Infocom games and their followers, or what makes a good game

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

You could credit me as “Brian Rushton”. But really, with the stuff in spoilers, it may have just been my personal reaction, so you should go with your gut or get some more feedback.

Overall, I was really impressed with the game. I have yet to unlock any achievements, so I’m going to go back and look for those

[mathbrush (Brian Rushton)]

@Peter hey, I finally finished Christminster. I always got stuck because the hints were so vague. The endgame is really good, as is the dinner sequence (which reminded me of Dinner with Andre or Gourmet). I finally see why people like it. It seems like a good game to play as a group, due to its difficulty.

[Peter_Piers]

Yeah, I got really angry at some of the puzzles - like figuring out what the “gum” was, and the fiddling with the jumper cables was excessive - but on the whole it was very satisfying. I agree on the endgame. It’s like the author really took to heart Graham Nelson’s suggestions on the formal structure of a game; a small and linear start to the game, a large midgame wihch is the meat of the experience, and then bottleneck to a fast and compelling endgame that’s just challenging enough.

[HanonO (Hanon Ondricek)]

The traditional special recognition is an excellent idea. I’m actually tempted to make it 14, because Enchanter, Sorcerer, and Spellbreaker each have 14 spells which can be copied into a spell book (including izyuk and golmac, excluding kulcad, girgol, etc), and it’s technically possible though very difficult to have 14 spells in your possession at the end of Act I. But the response to the alarm is triggered by getting that twelfth spell into the book, and I don’t know if players will think to copy it down or just keep searching because they don’t have 14 yet. I’ll experiment with that.

Perhaps you could specify the spell book has room for 12/14 spells in total, and that the PC is hesitant to leave without filling the book since they won’t get this kind of chance again.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

@HanonO

The traditional special recognition is an excellent idea. I’m actually tempted to make it 14, because Enchanter, Sorcerer, and Spellbreaker each have 14 spells which can be copied into a spell book (including izyuk and golmac, excluding kulcad, girgol, etc), and it’s technically possible though very difficult to have 14 spells in your possession at the end of Act I. But the response to the alarm is triggered by getting that twelfth spell into the book, and I don’t know if players will think to copy it down or just keep searching because they don’t have 14 yet. I’ll experiment with that.

Perhaps you could specify the spell book has room for 12/14 spells in total, and that the PC is hesitant to leave without filling the book since they won’t get this kind of chance again.

A good idea! The difficulty is that they get more spells after that, in Act II, and I don’t want to require too much inventory management.

[vlaviano]

@Draconis

@HanonO

Perhaps you could specify the spell book has room for 12/14 spells in total, and that the PC is hesitant to leave without filling the book since they won’t get this kind of chance again.

A good idea! The difficulty is that they get more spells after that, in Act II, and I don’t want to require too much inventory management.

[spoiler]You could impose the limit as HanonO suggests and then either have the PC find “INFLABO: increase the capacity of a spell book” or give them a second personal spell book early in Act II.

To ease inventory management, consider creating a meta command (>AVAILABLE) that produces a combined list of available spells across all books currently in inventory, perhaps also including ungnustoable spells such as kulcad. This might be worth doing even if you don’t make any changes, since it could make Act I nicer for players as well. When working a puzzle, I often found myself doing “>X SPELL BOOK. X EVOCATIO. X TOME” and having to filter out the prose descriptions of the latter two books.[/spoiler]

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

@vlaviano

@Draconis

@HanonO

Perhaps you could specify the spell book has room for 12/14 spells in total, and that the PC is hesitant to leave without filling the book since they won’t get this kind of chance again.

A good idea! The difficulty is that they get more spells after that, in Act II, and I don’t want to require too much inventory management.

[spoiler]You could impose the limit as HanonO suggests and then either have the PC find “INFLABO: increase the capacity of a spell book” or give them a second personal spell book early in Act II.

To ease inventory management, consider creating a meta command (>AVAILABLE) that produces a combined list of available spells across all books currently in inventory, perhaps also including ungnustoable spells such as kulcad. This might be worth doing even if you don’t make any changes, since it could make Act I nicer for players as well. When working a puzzle, I often found myself doing “>X SPELL BOOK. X EVOCATIO. X TOME” and having to filter out the prose descriptions of the latter two books.[/spoiler]

Another excellent idea. I’m definitely going to put that meta command in; preparing a spell searches through books automatically, so there’s no reason to reduce convenience.