Les vacances en France étaient come je suspectait: vraiment ennuyeux. Un ciel blue d’un sommet de montagne jusqu’a l’autre, une rivière murmurant derrière notre tente, des oiseaux qui nous reveillaient a une heure abominable,…
Comme je suis heureux d’être devant mon écran, prêt a jouer et juger quelques Fictions Interactives dans le context de ParserComp.
Avant de partir, j’avait déja commencer a jouer Things that Happened in Houghtonbridge. Je vais reprendre cette jeu ou je l’ai laissé il y a deux semaines et vous pouvez expectez mes impressions bientôt.
Welcome back Rovarsson! So glad to hear you’ve finished being bored by nature’s bountiful splendour, and are ready to reengage with the more important things in life. No irritating tweeting birds, no tiresome burbling brooks, no tedious trees. Just a glowing screen in a dark and silent room…
An engaging and strongly written piece. A midgame twist that was unwelcome to me at first. Then my prejudiced reaction was proven wrong (always a good thing). A fantastic sequence in farmer Chapp’s field. A breathless finale.
I’m sure making your own custom parser is a really cool excercise in programming. I bet it’s a lot of fun if you’re into that kind of thing.
In the vast majority of cases, actually playing a game in a custom parser is a lot less fun.
I played through this game once until I reached an ending. I loved the setting (more IF with archaeological digs!) and I thought the setup was really engaging (mysterious letter summoning you to an island). I also liked the parser/choice hybrid idea.
However, the illiterate parser and the typos made this game less fun than I think it could be.
I’ll try to make it through Uncle Mortimer’s Secret before judging ends. (An example of a good custom parser, once you get used to its minor idiosyncracies.)
This parser takes some getting used to but once I followed the directions to use the F1 key to GET ALL FROM IT , the game and I got along nicely.
The author has done a fantastic job of developing a custom parser, and adding many keyboard shortcuts to accommodate for player comfort. I don’t see this machine being used for story-centered IFs, but as a game engine, it does the job very well, perhaps especially because it is so obviously a game parser, focusing the player’s attention on the game.
The game itself:
Nothing bad, but also not much exciting things to say about this game. I had fun in a very cool old school time-travel key-finding way.
The most pleasing were the sudden story-beats triggered by a seemingly simple action from the player. An early example: A half-noticed cloak flying out the door, signifying the door is now open, and luring the player through.