Ectocomp 2012

Thanks, guys! Very helpful.

I tried to add a link to the competition page http://www.jjguest.com/games_ectocomp.htm on the IF Wiki Page http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Ectocomp_2012 but it wouldn’t let me. Any ideas?

The wiki wouldn’t let you? What was the error message?

I think you’ve been yet another victim of an unfortunate anti-spam question about a magic word [emote]:([/emote] (see this IFWiki discussion).

I’ve just added you to the TrustedUsers group, so you shouldn’t have that problem any more. I also see that someone has just added your link to the page.

My thoughts!


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

[spoiler]Storywise and writing-wise, this was the winner of the competition for me. On the first move, I was happy to find out that an uncommon verb was supported in this game, as the beginning text implored me to try >SMILE. When it worked, it ended up being my fall-back command for much of the game, but given the narrative arc, it was very appropriate (as was its response).

(I don’t mean to imply that adding new verbs to a game takes that much time, but that kind of prose->command->reward thing is good design.)

Mechanic-wise, the middle section (the conversation as you wait in line) doesn’t seem to affect the end scene at all, but that’s kind of clever in its own way. It was interesting just to go back and do the choices I was too intimidated to do the first time around.

It was also pretty cool to have the game start off with this other character who it is revealed looks out for you (and then immediately disappears). It puts you in a really good headspace for the game.

The bad ending isn’t told quite as horrifically as it could be, but I was somewhat grateful that it ended up being young-reader-level horror (which is also pretty appropriate, considering). In that area, my only disappointment is that some of Jennifer’s dialogue was too reminiscent of Heroe’s Sylar.

It’s understandable, but it also might have been better if the end section didn’t acknowledge the limits of its implementation. It’s hard to say, but I liked the game a lot and kind of resented that for spoiling the illusion.[/spoiler]


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

[spoiler]I’m not a big fan of rhyming games, and I’m even less so when there’s some questionable near-rhyme, which there is here. On my first playthrough, I blundered my way to near the end- judging by the walkthrough- but at that point, the command hinting seemed to be getting less obvious and I hit a wall.

I did revisit it to see if there was a >WALKTHROUGH command, which there was, so I have finished the game since. Anyhow, not bad, but it’s not the kind of thing to exactly win me over, either.[/spoiler]


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

[spoiler]This one had an interesting design for a TWINE game. Plotwise, it was interesting that the game initially developed in ways I wasn’t expecting. Once I got to the big puzzle/mechanic of the game, I was both impressed and internally sighing, as it sounded like it’d take a bunch of trial and error to solve (and some mapping). Sure, there was that listening command, but the game gave me this guilt trip/punishment thing about using it, so I avoided it altogether.

I just crossed my fingers and hoped I’d get through it on the first play through. Getting past the creature once (and blowing up the cavern) was easy enough, but when it dawned on me that I was supposed to get past it again to get out, I was in an unwinnable situation and all of my patience for the puzzle was exhausted.[/spoiler]


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

For me, this was the real winner of the competition, based on its humor, design, and implementation. First things first, I loved that a 3-hour EctoComp Inform game had a non-standard status line. Then, I loved the introduction explanation for why I was short on bullets. The poems were very funny. The mansion wandering-monsters did cause me to die a bit, but it was an enjoyable time figuring out the game mechanics. While I think I figured out everything, this is one of those games that leaves you walking away thinking there might still be a design angle or two you missed.


Parasites | Marius Müller |

A game has never made me so glad that certain verbs weren’t implemented (when it came to the sheep). Finding what to do next was troublesome here and there, but in the end, nice little Outer Limits type tale.


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

This game has a very silly sense of humor which has varying degrees of success, but some of what I found funny, I found very funny. Still, the game is hurt by the ADRIFT thing where a command is only understood one time and then never understood again. I don’t know enough about ADRIFT to know how avoidable that is. Despite this, I found several items, like the hook, the axe, and the chicken wire, but figuring anything else was beyond me. Oh well. EDIT: Ok, I turned on the debugger, and it seems like I should be able to tie the hook to the chicken wire (something I actually tried before), but it’s not working. Curse you, 3 hour coding!

