Bela's 2024 ifcomp reviews

Competitions IFComp
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Hello, some minimal reviews. I’m not as well versed in IF as many of you here so I hope you can forgive my naivety.

** LATEX, LEATHER, LIPSTICK, LOVE, LUST**

I really love the use of design, typography and timing here. It’s something I wish I was better at. A lot of this story reads to me like I’m watching a title sequence from a film, which is really nice.

I also love the the very palpable sense of place the story has, partly aided by the halftone background images, but also the references in the text itself.

The story itself is a lot of things, terminally online, educational, irreverent, sexy, youthful, personal, embodied. It doesn’t take itself too seriously but treats the experience it renders with seriousness.

The way the experience is designed, melding in various textual sources into one reading area worked well to evoke the sense of displacement and blurring that happens when the same device is showing you communications from different contexts in your life, whilst you might be embroiled in another, completely different context.

Which isn’t to say this is a game purely about technology, it’s deeply interested in what it means to have a body, in positive and negative ways, about relationships and community.

For me there were times where the pacing was slower than I would have liked. There’s a lot to get through and although the majority of things that are mentioned have satisfying payoffs, there’s some components that felt a bit tangential for me when playing through in a single sitting.

That said, I enjoyed the submission and would recommend checking it out if you think you would be interested.

13 Likes
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On the contrary, I love seeing reviews from people who aren’t intimately familiar with the customs of the community, because there are all sorts of things we old-timers take for granted. A new perspective on those can sometimes be sorely needed!

11 Likes
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Second this!

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** Verses **

Was very curious about this one from playing the opening. Pleasant visual style, interesting setting and a language I don’t speak.

I’m immediately quite impressed with the model of interaction this piece sets up. I’m not sure if this is common to IF works, but it works very well here with the theme of translation. The mode of interaction does a good job of using interaction for more than just Choice A or Choice B, the way you read the text is modified by the interactions that the game puts forward.

On a haptic note: Playing on mobile is quite different experience to clicking around on screen (the game involves a lot of clicking)

I did find myself frustrated at some moments, the rules of the analysis didn’t seem straight forward to me. This is obviously totally in keeping with the context of the game, but at some points did take me out of myself when I couldn’t figure out how to progress and suspected some kind of bug, but I got through them and am glad that I did.

Overall dark and baffling, dreamlike. I couldn’t fathom much of the deeper meanings on a first play through but I may come back to this one as it feels potent.

8 Likes
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** Bad Beer **

I’m very far from experienced with parser games but doing my best to not be scared of them.

I enjoyed the pubby atmosphere in this one (Bri’ish institutition innit) and the made up beer names (I could spend all day coming up with beer names, I think it would be my ideal job, though I don’t drink)

As things progressed I also appreciated the craft in creating a little bit of dread for the ghostly happenings to come. Personally I feel this could have been highlighted a bit more in the front matter, I understand not wanting to include all of the surprises up front, but this game has a lot of stuff that isn’t hinted in the front matter, or at least wasn’t obvious to me from the front matter, and I think that’s a shame! I was expecting a sort of chummy pub simulator, but got something much different.

I enjoyed figuring out the reasonably simple puzzle at the core of the experience, though I felt a bit surprised that the whole thing was over so soon. Maybe I need to go back and re examine some more objects, talk to some other people. Pacing is obviously one of the fuzziest things to nail down in an open ended game like this one so my experience is probably far from universal.

A pleasant game that even a parser beginner like myself could tussle with, I’m glad I had a go on it and might go back to poke around a bit more.

7 Likes
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Thank you for the review!

1 Like
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** Turn Right **

Infuriating game. Drove me absolutely crackers. Blood pressure through the roof. I think that’s what it’s meant to be doing. Made me extremely thankful that I seldom have to drive.

Interestingly to me, although it’s a parser game, there aren’t many options. So you could imagine that someone would argue that it would be easier to implement as a choice based game. However the incredible frustration of typing in your required command over and over works in a way that clicking something never could.

Unique and well executed. Another game that a parser fearer like myself can have fun with.

9 Likes
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Thanks for your great review!

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** Forsaken Denizen **

Another parser game, but early on the verbs are explained very very patiently, and they aren’t very complicated so even a parser beginner can come to terms with them. It must be frustrating making parser games and continually having to baby newcomers through the difference between EXAMINE and LOOK but rest assured…I need the babying and it is appreciated.

Funnily enough this game doesn’t require a huge amount of parser literacy, but does require survival horror literacy. I think even if the game can lead you through the mechanics of how to play, part of the joy of it is in seeing a known (and now, quite retro) format translated into IF. I have spent a bit of time in Raccoon City and Silent Hill, so I think I’m qualified to say that the chunky, slow nature of combat in these early games is relayed effectively here, along with a bit of their frustrations; namely item limits, backtracking, and sometimes having no idea what to do. How annoying you find these things will depend on you. I don’t think they ever felt egregious or a misuse of my time, but I also have never found them the most interesting of mechanics even in their original incarnations. I wonder how someone with no experience of the genre would interpret them.

Although this game translates mechanics from survival horror, the style and setting are completely novel. Whilst I appreciate this a lot, I couldn’t exactly tell you what the setting is. Sort of neo baroque science fiction world. Which I’m here for, but I thought some of the vibes could have been better brought out. I really liked the descriptions of various NPC outfits, but conversely I never really understood what any of the enemies or locations looked like, and you spend more time with them than the NPCs. I also couldn’t really tell you what the plot is in anything other than broad strokes, maybe that’s all that was intended or maybe I missed a lot of detail. I think what was there was sufficient that I knew what I was doing and what the stakes were, but not much more.

I would say that this is a piece that absolutely excels in mechanical translation, which is something I noticed in the only other Pacian game I’ve played, Gun Mute. It can’t be easy to craft something where typing “ATTACK JUNKER” into a text prompt evokes the long forgotten feeling of manipulating a console gamepad in sweaty palms, but this piece does that, and I’m impressed with the subtle art it uses to do so.

4 Likes