Anssi's IFComp 2020 Reviews

[Anssi]

Hello, and thanks for responding to my review. Yes, looking at another review of your game, before reading your reply to me, I already realized that there is indeed more to the game, and that I have missed a significant portion of it by getting stuck. So, I might have another look. To further explain my reasons for the low score and giving up on my first playthrough:

in the apartment, going in a direction doesn’t give any response at all (= Not even “You can’t go that way”, except when trying to go east, it still mentions “You don’t want to go back to the mansion…” (or something to that effect), anyway, the same response as the ‘east’ command yields when in the desert.

You can interact with the apartment door, even if it is not mentioned in the room description, but the walls, ceiling and floor are not implemented. They would be nice to have there as it is a confined space and the player wants to try out various things.

‘Turn on sink’ felt a bit unnatural; ‘use sink’ or ‘turn on tap’ would feel better.

Mimicking Shade felt a bit pointless, in the sense that it wasn’t for example a parody, or some other kind of different take to the original. Also, the lacking implementation felt it didn’t do any great honor to the original.

All this, together with the fact that the game seemed to halt after I had reached a certain point, until which point I had made reasonably smooth progress, made me feel that there might be nothing more to it, and for that reason I gave it the low score.

I progressed as far as having the game mention me starting to have serious doubts about my apartment (again, I don’t remember the exact wording), and another mention that I probably must be dreaming. I tried to wake up (and sleep) but they didn’t work. I had managed to turn almost all things to sand, but the stereo, if I remember right, was still there, and I didn’t manage to open the blinds. I was carrying the peanut butter jar. I would be grateful if you could give me a nudge in the right direction from this point.

(Mind you, I downloaded the games folder from the Comp website and am playing all the games as they were released on Oct 1, so I won’t be trying out updated versions of any games.)

Thanks, and good luck with the game :-)!
Anssi

[DeusIrae (Mike Russo)]

Small nudges in case they’re helpful (first one least spoiler-y, the rest pretty explicit):

• The notepad on your desk will give you some prompts on what to do next (they change over time)

• It sounds like you might still need to take out the stereo stand?

• You also need to open the blinds to end the sequence, but you can’t do that until everything else is done.

[Anssi]

Thank you Mike! I’ll use these as needed.

[Anssi]

DESOLATION (revisited)

As I learned, after playing this game for the first time, that I had missed a portion of it on my first playthrough, and as I had not yet used the two allotted hours of play to the full, I gave it another try. It is a nice homage to traditional, old-school text adventures and includes some references to earlier works of IF. I had earlier got stuck in the apartment scene of the game, and as it felt like a direct copy of an earlier, well-known work of IF with no twist or take of its own to contrast with that original game, I initially wondered what the point was. Even now, having been able to proceed to the end of the game, that portion feels as if it would have benefited of the author including some kind of take of their own to it, instead of that scene now feeling like a straight-forward copy.

The plot of the story (finding your way through a desert to escape your captivator) is interesting enough and keeps the player involved. The puzzles are entertaining, and difficult enough, even if mostly of the traditional type. I would comment on two specific puzzles:

When opening the bag and taking the hoodie, the main character automatically uses it as a bandage for the bleeding wound; however, it could have been left to the player to figure out this use of the hoodie.

I liked the final puzzle where you had to take the rope with you that you used for climbing; leaving it in place enables your chaser to catch you in the end. This was a smart design feature.

There are some implementation issues - even if you’re supposed to be hungry, tired, thirsty etc, ‘x me’ yields the basic “As good-looking as ever”; you can take objects that are not meant to be taken (for example the shower, the palm tree and the cacti), and there are spelling errors at a couple of places. No hints or walkthrough are provided, either. Even with its shortcomings, it is fun enough to play but offers hardly anything new to the well-trodden genre. 5

[Anssi]

DR EGO AND THE EGG OF MAN-TOOMBA

A nice jungle adventure in the spirit of Indiana Jones - as the author acknowledges in the about section - which took me about an hour to finish. The narrative is in the first person, and the descriptions are short. There are many small nice touches - in the jungle, you can get lost if you go in a direction not mentioned in the location description, and you even get a point for figuring out how to find your way back. A hen in the tribal village escapes you when you try to catch it and disappears into the jungle, to return after a few moves. The location descriptions change when you have visited adjacent locations, for example: “An unexplored path leads west” which becomes later “A path leading to a clearing is to the west.”, etc. There is a good hint system (which I had to use twice). The author knows, or gives the appearance of being familiar with, the geography and the environment of the setting of the story (Papua New Guinea). The only thing that caught my attention was the mention of the guide using an oar to steer the canoe; a paddle would maybe have seemed more natural, but that’s nitpicking. The puzzles were fair and there were no bugs that I could find. The parser is helpful and understands readily what the player intends. Inventory items are automatically placed in a bag when the main character is carrying too much in his hands. When the main character was carrying something heavy, there was a regular reminder of it (every turn, or almost every turn), but it didn’t have any consequences I could find, so those messages seemed redundant. All in all, I did enjoy this quite a bit. 8

