youfindyourselfinaroom.tumblr.co … fcomp-2015
I played through “Life on Mars?” and ended up creating an interactive review of it using Twine.
granades.com/games/life-on-mars- … eview.html
Good to see someone just got it. [emote]:)[/emote] Without the whole spelling out thing.
Thank you!
I have begun publishing my reviews, like last year, on my blog, starting with the overview post. Individual reviews will be linked there after they’re published, starting tonight.
ordinarily i wouldn’t question a review, but a comp-low 2 without even a single 3 makes me concerned you might have run into some sort of fatal bug i missed during a month of testing?
Thank you for the extremely favorable review. Makes me happy to see people actually playing it and having a good enough time (despite my programming limitations). [emote]:)[/emote]
I am gobsmacked to see Baker in Reiko’s top 3! Thank you!!
Sorry I was so negative in my review; however, that was my honest experience while playing the game. I didn’t run into any fatal bugs; I just could not tolerate the all caps text and the unsignaled instadeaths. I found out later from other reviews that there was a lot more story I didn’t see, and I think the instadeaths were supposed to be undoable using the node-map? But I didn’t realize that while playing, so I was restarting every time. Plus clearly there was a lot of thought put into the graphical node-map, which was interesting, but ultimately didn’t make much difference to my experience. I would probably play a post-comp version to see what I missed if there was an option to display the text normally (not all caps).
That’s a very individual reaction, mind you. You have no idea how hard you made me laugh when I realized what the scenario was. (For some reason, when I read the blurb with the bit about raiders coming, I somehow initially thought that the NPC players were the raiders, so the mental shift when I triggered inventory and saw the name/job/quest “items” and the Ultima/MMO scenario clicked in my head was huge.) And that was before I read the walkthrough to figure out how to break the scenario and actually win the game, too. But while I didn’t figure out very much on my own and the bread baking was rather finicky, I was engaged enough to see the game through to the end. In other words, it has its flaws, but the innovation and sheer amount of fun I had more than made up for them. This is a poster child for an IF game Doing Something Interesting. It’s not going to appeal to everyone, but it hit just the right notes for me.
This is a real danger that I don’t think many authors are aware of (though HanonO clearly was. There are a few hints here and there that “if you die, don’t restart! Don’t save/restore all the time! Trust me, wink wink”, which is quite enough and intriguing). If the game has quite a lot of story and wonderment but you can only get to it after a lengthy section that frustrates you and makes you wonder why you’re bothering with the game at all, then it’s not the player’s fault for not having seen the real meat of the game - the game never gave any indication that there was any reason to stick to it.
Howling Dogs is the prime subject for this pet peeve of mine. I wouldn’t even know that I missed out on that game if I didn’t start reading people talking about experiences I didn’t have.
It’s not a pleasant feeling, authors, and it’s likely to turn players very sour. Just so you know.