Hi, I’m Bruhstin. You might remember me from such threads as Introcomp 2023 reviews. Over the next couple of days I plan to share:
Before I start I’d like to thank Eric for his efforts as organizer and folks like Brian Rushton, Jade, and the voters for providing entrants with helpful comments and feedback. Y’all are great!
First off, Black Street Market. Check out Brian’s review here.
Of course, everything I say here is my own opinion.
Rather than just deciding if this monster who has 1 random trait is suspicious or not, let me the player determine this based on speaking with them and finding clues. I believe this may help increase the tension of the selling scenes.
Am I a beloved figure in the neighborhood for hooking other monsters up? Do my customers and I know each other? I think something like this can make the story feel more memorable than if I’m a faceless store owner doing the same thing every night.
I don’t understand why I should turn back from an unguarded path knowing that I’ll just be able to make it. Especially knowing that I can’t change paths if I come across the fuzz. This feels odd to me since I shouldn’t have to cease my activities for the night after spotting cops if I can just go to another route.
I think this is a funny little game with a lot of charm. I hope you continue to finish it!
Alrighty, next up we have The Blossom by @OlafNowacki. Check out Brian’s review here and Jade’s review here.
To be honest, I stopped playing this one out of frustration because I didn’t know what to do. It was fun to experiment and see what commands would lead to new content but doing so got old fast.
Maybe it’s just me but I can’t figure out how to explain this game. Is it a descent into madness, one word at a time? An epistolary experiment in parser-form? The lack of a clear concept doesn’t stop me from trying it out, but it doesn’t do me any favors for sticking with it either.
I don’t mean an actual cardinal direction but more so what they can focus on. It’s a game with a wide variety of things to do but this leads me to feel choice paralysis while I play.
All in all, I really want to know what this game turns out like in the end. There’s a cool idea here and I think it holds a lot of potential if done right. Hope you finish it, Olaf!
(apologies for any weird wording, it’s very late where I am)
Thank you so much for your kind feedback!
I plan to write a post mortem on the game. There are some constraints to the format (diary, each turn a day) that I would like to address.
Of course! And please link me to your post-mortem if you remember, I’d love to read it.
Looking at Jimin, Ari, and Shush next by @Scrooge200. Check out Brian’s review here and Jade’s review here.
I’m told that three friends search for an items that’ll help one of their mothers with her business. But the complication is one of their younger siblings joins and there seems to be a personality conflict? Being told that there’s a conflict isn’t as appealing as finding out for myself through playing. I think “show, don’t tell” can help here.
I know it’s only the intro and still a prototype, but I got to Saucedo’s bakery like Felix insinuated and got nothing when I talked with her and the other characters in there. I found I could explore more of the town and found a tavern with some other characters, but suddenly finding myself blocked right when I finish the very first quest didn’t encourage me to explore more of the city.
I know there were parts like at the megamart where we could ask about the workers there but if they’re my friends then as a player I want to learn more about them so I can believe that they’re really my childhood friends. Perhaps bringing up more shared memories, inside jokes, etc. could help with this.
This is a game with good potential, I hope you finish it Lance!
Thanks for playing! For the Saucedo part, IIRC you either got a conversation topic after reading the note, or you had to give it to her directly. Also, you can examine Ari and Shush in each room for a different quip or description of their thoughts on the place.
I did have a big story planned out for this game, which is hinted at in the summary, but I had trouble implementing it all with Inform and making the gameplay feel worthwhile. What’s in the prototype is maybe 10% of the content I planned for the final, but a lack of time and interest in some other projects mean I probably won’t return to it anytime soon.
I am planning to do a postmortem, though, explaining where the idea for the game came from and what the rest of it would have been.
No prob, and let me know when you write up the post-mortem!
Here’s The Picton Files: The Peter & Paul Case by @jkj_yuio . Check out Brian’s review here.
For lack of better terms and labels, it’s really annoying to click on an image to have it enlarged on my screen just to end up clicking on an interactive object instead. It seems like this game’s made with a specific platform and I understand tech constraints are a thing, but this usability issue made playing annoying and I have a hunch other players will have similar sentiments.
