A really well written puzzle oriented text adventure. I see people throw around the term “Zork clone” disparagingly. I don’t know why that is, I love Zork, throw me in a dungeon with little to no backstory, let me go around and solve puzzles, and then give me another game exactly like it but with different puzzles and rooms and I could do that from now until the big sleep. I am not sure how many Zork-like characteristics you need to classify your game as a Zork-clone, I just wanted to point out how I love those types of games.
I found the writing to be exceptional. The faun and Venus fly trap where comically lifelike in how they were presented, especially when looking at them through the telescope. The items were all very entertaining. The puzzles were funny. I liked how the game opened up:
“… you do not know how you got here. The last thing you remember is going out to eat at a fancy restaurant. Perhaps you were drugged. Perhaps you had a bad case of food poisoning and wandered off. Whatever the case may be, you are here now.”
Starting off strong with the ellipsis out of the gate, and then a confident transition right into a classy food poisoning joke, very well done.
This game also had my favorite one-two punch of the competition when you do something silly:
“>use gum on sunstone
Are you sure you want to do that? You could get hurt.
yes
That was a rhetorical question.”
Zing-Gotcha!
The puzzles were very entertaining, and none of them were underclued. I guess my only real complaint is how they started off pretty easy, and only escalated a tiny bit in difficulty towards the end…and then there weren’t as many locations as I would have liked to have seen. I feel a ten would necessitate at least a handful more rooms and the puzzles getting significantly more difficult.
There were definitely some rough edges that needed to be polished out, the one in particular was the “secret door” to the west of the starting cave which I am pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be able to access as early as I did…I didn’t deduct any points for this because I didn’t really care because I had a lot of fun with this game, and that is probably what matters the most to me in judging.
I also noticed that the author inserted the credits into one of the telescope’s functions. It stated that this is their first game, and I hope there will be many more to come![/spoiler]
I had a lot of fun with this game. It’s a B-movie plot that involves zombies invading the VIGAMUS video game museum in Rome, and you need to kill all of the zombies and the person behind the plot so that you can save the staff and the museum from annihilation. I am not sure how accurately the museum was portrayed, but the author is Italian so I will take their word on it. What this game did was demonstrate one of the biggest points that I’ve been trying to emphasize in my reviews since the beginning of this competition, and that point is to never underestimate the effectiveness of giving players a bunch of zombies to mow through, because it’s a lot of fun. That’s not the only thing you need, there was some game released on the IFDB not too long ago where all you did was go through a train killing monsters/people/things, and it was thoroughly terrible, but this review isn’t about that game, and I am pretty sure this author wasn’t the one who made it. I understand that making IF is a passion for authors, and they all want to make as fun and/or meaningful of an experience as possible for the players, and I appreciate that. What I have noticed with this author in particular is that while he may not be as fluent as some native English speaking authors are, he is better at conveying the happiness he gets from bringing joy to the players of his games, and this in turn reciprocates because I am pretty happy that this is making the author happy. While I get that feeling from every author whose game I’ve played in the past, this author has stood out the most to me in this regard during the competition. I’m not sure how he pulls this off in his writing, but it’s like how the chisel marks in a sculpture reflect the emotions of its sculptor. I don’t believe in psychic energies, but there is a good bit of legitimate science that supports positive mental attitude and bedside manner, so it probably falls in there somewhere.
I also find it interesting when authors include real locations in their games.
There was a fair amount of typos in this game, but I didn’t mark any points off for any of them. The one thing I’ve adhered to throughout this entire competition is my Ulysses criterion. This states that when your game exceeds the amount of errors found in the first edition of Ulysses, I would deduct 1 point. There are over 2000 errors in that book, and while they are spread out over a significantly greater amount of pages than any game here, Joyce was also one of the most brilliant authors of English literature to ever exist, so I felt the rule would still be fair for non-James Joyce works of shorter lengths. I am proud to admit that I adhered to this self imposed rule for the full list of entries, and not a single author was deducted even one point for typos.
