Le concours est commencé! And the Seeds have sprouted!

Competitions
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21
  • La Roche Tombée du Ciel [Concours FI]

→ An intruiging intro. Well written, detailed and evocative. Good use of background noises. Lovingly described flower-garden with accompanying herbological manual. The little nuggets of information about the various species of plants were interesting and engaging.
→ Tedious clicking. I sometimes like it when choice games that deal with object manipulation and moving between rooms get up close to the action, but this game is finegrained to an annoying level.
→ Related to the above: from a parser-player’s perspective, a bunch of intuitive actions that were not available. Most notably:
—Throwing a bucket of cold water on the rock right after heating it up with coals. I thought the temperature shock would fracture it, but the option wasn’t there.
—Using the shovel to dig up the rock. It wouldn’t move when I tried to pick it up, so I thought digging under it would loosen it. But the option wasn’t there.

The intruiging setup made me curious, the pleasant writing made me hungry for more, but in the longer run the repetitive and underimplemented execution diminished my joy of playing.

4 Likes
22
  • Found Journal [SeedComp]

-A short excerpt of a diary. Sadness and hopefulness. Moody background music. Nice supporting drawings.

-Some scrapping of adjectives would enhance the emotional impact.

-Unfortunately, “playing” amounts to:

>OPEN JOURNAL
>TURN PAGE
>G
>G
>G
>… etc…

…but in click-format.

→ Interesting setup for a fiction, zilch interactivity (I even pixel-hunted the pictures for a bit…)

5 Likes
23

Thank you so much Rovarsson for your comment!

Take your time to get rid of the thief. In the worst case scenario, there are plenty of ways to make some money.

4 Likes
24

I feel honoured to be the adressee of your very first post on the Forum. The more people from the Francophone community dropping in, the better. You have a great group of FI-creators with a particular outlook on interactive fiction.

(I check the French FI website from time to time, but I haven’t registered yet. Maybe I should…)

Anyhow, welcome Stéphane!

4 Likes
25
  • La Fabrique des Princes [Concours FI]

The product of the Prince-factory, your education is almost complete. In these final hours before being sent off to the Kingdom that awaits you, you must prepare yourself for a Joust of Rhetoric against one of your fellow/adversary Princes.

To this end, you must explore the Factory, proving your knowledge of the Book of Princes to gain coins of merit. These can be exchanged for coins of gold to buy equipment.
On the surface, this seems like basic RPG-gameplay. Level up you armour and weaponry, or rather, in the context of this setting, your luxury attire and your rhetorical techniques, until you feel strong enough to face your opponent and hopefully prevail and attain your Kingdom.

However…

The setting of La Fabrique des Princes, this vast complex of corridors and halls, where the walls have faces and voices speak enigmatic words, is too intruiging to just traverse in a simple goal-oriented fashion. A menacing feeling of deception soon grabs the player’s attention, inviting to search deeper…

Although the map is small, a mere 15 rooms, it gives the impression of a much larger edifice, isolated from normal time and space. I would have loved to search this place in parser-style, but I must admit that being denied the option of closely examining the many puzzling features of the rooms and hallways adds to the feeling of uncertainty and puzzlement.
There is a region of the map which is normally off-limits to the Princes, but is opened up for you on this special occasion. It would have added to the atmosphere of secrecy and hidden meanings if it were indeed off-limits, and some kind of subterfuge was necessary to access it, instead of just being given a key.

The use of timed text put me off a bit. I didn’t feel it added anything of worth to the piece. Fortunately the timed passages are short, so annoyance is kept to a minimum.

Discovering more of the Factory’s history and purpose, and meeting the “marginal” characters at the edge of the map was well worth the time spent pursuing “side”-quests. A story about how stopping and thinking is more valuable than blindly chasing a predetermined and ill-understood objective.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.

4 Likes
26

I sent in my voting forms for both the Concours FI and SeedComp. Lots of nice and/or okay games, I don’t regret spending time with any of them. And a few that stood out as excellent. I’m glad I participated as player/judge.

But do you smell that? That freshness on the breeze, that bloomy fragrance in the air…

Spring is here, and with it the Thing draws near!

8 Likes
27

Any word on the results for the Concours FI? I don’t see anything on the French site yet, voting should have closed 4 days ago.

Or SeedComp?

2 Likes
28

Results will be announced on Twitch tonight at 21:30 UTC+2.

2 Likes
29

Thanks!

I’ve been looking through the internet for information on UTC+2. Things like borders and boundaries interest me, in space but also in time. How humans put artificial divisions on the continuous world around us. (Anyone who thought “Planck!” gets a demerit and a frown for pedantry.)

I had been reading about countries without summer/winter time, coordinated universal time and Greenwich mean time and Zulu time, etc… for quite a while before I got the simple pragmatic fact that UTC+2 is Brussels. And Paris.

1 Like
30

SeedComp! will be announced tomorrow :stuck_out_tongue:

5 Likes
31

Thank you!

1 Like
32

And Amsterdam!

2 Likes
33

It will be on Twitch btw. In less than 15min from now.

2 Likes
34

Thanks for the heads-up!

2 Likes
35

Detailed results (multiple sub-prizes & runner-ups) on the French web site:

2 Likes
36

Both comps have completely ignored my premium candidates! I will have to call my lawyers…

For SeedComp, @alyshkalia 's A Collegial Conversation was the best.
In the Concours FI, @manonamora 's Les Lettres du Docteur Jeangilles was the best.

There. I haves spoken.

You may continue doing what you were doing.

Just remember what I said.

5 Likes
37

I actually was shocked Les Lettres du Docteur Jeangilles placed in the lower half! I thought it would be in the top 3 or 4. I thought maybe my experience was clouded by being a non-native speaker, but you’re fluent in French, aren’t you?

3 Likes
38

Yall’s reviews were The Real Win in my heart :green_heart:

To be fair, the OG text of day one was riddled with typos and grammatical errors. Rovarsson caught quite a few during his reading too. And with the emulated old-timey style… that probably didn’t help me :joy:
I shouldn’t have attempted to write 15k words in less than two weeks…

1 Like
39

I appreciate your vote!! :smile:

3 Likes
40

Get out of my head!!

2 Likes