What compels a person, an IF artist, to commit to this wonderful, chaotic, outright bananas competition? To speed run development in a flurry of ideas with little time to ripen, just choose a lane and GO? Five solid days of I can only imagine furious flowstate that must coalesce and crescendo at PRECISELY the expiration of the clock? While we all had front row seats, it STILL feels like until it is experienced, it’s the kind of thing we can SEE but not really GET.
Even after spending more than twelve hours with these games (not evenly distributed, oh my no, not by a longshot), none of that insane pressure shows in the final products. They might as well have emerged from a leisurely six months or more of development and rework based on the experiences they delivered. IT SHOULD TAKE LONGER TO DELIVER STUFF THIS MARVELOUS, is what I’m saying. I mean seriously, I have reviewed no-time-pressure Comp entries with more bugs than I experienced this weekend.
So my job: JUDGE them! To say these games are apples and oranges is to trivialize their disparate charms. They are Diffusion Welding versus Tritone Substitution. Even the rubric provided by the Chairman only gets us so far - each must be held to the goals of the pieces, often accomplishing completely different things despite the categorical commonality. The impossible task I undertook was to RANK these diverse employments against each other and declare one superior. No! No time to question the appropriateness of this task, let alone my qualifications to do so. I’M DOING IT, SO BUCKLE UP.
Writing - Challenger
In our Challenger’s case, writing is employed in service of a story. Long time readers will know I reserve special ire for the player-protagonist disconnect. I am routinely chuffed when asked to make decisions on behalf of the protagonist who knows so much more of the world (and the protag character!) than I do. The game is asking me to inhabit a persona, yet important details are known by this persona AND NOT ME. I typically find this annoying to the point of distraction in IF in a way other media does not inflict - this choice strikes at the heart of the promise of IF, many times in a fatal blow. Imagine then the shock I felt when plot revelation after revelation twisted the game’s progress, seemingly SQUARE in that protag-pc gap, yet I found myself enthralled. I could not explain it, and took tremendous energy interrogating this.
Yeah, it was the writing. See, the Challenger made two crucial choices to sell this usually-poison conceit to me. The first was by dropping us in media res into a chase scene. The protag had REAMS more knowledge of the world and its stakes than I did, but we both knew GETTING CAUGHT IS BAD. The immediacy of this introduction left no time, no place for that knowledge gap to manifest, just the desperate moves of BOTH of us, trying to shake pursuit with tools neither understood. Even after the initial chase sequence, the PACE of the thing (also writing!) did not let up, giving no space for the gap to reassert. Simply, the knowledge I lacked was rarely relevant…until…
The second authorial choice was actually more subtle, and the more noteworthy for it. Most of the major character reveals were coupled to plot twists that flummoxed the protag. So while I was reeling with “Wait, how do they know each other?” The protag was dealing with “Wait, this is worse than I knew.” We were not necessarily reeling from the SAME information, but our minds were both spinning sympathetically. For alchemical reasons, this made those reveals-to-player SO much more palatable… no, more than palatable, terrifically effective! It shunted aside my usual complaints and actually made the twists land. All due to the structure of the text that orchestrated those plot beats. I cannot recall this (fairly common in other media) brand of twist landing close to this well in IF before this comp.
Writing - Iron ChIF
We can be forgiven aliasing writing to storytelling, the two are inextricably entwined. But even casual reflection will expose that facile equivalence. Technical manuals convey information through writing and the best of them are characterized by precision, clarity and conciseness where every sentence increases knowledge and skill. The Iron ChIF delivered a puzzle-based work, a genre with COMPLETELY different aims. This is a genre where plot twists are often at the mercy of the player’s puzzling skill; where narrative is assembled through background lore. The writing delivers those of course, but by the genre’s nature they are usually secondary. The PRIMARY role of the writing is to soft-cue the player to the rules of the puzzles - provide logical footholds, clues of things to try and steering when things stray too far. All without SEEMING to do so.