Thanks so much Eriorg!

Damn, it’s pretty weird writing reviews for what’s basically a speedIF. For me one of the big draws of speedIFy things is that they’re unjudged and you’re free to fuck everything up and produce a pile of crap if you want, which is pleasantly liberating. I mean, I generate enough self-imposed pressure as it is, jesus, I don’t need the rest of y’all breathing down my neck.


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

[spoiler]This is a short tale about a witch in the teenage-neopagan idiom: thus, she has a frilly faux-medieval name and a beautiful spiritual soul, and is cruelly persecuted for no reason by ignorant villagers.

It is rendered in free verse. I am all in favour of IF as poetry, except that writing good poetry is extraordinarily hard; this has some nice imagery and figures of speech (‘the cauldron’s full of leftovers and / the bookshelf’s filled with songs’) but the overall shape of it is pretty graceless. It tends to drop into tumpty-tum trochaic metre. At times it attempts rhyme (or part-rhyme), but in a half-hearted, halting rhythm. It has poor instincts for the mot juste. So, yeah, it is mostly bad poetry; and it seems to give mixed signals about whether it’s intended to be campy and awful in a 7th Guest mode, or played straight. I enjoyed it much more when I started picturing it in a camp-spooky B-movie voiceover, though.

Part of the appeal of doing things as poetry, here, is that it avoids the standard IFese description style, which has a tendency to turn into a bland itemisation. In that respect, this is refreshing; for all its flaws, the game does accomplish a distinctly different atmosphere than is standard in IF. But practical concerns drag the poetry back towards listings, which it doesn’t always entirely fit. (Too, it kept being interfered with by standard parser responses.)

A particularly injudicious parser response: “You are wearing nothing, and are carrying nothing.” That’s… positive information where negative information is required.

As far as I can tell, the game is mostly about looking around, and at some point a bunch of timed events happen, involving the villagers coming for you with torches and pitchforks. I hit a fatal bug towards the end, when trying to ride the broom; this seems to be the required action to win, so I think this renders the game unwinnable.[/spoiler]


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

[spoiler]There are some awesome names here. You play one Jubilee Grief, an adventurer investigating the mansion of Vigilance Ghosterington to retrieve his last poems.

The design here is not unlike Clarke’s debut Leadlight: you are a cute, athletic young woman exploring a macabre setting, getting attacked by wacktastic monsters, and dying a lot. This version, however, is a treasure hunt. You are pursued around the house by two monsters, the clockwork girl and the terror statue; remaining in a room with them results in your death. You can avoid them by moving away (though they may come after you), or by shooting them with your limited supply of bullets. Also limited is a central room, which kills you the third time you enter it. Although the treasures you’re looking for (terrible, but highly valuable poetry) are hidden, they’re only nominally so; the trick is about finding enough breathing space to look for them, and finding genuine treasures rather than useless scraps.

For a game produced within the time constraints, it’s impressively tight design: everything pretty much works as it ought to. Poking at the scenery too hard is not to be advised, but in general you won’t have much time to do so. There are some sound principles at work here, but for me it wasn’t quite entertaining enough to stick at; that sodding clockwork girl was far too persistent, and working out which things hid the genuine poems was too trial-and-error, given that I usually had to burn up a bullet to get one. Too much of my gameplay was spent running in circles, trying to make a swipe at that damn armadillo shell and getting headed off by monsters every time.

This seems to be all pretty much by design, but my frustration level for replay is fairly low. If I’m not encountering new content or discovering new strategies, I don’t really want to keep hammering away at the same puzzle time after time. That hurdle is what stops this game from being a generally strong piece, as opposed to just a strong piece given its time constraints.[/spoiler]


Parasites | Marius Müller |

[spoiler]This is an alien-invasion piece; you’re in an isolated listening station, most of the world has already been conquered, and you’re effectively waiting for the aliens to clean up. There is some brief confusion about which side you should be on, but this doesn’t have time to develop into anything convincing; it’s so plainly misinformation that it’s hard to feel anxiety about it. Similarly, I get the feeling that the parasitic, body-snatcher aspect of the aliens was meant to be played up as horror; but once again, this is a pretty standard kind of concept and it’s touched on quite briefly, so there’s little time to develop any particular feeling about it.

