It’s TALP Jam time again - and yet again, I didn’t quite make the deadline this year (watch out for my time travel themed beginners’ game in ParserComp probably). So I’ll be reviewing all the games that did make it into the competition. Fingers crossed for some beginner-friendly gems!
14 Likes
Home Party by Zeno Pillan
Summary
This is an Inform 7 game set at a student house party. It’s a bit of a sandbox – you can type QUEST for a mid-game objective, but by and large the gameplay appears to be exploring the house, looking at stuff, talking to people, drinking a beer, watching YouTube, playing Playstation games… generally the kind of stuff you would do as an actual university student at an actual house party in the ‘00s. This makes it a relatively realistic game (especially for people of my vintage) – give or take the trippy bit where reading a Lonely Planet guidebook transports you to the locale in question – but I found the direction very vague and unhelpful, especially for what is supposed to be a beginners’ game. The second time I typed HINT, I was told ‘just talk to everyone about everything and show them everything you’ve found!’ – and there are a lot of characters, objects and topics in this game. I found it overwhelming and I think beginners would too.
The tutorial does a fairly good job of prompting the player to form verb-noun commands, though the direction section (looking north etc. instead of travelling there) could be a little confusing.
The author is a non-native English speaker and the English can be a bit rough. This is the case both in the game text and the Itch documentation, and I sometimes found the latter hard to understand.
The implementation could also use a bit of work. An example: there’s an envelope on the kitchen table, described in the object list as ‘an empty envelope with a curious blade in’. On examination: ‘An anonymous and boring envelope, probably a bill.’ But… the object list says it has a blade in it? Even though it’s empty? And you can’t pick up the envelope because it’s scenery, so ‘hardly portable’. This is the kind of thing that I would expect to be ironed out with a bit of testing, so it’s surprising to see it from a game with testers credited.
On the whole, I can live with rough English and implementation issues if I’m having fun. It’s not great in a game for beginners, but I can live with it. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t find this game very fun, because in general I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing – and I definitely don’t think I would have found it a good experience as a beginner parser player.
9 Likes
Your review of ‘Home Party’ sounds about right. I started playing it last night and I’m finding it very confusing. This is a bit embarrassing, as I’m listed as one of the testers, but the version I tested was dated 28 May 2024, and the current version is practically a new game. I think it really needed another round of testing after it was rewritten.
2 Likes
Back to it after a busy few weeks. Hoping to get through the games I’ve been stuck on and have a go at the ones I’ve not tried yet!
Witch Hedwig’s Magic Berries Brew by Robert Szacki
Summary
Played this in the Windows command line. I find such things fun and quaint but I know there are players for whom this would be a technical barrier. However it does look like you can also play it more straightforwardly in some commonly-used interpreters (I didn’t try that option).
Fairly dodgy implementation, some English issues, lots of guess-the-verb, lots of ‘I can’t see any X!’ when X is RIGHT THERE in the description, but oh my goodness I am so relieved to find a short and simple game in this comp. With some polish, a more modern approach to helpful responses when the player is barking up the wrong tree, and lots of work on synonyms, this would be a great introductory game for beginners. As it stands, it’s a nostalgic homage to old-school text adventures – including the frustrations as well as the charm.
5 Likes
Thank you for playing and giving opinion. Could you please give some examples of such words? I’m sure that the nouns provided in the descriptions are recognized and listed in the short description (except few, like ladder, window or sunlight).
Note: some items like “coin bag” and “seed bag” must be entered as a whole.
1 Like
I didn’t record a transcript of my game, but from memory I recall something like the following: upon entering the Druid’s Garden you can see a tree full of fruits. However, if you “x fruits” the response will be “you can’t see any” (or something like that). But as Dee said, it was nice to find a short game since most of them are pretty long (mine included. Sorry about that).
2 Likes
If it was fruit tree, OK - my fault. This item responses only when you try to cut it. The problem appeared because this puzzle was specific. Once you manage to bring the fruits, it becomes normally visible.
I made also changes in the last version to this puzzle. I made so that the game correctly handles all situations - but it brought with this also this problem.
Sorry for this, I was not aware. Here’s complete code of cut action.
I will try to fix the problem in the code! It just requires some more work, to make the fruits visible, but not allowed to take before they were cut.
