“A winter morning on the beach”, a parser game by E. Cuchel started out with an inviting splash screen photo of the beach, an introduction to the character (whose physician told him he needs to get more steps in) preparing for a walk, then a play button. Almost everything went downhill from there.
I assumed this would be a hiking simulator in the style of last year’s “Birding in Pope Lick Park” (Eric Lathrop) or the 2004 story “The Fire Tower” (Jacqueline A. Lott) or even the cozy “Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing” (Ryan Veeder). Interactive Fiction has great potential to convey a sense of place, in some instances entertaining without telling any story at all.
Hitting PLAY in “A winter morning” opens an unsightly black and green screen with a parser and some highlighted text. I do like parser/text hybrids, but after putting so much creative design into the splash screen, the choice of colors on the parser screen was unfortunate. Under other circumstances, maybe that wouldn’t matter, but I assumed this game was to simulate a relaxing walk on the beach, not the boot screen colors of a 1981 personal computer.
In terms of world modeling the game is a mixed bag. The “x me” gives a very detailed description of the player character and the clothing. The game impletments “touch”, “smell” and “taste” verb for nearly every examinable object. But there just isn’t that much to examine. Every numbered stretch of the long beach looks more or less like every other section. Infrequently there is a sign to read. But there isn’t much time to read them. If you stop for too long, a seagull drops its load on your head and the game ends.
I never imagined that a game about a walk on the beach could be so cruel on the Zarfian scale. If you stop too long, the game ends. If you don’t stop often enough, the game ends. Sometime resting for a mere two turns is long enough to summon the infernal sea gulls. There is no undo command. The doctor tells me that I need to build up to 10,000 steps (which I presume is the win state) but that is almost impossible to achieve in this game.
I don’t know if this was meant as an ironic commentary on the unpleasantness of following the doctor’s orders, but back in the real world I actually enjoy a walk on the beach, so this didn’t work for me.