What this game does have going for it is a sense of isolation in the face of an indefinite but inevitable doom. If this were built up to the size of a full game, that’s what I’d try to emphasize; build up the setting and the major NPC, and have the player spend more time looking for information about the outside world, and finding less of it. At the moment, the game is conspicuously about wandering about, finding the location that sets off a plot trigger and then doing so again. Perhaps the idea was to set up a sense of panic, rather than slow-building dread; but in a game this small, the two feelings inevitably get in each others’ way.[/spoiler]


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

[spoiler]This is a genuinely dark little story: there’s a Halloween backdrop, but the genuine nastiness is independent of that. You’re a middle-school girl at a small spookily-themed amusement park; your cool classmate Jennifer makes nice with you, but turns out to be a psychopath who tries to get you killed on one of the rides. The social dynamics at play here – peer pressure, early-teenage social awkwardness, the growing awareness that something is badly wrong – are deftly handled. So this is clearly the best writing of Ectocomp, and that applies to writerly things like pacing and arc as well. The ending is, appropriately, pretty chilling whether you survive or not.

More disappointing is the gameplay, which is essentially a set of yes-or-no choices, including one section where the conversation implementation peters out entirely. Examining the scenery does add a few things to the experience, but I still came away from this feeling that it could have been more efficiently rendered as a CYOA with scenery actions.

Still, this was the game that most effectively summoned up an atmosphere of horror, which makes it the comp winner in my book.[/spoiler]


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

[spoiler]Horror of the ‘blood, blood everywhere, mangled torso piles, veins in your teeth’ variety; this is pitched fairly straight, rather than Spooky Halloween Funhouse. You enter the (vaguely Lovecraftian) hunting lodge, which is full of horrible gorefests; eventually, after carrying out a couple of simple puzzles, you find your brother’s murdered body and his final message, which tells you how to defeat the monster that did this. After this introductory section, it transitions into another ‘you are being hunted by a randomly-wandering monster’ game. I didn’t know that Twine could handle this level of modeling (aha, of course, it’s expandable with Javascript) so that’s fairly impressive, but regardless, it’s just not a premise that appeals to me all that much.

Here’s why: death in IF games is, by default, annoying rather than scary. This tendency is exacerbated when you get killed in the same way repeatedly, because it really drives home the fact that death is just a minor inconvenience. Once again, if you’re making the player replay over and over, and your game is not very strategically deep, you need to offer a pretty decent chance of encountering tasty new content each time. This is a deep-implementation thing that obviously can’t be accomplished in a speedIF.

The Hunting Lodge’s design has some advantages compared to Ghosterington Night. You have some ways of telling how close the monster is, and in which general direction. But it also kills you immediately on encountering said monster, offers no UNDO, and has a much more irregular map that’s harder to navigate quickly and intuitively. It’s also possible that it suffered because I played it after Ghosterington and was already kind of burned out with that mechanic.

There are a few clangers:

It’s early in the morning, the cat woke me up at 3 AM, and I haven’t had my coffee yet, so I can’t really pick out precisely what’s wrong with that, but trust me: rewrite required. Possibly it’s that, well, the PC is basically uncharacterised, and we get very little information about said brother before he’s found dead and mangled; so I didn’t feel much emotional response here, and thus “You become shocked” is conspicuously wrong. (I mean, usually if an author has to tell you ‘This is the appropriate emotional response!’ it’s too late, so this wouldn’t be awesome even if the brother was better-established.)

