This morning I played a couple of shorter games served up by the randomizer. “The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer” is a point click game written in Twine by PB Parjeter. A pair of a Italian brothers have kidnapped a Japanese game developer in order to steal his next game release. The PC is the lesser of the two brothers, someone who has long suffered his older brother’s scheming and abuse. The game developer remains surprisingly calm through most of this ordeal. He is known in the gaming community as someone with a puckish sense of rebellion aimed against censors and corporate overlords.
The game has some nice graphics throughout, including photos of a man whom I presume is the real Kenji Eno. As far as I’m aware, there is no sound, but my browser can be buggy with sound files.
The game includes a ton of cultural references including Kenji Eno (who is based on a real developer with the same name and personality), Teen age mutant Ninja turtles, and Mario Brothers. It’s all in good fun, with plenty of comical dialogue and descriptions. At first I didn’t think I would want to spend much time at this, but the game grew on me and I completed everything (including a long and amusing, but mostly linear post-script) in a little over an hour. In addition to the three men, the other central character is Eno’s pet turtle, who keeps escaping, and must be repreatedly re-captured from more and more distant locations. The game is funny and fun to play, and it feels like the author has a genuine affection for Eno. There were some messages in there about censorship and software development, but they won’t be as memorable to me as the jiggling graphic image of the turtle when I knocked it off the ceiling fan, or the vivid written description of the PC navigating through the sewer pipes like he was a turtle himself.
Other game I played today was “My Creation” by dino. Curiously this felt more like a TWINE game, and “Kidnapping” felt more like a parser game, even thought the development systems were just reversed. Why did “My Creation” feel like a TWINE game? In part because it deals with gender identity (and trans identity) themes which have been explored extensively through TWINE. But also due to weaknesses in the parser implementation which made this game feel like it has a broken world model. Lots of mentioned objects not implemented, or not in scope where they are first mentioned. Exits not mentioned in the location descriptions, which makes navigation difficult. Even a few spelling errors to interfere with the immersion. The end sequence (which can be reached after a few minutes of play) contains more text than the rest of the game combined. But the end sequence is also the highlight of the game, setting it apart from a mere programming exercise and giving it a sincere and heartfelt message that just needed more editing and beta testing.