Looking for (hopefully) final round of beta testers for dark IFComp parser game

Playing Beta Testing Requests and Discussion
1

Weeks have passed since your husband went missing. Left alone with your only child during a blizzard, explore the increasingly unsettling rooms of the house to save your husband and your own sanity …

And uncover truths best left forgotten.

I’m looking for some betatesters to give very harsh criticism on my IFComp parser game, which is a dark story of memory and identity. Playing requires a significant amount of focus due to its disorienting nature, but the game overall should only take 3 hours - though it is meant to be played in 3 distinct acts (plus an engame), so you can pause in the interludes.

CONTENT WARNING: Mild body horror, gaslighting, infrequent swearing, and deprecating comments toward the player. Fast flashing light sequences can be skipped if needed. References to death of loved ones are made.

You will either need an interpreter that is up-to-date with the Z-machine standards 1.1 (ie. an updated Frotz or Gargoyle), or it can be played online (no scrollback or screenreader capablities are available, but transcripts can be made).

Please PM if interested.

(I know this is basically a word-for-word copy of my previous search for betatesters last year, but I didn’t want to assume anyone was free after so long…)

4 Likes
2

Why does it need the 1.1 standard? I think you may be limited your audience by requiring that.

3

Sure, but if your interpreter doesn’t have it, the game won’t work. So an updated version of Windows Frotz, for example, would work. If it can save and retrieve files to the computer without prompting the user to do so, then that’s basically all that is needed.

4

I see, thanks for clarifying.

5

I believe iOS Frotz is the only major interpreter that doesn’t support the 1.1 standard at this point. Last year, the comp version of The Wise-Woman’s Dog—in fact, every project built with the prerelease version of Dialog 1a/01-dev—would crash on pre-1.1 interpreters (oops!). I didn’t find out about this bug until a month after the competition when someone tried to play it on iOS.

The bigger issue is that I believe Parchment doesn’t support the extended save and restore opcodes, despite generally following the 1.1 standard. So anything except Parchment and iOS Frotz should be okay: Windows Frotz, Unix (SDL) Frotz, Bocfel (Gargoyle), and so on.

(I haven’t ever tried to use the extended save and restore opcodes, though, so it’s very possible they’re less widely supported than 1.1 in general.)

1 Like
6

Also note that terminal frotz doesn’t work, and probably the clubfloyd player doesn’t either.