“Confirming that you have indeed arrived at your destination” is a great big bloat of a sentence. “Seems you’ve arrived” contains precisely the same information: if two-thirds of the words you’re using are padding, your sentences will feel padded. There’s obviously no time to edit in three hours, so I don’t really feel that this represents a horrendous failing on the author’s part. (In Ectocomp you’re allowed all the time you want for writing before you actually start coding, so maybe this excuse isn’t quite as solid as it might be; but, still, this is not something you’re likely to put a Comp-entry level of polish into.) Long story short, though: if you’re going to make your audience replay a lot, and the level of interactivity is quite low, your writing had better offer a high level of reward.[/spoiler]


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

[spoiler]Holy textdumps, Batman. This game has some pretty advanced zany logorrhea. I found this entertaining and funny enough, despite a generally low tolerance for zany games.

It is, sadly, kind of horribly unresponsive. >KILL CHICKEN gives you an appropriate response the first time, then abruptly stops working. >KILL CHICKEN WITH SPADE seems sensible but also doesn’t work. (Indeed, the game seems to consist of finding objects which could all, without stretching one’s inventiveness very far, be used to kill a chicken. Since a chicken can be killed with bare hands, this is not a stretch). >DIG doesn’t work unless you do it on the right thing.

[quote]
You’re not sure why there was a large metallic hook buried in a garden but after seeing a chicken with two noses, all of your belief in the rationality of the universe has evaporated[/i]
That about sums this game up; it wants to take you on a ride, and you are not expected to follow along, not applying that unpleasant logic thing. This is an approach that only works if the game is able to shepherd you gently through all the steps, and it’s not quite there; I had the idea that I was meant to get into the shed somehow, but nothing I tried gave me any useful responses. (Possibly there is a rope or a ladder somewhere that would let me get onto the roof. I couldn’t work out where it might be, though.)[/spoiler]

No javascript was used in The Hunting Lodge. I only used the built-in language, which I believe is a heavily stripped down version of PHP. I wanted to see how far I could take it (turns out it can go quite far).

Oh, cool. That’s definitely a mark in Twine’s favour, then; I had only previously seen it used to do things that required only fairly basic state-tracking.

I found a nice 3D effect and tried some 100 brute force word combinations even using 3D to get on. Does anybody solve this problem?

The debugger shows that you presumably have to construct a wire ladder to climb into the shed. Steve seems to double me and my inventory, I also tried to cooperate. Giving up by now. Any hints? I really want to finish that crazy game.

This sounded like those disclaimer at the end of horrible movies.

“No cat was harmed during the making of Zoo-The movie”.

Maga - most people just write a couple of lines in the notes section, but we do appreciate your in-depth reviews!

Looking forward to the results! I predict that my position will be… fifth. Maybe fourth.

The deed is done! The runes are cast!
The wheel of fate has spun its last
The augeries of doom portend
That Ectocomp is at an end!

Here are the final scores for Ectocomp 2012, averaged out of 10:

  1. Ghosterington Night by Wade Clarke … 8/10
  2. What Are Little Girls Made Of? by Carolyn VanEseltine … 7.6/10
  3. The Hunting Lodge by HulkHandsome … 6/10
  4. Parasites by Marius Müller … 5.5/10
  5. Beythilda the Night Witch by DCBSupafly … 5/10
  6. The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D by Mel Stefaniuk … 4.2/10

Congratulations to all entrants and especially to Wade Clarke for first place! Thanks to everyone who voted!

I’m going to post everyone’s scores and comments below.

Ned Yompus:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 5
Comments: well done for speed-if & offering some clear branches on what you can do–it’s obvious things will be significant w/o the story saying it. I’m glad one game with non-life-threatening fears made it and this is well done. Some more stuff I’d like to see implemented.


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 4
Comments: I really like the idea of game-by-poem and while this feels disjointed, I’m glad I played this game & the walkthrough was much appreciated as I saw what the author was doing. Might be too ambitious for a speed IF but that’s a good fault to have. Still I want to see more people try this sort of thing. Though I’m a bit scared to, myself.