As a bit of a side note that applies to all of the games submitted, not just this one, I am now realizing the irony of not deducting any points for typos in what essentially boils down to a writing contest…it’s too late now.
In conclusion, I feel the author could have improved this game by adding more zombies to mow down.[/spoiler]
I have finished playing all 56 games that I am allowed to vote on. I will now be going back to fine tune the final scores. Most of this will just be adding or subtracting a point over the next week or so, nothing too extreme. There are a number of games that I would like to expand my reviews on, and in some cases I have had a slight change in my opinion towards the game. Anything major will be added to the list below to make it easier for anyone following those reviews. I have also added the dates of the most recent update to make them easier to follow. Any additional thoughts will be added to an “*****updates:” section at the bottom of the inside of the spoiler for that game. I will also be moving the scores in the reviews to the first input in the spoiler box to make it easier to view. Thank you.
Major Comp Review Updates.
Labyrinth of Loci 10/21/16
Darkiss! Wrath of the Vampire - Chapter 2: Journey to Hell 10/27/16
I didn’t bring this up in my reviews because I didn’t feel it pertinent enough to impact a score, but I still enjoy it as part of your contribution to the overall presentation, so I am including it here. I am going to start with what I consider the highlights of this category, and then go from there.
Billy Mays Reviews Your Cover Art
Black Rock City - Now this was refreshing to see. Your new cover art is what actually inspired this part of my review. I didn’t want to mention anything at first, but your original dingy cover art did not fit the game at all. Your new cover art’s vibrancy better matches the story.
Detectiveland - Nicely done.
How to Win at Rock Paper Scissors - It tells you everything you need to know about this game.
Inside the Facility - As someone else already mentioned, the effective minimalism of this cover art reflects that of the game’s ingenuity.
Letters - Envelopes of letters with no mailing addresses written on them, a nice touch that reflects the central theme of the story.
Stuff and Nonsense - Easily my favorite cover art of the competition, the picture is very graceful.
Ventilator - How do you capture the essence of perfection in a picture? You can’t, but this one does its best.
Ok, that’s all folks. I may come back to fill in some of the blanks later, but right now I’ve got nothing. Thank you to all of the authors, I had a really great time with all of your games!
Billy Mays Reviews Billy Mays Reviews the IFComp 2016
[spoiler]The one stain that even OxiClean won’t take care of.
I feel that the parts where he was trying to come across as thought provoking and insightful were just completely pedestrian in nature, and the parts where he was trying to insert humor into games that he disliked was just rude and obnoxious. His writing also demonstrates to me that he has no real comprehension of the proper use of commas, he just throws them in wherever he feels they belong, there is no rhyme or reason to any of it, this last part really sickened me the most. The high view count informs me that this entire topic provides nothing more than the primal fascination of a dumpster fire. He tried to save this sinking ship by beginning to review the cover art of the entries, but even that ran out of steam and was a complete fail. That being said, a handful of his comments did present some minor degree of value, and his repeated insertion of trizbort trizbort.com/ into the reviews may help out people not familiar with this amazing and free mapping program, as well as the individuals who worked hard to present it to the IF community. There was also a lot of whatever this was supposed to be, and quantity is a quality in and of itself sometimes.
Ventilator is beyond brilliant, it’s easily my favorite game in a sea of outstanding entries, as well as having my second favorite cover art of the competition! Thank you!
I may still adjust some of the other scores some more, they will probably get raised, but I am confident that none will get raised to a 10, and none of my 10s will get lowered.
While all worthy of the 10 I awarded them, here is how I rank them against each other:
Billy Mays’ Top Fourteen Of The IFComp 2016
Ventilator - Many authors came out swinging hard in this competition, but I have to go with my gut, and my gut is telling me Ventilator stole the show. If I was the UNSG, I would launch a copy
of this game deep into outer space so that any intelligent life out there would understand humanity’s greatest achievement.
Night House - I really enjoyed this game as it flawlessly transitioned across multiple genres.