( action cut_action
( verb cut )
( direct-object )
( code
( if ( or ( send cur_room find ) ( send player find ) )
( if ( match fruits $dobject )
( print "These are already cut fruits!\n" )
( progn
( print "You can't cut " )
( print-noun $dobject )
( print ".\n" )
) ; progn
)
( if ( match fruits $dobject )
( if ( = cur_room garden )
( if ( = ( getp tree current ) nil )
( print "The fruits have been already cut from the tree.\n" )
( if ( not ( = ( getp sickle current ) player ) )
( print "You have no tool to cut these.\n" )
( progn
( print "You cut the berries with the sickle! They felt on the ground.\n" )
( unlink sickle )
( unlink tree )
( link fruits cur_room )
) ; progn
) ; if
) ; if
( if ( or ( = ( getp fruits current ) player ) ( = ( getp fruits current ) cur_room ) )
( print "These fruits have already been cut.\n" )
( print "You can't see fruits here!\n" )
) ; if
) ; if
( progn
( print "You can't see " )
( print-noun $dobject )
( print ".\n" )
) ; progn
) ; if
) ; if
) ; code
) ; action
2 Likes
Yes as @g0blin says it was mostly the fruit - I really struggled with that! I did keep a transcript and will send it to you.
1 Like
Tempus Fugit: The Past is Yet Unwritten by Gianluca Girelli
Summary
I really enjoyed this one. The direction is clear, the map concise rather than overwhelming, the room descriptions carefully written so the player isn’t wasting time examining irrelevant nouns. It’s pitched exactly at the right level for beginners.
The game could do with a little more polish in places – for example CUT CHAIN WITH TUBE (a ‘metal tube’ you’ve found on the ground) is a bit unintuitive, and it took me far longer than it should have to place a ladder against a wall (for anyone else struggling, DROP LADDER is the recognised phrase). It could also benefit from some English-language proofreading, but on the whole I didn’t have any issues with comprehension.
The story is slightly silly in places but a lot of fun, with various pop culture references to spot. The apparent death of one of the villains felt a little cold to me in the moment, but then I laughed out loud at the next response:
search invader
“I am not dead yet. Don’t you want to hear my story, first?”
Lots of this kind of knowing humour in the writing and lots to like here. A thoroughly recommended experience.
6 Likes
Thanks for the kind review, Dee. I will try to polish the game even more, and I promise to get better at prose. Have a nice one.
2 Likes
Quirky Test by Andrew Schultz
Summary
This is another very enjoyable game that I found to be pitched at the right level for new players.
It makes good use of the Adventuron coloured text to flag up important words – this is a really helpful feature for beginners and I think it should be standard in TALP games made in Adventuron or any other system that allows coloured text.
In my view, the tutorial section could do with a bit more press-any-key (or multiple spaces between paragraphs) in order to avoid the wall of text that can be an issue with text-heavy Adventuron games – it’s easy to lose track of where your command was in the text due to the way the screen scrolls.
I also felt that while ‘using one of your senses’ is a nice easy hint for experienced players who are used to typing LISTEN in parser games, a newbie might be a bit more flummoxed about what that means if they’re still getting to grips with verb-based commands.
However, I think it’s the best tutorial I’ve ever seen in a TALP game. The tutorial notes have a lot of really good information about text adventures that you likely wouldn’t pick up just by playing a standard tutorial. This all works together to provide a really good resource for beginners.
The author’s signature wordplay puzzles work really, really well in an Adventuron game. I had so much fun with this one.
6 Likes
Thanks very much for t his kind review!
I put a lot of thought into the tutorial. I didn’t want it to be just an instruction list. I wanted to throw out ideas I wished I’d have known when I was a kid and it was fun to type stuff into a parser but sometimes the games made me feel silly. I think in general I like being able to know “hey, you can do this” or “you can ask for help here without spoiling things.”
I’ll look at the issues you mentioned with press_any_key … I can forget to break things up and let the player take a step back some times.
I also noticed a few other competitors gave help beyond the tutorial. Fat Bear in particular mentioned that certain areas/puzzles were potentially treacherous or required timing.
Which I was really glad to see. I think it’s a dimension that could make TALJ games that much more welcoming going forward, not that it should be obligatory (that never ends well,) but because warnings for tricky puzzles can help even advanced players.
3 Likes
I realize now that I was derelict in my duties as a newly minted Anti-Adventuron Propagandist by forgetting to add a section about the weird/chaotic scrolling 
. Why is it like that? Goodness!
(I’ve really enjoyed following this thread btw, it’s cool reading the thoughts of someone who was working on an entry for the same event!)
2 Likes
Very much in agreement - for me the ideal TALP game is one that continues to help out the player long after the tutorial.
2 Likes
Well, I didn’t manage to finish all the entries by the voting deadline (May was… yeah) but I’ll be continuing to review them in this thread as I get to them!
3 Likes