I kinda wish itch.io had better options that just
Cause what’s a few hours? 2? or 12?
Same for the IFDB, it would be nice to be able to indicate how long it took you to complete the game.
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I think the problem is fundamentally even worse than that. If you know all the solutions you may be able to get through a game in 10% of the time as someone new. Also, if you take your time and enjoy it it may take far longer than if you rush through it. And if the game has multiple secrets and alternate endings, do you specify the time required to get one ending or to get the best ending?
So I can imagine all sorts of metrics one might try, which lack the simplicity of a single number.
-
number of endings
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mean and standard deviation of time or words per game by testers
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difficulty and style of game, which may let people adjust their expectations
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total number of words or file size, which is probably only useful when compared with similar games
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It’s really hard to estimate how long your own game is—I tend to underestimate mine because I read fast and, hey, I already know the answers to all the puzzles. I think I’ve never had anything go live in IFComp or Spring Thing with a wildly inaccurate time estimate, but I have had to make some frantic last-minute updates because I heard from playtesters that the game was three times as long as I thought it was.
Yeah, I agree this would be nice—some people already mention it in the body of their reviews or in tags, but having a dedicated field for it would make it easier to skim through the reviews and get a sense of how long the game usually takes.
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“A few seconds” is surely a joke among the itch devs. What games are seconds long? (I should just filter to that and see what it pulls, actually…)
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My sexual life, I believe.
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Looking at all this, and developing a game for ParserComp this year, it’s a bit overwhelming for an author. I can avoid some of these but as other comments have eluded to it’s impossible to please everybody.
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That’s one of the reasons I migrated to choice. When I get going, my games tend to skew Brobdingnagian (thank you @DeusIrae for this term I use all the time now!) and it’s one of those “If the system will let me do it, I will do it and probably try to break it to do a thing it’s not actually designed for” things.
Beta testing a parser game is hard and difficult to find willing participants (I know I’ve certainly failed people before just wearing out on playing a game) and with choice I’ll still complicate things in some way, but if I have to build the system from scratch it’s a little easier than writing rules that need to work alongside existing rules… While I can certainly hold my own in Inform 7, there are still tons of moving parts about it I avoid and don’t understand.
In a choice narrative, limiting the interactions to just the stuff I plan for and not having to worry about whether the player can pick up and carry a piano I forgot to make fixed in place can reduce anxiety.
I just need to learn to write smaller games after losing my flow for a couple years. I’m not saying I won’t ever write another parser game; if I do, I just need to scope it realistically.
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I struggle to give a single figure because my 4 playtesters’ figures for how long my demo took to play differed by a factor of three (the shortest was 20 minutes, the longest an hour). Naturally, I got a report of one player at Spring Thing completing it in 10 minutes!
However, some sort of ballpark figure, preferably based on how long other people took to play a single run of the game, is a good idea.
What sort of games are a few seconds long? Ones that are only a few clicks long, or parodies of You Have To Burn The Rope.
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It’s the default setting actually…
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Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t tend to find shitpost-y/troll/“parody” games all that interesting. I realize it can be fun to have an ironic appreciation for them and set false expectations but most often I don’t even bother to play them, I just read what the joke is from the reviews and save some time. Making something intentionally bad is easy, but making it bad in a funny way takes skill. Something like Not the Lord of the Rings or Textos Blast from the Past is just a slog because the humor is so immature, uninspired, and repetitive.
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Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die
Aisle
There’s probably multiple One-Choice Jam entries that only take a few seconds.
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From my recollection, all games requires at least a few minutes to play/read. Only one or two had the choice right at the start, and they had quite a bit of text.
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Spider and Web (a definitely cool game) is described as a holiday journey which it really isn’t. That irritated me at first. (Off course this is no problem anymore once you got the first steps done.)
The thief in Zork: I hate being pickpocketed in an IF.
The usual suspects, as already mentioned, like puzzle unrelated to the story, too weak puzzles, too hard puzzles. The general approach of early IFs, like dead-ends, and many more.
Over-verbose intro. Or an intro that doesn’t actually introduce you to the situation or task. Generally too verbose text.
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The fact that it is useful combined with the fact there is no right (good?) way to do it is why I think it’s an interesting problem. Should you err on the side of overestimating or underestimating the duration? Maybe it depends on who your target audience is. If they are busy people looking for something short then say the game is short, and if they’re not busy (?) and want a really long game say it’s long. In either case including indications of progress in the game could help them quickly figure out what exactly you mean by long or short.
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I may add another couple:
• Games that start in “your room”. (Yes, my most popular game starts in “your room.”)
• Games that start in a place crowded with objects, like “You are in King’s College’s Chapel. You can see a broom, a groom, a drum, a plum, a plume and a doom in here. Jack, Mary and Chris are here, chatting along themselves.”. Too many things to interact with at the very beginning give me a sense of agoraphobia. TL;DR. Then I usually don’t R because I’m burned out already.
• (Annotation to the above: Games that start in rooms with long descriptions, in which you actually HAVE to X a lot of scenery to find the interesting one–or even none: the point is, again, TL;DR.)
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This can be part of a trope “My Crappy Apartment” where you start in a location with a couch, a TV (often with a remote hidden in the couch to test supporters and hidden objects - SWITCHING ON often provides a plot/lore dump) and a possibly a kitchen bedroom and bathroom that really doesn’t have anything to do with the game. This is kind of what most people do as their first test implementation (model their living space) which is good for a learning prototype, but it often winds up as the starting room in many people’s first game.
This trope might be called “Chamber of Exposition”
In a non-interactive media it’s similar to “Exposition Party”
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Should we start an IF Tropes wiki?
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Looks at the “My Apartment” trope <_<
Common Varieties
- My Apartment / House
- Often surrounded by a cookie-cutter suburban neighbourhood.
- There will be a fully furnished, but ultimately useless, bathroom.
- The fridge will contain two or fewer items.
- The author’s cat may make a cameo.
Looks at my TADS 3 experiment >_>
> l
Aster’s Bedroom
Aster’s bedroom is quite large, but seems a lot smaller due to the clutter–
clothes, bins, trash, sheets, and random other objects that probably shouldn’t
be on the floor.Slinky is here.
> x slinky
Slinky, Aster’s sleek black cat. He is loving, affectionate, beautiful, and a
little shit. Alternatively, 'baby man’, 'Slinky Malinki’, or 'Stinky’.
Looks back <_<"
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well, let’s amnesty all those experiments 
after all, are by definition excellent and varied tutorials for IF languages.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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