Snake’s Game - This was some of my favorite writing in the competition, and I am still completely enamored with the really slick trick the author used.
Color the Truth - There’s no mystery here, this game’s color is green.
Black Rock City - 64 endings, and every one of them a win.
I’m impressed with how quickly you’ve played and reviewed the games. I’ve posted reviews for about half of them. One of my motivations is to let the authors know I’ve read their stuff. I admire them. dougegan2.blogspot.com/
When I decide I’ve had enough, I may borrow from your self-referential meta review. Even the most flawed entry of this competition probably took more time to write than my entire collection of pithy feedback. Who am I to judge?
There are indeed flying carpet at Burning Man, and while I haven’t personally seen the unicycle made of shoes, I am going to guess that is real as well as everything else mentioned in the game.
Although I literally have the polar opposite opinion as you on every single game you reviewed, and never issue 10s unless they are as good as HHGTTG, I cannot help but devour your reviews and the mixed metaphors they contain like a pack of flock of ravenous gulls at a clam bake. I rated Ventilator very low because I just did not ‘get’ it but this review alone has caused me to love it solely because it elicited this response from a human being. In fact it may be now my favorite game I never played to completion for this very reason. If you ever wished to go into detail about why you love Ventilator I would eagerly buy multiple copies of any book you chose to write on the subject and liberally distribute them to relatives at family gatherings in order to sweeten the pot for return presents from said relatives at holidays and birthdays.
First, I need to premise everything I am about to write by stating that I follow all comp rules to their extremes without question and all of my scores have been in good faith. Second, I stand behind Ventilator as my number one pick of the competition without any doubt, the other 13 games on that list I may shuffle the order around, but I am adamant in my belief they are all 10’s.
This Ventilator question has been brought up to me on several occasions, and it is a fair one to ask in which I have been meaning to address for some time now. I decided to do it here because I enjoyed your absurd review of my absurd review of an absurd game, I was hoping more people would have caught on to that, but I take full responsibility for any ambivalence. The other important point I need to make is that I also believe that Ventilator is something much more than just an absurd game, while you can easily enjoy it for its base comedy alone, its wit will cut you deep if you attempt to explore it further unprepared.
I believe comedy is the hardest genre to write for. Something can be kind of scary or pretty thought provoking or reasonably entertaining and it will all hold some degree of value. When you say that something is kind of funny or pretty funny or reasonably funny, that is just a polite way of saying something wasn’t funny at all. Something is either funny or it isn’t, there is no middle ground, and there is no doubt when something is funny.
I felt the author here came out with the ferocity of a prize fighter from the first to the last word of each ending. There was no lull in the writing, it was just unmitigated savagery without concern for anyone or anything, even their own personal well being. It was just a blood crazed flurry of teeth and nails. The author showed no mercy, no quarter, no compassion, no forgiveness. Even after the ref put a stop to the fight, even after the ref tried to tackle the author off of a now extremely brutalized and very obviously deceased former professional athlete, even after the Las Vegas Police Department stormed the ring to viciously club and mace and taser the author in a vain attempt to put an end to the carnage, the author still kept tearing out handfuls of flesh, headbutting the solar plexus, and delivering devastating knees to the chin until the the stain on the mat representing somebody at sometime once was neatly separated into plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. This was all a metaphor for what the author did to their keyboard of course, I don’t actually think the author is a violent psychopath.
I may try to do an in depth analysis of it in a future post, but right now I am thoroughly enjoying Ectocomp, and I still have a few IfComp reviews that need to be fleshed out significantly.
I see a lot of different explanations people have for how they judge a game, I have nothing to say on this because that is between them and the officials. I personally always judge a game based on the context of what category it resides in. If a verified comp official instructed me to score the games based on how they hold up to a must own game that easily resides among the greatest works of Interactive Fiction of all time such as “Hadean Lands” for example,
then I would first contact the comp directly to verify that the individual who contacted me is indeed a comp official, confirm that I understood the instructions correctly, and then change all of my comp scores to 1’s and 2’s, but that wouldn’t be fair to the authors of this comp, so I judge the games against each other.