[Anssi]

THE ELEUSINIAN MISERIES

In contrast to the previous game I reviewed above, the narrative style in this game is extremely wordy, a kind of high-brow English especially in the style of P.G. Wodehouse (of the Jeeves and Wooster fame). This style fits the setting, even if the game deals with an initiate to a secret fellowship in ancient Greece, and for having been given the chance to participate in such initiation rituals, he has to act as a kind of servant to his acquaintance who agreed to take him there, and in the beginning of the game he has to carry out some household tasks before the actual rituals begin. The language is hilarious, and for example the first-time ‘x me’ response induced a LOL moment. The location and object descriptions may be rather long, but fortunately examining them repeatedly yields shorter responses. In the beginning, the puzzles are on the easier side, in spite of the general wordiness of the game, and they get a bit more difficult as the game progresses. Sometimes the puzzles are even too easy, for example

one of the rituals that the initiate has to go through can be solved ideally just by waiting.

One puzzle involving the rituals was a bit unclear:

In the ritual, you were supposed to pray to the gods, but this was mentioned only once, and if you missed that bit, examined something else for a while and then tried to ask an NPC what the present ritual was about again, there would be no helpful response. Also the ritual itself was somewhat inadequately clued: the puzzle with this ritual was that you would be in danger of falling asleep while concentrating to pray. However, praying repeatedly just yielded the response that your eyes were almost closing, but you actually never fell asleep. The game didn’t proceed from there, however; so, it wasn’t actually enough that you didn’t fall asleep, you also had to be wide awake. This was not adequately explained, and hints were needed to proceed.

Later on in the game the puzzles get a bit harder, and fortunately the hint system is available throughout. However, in a couple of cases the hints jump from gentle nudges to the outright solution, and there is no in-between (before the outright solution was spelled out, there was a warning about it, however, so there was no big harm). A couple of cases involved guessing the verb, might have been also just me though. After the polished language of the beginning, there are also some spelling errors here and there in the middle and towards the end. These are forgivable, though, as the language used in this game is very high-standard in general. and even something like “smörgåsbord” is spelled properly with all the dots and circles. One aspect of the humor of the game indeed is that even if it is set in ancient Greece, various terms originating in more modern times are used.

I couldn’t finish this in two hours (the wordiness of the descriptions takes its toll, especially with a non-native speaker). Based on what I was able to play, it was a hilarious, fun experience, and definitely worth checking out for the language used. The slight unevenness of the puzzles (some easy, some guess-the-verb or otherwise a bit on the unclear side) didn’t distract too much. 8 1/2

(I played to the end after the two-hour mark, and the final puzzle felt

a bit drawn-out, and I am not sure if all female players appreciate its subject matter (I am a male myself, but it just crossed my mind), even if it is relatively innocent. Anyway, it feels like the ending - the trip home and what happened afterwards - is not as strong as the other parts of the game. The game could have very well ended when the main characters exit the gates of the location where the ritual took place. There are some long passages of text after that, and one grows a bit weary of the wordy style by that point.

[DeusIrae (Mike Russo)]

Hi Anssi – thanks so much for the review! Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for flagging some stuff I should smooth out in an update.

That response to a premature PRAY command in the ritual gave me some trouble to write, so very helpful to hear that it still needs some work. And you’re completely right that unlike the other ritual steps, on the final one there’s no easy reminder if the player isn’t quite sure what they should be doing – thanks for catching that. On the silent part of the ritual, the idea there is that the player needs to stop sneezing, so while it’s probably fairly easy there should be a little work involved… the ritual puzzles are actually drawn fairly directly from what we know was involved in the actual Eleusinian Mysteries, and that was probably the least inherently interesting of the lot.

Thanks again for such in-depth feedback!

[Anssi]

Thanks, Mike, for the comments! It’s a strong game, and it’s also interesting to hear you have taken the ideas for the ritual puzzles from what is actually known about the real rituals in the historical context. Best luck in the comp!

[Anssi]

ELSEGAR I: ARRIVAL

Oh-oh. A typo on the first line (“hitns”). Well, let’s keep an open mind and begin :-).

Ok, there is no introduction, unless I type “h”. The introduction is basically identical to the blurb of the game, amounting to that I ended up in a strange new world after examining a strange object, and I have to find my way back.

I am lying on a bed in a cabin. There is a hole in the ceiling. ‘x hole’ yields “It probably got there when you fell through the roof.” - Just probably?

Finding a way to open the door of the cabin gives me 11 points for some reason, even if the solution to that puzzle was rather basic. But thanks! Why not live a little?