This is every bit as hard as making a reader tear up during an emotional scene, and for great swaths of this game it worked seamlessly. The Iron ChIF seemed to have an intuitive understanding how to do this. I have previously called the level of detail in a game the “Implementation Horizon” - how deeply details are rendered, in turn acting as coaching for how deep the player is intended to probe. The ChIF’s dish was precise here. Location descriptions were spare but varied. Tantalizing details that begged exploration, but extraneous scenery shaved away like so many weeds to keep the path reasonably clear.
I think it was the writing’s CONSISTENCY that sold this more than anything. Each location with 2-4 noteworthy elements, most uniform in flavor and impact, rarely more or less than one demanding deeper engagement. This stylistic consistency was exactly perfect for the goals of this one, and provided a solid, level playing field to solve puzzles on. This is writing too, baby!
WRITING VERDICT:
I found the Iron ChIF’s writing powerfully firm in its achievements for his dish, but give the nod to the Challenger for providing a series of revelations that bypassed the pc-protag disconnect. Something I would have claimed “not possible” prior to this event.
Playability - Iron ChIF
So this is a loaded category. Just calling it by that name implies there is a generally accepted metric for this that games must measure up to, nevermind the relative competence (or in-) of any given reviewer and their facility/sympathy for specific sub-genres. There are chess people and non-chess people. I am the latter. A chess puzzle will be less “playable” by me than others because I am less enthralled by the rules of the game. Wordle, on the other hand…
Even with that acknowledgement though, I had issues with this game. Here is where I have to tell you I spent a total of 11.5hrs playing it (including some time collab’ing with my fellow Horsemen) and only achieved 5 of (presumably) 6 papyri. These puzzles were varied, intriguing and some quite HARD. None of that is a problem, I was immersed pretty much the entire time.
BUT. Some were waay fiddlier than they warranted. In particular the scroll effects (which had a range of impact) and the map moving mechanic chafed a bit. For the scroll, I spent a LOT of time “move 3 rooms away, drop objects I want to preserve, move 3 rooms back, unleash scroll effect, re-secure scroll, fetch objects, now ready to try new thing.” To the Iron ChIFs defense I did not detect an inordinate amount of puzzles NEEDING this movement to solve (though yes some for sure). Thing is EXPERIMENTING to deduce the rules and what worked required SO MUCH MORE of it.
The map movement was worse, though in a way that feels in reach, maybe for an updated version? To move the map you must >PRESS X for every move. There is a reason navigation is often shortcut to a single character. You have to do it A LOT. Full on typing becomes wasted energy. Just allowing a shortcut of >PX would have made map fumbling so much zippier and smoother. Too, consulting the map after moves required a whole SEPARATE >X MAP. Now, the IC DID provide an auto-update option (lay the map on the altar). That was a great idea! However it then required you to TAKE and PUT it whenever you sojourned into a new configuration. More importantly, it required you to REMEMBER TO DO SO. I did a non-trivial amount of >X MAP, oh crap, go back and get it. I think a shortcut >MAPON/MAPOFF would have been more seamless.
Playability - Challenger
I have less to say here, because I found this to be as smooth and frictionless an experience as I can remember. I don’t know how far to take this though, as our INSANELY open challenger revealed perhaps the stickiest playability glitch in his game, as noted by his sous chefs. They experienced some confusion with his 3D navigation. He attempted to ameliorate this with a map (with transparent background BTW?) and some text editing.
Thing is, I was never confused! Ok, not NEVER. I did not tumble onto “IN” smoothly, but I got there. How much of that was careful wordsmithing on the author’s part, and how much due to meta knowledge revealed during the dish’s preparation? I don’t have NEARLY the self-awareness to untangle that knot. My EXPERIENCE though was unambiguously smooth and zippy, very much of a piece with the brisk pace of the narrative.
