Iron ChIF: Pilot Episode (Audience Commentary)

[Dissolved]

@DeusIrae

Structurally, ATSS is about as stripped-down as it gets: it’s a one-room game with the most limited parser imaginable (all you can do is type a noun), and while it offers a meaty enough play-time, there’s really only one medium-dry-goods puzzle

And the defamiliarisation is good at making you not notice it’s a medium-dry-goods puzzle until it’s pointed out—I didn’t perceive it as having any until reading this review, tbh.

@DeusIrae

Or this response to checking out a deactivated automaton:

Reading that provoked images of a fantasy Stakhanovite man statue in me, tbh.

@DeusIrae

unfamiliar with the workings of the ancients

And perhaps the moderns as well, considering the metal something…

@DeusIrae

The fairy can’t pick things up or do anything except draw the stranger/spider’s attention to particular things; the spider will then point a gadget at the object, and depending on what it says and what they’re carrying in their hands, potentially take an action.

There’s some sort of triangle of identities point inchoate here, or possibly a joke about the old notion of the parser as “your eyes and ears”.

@DeusIrae

but also meant I was piling up a comprehension-deficit that left me blinking as I entered the endgame

That sort of gels with my experience—it’s possible to get access to the whole map and get stuck because your translations are off and there’s no intuitive grip on how to rearrange it.

@DeusIrae

(now that I’m writing this, I suspect this might have something to do with the pouch, so I’m not sure there are actual bugs here, but it was confusing!)

I encountered that and dealt with it by dropping the pouch in a room where I had checked out all the shiny things. That room was highlighted in the VOCAB response. A sort of unintentional “Aha!” moment.

@DeusIrae

Endymion’s writing makes for a strong opening, but winds up fading into a background level of functionality once the player starts engaging with the meat of the game

The brief resurgence after you teleport to the debris ameliorates it slightly.

@AmandaB

ATSS: Strawberry, very sweet but with some jalapeño thrown in to cut that sweetness. Three-tiered and decorated with fairy husks, which are very beautiful but ethically troubling.

This cake clearly wins the “Most Likely to Be Used As A Romantic Gift By A Spider” ribbon. :')

@AmandaB

Endymion: Dark chocolate. The kind of chocolate cake that’s nearly black. There’s coffee flavor there, too, but only enough to deepen the chocolate flavor. Decorated with red, blue and green sugared spheres in very complex patterns.

This cake clearly wins the “Most Likely To Be Destroyed In A Tragic Teleportation Accident” ribbon. :​P

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I think it's interesting to look at failed predictions—such as the notion that Endymion would involve aliens in cryogenic suspension.

@DeusIrae

Endymion is a symbol of sleep… perhaps there are aliens cryogenically suspended, and finding them will be our lonely castaway’s deliverance?

@AmandaB

And agree with Mike that the title Endymion evokes sleeping aliens, and that waking them may be our task in Draconis’s game, using whatever device controls the sleep.