It’d be nice to know what’s clickable and what’s just something to look at. Giving them different-colored borders might be a quick fix.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the interface could be streamlined a bit. It’s cool to see this hybrid setup where you can choose to interact with items through text or via point-and-click. But at least for me it’s overwhelming due to how many things the game makes me see all at once. I think focusing on a specific area of interaction (text vs images) would help but there might be a better solution that offers a compromise.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t play the earlier game yet but why does Picton look straight out of Midsomer Murders and Kit look like she’s a friend of the week in Doctor Who? This isn’t criticism or feedback, I’m just curious because of how different their outfits look lol.
I appreciate the production value here and the fun characters; looking forward to this one! (And as a detective fiction fan I’ll most definitely need to try out the earlier mini-game.)
Hi @Bruhstin
Thanks a lot for your review and feedback. Much appreciated. I’d like to ask a bit about your suggestions. Perhaps there’s a bug here:
Or are you saying it’s annoying to enlarge the picture just to then click on one thing?
If something is annoying, I’d like to fix it. Or at least give an option.
static vs dynamic images? Are you saying you don’t know in advance whether items in a picture are clickable? The borders should highlight when you hover the mouse. If you played it on a mobile, there is no hover, so in this case, it does not highlight. Perhaps that’s the case?
Or, do you mean differentiate between clicks that just “examine” and ones that might do something else?
Streamlining. I am open to adding interface options here, if you’d like to suggest any.
Your question:
This came as a bit of a surprise!There are not meant to be any similarities to existing characters (eg Dr Who). The “Kit” character has a lot more depth than is played out in the demo.
Here is my design precis for Kit:
Role of Kit in the story and game mechanic:
Kit is the player’s in-game help. Her purpose is to guide the player and ensure the game does not get stuck. This is done by making sure the player always knows what to do next.
Kit won’t tell you the answers. Her character is very intuitive, but not especially logical. As the player, you are meant to assemble the object-based and statement-based evidence. Kit will jump to conclusions which you have to remind her must be based on proof. This exposition mechanic is how the gameplay is revealed to the real player - by Picton explaining it to Kit.
If the player gets stuck, you can consult Kit (ie ask for help in disguise). She will nudge the player by making suggestions. For example, “Perhaps we should talk to Paul again” or “perhaps we missed something at the apartment”.
Kit has a talent for “reading people”. She will say, “He’s holding something back”, or “He’s distorting the truth” or just, “He’s a liar!” As a result, you can press people or confront people, who may make statements that incriminate them, or at least reveal their true motives.
Kit is also the person that fills in for boring donkey-work. If you send the “residue” to the Lab, a bit later, Kit will give you a report. This cuts down on pointless travelling about and fleshes out much of the “how” part of the mystery.
Kit has an enigmatic background that is revealed as the story unfolds. In for example, Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Watson is mostly useless except as a device for exposition and Holmes has additional roles outside the “sleuth” character - for example Holmes sometimes gets into fights and sometimes is guilty of breaking and entering. This won’t be the case for Picton. Picton is always the logical thinker, the sleuth (and the player). Opposite to Holmes, Kit has all the grey-area roles like breaking into buildings, cracking alarms and some fighting. These skills are revealed later.
Regarding Picton, i thought he looks a lot like a policeman or a detective. I managed to get that kind of look about him.
Midsomer Murders: Crikey! I have never watched this, but you’re right. The suit is very similar and even the hair style is a lot like it. Damn!
Now I’m checking Dr Who links too…
Thanks again for your feedback.
Let me rephrase: When I want to enlarge an image I want to get a better view of what exactly is inside it. I’ll click on an image to do so but sometimes I end up clicking an interactive object instead, so rather than the bigger view of the scene I see text appear instead. Ex: When I tried to get a better view of Picton’s office I ended up clicking on his desk. I expected the image to get bigger but instead I got a description about said desk.
Sometimes I click on an image to click around on it more just to find out that there’s nothing inside. The reason I suggest differentiating images with clickable objects vs images with none is to save time from clicking when there’s nothing to click on inside an image. Ex: I believe when you click on the clock in the dining room you get a closer view of it in a separate image. But that image doesn’t have anything clickable inside of it. It’d be nice to know ahead of time what images are just meant for showing a scene vs letting players click and explore.
Re:Streamlining.
