Aha, I’ve done that too, being pretty sure I reviewed an entry when, in fact, I just had a rough draft.
And not just for reviews but for implementing features in my own entry: “I still have features B, C and D to implement. I implemented A, right?”
As for Thanatophobia–yes, I had problems getting things set up for testing, too. But with Windows, IPv6 isn’t bad to configure. I don’t know about Linux/Mac (maybe it can be done on Android? This is out of my comfort zone) so this may be worth a separate how-to topic. Every year it seems there are 3 or so such games.
I tested Thanataphobia too, and fwiw on Windows all I had to do to deal with the IPv6 thing was install Opera and click one button to turn on the VPN feature. So it’s pretty easy, and I agree that I think folks would enjoy checking it out - I feel like I’ve heard discussion of chatbot based IF and this struck me as a robust implementation.
I’ve got Jokey Journey coming up like six or seven games from now, so should have a review for it in a few days. I tested Prom Dress and it is massive puzzle fest, though fair and quite well done - I worry it might take a while to find reviewers though.
I got back from my trip late last night and am digging into Prom Dress. I’m up to 12 points out of 250 after an hour or two, with no hints. Will probably play with hints at some point to finish it, but its the kind of game I’ll definitely revisit once I forgot all the walkthru. The game it’s a sequel to was one of my first favorite games, along with Curses!
Protip for other folks who might not play a bunch of TADS games – use the QTADS interpreter, it makes for a really slick experience! In previous years I’ve typically just defaulted to Gargoyle, and I now that I’ve used QTADS I’m regretting those decisions.
It’s so delightful to see that the minimum number of reviews for a game is now 1. Every game has a review.
(That said, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every game has good feedback. It’s totally possible that some games have a single review that doesn’t really like the game. I might go through some of those one-review games and review them again.)
And now we’re down to only two games with no public reviews! Mostly thanks to @mathbrush casually stepping in and knocking out three multi-hour games in a row. What’s your secret to being this awesome?
Agreed–though conversely, some games with relatively few reviews may have very good feedback. I’ve received PMs from a couple people saying “hey, you should implement this” or “you should expand this feature” or “hey, this command is a good try!” which are valuable for pushing a way forward to a quick post-comp release.
And for parser authors there are always transcripts!
Glad to see so many reviews and reviewers, makes the comp quite festive! I would just like to take a moment to encourage everyone to consider posting their reviews to IFDB as well, as it’s a great long-term, central directory of IF. That way people stumbling onto the game ten years from now can gain from your perspective.
I know IFDB has a mechanism to add external reviews/links which can also be useful. Perhaps there is already a way to add these reviews via a script, as this year’s entries got added to IFDB. That could be a big technical win. Though I also enjoyed taking the time to touch up my own reviews from behind the author-wall and repost them. The embargo feature is also nice if you’re worried about a review dump. You can drop in one a day. (And I think it worked well last year for me, when Mike Russo and I went through the ones placing 71-69-67 and 70-68-66 respectively.)
I know I really appreciate seeing reviews turn up outside of the comp, as it reminds me of stuff I never quite got around to, and I hope I can do that for other people. After all, we need something to do when waiting for the next IFComp entries!
Maybe, you’ll have to fight me for it. Mine was the last to get a review, public or private.
And even though others now still only have one and mine has two, I reserve the right to bear the loudest, most long-winded, most pointless grudge against The Cabal.
Also, yay for us hitting 3/2 total/public reviews per game! It seems like we’re on a clearly stronger pace than last year. It’s good to see so many previous comp writers, or Spring Thing writers, back and contributing.
I can say that the combination of ‘two-player’ and ‘longer than two hours’ is very intimidating. I do plan on doing single player mode, and it’s the next game I plan on doing. I actually downloaded it and poked at the code to judge its length, although it didn’t load right in twinery (so I opened it in Notepad++). Seems cool, and I look forward to playing!
ferkung on twitch has been streaming playthroughs of a few shorter IFComp games (now on the spreadsheet). They also have a youtube channel with recorded streams of IF and IF-adjacent playthroughs.
Has anyone encountered any other ifcomp-related streams, or just random reviews scattered on the internet?
