I have finished Starry Seeksorrow (D6), and it was fun! I arrive at the first long game of my marathon. An uphill stretch has begun, and with it the first real test of my stamina. At E5, I join Otisdog at Worlds Apart.
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I’ve played Dragon Fate through to two endings (well, three, I couldn’t resist seeing what would happen if I refused the call). I may revisit it later, but I’d like to move on.
Next up will be The Saltcast Adventure at F3. I’m going to get in a couple more Spring Thing games first before ribbons close, though.
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Finished Reflections.
- Thought that would be longer. It’s a Text Adventure Literacy Jam entry, and very kid-friendly. None of the puzzles were particularly hard, though since it limits itself to two-word commands I found myself hunting for the right verb at least twice.
- Based on some of the descriptions, one has to assume we’re really seeing the world through a child’s eyes.
- Something about the large custom text and simplistic pictures reminds me of The Hobbit. Dunno if that makes sense.
- Might do an unofficial sidestep to The Little Match Girl 5 later, but for now, the road to C4 - The Bones of Rosalinda is open.
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After taking some time to get ‘course correction’ ready for beta testers for Release Update Day (woo!) I’m back to Little Match Girl 5! And, like, guys, this game is just so bonkers and creative. I’ve discovered a sort of ‘hub’ area, and several ‘spoke’ areas, and the hub is entirely in third person past tense, and the spokes are the traditional second person present tense. Why? I have no idea! Maybe I’ll find out, and maybe I won’t! Various NPCs consistently respond to the narration. I respond to the narration at one point, using it to discover someone’s name! This is not commented on in the slightest, anywhere; the narration is the IF-standard ‘here is what you see and what’s going on’; it has no ‘voice’ at all.
The puzzles themselves (as I’ve gone through them; there’s obviously multiple possible orders) have thus far been sort of standard fetch-quest-ish, but the latest ones have been overlaid with moments of genuine emotion. Despite the genres being an utter mish-mash of everything from Poseidon ruling Atlantis to some sort of Power Rangers pastiche to a Colin-the-robot-from-HHGG homage (I think?), things are… sort of beginning to cohere for me? In tone, if not in content?
At any rate, I press on!
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After being stuck at the starting line for a week, fumbling with my shoelaces or whatever, I’m finally off!
I’ve started the Plant, not finished it yet. It’s my first time playing a TADS game (believe it or not) and I like the system, it seems a very capable engine judging from all the intricate items I am able to manipulate and investigate…
The Plant is very puzzly. I’m struggling to gain entry to the facility in question. I’m pretty sure I have to scan some bar codes, add up the numbers (or something) and fiddle with the settings on the garage opener to open the side gate…but I seem to be missing something.
Anyway, I’m enjoying grappling with it. I’ll convince myself to look at the solution if I have to. Will accept hints!
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Ah, I’m in now. It was more straightforward than expected. I must have been too tired last night, as the clock went past midnight.
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Completed F3, the review is here. Moving to E4.
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OK! I finished Little Match Girl 5, and wrote way too many words about it. Mostly spoilers! The short version is that you should play the game and draw your own map when you get to the end section. I’m utterly delighted that the RNG sent me here; I feel like this whole marathon endeavor could be worth it for that game alone.
But! I have more map to cover! This time I have seven possible open spots near me. And unlike last time, this time there’s a mix of games other people have played and games other people haven’t. I went back and forth in my head whether I should bias my die roll in favor of one class or the other: on the one hand, it’d be fun to compare notes with someone else who played the same game, and on the other, it would be sad if someone’s game ended up on this map and never got played. And those two competing thoughts cancelled each other out, and I’m just going straight random. Once again, ‘1’ means ‘north’, ‘2’ means ‘northeast’ etc., skipping ‘south’ this time, since I’ve been there already (so a 5 is ‘southwest’, and an 8 is ‘reroll’):
A 3! East it is, to B5: ‘New Year’s Eve, 2019’ by Autumn Chen. An unplayed game! I’ll report back soon. I hope.