Thanks for the details about Kit! I like how you draw from the classic Holmes-Watson pairing to help us know what their roles in the story are. And if you’re a fan of detective fiction, I’d recommend giving Midsomer Murders a watch.
Of course! Thank you for asking more about it.
Now we’re coming up to the other winners from this year. This is Chronicles of Kyrathaba by an unnamed author. Check out Brian’s review here.
Brian already covered it nicely, so this is more to agree with his point. Since it’s supposed to be an RPG it may help to let the player choose the tactic they’d like to use against the goblin. Similar to what Brian mentioned, passively watching stats change (if they even do in a given turn) isn’t very engaging.
I appreciate the author giving different text and link types different colors but the bright blue for dialogue makes it harder to read. The quotation marks are enough to indicate that a piece of text is dialogue. And since the choices with dialogue in them are functionally the same as the other choice links, they should be given the same color as well; it’d be less information to process.
I think giving the player a larger goal to look forward to may help the story feel more engaging. I don’t mind learning about the world but it’d be nice to have some more advancements in the plot than hearing Dorn give us lots of exposition.
This is a really neat entry and shows a lot of promise. I hope the author finishes!
Last round of entrant feedback before I get to the comp! Here’s Loose Ends by @Draconis and Elizabeth Tricou. Check out Brian’s review here.
Off the bat, I’m hit with 5 different options for dialogue in the first scene while diving deeper into the case with the client; one of these choices open up 5 more dialogue options, some of which don’t disappear. Later on IIRC I see 8 choices come up to me. I understand there’s a lot to cover but at the very least the number of choices shown should be managed.
For example, the discussion with Varkonyi at the beginning can be segmented into sections devoted for a specific question.
Since they’re only applied to certain choices, I assume they indicate some particular meaning about said choices. But so far I can only assume that they’re related to the traits we chose in the beginning? It’d be helpful to know more about what exactly they’re signifying. Though the star icons in the inventory that indicate what items you haven’t examined yet were good.
I like how I get a quick summary of who I am and the status of my relationships but it feels a little misleading that I don’t get a quick summary on the current stage of the case. Giving a quick line or two about what I need to do next might be helpful, especially since there’s so many things to remember.
I can tell a lot of effort and care went into making this entry. I’m excited to see how the game turns out!
Thank you! The review is much appreciated!
Yep, the icons indicate that a choice is only available because of the choices you made at the beginning—the diamond ones come from having a particular supernatural power, the circle ones come from having a particular mortal background. I need to find a way to convey that more clearly.
Absolutely something to add for the full version! A summary of what you’ve done/learned so far would be helpful, and I think Ink’s tracking of what nodes have been visited should make it relatively straightforward.
No problem, hope it helps and thank you for clarifying!
Alrighty, here’s the feedback for IntroComp 2023 itself, run by @Feneric!
Some context: This is the first ever IF competition I’ve entered in. The good part about this is that I might offer a perspective seasoned comp entrants may not have anymore. However I may tread on old ground and unreasonable tasks, so apologies in advance for that.
Disclaimer: I understand there’s various constraints involved (like Eric having his own life and things to handle) so my feedback here is no biggie, they’re just some thoughts I had about the comp.
I appreciate the brevity and depth of the rules. After reading everything I don’t think I had any questions aside from wondering how long my entry should be and what some qualities of a “finished” game might be, which were more curiosity than anything.
Receiving reviews from folks and feedback from voters was my favorite part. It was fun seeing people’s thoughts on the entries.
Knowing that it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t reach my desired scope- This was a nice mental safety-net to have while making my entry.
Maybe it’s just me but playing older IntroComp games was important for me to better understand the approximate length that were expected here. While I know the rules say length is up to the dev, it was still helpful for my own planning purposes. And yes, I know IFDB is a thing but those who don’t know about it would have a harder time finding previous games.
Some ideas that come to mind include having a section linking to the IFDB pages for previous years’ comps (which already lead to the games themselves), linking directly to IntroComp’s own archive somewhere on the main page (ideally with a similar interface as the main page), and having a “Hall of Fame” section or page, similar to how IFComp lists previous years’ results.
Note: Rereading my emails with Eric, I think he might have mentioned something akin to this (unless I’m reading into it wrong), so that’s exciting.
