nope. The mayor hanging out a few levels deeper than the dungeon... nope. If the placement issues were fixed then this could be enjoyable enough to play in a larger version.

The writing could do with some proof reading and edits. I didn't mind the combat, but I blanked over the combat text since it didn't seem to matter.

The verdict: skip this game unless there are major updates.

IFCOMP2014: The Black Lily Review

The Black Lily by Hannes Schüller placed 17th in the 20th Interactive Fiction Competition IFCOMP2014. You can play online at ifdb. This series of blog posts are mini-reviews I wrote as a fellow author to document my impressions of other games.

Spoilers below

At first I thought this was some story about a man reaching a point in his life where he was deciding to leave aside the passions of the flesh and settle for more stable relationships. This was some bookish withdrawn guy who lived a quiet but comfortable enough life. Then I met Lily. What the heck! So I go back and open up the safe. Oh. I'm a murderer. Heck. So I play again. I'm also maybe a woman. Well that shows how much I'm projecting into the story.

Yeah, my suspicions were raised by the title: The Black Lily being similar to the Black Dahlia (a murder victim). As I played I saw the recurring Black Lily motif as some kind of marker - a symbol that linked the encounters into something to be left behind. But then it became a great plot device to represent the urges of the player character without giving too much away.

At first I wondered why the shower scene was needed. Why not just go straight to the albums... but in the end it made sense. This was the time to discover the identity of the character and I missed it.

The commands were easy enough and the world richly described. I didn't get all the endings or much of a score. But Yep. I liked it. Play time is under an hour and you might want to play a few times.