10 | TURN RIGHT
10 | TURN RIGHT
by: Dee Cooke
Progress:
- I completed this game in about 15 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
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A compelling aspect of the game is the way it builds tension for the player. As the game progressed, I was caught in a struggle between continuing to try to turn right, or trying to come up with some kind of lateral solution to the game. With how it unfolds, it gives the impression that you might be in an infinite loop; this is especially threatening when successive traffic events are so cruel in their mundane repetition that I wondered whether I’d already encountered that scenario already and should be trying to actively resist the game’s insistence that I turn right. I would rather try doing something else to avoid turning right, but ultimately, that is where you need to go. So I thought it was an interesting aspect of the game that it fostered that kind of response in me given that the game has “innocently” told me that all I need to do is turn right.
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Similarly, one of the strengths of the game is how it potentially draws creative self-expression out of the player. I could not resist the temptation to do things other than turn right. After a while I started entering more surreal commands like, “dematerialize obstacles,” “heat death of the universe” (well at first I typo’d it as “het death of the universe,” so I guess, straight people might take care to avoid causing that particular unmaking of spacetime), and “abolish cars”. I didn’t expect any of these commands to work, but it helped to vent the emotions I was feeling to just say that.
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I liked the dry comedy of having a diagram of the intersection as if that would somehow help me demystify the task of turning right. I would look at the diagram and think, okay, is there some kind of clue here of how to break out of this? There isn’t. It’s just context for your misery.
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In other parser games I have played so far, it is sometimes annoying to have the game tell you that it doesn’t recognize a verb you are trying to use. However, in this exact use-case, it really adds to the passive-aggressive tone of the game. For instance, being informed, “You don’t need to ‘dematerialize’ in this game.” It’s hard not to read that as a bemused roast of my pitiful escape attempt. Rather deserved, I think.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
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Overall, I think the game does exactly what it needs to do visually. One very minor thing that I didn’t like was that upon opening the game, it immediately forced me into fullscreen. It was trivial to undo that, but I’d rather get to decide for myself whether I get to look at anything other than this game while trying to turn right.
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I encountered no bugs or technical issues; this was a small-in-scope, but ultimately well-crafted experience.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
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Using parser error messages to influence the tone of the game. As I discussed above, receiving (what in context became) passive-aggressive error messages from the game when I used forbidden verbs enhanced my experience of playing. It made me realize how, in the context of a parser game, even if you can’t anticipate every bit of nonsense your player might input, putting thought into how those error messages are presented could be a great way to influence the tone of the game. Here, it was passive-aggressive, but perhaps other phrasings could evoke different moods. So the lesson is: there is no space of a game that you can’t imagine as being influential for the experience, and a snarky error message is an example of that.
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This is a minor UI thing, but I liked the use of the blinking yellow cursor as a minor aid in telling me when I needed to hit return to reveal more text as opposed to focus on my next command. It’s just a small thing that helps unobtrusively get the player focused on what they need to do to get the experience to unfold in an organic way. It feels important to make UI elements that are present and helpful, but unobtrusive, as this game does.
Quote:
- “You should be focusing on turning right.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
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When I was allowed, mercifully, to turn right.