I remember finding out about the results through Twitter- but this was only after remembering that there was a Twitter account in the first place. Including this more prominently on the website may help keep those of us who don’t check Twitter/X much in the loop.
One way this might be able to work is by embedding the Twitter account’s posts onto the site.
Part of what got me to enter this year was hearing that IntroComp welcomed new authors. I think providing them with resources to get started helps show more folks that making their first IF game isn’t that crazy (I mean it is, but y’know, it doesn’t have to be and- I’ll stop talking…)
I like how IFComp gives a quick list of tools to make IF pieces. Showing previous years’ entries also gives newbies an example of what they could achieve with their own entries.
Maybe this is too subjective but it’d be nice to have some baseline descriptors of this. I ask because it’s a little intimidating to consider that I might burn out before actually finishing, since I don’t even know if my idea of finished and polished is the same as the organizer’s. I think it’d even be interesting if they varied a little depending on the organizer’s tastes but that’s out of scope for this reply.
For example a non-exhaustive rubric gives entrants a direction to aim for. Part of why I bring this up is because I was ready to just submit a .gblorb file but Eric suggested exporting a web version, which turned out to be a much better layer of presentation. It’d be nice to have an idea of this kind of stuff before submitting.
Less of a suggestion and more of a question. I joined intfiction to interact with Brian’s review post so I’m not too familiar with what we can do here, but I wish I had more people to talk with during the comp.
Is it possible to have a private post just for entrants and the organizer to discuss things in?
EDIT: And on that note, it’d be nice for an option to keep folks accountable; kind of like a monthly check-in where we share our progress on finishing our games. I realized at some point that the coming year might feel a little lonely in regards to finishing, and I imagine others will feel the same.
If this comp is meant to be friendly for new authors then I don’t see why it can’t be friendly to new reviewers too. I feel like part of what made me hesitate to review games is that I just didn’t know what to talk about in the first place; and if I did, where would I stop?
It doesn’t necessarily need to be focused on giving a quantitative score. Something as simple as the structure I used in this post is fine too. The focus should be on helping folks understand their interactions with entries and learn structured analysis to make them feel comfortable in sharing their thoughts.
Just for fun! It could be a simple PDF certificate congratulating them by name; it’s like those shirts that go like “I entered IntroComp 20XX… And survived!!!” Obviously this means more work for the organizer, so I won’t anticipate this anytime soon.
I had a great time with this comp and look forward to entering other ones. Shout out to Eric for being a real one and taking on the unholy work that is organizing 
I’ll also be going back and cleaning up the formatting for the feedback I gave (typography is important!).
I agree. And i also think these two rules should change:
(1) should be scrapped.
(2) should be changed to allow authors to talk about their own entries, providing this is not blatant vote canvassing.
For example, if you have a new feature or cool thing in your game you want to talk about, this should be allowed. Whether this is self-promotion or just talk is a grey area, but i think it should be allowed.
Oh yes, and there should be a link to previous introcomp years on the main page. definitely.
That’s how IFComp is done on the forums—there’s a special place for authors to talk without breaking the comp rules. It wouldn’t be too difficult to do the same thing for IntroComp, from a technical perspective; the question is just how much use it would see.
And finally, the Luna Gardens Demo Post-Mortem! Check out Brian’s and Jade’s reviews here. For a tl;dr, see “My self-review” below. Needless to say, spoilers for the game are present.
(Also, I went back and included Jade’s reviews for the other games, where applicable. Sorry for the oversight!)
Luna Gardens is a parser game that emphasizes observing your environment. I intended it to be less about puzzles (which I have a love-hate relationship with) and more about the little things you notice in the place immediately surrounding you.
At least, I realized this in hindsight. I didn’t really understand what exactly I was making at the time.
This game’s main idea was inspired by the walks I’d take at night back in college. There was a lot of wandering; sometimes I’d just be inside my head, other times I’d see some real bizarre stuff. All of that coalesced into an idea that I was tackling inch-by-inch but struggled to flesh out.
When I found out about IntroComp I realized that it was the perfect opportunity to push me to finish a prototype of the idea I’d been thinking about. But this idea wasn’t my first choice; looking back at my brainstorming mind map I had 4 other ideas in consideration. In the end this one won out whether it was due to constraints or feasibility.