There was another element worth mentioning - early on, we (the protag and I) were experimenting with unknown scroll effects. This could be a potential pitfall of confusion, but again I did not find it such. The most obvious counter were the kind of hilarious woodpeckers that announced those effects to the world, but I felt the environment and character cues were equally effective there.
PLAYABILITY VERDICT:
Challenger, for smoother overall experience
Design - Challenger
Both Challenger and Iron ChIF incorporated the challenge ingredient into their designs. This is probably inevitable when your ingredient is supposed to ALTER THE WORLD. I am going to try and divorce the GAME DESIGN of these elements from the FUNCTION THEY SERVED IN THE GAME. If you have no idea how those two are different… I get it. I’m struggling myself. Okay, game design. For the Challenger, this meant scrolls with local effects when opened. The permanent effects provided PLOT/NARRATIVE impact, but not so germain to the game design. See, even that is slippery because the permanent effects are kind of the main motivation and goal, but let’s set that aside. BECAUSE I SAID SO, THAT’S WHY.
The Challenger’s design was ambitious, and I don’t think QUITE fully realized. Each of the initial scrolls (secured on previous, pre-game heists) had specific effects. The first puzzle/scene of the game is to elude pursuit using these scrolls against a pretty tight movement area. To the ChIF’s credit (and bespeaking an elegance of design) he created MULTIPLE ways to elude pursuit. But. The way I succeeded didn’t actually require use of one of the scrolls. And I don’t think the game required me to EVER use it! Multiple solution puzzles are among my favorite features of games where they appear, they speak to an author deeply committed to player experience and multi-dimensional worlds. They do land better for me though, when they employ objects that ALSO have more than one application. (This could certainly be true here, actually. I haven’t looked at the code to see if it was my incuriosity that stranded these scrolls.) It’s unfair, I see that. “Author, I want multiple solution puzzles.” “Author I want every object to have some specific use.” Nevertheless, I keenly felt like I was toting around a scroll, with game effects I never NEEDED… it felt like a design glitch?
There was one other element that felt like a design artifact - the ending. There was a final choice the narrative built to, with 7 possibilities. Except only one felt like a REAL option. I checked the others, because you know, judging, but really the obvious best choice WAS the obvious best choice. I kind of think if you’re going to make it a choice, make it a real choice? To be fair, one or two of them had real emotional stakes and drama but still… really just the one choice.
Design - Iron ChIF
Okay, above I complained about the scope of the thing turning fiddly. Let me now GUSH about the scope of the thing a bit. So many varied puzzles. So many interlocking mechanics. So many disparate ways to eke out clues, room by room. So many GREAT ROOMS. (50? 52? 56?). So many objects that flit back and forth between physical instances. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would have died on the hill of “In 5 days? Impossible.”
We’re talking about alphabet-labeled rooms, feeding spelling puzzles, feeding object manipulation puzzles, feeding map manipulation puzzles (which I think I called “Map Rubic’s Cube”), feeding MORE word puzzles. The amount of interconnectedness in this sprawling setup is staggering and PERFECT. At one point, the game (author) says “I hope you’re taking notes.” I mean, I was cause I’m me, but HOO BOY is that advice well served. I don’t think I have the words to explain to anyone that hasn’t played it just what a master class in design this is. Mechanics interacting with clues, interacting with goals and description/map feedback, all of it exhibiting a DEEP understanding of how this infinitely complex beast is going to be experienced by a wide-eyed player. Good thing I’m talking to people that have played it and can just nod knowingly!
DESIGN VERDICT:
Our charge, as judges, was to assign a 1-10 score to each of these dimensions. In wrangling the scope of this interconnected spider web so effortlessly, I awarded the Iron ChIF a perfect 10 in design.