*****Update: After rereading my post here, I am concerned over the wording of my final point. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the comp entries to various degrees up to and including elated, and I would score them on the IFDB proportionate to how I scored them here, rounding up or rounding down to be determined on individual merits. The games all hold a tremendous amount of merit on their own as well as in comparison to the overall body of IF. The point I was trying to make is that I believe it would be unfair to base your score of a comp game based on how it stacks up to a game that has reached the bleeding edge of perfection through decades of an author building up skills through hard work and determination. Or to the commercial Infocom games where they had an actual business location and a team of talent to work on projects as their full time job instead of making games as a passion and trying to fit that around careers and family. Sorry if this came across the wrong way.
I appreciate that you’re trying to identify the best IF works of all time, but there are a couple of ways in which it isn’t fair to compare those works to IF comp entries.
The works you mentioned are commercial products. Every IF comp entry is an amateur work.
The works you celebrate as the best in interactive fiction, are considerably longer than 2 hour plays. Only an exceptional individual such as you could imagine that a first time player could finish Hadean Lands in just two hours. As for the Infocom classics, few voters today would put up with mazes or unfair puzzle fests. Tastes change.
When new people bring new ideas it’s interesting reading. I shouldn’t get so excited about it! (I want the forum to be a friendly forum. I’m trying to be a nicer heartless zombie.)
In the spirit of fairness, since many of my posts haven’t been the most pleasant things to read either, I have decided to remove you from my ignore list.
Identifying the best game or games was not the intended purpose of the post you are referring to. Also, I feel “appreciate” is a loaded word here since it is being used to describe a reaction to my subjective opinion which holds very little value in regards to the topic of IF.
This ironically enough was largely the crux of my argument, and much of what you wrote here is merely a recap of the part of my post that you had quoted. Where I disagree is with your choice of the word “amateur” work as there were many veteran/professional authors that entered as well as the first time or less experienced authors, “noncommercial” work would have been a more accurate and appropriate word for you to use.
Here you are being overtly facetious, and clearly trying to work an angle.
Also, as far as my insertion of Hadean Lands, I did that because I believe it is a prime example of a greatest game of all time, not the only one, but one without a doubt. But you don’t have to take my word for it:
And before the accusations of me trying to kiss up to zarf (not entirely without merit I fear) are made (have been made?), I can assure everyone here that this blatant plug was purely selfish on my part. I love his games, am less concerned about what he thinks about me personally, and if it ends up moving some copies then that is more resources he can use to make me more completely excellent games in the future.
Where are you pulling this information from? There is a clear distinction between difficult and unfair that you have obviously missed. If the original Infocom team decided to enter the IFComp, was able to capture their original magic, and entered games in the classical Infocom style, that would be the most epic, face melting, earth shattering comp of all time…
No they don’t, more flavors are just created.
Porpentine is an extremely talented author, just not one who has reached the pinnacle of authors or her potential yet in my opinion.
No arguments here, this game would easily make my greatest of all time list.
She is a member of a vampire-killing team, and until now had only encountered vampires while with the team-- in particular, her role on the team is to be the passive bait to lure the vampire so her teammates can kill him. So I think it’s an intentional part of the story that she is unprepared, and has to learn how to improvise and to be an active vampire killer. (She can also call her team members for help, though she still has to do some maneuvering to get the vampire to a place where they can help her.) Moreover, I think this plays into the story’s metaphorical theme of self-empowerment, and learning to stick up for victims to defend them from predators.
I felt this way on my first playthrough as well, but this game turns out to have a lot more branching than I thought at first, and other branches reveal a lot more about their relationship (as well as the relationship with Miss Dexter). Even after discovering a branch where there is explicit abuse, I still wondered whether Evelyn might be an unreliable narrator, but eventually the truth comes out definitively. I thought this contrast between playthroughs was an effective demonstration of gaslighting and the self-doubt/denial that can persist in the mind of a chronic abuse victim.