I wrote a short review of Quest authoring system a month ago and posted it in the (private) competition author’s forum where it was not widely seen. I’ll repost it here.
I like the idea of games that allow either text entry or point and click entry. I like having a graphical map on screen. Quest is the only authoring system (I know) which offers those features as a default. I believe that inform has some extensions for graphical mapping and clickable links, but they are not commonly used. I have never seen a Twine game with even a two word parser, though I imagine if you knew enough javascript you could make it work. Quest is a system that seems to provide the best of both worlds, right out of the box.
I’ve had a little experience with programming in Quest (though never published anything with it) and I like it from that perspective also. It is much easier to program in than Inform, and allows the programmer to toggle easily between code view and GUI view. If you forget the name of a function, you can always find it from a drop down menu.
All that said, the system definitely has some weaknesses. As a parser system, it is no where near as robust as a well written Inform game (yet better than a poorly written Inform game). As a point and click system, authors often make the deliberate choice to render certain puzzle solutions inaccessable to the point and click interface. A puzzle solution might be text-only, defeating the player who become too dependent on the links!
As an authoring system, I found it started to become unwieldy as my project grew larger and I had trouble keeping all the different object trees well organized. In addition, there were things I wanted to do programatically that just weren’t possible. (things as simple moving the player object to a new location that is non-contiguous with the rest of the visible map). Lastly, it bothers me that the system for playing Quest games online is just so buggy. (especially for those who choose to play anonymously.)
I hope to see more authors take up the Quest system and maybe address some of these shortcomings. I think it has some real potential.