An interesting question. Surely a primary goal of the IF Archive is to preserve the heritage of all text-centric gaming, and any public-domain or noncommercially-licensed game should be there regardless of whether the author is even aware of the Archive’s existence and general endeavor. On the other hand, Anamnesis seems to be in an effervescent state of vigorous and wide-ranging development at this time; perhaps adding its current iteration to the historical record is premature. Yet this seems like a fairly common situation-- if no official statement of the Archive’s preferred policies on these matters already exists, perhaps we might induce one of the archive-keepers themselves to comment on the general question and settle the matter?
@all
I’ve played several more games of Anamnesis (continuing to exclusively use the “Adventurer” mode), and am impressed at the ample offering of content which faciliates ongoing replay value. The gameworld, cast, and particulars of the plot are procedurally generated and heavily randomized in each new game. This could quickly devolve into bland reptitiveness, but the author’s imagination has simply included so much material that even after perhaps twenty games I’m still confronted with new territories and novel situations I haven’t before seen.
Anamnesis has many virtues, but also has a few problems that seem likely to frustrate most players. In my opinion there are four prominent flaws of the game in its current state-- three are poor design choices (or perhaps unintended outcomes of interactions between numerous complex mechanics), and one is a simple bug.
- Money (Arkhe). The game seems primarily balanced for play in “Governor” mode, and Adventurer mode presents many fundamental or structual problems for the player. In the latter mode, the player-character is too often afflicted by mere random adversities and thus arbitrarily driven into bankruptcy. Presumably most other readers of this forum share my opinion that play of any game is much more satisfying when the player-character’s fate is largely a result of the player’s choices (tactics, strategy, and roleplaying). For dismal tragedies in which reckless gambles and fickle fate are the prime-movers of destiny we all are already immersed in that incorrigible phenomenon known as “real life,” relief from which is presumably our main motivation (apart from mere intellectual exercise) to explore works of fiction and interactive games. In my opinion the most effective way to correct this deficiency in Anamnesis would be to ensure that in each possible random configuration of the territories of the game-world, at least one territory is always included where the default exploration option is some form of minor income-production (such as is currently the case with the Veshite “Free Mines” territory). In a game like this, I’m willing to accept that if my player-character suffers notable misfortunes, then I as a player must resort to grind-based tactics to persevere. Yet Anamnesis often does not offer even that option; particularly since Merit decrements based on debt, Merit is required to visit neutral territories where non-random income can be generated, and plunder derived from conquering territories seems to be based on current Merit, the player can far too often simply lose the game, with no plausible course of corrective action at all, based on random events. Another beneficial change to the structure of gameplay would in my opinion simply be to eliminate the possibility of debt. For example if I’m flat broke and a band of Ogres attacks an allied caravan, I fail to see any sensible way in which I could lose 80 Arkhe; as I had nothing to be stolen, the Ogres should have obtained nothing from me.
As a gross palliative and after extensive play, in my opinion a much better (i.e. more enjoyable) game balance is achieved by raising the starting cash for Adventurers. I effected a modest rise in initial funds to 400 Arkhe (from 300), and found this nicely enhanced my ability to navigate the gameworld based on skillful play (as opposed to squandering play sessions made hopeless due to random vicissitudes). Those who might wish to try this themselves need only open a plain-text editor (e.g. Windows Notepad) and change two separate entries in the file script.rpy:
"An Adventurer":
if pcontrol == 1:
$ yterr = "The Shelter"
else:
$ yterr = "The Refuge"
$ arkhe = 301Simply change “$ arkhe = 301” to “$arkhe = (XXX + 1)” where XXX is the starting funds value you desire, but note that this value must be changed in two separate places (one for initializing a new game, and the other for re-initializing an ongoing game).
As an aside, in looking through the game’s code I found the Python language in which the game is written surprisingly comprehensible despite my utter lack of previous familiarity with this programming language. However, reading is one thing while writing is quite another-- in a game with as much raw volume of output text as Anamnesis, I personally wouldn’t want to ponder the effort involved in using this toolset as making a game would certainly be far more an exercise in the meticulous technical details of programming and discursive formatting (of which I’m not fond) as opposed to conventional text composition or mundane writing (which I enjoy). For those who might be interested in building a broadly Anamnesis-like game with Inform 7, an old generic example of mine which embraces I7’s Scene mechanics as a framework may be of some use in getting started.