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 6
Comments: A good serious work with a few speed-if flaws specific to twine, but I was tense enough getting chased. A few unfair deaths but you’re pretty well clued through the game & it’s fun to see all the ways you can go wrong.


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 7
Comments: Very tidy planning of a fun-scary adventure where the fun-limiting factor is how tough it is to find the last poem–both avoiding the monsters and, well, knowing what to do with the final object. My favorite title too.


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 3
Comments: This felt a bit bland to me & lack of implementation pulled it back too. But the choice of tough endings is a good one for halloween & while I’m not big on aliens, I see what’s going on. The problem was that I sort of guessed the possibility in advance & I had to struggle with the parser, which dampened the emotional effect of the story.


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 2
Comments: I’d like to play through with a walkthrough but had trouble brute-forcing. E.g. I went TAKE ALL etc. Hope this game gets a post-comp release but I found myself baffled trying to get on the roof my 2nd time through.

Sean M. Shore:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 8
Comments:


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 5
Comments:


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 5
Comments:


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 7
Comments:


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 6
Comments:


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 2
Comments:

Wade Clarke:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 8


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 6


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 7


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: n/a


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 6


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 4

Sam Ashwell:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 10
Comments:


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 4
Comments:


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 5
Comments:


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 8
Comments:


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 4
Comments:


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 5
Comments:

IFWizz:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 5
Comments:
Plus: good prose, nice character study;
Minus: too short, almost no interaction, two pointless y/n-decisions; unneeded characters.


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 4
Comments:
Plus: nice puzzle ideas;
Minus: rarely a story, confused prose, missing motivation; missing some implementation (e.g. no shadow).


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 7
Comments:
Plus: setting, action;
Minus: should better be parser IF to get a better mood while exploring details.


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 8
Comments:
Plus: action, implementation, humor;
Minus: just Hunt the Wumpus, no real story.


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 6
Comments:
Plus: humor, action;
Minus: implementation (too many “You can’t see any such thing”).


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 6
Comments:
Plus: excellent Prose in Terry Pratchett style, funny puzzles, nice 3D effect;
Minus: bad implementation, for that one puzzle is not really solvable (entering shed).

Roody Yoghurt:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 8
Comments:
Storywise and writing-wise, this was the winner of the competition for me. On the first move, I was happy to find out that an uncommon verb was supported in this game, as the beginning text implored me to try >SMILE. When it worked, it ended up being my fall-back command for much of the game, but given the narrative arc, it (and its response) was very appropriate. Mechanic-wise, the middle section (the conversation as you wait) doesn’t seem to affect the end scene at all, but that’s kind of clever in its own way. It was interesting just to go back and do the choices I was too intimidated to do the first time around. It was also pretty cool to have the game start off with this other character who it is revealed looks out for you (and then immediately disappears). It puts you in a really good headspace for the game. The bad ending isn’t told quite as horrifically as it could be, but I was somewhat grateful that it ended up being young-reader-level horror (which is also pretty appropriate). In that area, my only disappointment is that some of Jennifer’s dialogue was too reminiscent of Heroe’s Sylar. It’s understandable, but it also might have been better if the end section didn’t acknowledge the limits of its implementation. It’s hard to say, but I liked the game a lot and kind of resented that for spoiling the illusion.


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 4
Comments:
I’m not a big fan of rhyming games, and I’m even less so when there’s some questionable near-rhyme, which there is here. On my first playthrough, I blundered my way to near the end, judging by the walkthrough, but at that point, the command hinting seemed to be getting less obvious and I hit a wall. I did revisit it to see if there was a >WALKTHROUGH command, which there was, so I have finished the game since. Anyhow, not bad, but it’s not the kind of thing to exactly win me over, either.