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[!example]
The Great Play Marathon
>play social democracy
You play Social Democracy: Petrograd 1917.>
se
Well, that’s orig— wait, what? Southeast? Do you really mean it? This is so exciting! I’ve been printing the exact same exit list since A2!B6. Pageant. Exits: northeast north east southeast south southwest west
You see a Dendry game by Autumn Chen here.>
And I’ve posted my comments on Miss Gosling’s Last Case.
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Trying to move this from another thread where it misposted
I’ve just finished “Faute De Servo” by Jack Welch, which may make me the winner of the fastest short run by a free run competitor, but once again, I don’t really understand this rule set.
Faute De Servo is a French language game, a language I can’t for the life of me pronounce, let alone understand, but playing it in browser, with Google Chrome translate, and following the walk through very strictly, and doing some puzzle solving to figure out how to type some of the French accent marks in my typed commands. I played through to the end. That was enough to remind me that I had played the English language translation when it was released as “En Garde” by the same author in the 2018 competition. unfortunately I only published one review that year, so I can’t remember what I thought of it the first time around, though I think I may have followed the walkthrough very closely on the English version also.
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I’ve completed The Plant. There was an incident where, in a moment of fatigue and weakness, I referred to the walkthrough. It was only a little hint, really, but still, I feel like I’ve cheated myself. It was just right… there… and I had no clue what I was even trying to do with those air vents…
Anyway, the game was entertaining and I thought the puzzles were well constructed; I’ll post some more thoughts about it soon. For my next move, I’ve decided to tackle Moondrop Isle on B9.
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Well hello @kaemi !
My head was so filled with history that I didn’t notice you joined me at E4. Hi!
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I believe this means that I capture your piece, so uh, check!
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Doug_Egan has formally switched to a short course, so we have a winner for that course type. Congratulations, @Doug_Egan for a record-setting sprint!
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[!example]
The Great Play Marathon
>play pageant
You play Pageant.>
w
B5. New Year’s Eve, 2019. Exits: northeast southeast south southwest west
You see a Dendry game by Autumn Chen here.>
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I’m not sure that anyone knows this (since I seem to have forgotten to mention it), but I’ve been updating the map and posting a weekly summary of the marathon in the top post of the main thread.
The same type of update will occur each Friday. In the meantime, the freshest information about the state of the marathon will continue to be on the activity log thread.
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I posted a review of The Plant on IFDB.
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Oh man, I’m going to be exploring Moondrop Isle for a while 
Luckily I have a lot of squared paper to hand…
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I’ve completed Junior Arithmancer, with a final score of 101/100 points. I was drawn in almost immediately, and decided to keep playing even after completing all ten numbers. The puzzles are well designed, hard enough to require some thought without becoming frustrating. Even the ones about reaching particular colors, which I thought would require a lot of note-taking, have a system behind them which made solving them much simpler. The game is very beginner friendly, with no way to lose unless you intentionally end the exam without completing enough numbers.
The running commentary from the panel of judges struck a nice balance; it felt like they were observing the PC and talking to each other without making so many comments that it became overwhelming. Their dialogue seem to be a combination of discussions triggered by specific events, most often reaching the end of a number, and shorter quips in response to certain commands. Personally, I would have either added some more variation to the comments in response to particular actions or made the judges repeat a message only a limited number of times (e. g. you would get Teraboz and Berzia’s back and forth the first time you type INC instead of PLU, but after that you’d get a shorter message.) Their commentary also acts as a hint system, though, so it’s understandable why they repeat the same comments, even if it reduces the realism.
Junior Arithmancer seems likely to appeal to all ages. Kids will get a chance to apply mathematics in a fun way, and the running commentary from the judges adds something for older players. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys logic or arithmetic puzzles.
Does anyone know if there are other bonus points besides visiting infinity?
From here, I’m heading northwest to Pytho’s Mask.
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IIRC there are two bonus points so the max is 102? Visiting Infinity and visiting the rainbow colors in order?
Edit: or… well… given the thread speculating about bonus points and the postmortem thread, there are at least two bonus points, but I don’t recall anyone talking about finding more.
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