Here’s my attempt at this exercise. I’m also trying out the “slow play” idea and refining it.
I chose 16 Ways to Kill A Vampire at McDonalds, a game I had previously played and enjoyed. I wanted to focus on “interactivity” and how that shapes the puzzles, hints and various affordances.
My raw notes
Slow Play of 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds
This is my first dedicated slow play of a game. I want it to be a decent game but not too meaty. I remember playing this when it came out in IF Comp 2016, and enjoying it. I don’t think I finished it completely.
This will be both a slow play of 16 ways and a test of the slow play method. I won’t go through in this detail for every exercise, but this one might be instructive.
In terms of aspects I want to focus on very few things to keep the scope low. The suggested aspects and whether I think they are useful for this piece:
- Promise :: I think the promise is pretty clear from the title and blurb.
- Interaction :: I remember it being “Twine with inventory”. I think focussing on how it mentions affordances would be useful.
- Progress :: I remember this being reasonably straightforward. There’s 16 ways, and you tick them off.
- State :: I remember the world being interactive in regions without being too systemic. Perhaps how it reveals state and how fine-grained it is would be a good aspect. I remember some of the kills required a few things to align simultaneously.
- Friction :: I can’t remember how it did hints or nudging players towards victory. This could be useful, especially in a “checklist” type game.
- Timing :: Pace might be interesting, since there’s replay required. I don’t want to focus on IF Comp applicability today.
- Presentation :: I remember it being nicely presented. I don’t think I want to focus on this, when I have games like Detritus coming up.
- Tone :: This might be fun to really dig into, since it is on the outside a flippant approach to “how do I murder someone a lot?”
- Comparison :: Again, something that I might have fun with, but probably not today.
My thoughts are to focus on the interaction in terms of hints and affordances. I might make some notes as I play for the others, just to get my thoughts down.
Slow play notes
I’m going to 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds - Details to play the competition version.
Playing notes
- I run through the intro text.
- Maggie ambushes with stake and machete, Luke shoots them and buries them, protag lures them
- Environmental clues: fried grease, orange lights, booths, counter, cashier, customer
- Ignored mani-pedi etc
- Walked past customer. Change of scene (help)
- Creepy whisperings of murdered people was neat (disorienting but intentional?)
- Call to action “I’m gonna slay the fuck out of this guy”. Especially when cashier is so nice.
- Explicit mention of ways to kill them: fire, stakes, garlic. Hints at others (chopping off heads? cross? daylight?)
- Gotta weaken them
- Straws in the booth
- Going to street costs a minute
- Made crosses out of straws and the pamhplet. Hugged him into dust.
- Tried the mani-pedi (red nails) and movie. Loops.
- Talk to cashier. Stumble across the “rescind invite”. I lie about inappropriateness. Caught out.
- “Three, three paper towels. Ah ah ah” Gold.
- Lower hairdo to get bobby pins to pick the lock.
- Ah fuck, I find the stake and forget that he’s strong. I’m dead.
- Got the vampire expelled but not killed.
- I think of getting Luke to blast him. Unexpected friction in the team.
- Tried to stop the toilet with paper towels. No luck.
- Found wreath and put it on the door. Let’s test the politeness rules vs chemical weapons. (Vampire explodes)
- Boddy vs bobby pins?
- Waiting for my fries order to get salt to bless the water. Cashier and vampire go around the back.
- French fry oil and zippo light (Vampire explodes)
- Turns out I forgot to order. Find the garlic fries.
- Find the squirt gun in the Happy Meal.
- Staked him while he was flirting. So gross for the cashier. “Rapes the idea of consent up the ass” is… quite a line.
- UV light and wait is an easy one. I even plugged the door with the wreath.
- Ate a lot of garlic fries and then hugged him.
- 8 kills without a hint. Might try to get some more then write up.
- Luring with blood etc is neat. The pickup artist stuff from the vampire just makes him more disgusting.
- Accidentally blocked the door with the wreath (I attempted to burn down the place) before luring him. The wreath ended up being a neat way to finish that.
- Also did the “call Luke and he saves me in the nick of time”
- Been playing for about an hour, so I’ll cut it there.
Interaction
- From the get-go, it has some interaction affordances. There’s a hint to “touch the yellow text” to progress. There is Skip Intro, Menu and Inventory down the bottom-right, even though we’ve barely started. This is probably for the replay.