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 5
Comments:
This one had an interesting design for a TWINE game. Plotwise, it was interesting that the game initially developed in ways I wasn’t expecting. Once I got to the big puzzle/mechanic of the game, I was both impressed and internally sighing, as it sounded like it’d take a bunch of trial and error to solve. Sure, there was that listening command, but the game gave me this guilt trip/punishment thing about using it, so I avoided it altogether. I just crossed my fingers and hoped I’d get through it on the first play through. Getting past the creature once (and blowing up the cavern) was easy enough, but when it dawned on me that I was supposed to get past it again to get out, I was in an unwinnable situation and all of my patience for the puzzle was exhausted.


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 9
Comments:
For me, this was the real winner of the competition, based on its humor, design, and implementation. First things first, I loved that a 3 hour EctoComp Inform game had a non-standard status line. Then, I loved the introduction explanation for why I was short on bullets. The poems were very funny. The mansion wandering-monsters did cause me to die a bit, but it was an enjoyable time figuring out the game mechanics. While I think I figured out everything, this is one of those games that leaves you walking away thinking there might still be a design angle or two you missed.


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 4
Comments:
A game has never made me so glad that certain verbs weren’t implemented (when it came to the sheep). Finding what to do next was troublesome here and there, but in the end, nice little Outer Limits type tale.


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 4
Comments:

This game has a very silly sense of humor which has varying degrees of success, but some of what I found funny, I found very funny. Still, the game is hurt by the ADRIFT thing where a command is only understood one time and then never understood again. I don’t know enough about ADRIFT to know how avoidable that is. Despite this, I found several items, like the hook, the axe, and the chicken wire, but figuring anything else was beyond me. Oh well. EDIT: Ok, I turned on the debugger, and it seems like I should be able to tie the hook to the chicken wire (something I actually tried before), but it’s not working. Curse you, 3 hour coding!

Emily Short:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 9
Comments: An impressively creepy and coherent little story, my favorite of the competition. I ran into a few implementation hitches, but there was still a fair amount of freedom considering the amount of time that was available. And I found the emotional arc — first being hesitant, then starting to like and have more trust in Jennifer, then starting to doubt her motives again — very well put together.

(Full disclosure: I find this persuasively horrific. When I was in sixth grade, I was routinely tormented by a girl whose life ambition was to be a divorce lawyer one day. I decided that the career ambition was probably a marker of something deeply askew in her soul. In retrospect, possibly that is wrong. Maybe she just thought divorce lawyering would make her rich, or maybe she’d discovered that adults flinched amusingly when she said it. Not sure! Possibly now she has grown up and become a kind person who volunteers at homeless shelters.

Playing this game reminded me of the way in middle school it’s sort of hard to tell whether someone is immature, morbid, just trying to get attention, or, you know, actually sociopathic.)

I hope it gets a post-comp polish, because I think it would be quite recommendable. Nice work!


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 6
Comments: Cute, goofy, didn’t take me more than a couple of minutes. I felt like the conclusion was a bit anticlimactic, as I was expecting more to do to actually effect the rescue.

In addition, the poetic language sometimes kind of obscured what was really going on, so I was never quite sure how on what level of reality I was communicating with the stars. (Was this just a kind of psychic astrology on my part? Or are the stars meant to be responsive entities that answer questions? Etc.)

Still, IF that attempts interactive poetry is rare; trying for interactive poetry that still works sort of as a puzzle game is even rarer. Points for really trying to take this idea as far as it would go.


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 7
Comments: I was kind of surprised at the similarities between this and Ghosterington: both concern moving around a map while trying to evade lethal NPCs. This one had a little more of a story arc to it, in that you spend the first part of the game finding (rather heavy-handed) evidence of the chaos that happened in this location previously.

While I think there’s been some impressive work in Twine recently, I am always a little bit taken aback by CYOA user interfaces over what feels like a very standard IF-with-rooms world model. I suppose one advantage is that it may be slightly more accessible to players who wouldn’t be interested in a parsed game; on the other hand, I would have welcomed some of the advantages that would have come with a parser-based version of the same story, such as the ability to view scroll back, and the fact that if you WAITed in the library, it would not necessarily print the “You enter the library…” part of the room description over again.

I played several times and each time got eaten.


