I’m doing a long run in the Great Play Marathon. I’ll put my reviews here. I’ll do my reviews a bit different than usual: I am planning (one day) to write my own IF game, hopefully for a competition. I’m using the plays in this marathon to get inspiration, and I’ll therefore mainly concentrate in my reviews on elements of the game that I really like or find interesting, as potential ingredients or important lessons for my own future game. Obviously, if I really dislike some aspects, I may note them down as well.
First game:Tales of the Travelling Swordsman by Mike Snyder.
This game placed 4th in the IFComp of 2006. I did not remember ever playing this game before, but I must have, because some elements seemed really familiar to me, especially the scene of spiders trying to steal crates of a flying ship. I don’t think I got much further in my original playthrough.
This new playthrough however was pretty smooth - I managed to figure out almost all solutions to the puzzles myself, only requiring to glance at the walkthrough twice; one of which was probably not needed if I had read the description of what happened when attacking the main villain more carefully. I really had fun.
There were several things I liked:
Puzzles: I really enjoy parser games with puzzles. This game has quite a lot of them. And they were implemented in such a way that they (almost) never seemed too difficult or harsh. This was done in several ways which I may also include in my own game:
Divided into several ‘acts’ with a small number of rooms and objects per act. This ensured I never was overwhelmed with things to do. Often the objective was quite clear, and the number of combinations of things to try small. The small areas also made it easy not to get lost.
Hints: in the game itself there were several hints in the description on what could or could not work, things that pointed you in the right direction.
I don’t think there was a way this game could be made unwinnable.
Story:
The story itself was about a hero (the travelling swordsman) travelling to save a village from evil, running into weird magical situations and strange characters to help on the way.
There was an unexpected but fun twist in the end.
I liked the different settings and characters described - I really had an image in my head when playing. Some were almost dreamlike. I was already thinking about possibly doing something with weird locations in my own game, inspired by the fantasy of my 3 year old son building weird structures with Duplo, like never-ending bridges leading nowhere. Some of these elements were in this game as well.
There were ‘action scenes’ that increased the tension, while there was no actual time pressure or way to lose. This is also something I’d like to try in my own game - no failure possible, but increasing a sense of danger after all.
This game placed 2nd in the IFComp of 2019. And I seem to discover a pattern in my games already (or regarding my own memory) - this is another game that I realized I played before only after playing it again - the short description on IFDB had not directly jogged my memory. I chose this one during my long run because (1) the content warnings were quite fascinating (sex; sexism and other gender issues; suicide; torture; homophobia; xenophobia), and (2) I’ve heard a lot of good things about Victor Gijsbers before (and I’m always interested to play a game from a fellow Dutch person). It’s loosely based on an opera of the same name, that apparently premiered exactly 100 years ago - I’ve never seen it, but read the brief summary, and it’s quite a weird one.
I’m usually mostly interested in parser games instead of choice-based games - also my own future game would be a parser game - but I’m willing to make exceptions (and apparently have done so in the past).
It was a completely different game than my first one: there were no puzzles. You can make different choices (primarily dialogue choices), but they did not lead to completely different settings or endings as far as I know. So the biggest focus was on the dialogues, mostly between the player character Calaf and the princess. And they were very cleverly written, and very fun to read (but do keep in mind the trigger warnings mentioned above) - I laughed several times while playing.
Some elements that I might want to incorporate somehow into my own game:
I like witty dialogues and funny scenes - though I’m not sure yet whether my own game would be a funny game, it is something I want to consider.
Also, I’m not yet sure how much I want to deal with other characters in my own game, and having to incorporate ways to communicate with them (seems like an additional hassle for my first parser game), but if I do, it would be a nice way to convey more information about both the player character and about other characters in the game.
All in all I really liked the game. Up towards the next game!
Turandot is a great introduction to Choicescript games, glad you were able to have some and get some variety. Looking forward to your comments on more games!