- I wonder if it knows when the player has started an absolutely fresh game and whether they would show the bottom-right menu.
- 3rd screen there’s two yellow options (“I do” and “night off”)
- I do : Reveals protag name. Awkward linebreaks, but makes it easier to spot the difference.
- Night off : Three options. I wonder if I lawnmower them like the blurb suggests, or do them out of order.
- “Slayed/slew/have slain” is a neat little joke interaction.
- Interesting change from black to maroon background. The yellow is perfect McDonalds.
- Change of scene to the “help” one, which is timed, is an interesting choice. No idea if it’s screwed me. (later note: Nope)
- Explicit start keeps it simple: I’m in McDonalds. Here’s things and places. Here’s some verbs.
- Very subtle little clock up in the top right. Suggestion that he’ll eat her at midnight.
- Menu suggests 16 endings, and hints for 15 of them. Nice to have a creative name for each.
- Vampire opens up 10 interactions, some greyed out.
- Cashier has two interactions (and a never mind).
- In other games the homeless person would be a caricature and would immediately give up the pamphlet (or would exchange it for another get quest). There’s a little more push and pull here, which is better.
- Explains directly that the homeless person is who can bless water to make it holy.
- Managed to get two kills in one! Bug or developer kindness?
- Menu changes to include Acknowledgements and Unlockables on the first death.
- Offers “Get a mani-pedi” after you’ve had one, but blocks it if you try. Should it be greyed out? See a movie just does the same passage.
- Lying to the cashier is another push-pull.
- Death hint as a good post-action (post-mortem?) review.
- Skip Intro goes straight to the action.
- Sending vampire out when Luke is warned doesn’t blast him.
- UV light doesn’t weaken him.
- Play again then Skip Intro starts to get tedious after round 7(?)
- It remembers (slightly typographically awkwardly) the “take a million towels” option
- Garlic fries and get hugged doesn’t mention the issue of getting bitten. Maybe the garlic solves it.
- There’s a nice amount of systemic recognition. If I make myself a garlic trap, I can lure him or just get bitten, but the same result.
Writing
- Bold to have “Fucking” as the very first word.
- Playing with the latent sexuality re vampires with “staring at my breasts to keep himself from ogling my jugular”
- Occasional brutality (staking him) and sexuality pick a very particular tone. I think it’s Buffy-like but I haven’t seen much of that.
- Descriptions are kept terse, but action is described well. You see the former a lot more in playthroughs.
Summary
One thing I notice now with my Slow Play exercise is a lack of instructions of what to do when you’re finished. I think it is appropriate to write some sort of conclusion to help synthesise some of the thoughts from the game.
I’ve surely played a few “get all the endings” games in my time. The reason “16 ways to kill a vampire in McDonalds” is so well-regarded is that it takes that experience and polishes it.
Many of the puzzles have a bit of push-and-pull. Compare with Mike Spivey’s Sugarlawn where you’re more-or-less finding racing lines through the mansion, here you pick a direction and a direct approach doesn’t work. Corfman makes use of everything at her disposal: bobby pins are hidden in the inventory; the vampire is open and vulnerable for about 20 minutes before flirting with the cashier; there’s five locations and you can probably kill the vampire in each in different but not all the ways; and there are soft and hard fail states giving a different texture of exploration rather than all literal dead ends.
The game is quite explicit with what is usable, and how. It even tells you about things you haven’t experienced or have available. This drops the friction and how that interacts with difficulty, at the cost of having to move the surprises elsewhere.
I also liked that “16” wasn’t just a four-deep binary tree of options, but roughly “we came up with these different ideas and this was the most we could get without being too specialized”. There is a nice amount of reuse of elements or multiple paths to each victory.
If I’m to compare that with my own game “Hand-me-down”, I had a lot of things that were for individual paths and they didn’t really cross. You didn’t need all the paths to finish in my game. However I think “there are many paths, some rejoining, pick one” is much cleaner gameplay for players versus Hand-me-Down’s “there are many paths, pick one out of each category”. Hand-me-Down’s approach seemed to be received as “well I got enough to claim an ending”. Paying for an ending in puzzle shrapnel, rather than nailing a sequence of puzzle techniques like in “16 ways”.