Inventiveness - Iron ChIF
This is another loaded category. I am supposed to QUANTIFY each author’s overall creativity, as exhibited in their respective dishes?? As sometimes happens in my brain, I alias experiences to other experiences in a way that seems reductive. With the Iron ChIF’s dish, my brain did this to me: “Blue Prince meets Silent Hill”. If you’ve experienced either of those, you are likely to see the parallels, though I’ll admit the Silent Hill resonance is pretty specific to the alternate, corrupted world lurking behind the one we see. Very much NOT the survival horror. Here’s the thing. I LOVE BOTH OF THOSE SO MUCH. The chutzpah to mash them up is breathtaking.
To be clear, I am not trying to assert that the Iron ChIF used existing properties as a crutch. Just the opposite, I am saying the Iron ChIF tapped into the same vein of collective subconscious that made those games so awesome to craft his OWN version of awesome. From a prompt about scrolls! To THEN marry that to a deeply interesting map manipulation mechanism, I mean, save some ideas for next game Iron ChIF! There is SO much going on here, conceit wise, mechanic wise, and all of it fits together like a clockwork of imagination. I keep coming back to “How the heck did he get here from SCROLLS???”
Inventiveness - Challenger
Okay, I gushed about the inventive vision of the Iron ChIF above. The Challenger showcased a completely DIFFERENT kind of inventiveness. In just 5 days, he invented a civilization. Of bird people. NO, NOT MOLE PEOPLE, BIRD PEOPLE. I found his vision insanely well realized, but as inspiring as the accomplishment was, it was the way it was conveyed that really blew me away. This was a fast paced narrative, starting with a pursuit and not really letting up after that with emotional plot twists and beats.
Threaded through all of it was an civilization and lore that never got in the way but was SO concisely conveyed. As much was done with implication and suggestion as actual lore. Now, I’m not going to suggest that going back and picking it apart is anything but a dick move that I for one will NEVER do. In the course of a fast paced narrative all it had to do was hold together enough to get us to the end, when we’d likely be more worried about emotion. What it didn’t have to do, but it DID, was intrigue and entice. Every step of the way I was wringing my hands, geez, I really want to know more about THAT but… I get it Constance, there’s some urgency to our quest but… fine but you can’t stop me from rubbernecking as it flows by.
“Always leave them wanting more” is fine advice, and our Challenger REALLY left me wanting more.
INVENTIVENESS VERDICT:
Both competitors really delivered in this category. I give a slight nod to the Iron ChIF on the strength of the scope of it all.
Challenge Ingredient - Challenger
How well is the ingredient featured in the work? Just halogen spotlight focus for the Challenger. The scrolls are employed to game effect, lore effect, and dramatic effect and each employment sang off the others. If I pretend for a moment that the early game effect scrolls in the player’s possession were not there, just the dramatic payoff of “Wait, I’m healing…?” in lore and climactic drama were so well timed and paced. Pile that on top of MAGIC ABILITIES YO, and the ingredient just felt so well stitched into every dimension of the Challenger’s dish. Every aspect of the dish swirled around the challenge ingredient, informing and enhancing the ultimately very emotional stakes of the story.
Challenge Ingredient - Iron ChIF
The Iron ChIF took it about as literally as possible - turning this open ended prompt to compelling game mechanics, integral to a deep puzzle fest where the scroll impacted everything around the player. The scroll was a constant companion (and thorn in the side!), whose effects were manifest every step of the game. Mechanically, it was about as deep and faceted as one could hope for. It is true though that for great swaths of the experience it was tangential to the immediate intellectual problem at hand. Something to be managed in service of exploring and decoding OTHER problems.
Said another way, the scope of the Iron ChIFs dish was larger than the secret ingredient itself. As central as it was to the proceedings, the universe around it expanded so much it became part of a whole, not the main focus. Did the ingredient HAVE to be that? No! If your ingredient is chipolte peppers, and you use that to make brownies THAT IS DELICIOUS. But if the lingering flavor is chocolate not chipolte… isn’t that noteworthy? I don’t know, we’re all making this up as we go. It feels noteworthy TO ME.
CHALLENGE INGREDIENT VERDICT:
For me, the multi-dimensional integration of the key ingredient tilts this to the Challenger.