I am supposed to be in a strange new world, but there is a toilet in the cabin that has “a U-shaped lid like the ones found in public restrooms”. (and yes, I can use it.) There is also a radio that spews music, commercials, etc.

“Huge mountains surround you from your left and to your right.” I am not sure if that’s entirely correct, but what the heck…

But this game is not to be sneered at. It is very obviously made with honest intentions and the author might not be a native English speaker. This might also be their first game? After some exploration, your main goal is revealed: you have to find and defeat a monster that plagues a village. As a reward you are promised a gold coin, and with that coin you could then buy a train ticket and find your way back to your own world - or at least to some other place hopefully closer to home. I’m totally in.

In the midgame, there are some things that are not immediately obvious. There is even a hint system implemented, but sometimes the hints are rather unhelpful. For example : How do I open the labyrinth door? - Find the key. or: How do I get out of the labyrinth? - You’re on your own. Something more tangible would definitely be in place to help the player here. But thanks anyway for thinking about providing hints

Yes, there is a labyrinth - “of twisty little passages, all alike”. And no helpful twist or take to it. So I mapped it. This halted gameplay considerably, and progress was slow as compared to the other portions of the game. That’s why it is considered a good idea to implement some kind of helpful feature to assist the player to navigate in a maze, in some other way than purely by experiment. There could be a wind, or smell, or sound of some kind that the player can use as a means of navigation, or anything to that extent. For those interested, here is how I found the monster once inside the labyrinth:

Once inside the labyrinth, go N three times. Then W, S, W, S, S, W, S.

When I encountered the monster, the blurb of the game already had instructed me what to do. So, it was pretty straightforward. I was able to finish the game in the allotted time.

Even if things were rather basic, everything worked well enough and there were no real bugs (save for one place near the village where the sign showed wrong what is to the north and to the south). There were, however, some under-implemented things - often you could not examine things found in the location, etc. I liked certain random responses such as when examining the sky through hole in the ceiling: “A bright cloudless blue. You smile at it.” or flushing the toilet: “FLUSH. Your business is appreciated.” and various other ones. I liked the humor also in the other places throughout the game.

I appreciate the author making this game and it was very obviously inspired by some early works of IF (the author mentions this in the credits). I had fun playing it and it would be nice to see the sequel. Thanks! The final score is affected by the general level of implementation, language, typos and the helpfulness of the hint system. 5

[silicon14]

Thank you for your review @Anssi (Also what version are you playing because I fixed some grammar issues in release 24 and if you have other issues feel free to message me for improvements in the next release and when I start development on the sequel)

[silicon14]

(And yes I am a native English speaker and the this isn’t my first game but is my first text adventure and game using inform 7)

[Anssi]

Hello! I played the version which was included in the download package (,zip file). Yes, if something else comes to mind, I will send you further comments

[silicon14]

Yeah I did some improvements to grammar in the latest release and made the well puzzle easier to figure out.

[Anssi]

Great, I will take a look at that version as well

[Anssi]

ENTANGLED

Ok, let’s see… The intro says:

“You came home from work only to be driven out. Sam’s wife lost it, going on about how the landlord is going to evict you. She needs to calm down, but you’re no help. Sam should be down at the bowling alley that’s on the other side of town. If you’re lucky, you might be able to get him away from the bar.”

I was a bit confused after this. So, I was driven out of home because Sam’s wife lost it. What does she have to do with me? Is she living in our place? What say does she have about whether I can stay at home or not? Why is the landlord going to evict me? So, as I am of no help obviously, Sam needs to be found, for whatever reason. So I need to go to the bowling alley to get him. But why does it say I might be lucky getting him out of the bar? Didn’t we just talk about a bowling alley?

You head out looking for Sam. The first location is “Eastside Cliff” overlooking Sunnybrook. Why do I start here - wasn’t I supposed to be going to the bowling alley? Turns out that I live in a trailer park a bit out of town, so that’s why. Even if the location is “Eastside Cliff”, I have to walk along a path leading north to enter the town. Or is it a city? “This cliff overlooks Sunnybrook, a small town that could be any one of the number of cities dotted across Midwest.” Ok, it’s a small town. Following the path (seems I’m on foot all the time) I come to a gas station, from where the path continues north to Main Street. How do cars access this gas station, if it is only connected to the Main Street by a footpath?

Well, not to give the author any more bad time :-), these were just some first impressions and remarks. Everything will become clear in due course. The game is very well implemented and a joy to play. The parser is very understanding and helpful. The game map consists of the streets of the town that you can go around, asking people about Sam and trying to figure out where he is. Soon, however, it turns out that that is not your biggest worry. You notice that you have ended up 40 years back in time, and your new task is to fix a time machine to find your way back home. You do that by going around the town again, now revisiting those places you’ve already been in, these places being now different by the time gap of the said 40 years. Once you manage to return, the problem with Sam also finds its solution. The two-hour estimate was rather accurate. There were helpful hints, but they were not needed that much, as the puzzles were not too hard. There were some “redundant” locations, such as the art gallery (at least I couldn’t find out what to do there), on the other hand the art gallery contained a potentially useful object for a puzzle. That object was, however, found elsewhere.

