The Sword of Voldiir
The Sword of Voldiir is an entry in the venerable category of computer games that are trying to emulate Dungeons & Dragons. It is a choice-based game in which you are a member of a group of adventurers which is tasked with finding the titular sword, only for the journey to go unexpectedly awry. As is customary for this type of game these days, your PC is heavily customizable, and you can choose to romance any of your fellow party members.
While I don’t shy away from giving negative feedback, I do usually try to be a bit more lenient with IF reviews than I would with, say, a published book or a commercial game (even an indie one). This is a hobby community and we’re all having fun and sharing our works for free. But the free version of Sword of Voldiir is a demo for a full game that costs money, and as such I’m inclined to hold it to a slightly higher standard, since the question the review is addressing is no longer simply “is it worth your time?” but “is it worth your time and money?” All of which is to say, this review is harsher than I’m inclined to be for free IF, and I apologize for that in advance.
The bones of Sword of Voldiir, as it were, are perfectly fine. There’s an audience out there that absolutely cannot get enough of this type of game. But without any notably unique concepts behind the story or gameplay, the whole thing lives or dies by the execution, and right now the execution is messy. I do understand that this is still one person’s passion project, but if you want me to pay for your passion project then I do expect some polish, and there are many free works that are in better shape than this one, so I don’t think I’m holding it to a standard that is out of reach for an indie creator.
There are frequent errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, along with malapropisms like “through” for “throw” and “waterskein” for “waterskin.” Some sentences don’t quite make sense—the PC, for example, attempts to comfort their unhappy horse by saying “I know you, we’re almost there,” which reads like the writer got distracted halfway through writing “I know you can do it” or maybe “I know you’re tired, but…”
There are also issues with styling; the list of options is occasionally centered but usually left-aligned, and the dialogue UI (for the dialogues that pop up when saving or restarting) hasn’t been styled to have text that is legible on a black background.
Combat is quite buggy. I think you’re meant to be able to choose whether to attack with your weapon or cast a spell every round, but in practice what happens is that you do this once at the start of battle and the game randomly(?) chooses for you thereafter. Under some circumstances (I’m not quite sure what triggers this), after you attack you’re taken to a passage with a broken “if” macro that gives you three “next round” links. Display of the enemy’s remaining hit points doesn’t always work quite right.
The combat is also an area where I have some quibbles with the underlying game design (I think). I originally rolled up a squishy magic-user, as is my wont. But it was absolutely impossible to make it through the first battle with that build, as you have no option to try to stay out of range of the enemy (at least, not on the one turn on which you’re able to make a choice at all) and are constantly taking hits. I ended up having to restart and create a character with a high Constitution stat to see the rest of the demo. It may be that if you were actually able to strategize and make choices every turn this would be less of an issue, but as far as I can tell it seems the game isn’t well balanced for different PC builds at the moment, and as PC customizability is such a big draw of this kind of game, that seems like a serious problem.
As for the romanceable party members, their character introductions are offloaded to a “relationships” screen accessible from the sidebar that I didn’t look at until halfway through the demo. I think that’s likely to be the case for many people (why look at the “relationships” screen before you’ve made a few choices that are likely to affect relationships?), so I would recommend working this information into the game proper. Also, the one time I chose a flirty option, the game said absolutely nothing about how the character being flirted with responded—the entire resulting passage was just a restatement of what my character had said, an added line or two of their thoughts, and the link to the next passage. I can’t tell if that’s a writing issue or a technical one where text should have appeared and didn’t, but either way it discouraged me from trying more flirty options, since seeing the other character’s reactions is pretty much the whole point of a romance with a blank-slate PC.
I don’t think Sword of Voldiir is a bad game—the problems it has are the problems that pretty much every IF work has when it hasn’t been through proper beta-testing (which IME in this sphere usually includes writing feedback along with bug-spotting and feedback on game balance). I think a few rounds of thorough testing and feedback from maybe 4-5 people who aren’t the author could really make this sparkle. (You can ask for help with this right here on the forums! People are usually happy to volunteer as long as it’s not too close to a major comp!) But as it is, the game feels not ready for primetime.