After that it was just me brainstorming and thinking of as many self-assigned constraints as possible to shape the game; what else can you do when the sky’s the limit?
I found out about IntroComp late in June and only started around July 1st, meaning this demo version of Luna Gardens took about a month to make. Concepting and Designing took about 2 weeks, with Implementation and Testing taking up the other 2 weeks.
At first glance this doesn’t seem too difficult but as we all know making a game is never that straightforward. I realized that this kind of game was best suited for the parser format and took my first steps to make my first serious Inform 7 game.
Those last 2 weeks were painful. I7 is a fun and unique approach to programming IF but man I think I (figuratively) broke my brain trying to figure out how it works. It’s ironic that my experience with programming classes made it hard for me to get used to I7’s syntax.
Anyways, I get why a lot of younger game makers skew towards choice-based tools. My first time giving Inform 7 a real try felt like a mental beating. Meanwhile it’s the simplest thing in the world to implement a choice in Twine or Ink; the hard part is making it worth choosing. Regardless I plan on continuing to learn I7.
I know at least 1 or 2 folks commented on how the setting, characters, and branching were unusual, so I wanted to go into that a bit.
At the time I started thinking of the game’s story and design I was reading a book called The 9 Cloud Dream.
The branching path you could take to become either a cloud or a butterfly was inspired by this novel quoting Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream. I thought it’d be fun to suddenly find yourself transformed into something else. The easiest way I figured out to accomplish this was via walking through a tunnel.
The cloud path is a little less obvious. I heard somewhere (I forget exactly where) that Buddhist and Daoist monks are sometimes referred to as “clouds” when they’re on a pilgrimage since they seem to be wandering around like clouds in the sky.
In a nutshell, the setting of Luna Gardens is inspired by my old college campus. Sometimes I’d randomly come across a garden or two and chill out there in-between wherever I was rushing to next.
The trippy aspect of this was inspired by the approaches of both The 9 Cloud Dream and David Lynch’s work, particularly Twin Peaks. I’m a big fan of detective fiction and seeing it in a surreal and ominous way left a mark on me.
It’s on me for not testing more but towards the end of this demo you encounter a character named Maya whom you can ask questions via dialogue options. I think based on Brian’s transcript, there was a bug where spelling “maya” with the lower-case M didn’t bring up those options.
The fruits you could take from the tree and give to Maya were part of a light puzzle to proceed in the level. If I recall correctly each fruit has a specific meaning I got from a Buddhist website (in accordance with the Buddhist themes in The 9 Cloud Dream).
Lastly, Maya’s appearance is inspired by the High Priestess of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck. I chose this reference because of the moon’s presence in its imagery; it’s something I want to expand upon in the full story.
Whew, that was a mouth-full. Here’s the tl;dr!
I was really worried about how my writing style would be received, so it was nice to hear that folks seemed to like it. I had a whole headache dealing with my anxiety and figuring out how not to make it too pretentious, so I’m glad it worked out in the end.
Folks also seemed to enjoy the world of Luna Gardens. I didn’t know how well it’d be received because it doesn’t play into typical genre settings nor is it rooted in anything specific. But as long as flying clowns with chainsaw machine-guns don’t start flying out of the wood works (Hmmm, actually…), then I guess it should be fine.
This one was probably the biggest surprise for me. I didn’t know much about the typical game made with Inform at the time so hearing that the branching was unusual was a bit of a shock. But now I’m considering ditching the journal mechanic in favor of just transforming in each branch.
I know including detailed descriptions was a nice touch but also detracted from the amount of time I had to finish making the demo. I’m going to have to figure out the right balance so that I can actually finish without running myself ragged.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure where to take this game’s concept next. However I do plan on researching some more first before committing to any one direction.
While I do intend on finishing this game, I also want to get in more practice by making games for other events. The obvious risk here is running out of steam before I even make it to the finish line. But maybe it’s the learning curve of making an Inform game that’s speaking here.
If you managed to get down this far, thank you for reading! Do let me know if you have any questions or comments for me.
And with that, this thread is done! Now I don’t have any excuses to procrastinate anymore 