I was left thinking about one thing concerning the plot:

The fortune-telling lady could be encountered already in the present-day world, but in the past she was described as closing her shop and selling it forward; it felt like there was an inconsistency there. But it didn’t disturb the flow of the game in the big picture.

All in all, a very strong game with excellent programming. Towards the end (e.g. when fixing the machine), there were a couple of instances of subordinate clauses forming their own sentences, but otherwise I couldn’t find any problems or errors in the game. An entertaining game that gave a rewarding feeling. 8 1/2 now, might be higher once I get through all the games I am going to play and when possibly re-adjusting the scores.)

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

I think the author started testing this in January! Makes sense it would be so smooth and polished

[DrkStarr]

@Anssi Thanks for playing my game. I appreciate you sticking with it

@mathbrush Yeah. This was in development for a long time. Probably too long

[Anssi]

FERRYMAN’S GATE

I like the premise very much - a mansion I have inherited from an obscure uncle. It promises a pleasant puzzlefest, and as there is a language-related aspect thrown in, be it as “boring” as comma rules, so much the better. A small grammatical error (“in your mothers words”, with a missing apostrophe) casts a small shade of doubt right in the intro, though, and there are some other such small mistakes (“You read a couple poems”, “The closet is empty except from a strange copper panel”), which distract from trusting the author fully as to the included theme of comma rules, but fortunately errors of this kind are few and far between. The gameplay is fun, even if descriptions are sometimes rather sparse - ‘x me’ yields the default response, many objects are just “nothing special”, and location descriptions mostly list the two or three pieces of furniture present in the room, without much variation. To be fair, there are some delightful exceptions, for example the description of the reflecting pool: “…by reflecting the wispy clouds, [the pool] brings the sky down among the hedges and flowers” and a couple of other instances. There is a maze at some point, seemingly without anything else to it than mapping or going around by force, and I as had encountered another such maze in another game recently, it felt a bit frustrating. This is also where I stopped at the two-hour mark. I intend to play to the end as the game was interesting enough to make me want to finish, and looking at the walkthrough, there is not that much left to do. The in-game help sometimes gives helpful nudges, but the help is often too generic to help in specific problems. To summarize: I expected maybe a bit more, but this was a good effort and kept me engaged during the allotted time. 6 1/2

[Anssi]

Small addendum: I finished the game and just wanted to add that, contrary to what I said above, the maze in this game is clued. (You can also proceed just by trial and error, and you’ll find the goal easily enough.) The final puzzle felt a bit tedious (you have to place the plates correctly twice (in different combinations; first, to release something, then to bind something, and for this you had to read the sentences that the plates contain, but fortunately there was a command to examine all plates at once, so that it didn’t have to be done one by one. The very ending seemed a bit anticlimactic (an object disappears, and that’s it… there might have been some additional remarks about the main character now having finally proved themselves to be the rightful heir to the mansion, or something to that effect) but anyway this was a fun experience and I thank the author for their efforts.

[Anssi]

FLATTENED LONDON

The blurb claims that this game is a crossover between the worlds of Fallen London and Flatland. I haven’t played either game before, so I took a quick Google search to get an idea. Fallen London is a text game depicting London with a Gothic take - the city has fallen underground and various creatures have taken over/infiltrated into the city. Flatland is a 2-D platformer with geometrical shapes. Strangely, this combination works. Even if the resulting setting is bizarre, it keeps the player interested. In fact, I was absolutely engrossed. This is probably the strongest game so far, or at least one that has made the biggest impression on me. That’s a good job, because I must admit I wasn’t at all thrilled after reading the blurb. Your main goal in the game is to find a book about 3-D concepts recently imported into the city and destroy that book before the heretic ideas presented in it manage to become widespread. You go around the city, and as everything is 2-D, going north of a building might mean you’re on its roof, a basement is south of the ground floor, etc. (Most often, though, the directions work normally, except for up and down.) While you keep asking “but why?” while playing, you just have to keep going because somehow the fascinating nature of the game, as well as the fresh ideas you continually encounter, slowly seep into you and keep you playing. What exactly is so appealing about the whole thing might be hard to point at - maybe it is just the general bizarrerie - but you (well, at least I) just become sold as you go. The map is rather large, and there was no chance of finishing this in two hours (just as the time estimate in the blurb mentions), but what I had time to see convinced me.Only two beta-testers are mentioned, but everything works well. I still have to play this to the end but thank the author already at this point for a genuinely enchanting experience. 10.