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 8
Comments: This is pretty impressively tight for three hours worth of work: there’s a clear goal, a puzzle allowing multiple levels of success, some very bad verse, and multiple self-moving NPCs. Unfortunately, despite several playthroughs I didn’t do all that well — the best I ever accomplished was to get three poems out of the house. I also didn’t find it especially scary, but it seemed to be more in a silly/parodic mode anyway, so that was fine.


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 7
Comments: The speed-IFfy implementation of this one does show a bit: some typos and odd punctuation, unimplemented scenery; a character who is shot will be described as still existing alive a turn later if you do something unexpected; etc.

The hook is not bad, though — the earth has been ravaged by alien invaders, you and a couple of other refugees are holed up on an island, and suddenly you receive a radio message that another group of aliens, enemies to the first group, is headed towards you to continue their long-running war on your territory. Your companion Verdade is eager to see them do this, but he seems a bit crazed, and it quickly becomes clear that he isn’t entirely sane.From a design perspective, there’s one serious problem: you can get two endings, but one of them is easy to miss (thanks to coding/text cluing not giving the player enough ideas about what could happen at a critical moment); and the other ending doesn’t make much sense without it.

So I liked the concept and would be glad to see this made a little more solid on the coding front. I felt that, like What Are Little Girls Made Of?, it actually managed to deliver a quick creepy story with decent-ish forward momentum: no small achievement for Speed-IF. It just needs to be made a bit more watertight to ensure that that experience is the one the player actually has.


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 5
Comments: This is a pretty whimsical business about an evil double-beaked chicken. This kind of humor I generally find silly without being actually ha-ha funny, and so I was feeling a little impatient with it; not the author’s fault, but it was just not especially to my taste. I did make my best effort to win, and I found a couple of items I think should have been useful, but nonetheless I wasn’t able to get to the end, thanks to either bugginess or lack of clues. Oh well.

HulkHandsome:


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 7
Comments: Reminds me of Fear Street and Emily Short’s Glass. The writing was pretty good (and liked the story concept) but most of the game is just waiting in a line. A version with more interaction could end up being quite a cool little story. Also, the warning at the start of the game made me expect much more gore.


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 6
Comments: The poetic prose didn’t do much for me, but I liked the idea and the implementation was good for a Speed IF!


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

N/A (It’s my game)


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 8
Comments: A simple but charming little treasure hunt game with some very fun writing. Also felt most like a game out of all the entries. Enjoyed this one a lot.


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 7
Comments: I would have liked this a lot more if it was implemented better (or gave the player clearer directions), I kept getting stuck trying to figure out the correct commands, to the point that I almost just stopped playing. Despite this, I really enjoyed the story (and both endings), and the fact that you have a sheep companion. Was really close to being my favourite.


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 6
Comments: The actual game is a bit naff, luckily it makes up for it with some very amusing writing and sweet 3D effects.

J. J. Guest


What Are Little Girls Made Of? | Carolyn VanEseltine |

SCORE: 8
Comments: A nice idea, nicely written. Jennifer came across as a well-drawn, goulish character! Too linear for my liking, but otherwise a good effort!

1 Star * for being set at Haverhill, Suffolk only 39 miles from where I live.


Beythilda the Night Witch | DCBSupafly |

SCORE: 6
Comments: Points for writing the whole game in rhyme - something I wouldn’t have attempted in three hours! I won the game without really knowing how - I walked right past the archer. Could have been a little better clued, I felt like I was guessing rather than working things out. The Adrift Runner crashed on me once.

2 Stars ** for being set at Epping, Essex only 8.7 miles from where I live.


The Hunting Lodge | HulkHandsome |

SCORE: 6
Comments: A curious game this - it plays like a CYOA but feels like parser based IF since most of the choices you can make are compass directions. As a result I kept wanting to interact with the objects described. The writing was a little flat - especially the scene where the PC discovers his dead brother! But a solid effort nonetheless.