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The author has combined two quite separate metafunctions, “Save Game” and “Quit Game,” into the single function “Save and Quit.” For a game a complex as Anamnesis, a game which has such a considerably steep learning curve combined with very little general documentation, one would be hard-pressed to find a better way to foster inherent frustration for new players. My first few games lasted only a few turns, and my next few only ran to 50-100 turns (requiring a nontrivial investment of playing time) as I strove to understand the mechanics of gameplay. After each one of these lost games, I had to restart from scratch at the character creation screen. I found the game generally appealing and fortunately decided to persist in playing, but I think many players would instead give up and never return to this slightly eccentric game. Even if for whatever (in my opinion unsound) reason the author should like to forbid incremental save-games, I think a diversification of interface functions into “Save and Quit” plus simply “Quit” (i.e. no independent “Save” allowed) would offer at least some consolation in allowing the player (to whom time spent playing as opposed to engaging in other activities such as patronizing the local ice-cream parlor is important) to recover from play sessions in which the player-character was notably beset by inexorable adversity leading to an inevitably lost contest-- particularly because Anamnesis relies heavily on randomization, and general trends in one’s luck during any individual episode are not usually apparent for fifty or more turns. As matters stand now, the player must resort to stark contrivance-- backing up savegame files from the \Anamnesis\game\saves\ folder-- to make the most effective use of (always sadly limited) hobby time spent playing Anamnesis.
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Opportunities to acquire any Seafaring skill are far too rare-- given the random configuration of territories, numerous games are likely in which the player-character does not acquire any nonzero value at all for Seafaring. As the player is often strapped for cash in Adventurer mode, visiting ocean or strait territories as often as one might prefer (i.e. enjoying the game) can often become unlikely or impossible. Furthermore a number of skill tests associated with recovering or researching artifact pieces are tests of Seafaring skill (e.g. in pursuit of the Saurian Moon), which tests the player-character therefore cannot often complete. Though Merit can of course be spent to hire a consultant in cases of acquiring an artifact, in cases of research the possibility of research is thus simply lost, with no chance of appeal or later revisitation. Affiliated units (i.e. non-Renascent allies), many of whom are naval units with Seafaring expertise, furthermore cannot be used in any artifact related tests. This is dubious-- are these units under the player’s control, or not?
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Not all game variables are reinitialized when embarking upon a new episode in an ongoing game (as opposed to restarting with a new character at the conclusion of an episode). This is most noticeable in two areas, base upgrades and investments. If a player ends an episode while Outstation or Fortress construction is ongoing, Outstation construction is not at all possible until a sufficient number of turns have passed in the new episode equivalent to the turns remaining for project completion in the previous episode. Likewise I’ve noticed occassional oddities with investments-- after an investment outcome report, I suddenly have either more or less cash than simple arithmetic allows given the investment parameters, and these errata always seem to occur in the early turns (first ~50) of a continuing episode after a prior victory. The bottom line for players is: if you intend to continue the game in a new episode (rather than restart with a new character), postpone your victory whenever possible so that no base upgrading is in progress and no investments are outstanding on the final turn.
Anamnesis has a few other minor bugs (very occassionally during artifact recovery vignettes the text overflows from the display area due to quirks of procedural generation, in one game the location “Nivar’s Spinal Avenue” was initialized to appear in two territory slots, if the player-character has a negative value for Merit votes “for” in the legislature are de facto votes “against,” etc), but these are easily overlooked given the game’s state of ongoing development as well as the considerable novelty of its narrative and its copious general entertainment value.
That’s great stuff. 
On a much more general note, do those who have played Anamnesis have any strong opinions on the mechanic used to facilitate exploration of the territories, particularly in contrast to a more traditional room- or spatially-organized structure of the gameworld? Anamnesis is of course a mouse-driven game utilizing a hyperlink interface for destination selection (though this effect could easily be duplicated in a keyboard-only interface with a simple menu system). In a traditionally-structured text game, the player’s base and the various territories would likely be organized as rooms, with discrete directional relations and intervening locations affecting global mobility. For example in a traditionally-structured game, if we are in (a room called) “Isle of Malta” we likely cannot simply move to (a room called) “Port of Aden” without traversing at least one intervening room (perhaps called “Suez Canal”) where additional gameplay will likely develop. On the other hand, the player may have difficulty remembering how to get from A to B in a world that is randomly configured in each new game. Certainly both approaches are effective in simulating wide-ranging exploration if properly implemented, but in this particular sort of game is one approach inherently more compelling than the other to most players?