14 | LPM | GHOST HUNT
14 | LPM | GHOST HUNT
by: Dee Cooke
Progress:
- I reached the end of the game in about 6 minutes.
Engagement with Horror Genre:
- This was a pretty light-hearted Halloween-themed piece, with a supernatural element (the ghosts). The situation is more humorous than threatening.
Things I Appreciated:
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My favorite aspect of the game was the upstairs puzzle involving the hat. It was interesting to have two NPCs to talk to at once and try to figure out if there was a more diplomatic way of getting the hat before just snatching it. It was a very functional puzzle given the limited development time, and I found it fun!
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I like the premise of the game, it seems like it could be iterated on for a larger scale game with more ghosts, if the author were so inclined. Not that it has to be some massive undertaking, but exploring more rooms of the house and experiencing simple puzzles with slightly different types of haunting or poltergeist activity would be charming.
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I thought the game was really effective in directing my action so that I didn’t use unimplemented verbs. I think the only thing I tried that didn’t work was “ask effie about hat” which the game anticipated and got me back on track immediately. So I appreciated how the descriptions and prompts from characters efficiently aimed me toward what was important for me to be looking at and doing in the game.
Miscellaneous Comments/Recommendations:
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I thought the path to get to the upstairs ghosts was a bit odd. It was somewhat jarring to pass through two rooms in a row with nothing in them to get there, but then arriving at a room with a lot going on. Given more development time, I’d imagine this would be evened out: maybe streamlining the path to upstairs in the description of the action, or adding some flavor text for the interstitial rooms to help with visualizing the festive Halloween decorations.
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I found the interface a bit distracting. Not aesthetically, I liked the color scheme and so forth! But, at first, the game surprised me by automatically launching in fullscreen, and I accidentally clicked through some of the introductory text, which disappeared, while I was trying to undo that. (I really shouldn’t have been surprised, though, since the auto-fullscreen thing also happened in Turn Right as well! This time it’s on me.) I also experienced some mild friction here when the game gave me a feeling of ambiguity as to whether clicking something or typing a letter would suddenly cause what I’m currently reading to disappear. The source of the friction I think is my internal distraction— I’m trying to tell myself to still my fidgety fingers until I’m sure that I’m done with whatever it is that I’m reading, instead of being able to just trust that what I’m reading will continue to be there even if I mistakenly start typing a command before I’m supposed to.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
- I keep saying this, but it’s really impressive to me that people have coded functional parser games in four hours and under. This game has one short, and one slightly longer puzzle, multiple rooms, some dialogue, and character descriptions, and it did what it needed to do to point me through. So I just like thinking about how cool it is that people have become fluent enough in the coding languages that make this possible! It makes me feel like, if I want to learn any of them, aiming to make a small-scale parser game that takes place in only 1-3 rooms is a more achievable goal than I thought (though not in less than four hours at this point, of course).
Memorable Moment:
- I really liked the moment when I had to decide to be a little rude and snatch the hat. Maybe a more polite solution is available, but I thought it was funny that the game managed to use my inhibitions against me, to make me question whether the obvious solution would really work.
DemonApologist_GhostHunt.txt (7.1 KB)