Ghosterington Night | Wade Clarke |

SCORE: 9
Comments: My goodness, that was fun! And not a little nerve-wracking! It’s like an IF version of Atic Atac. It’s one to play over and over to see what you can discover before the clockwork girl gets you. Thoroughly enjoyable. By an odd co-incidence I was reading only yesterday about William McGonagall. On the evidence I’d say Ghosterington’s poems were worse.


Parasites | Marius Müller |

SCORE: 7
Comments: Initially I liked the scenario and my expectations were high, but lack of implementation meant I spent far too long trying to do things that weren’t an option - such as using the boat to get out of there. It was clear at the end that I had to take drastic action, because there didn’t seem to be much option, but I’m not clear on why taking that action saved the day.


The Evil Chicken Of Doom 3D | Mel Stefaniuk |

SCORE: 4
Comments: Perhaps some of the time spent writing the lengthy (and very funny) introduction would have been better employed, you know, implementing stuff. Turns out “kill chicken with axe” is not accepted, whereas “use axe on chicken” is – the dreaded verb “use” which should be stricken forever from the IF lexicon. For that you lose points Mel. Unfortunately I couldn’t work out how to gain access to the shed or win the game.

Oh, I did better than I thought I would! Congrats to Wade and thanks to J.J. for hosting the comp.

Wow, thanks a lot everyone.

Soon after I submitted the game, I started working on a big shiny update for after Ectocomp. Probably due to my psychological problems with tackling speed IF in the first place. I always feel like ‘Oooh, I can’t leave that bit like that, or that bit like that, or that bit like that…’ So I am glad this competition motivated me to try it.

The most obvious difference in the update to anyone who played the original is that you can now take some non time-taking actions in the presence of bad guys without being killed. Not being able to even examine them without dying was pretty annoying. The main game design is the same, but stuff is implemented, silly things players may try are implemented, etc., and an easter egg for xyzzy. There’s also a title picture (different to the cover art) and title music. And I added a time limit (you die at midnight), but I added this more as a psychological special effect to create some tension rather than to genuinely make life difficult. There’s tons of time, and lots of moves take no time.

In doing the update, I realised this game was small enough that I could comment the source pretty well and that the result may be of interest or help to other Inform programmers who’d like to see how I did some things after playing it, or simply see someone else’s way of organising the material for a whole, but small, game. It’s a recurring question on the forums: ‘How do you organise your source? You can do anything and the result is I don’t know how to even start.’ And the other issue is, I find looking at the source for huge Inform projects that aren’t mine a bit baffling. So I think it’s useful to be able to see code for an entire game, but one that is small and approachable.

I’ve got the new version and the source code up on IFDB: ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=6kko9va64c4o5jan

Thanks again JJ for organising, and to the ADRIFT folks for broadening their competition’s scope the last couple of years.

  • Wade

Thank you all for the feedback and kind words!

I confess, working on a speed IF that I know will be judged is really hard for me. I wanted to spend far more time than was appropriate because, well, I’m like that. [emote]:([/emote]

Colin Sandel played this for me before submission, and his immediate question was, “Why did you make it parser based? You should have used a CYOA format.” Which made me laugh and wince, because basically everyone said the same thing in their comments.

Consequently, I’m planning to polish this up and rebuild it in Varytales. I hope I can convince you to play it again in a more suitable format.

One last note…

Actually, I was thinking of Haverhill, Massachusetts - or possibly New Hampshire or Ohio. (I figured it was like Springfield and there are a lot of them.) But if I get a star out of it, I’ll take it. [emote];)[/emote]

Actually I guessed you probably weren’t thinking of Haverhill, Suffolk, but when the next game was set in the village of “Epping Forest” I envisaged a whole competition in which all the games where set in the Northeast London commuter belt. Of course this didn’t happen. Epping Forest itself extends right into Greater London and is two minutes walk from my flat. The town, about 8 miles away, is known simply as “Epping”.

And of course it wouldn’t be a Hallowe’en competition without a game set in Massachusetts, that goes without saying!