If you force light mode or have the screen clear after a timer elapses, I am closing the game and never returning.
If you have a major game-altering choice or a puzzle that requires “social skills”, I am finishing the game, but removing a star from my rating.
Everyone’s idea of “normal social skills” are super varied, and based on both neurology and culture. Predicating a major game decision on your own version of normal is a weird ask for a player.
(The ending of Milliseconds of Romance is not a social skills puzzle. It’s a test of whether or not you’ve figured out the character’s reward function.)
I would argue that there are multiple kinds of social skills puzzles; something where you’ll fail if you don’t know, going in, a certain point of etiquette is a bad puzzle, but I tend to design social puzzles to be navigable by trial and error—try something, see how the other character reacts, and if they’re not receptive, try something else. (And I’ll straight-up tell the player “[character] seems annoyed” or whatever, so it’s not as hard as it is in real life, where, ironically, I am very bad at picking up on how people are feeling about my behavior. I guess it’s wish fulfillment?)
It sounds like you probably still would not enjoy this kind of thing, which is totally fine and I’m not trying to argue that you personally should feel more positively about it, I just want to push back gently against the idea that social puzzles by definition require you to intuit what the writer thinks is “normal” and are therefore inherently less fair than other kinds of puzzles.
I thought of another one… “click anywhere to continue” functionality with no “back” button. Every time I play a game like this, I click accidentally at least once and miss a screen of text.
This is one I’ve been thinking about a lot, actually. Wondering if a good alternative would be “go to kitchen” instead of “go north”, if the kitchen is described as “to the north”, and just ensuring the parser knows how to handle that for every room.
Because a lot of people rely on ordinal compass directions to navigate easily, so there would need to be an additional mechanic, instead of replacing it, especially because the player’s facing direction tends to be really ambiguous in parsers.
EDIT: Fwiw, I find compass directions useful in parsers, but I would be lying if I claimed they were compatible with my brain. It’s more like they’re useful because implementing a facing direction and moving with forward, left, right, and back would be more confusing. I’d love to hear other ideas for supplemental solutions for this difficulty, if anyone has them. Might be worth starting a new topic for this, too.
Well, I’m not in love with compass directions in general, but I can handle stuff like “go north” a little better. It’s the ordinals like NE and SW that really mess me up.
There has been more than one game where there is an object on the other side of a large room, and I am recommended that I “go to it” or like, “you can’t reach it from the other side of the room”; but when I try to “go to it” or move in that direction, it doesn’t understand - or complains i walk into a wall.
Hmm…I’m getting inspired by all these to create a game with as much bad stuff and unpopular choices as possible. Next question would be choice or parser. Or both. BSUCTG: The Game coming soon (maybe (probably (not (but it would be funny (right?) (yeah it’ll happen someday (well anyways the programmer in me needs to close all these brackets (but let’s get one more in))))))).
One thing I really don’t like in IF is unnecessary profanity. I teach high schoolers all day and it makes me think of the 14 yr old boys, or even of a child.
What’s the difference between a profanity laden game and this kind of dialogue:
“You boo boo meany ugly fart poopoo face! Stupid sneaky tattletale bum booger!”
A boatload of other things that are generally considered bad…
getting “You can’t see any such thing” when I try examining something mentioned in the room description
flip-side of the above: making incidental details seem so pregnant with meaning that there are red herrings through the roof (and/or having lengthy readable things without story value unless they redeem themselves by being really funny or something)
capricious puzzles dropped into the middle of a narrative with zero diegetic rationale (but it’s fine if the whole game is “thin narrative frame around a puzzlefest”)
in parser games, not following through with implementing acts suggested by the environment and the things at the main character’s disposal, especially simple things like I can climb the ladder, but I can’t go up, or vice versa
things that make no sense. I was playing a detective game once and a secretary was stonewalling me about looking around the boss’ office. The game had a hint to the effect of “you have to do something to show her you’re serious”. And that thing turned out to be… show her my PI license. “Oh, you’re a professional snoop I’ve never heard of who wants to poke around my boss’ office? Well, why didn’t you say so!”
either not implementing obvious verbs or not appropriately re-purposing existing ones. I was very peeved with “hit door with axe” getting “Violence isn’t the answer to this one” when the solution was to “chop door with axe”. Or “buy ” getting “Nothing is on sale” when you’re in a store. And there have been lots of times I had the right solution to a problem conceptually, but I became convinced it must not be right 'cause every way I could think of to try to enact it was rejected.
being completely stuck with zero idea of what the next thing to do is
Some maybe slightly more distinct bugbears:
having things that are revealed by “search” but not “examine” or vice versa
in choice games, what my character actually does turning out to be way different from the choice I was offered, e.g., “Refuse” becomes the character saying something massively insulting
gratuitous motion. If you have an animated background, I’m outta there. If there’s a bunch of animated text, I’m probably outta there. Shaking a word briefly is fine; persistent motion isn’t.
bad foreground/background contrast.
lack of consequences to actions, e.g., NPCs having no problem with you searching their homes right in front of them (or searching them themselves)
lots of rooms serving no purpose beyond making the map larger (evoking/revealing the setting can be a purpose, of course)
a large map and the absence of a go to <room> command
essential information that appears once and if you miss it or forget it, you’re screwed. Also: requiring me to notice some subtle difference that has cropped up in the middle of a room description.
Having no feedback about weighty consequences of an action, i.e., pushing this button changes something elsewhere… at least usually. I wouldn’t be so cranky if it were apparent when I got to the changed thing that its current state was a likely result of my button-pushing.
misspellings or wrong word choices, especially substitutions like “affect” for “effect” or vice versa
pretty much anything that isn’t turn-based with as much time as desired between turns
An unstated goal of those early games was to finish in as few turns as possible, leading directly to those sorts of challenges. They were also never meant to be solved in a single playthrough. Yes, I strongly dislike them (the things on the list, not the games) too. I don’t like anything timed, unless it is a (very) small, isolated puzzle.
This is absolutely going into I Am Prey 1.0 now, ahahahaha. I need to think of some really obscure series of actions that the player would need intent to perform, and then the Predator starts talking like this. He’s run out of patience and is starting to experiment with new ways to be excessive, lmao.
Does this motivate you, Prey…? Will you work harder if I call you a stinky poop face, instead of a fucking spider? Stop wasting time, ugly fart head…!!
I do think profanity can serve a purpose as far as characterization and tone. Real people use profanity (some quite a lot!), so it only makes sense that a portion of fictional characters would, too. This makes me think of how silly it can come across in TV shows when the dialogue isn’t allowed to include swearing—e.g., when a character is forced to vehemently declare, “That’s bull crap!” Not trying to argue with your preference, of course, just adding my two cents.
My siblings and I used to be fans of the comedy group Studio C, and due to their religious affiliation they can’t use any profanity at all. It’s very jarring hearing someone scream in furious rage “GOSH DANG IT!”
It reminds me of Inform 7 (until recently) having special code in the compiler that would hide the verb “bother” from the index, because it was important to berate the player for using such language, but it was equally important to ensure that no innocent minds would see it in the documentation!
So in terms of some actually actionable advice—if you don’t want to include profanity in your game, telling instead of showing (“he curses and slams his hand against the wall”) is a lot better than using minced oaths like “gosh darn” if you want to keep a serious tone. Because to me, that (the minced oaths) is what sounds like an elementary school child.
He’s run out of patience and is starting to experiment with new ways to be excessive, lmao.