[size=150]Eruption - A tectonic excitement By Richard Bos[/size]
Game’s Blurb:
You have just woken up, in a cave, with a hangover, and something is rumbling. And it isn’t your stomach.
(Score and review contained within expandable spoiler):
[spoiler]Preconceptions:
Aside from two mini-comp entries (says ifwiki.org) back in 2000 (which I haven’t played), it doesn’t appear that Richard Bos has done much IF authorship. The name is very familiar, though. A regular in the IF newsgroups, I think (but I can’t check past posts at the moment). Something tugs on my memory that maybe Richard is one of the more outspoken posters, with some strong opinions that sometimes do but often don’t coincide with whatever topic he’s responding to. This is all very vague, though, and since I can’t remember any topics of mutual participation, my guess is he wouldn’t know me either. As for the game, not much comes to me just from the title and the blub. Seems like it might be a little generic, but with flavor.
Review Summary:
A very short game set on a now-deserted island; well-coded and amply polished, but lacking in substance and ambition.
Played: 10/9/2009 for 35 minutes.
Score: 6 (Limited Appeal)
Transcript: here
The game’s >about text helps explain the series of events and the reasons behind Richard’s submission in this year’s Interactive Fiction Competition. In part, with so many bad games showing up every year, a very short but well-polished and competently-coded game stands to rank highly, even if it’s not a stand-out work, lacks innovation, and features only the simplest of stories.
It’s an interesting point, and one I think Richard is very likely to prove. Eruption is perfectly fine. It’s focused and well-implemented. It’s the kind of game new authors should take a cue from: not an expansive map, a few easy one- or two-part puzzles, no outmoded design annoyances, attention to detail, no grand ambitions in terms of story or design. It stays centered on a small, manageable game world, allowing the author to implement more optional actions and responses to various verb/noun combinations that usually go missing in more ambitious games. Most would-be IF authors (or game designers) would be wise to start by coding an Eruption before planning that epic ten-hour opus.
Eruption is the tale of a man – presumably a man, but I suppose it isn’t said – with a hangover and the inevitable touch of amnesia that goes along with it, on an island, with a growing sense of concern. It’s an easy story to figure out, even before things in the game begin to click for the protagonist. It’s very short, very easy (aside from some possible confusion with the interconnections between locations), and nicely polished. The writing isn’t overly verbose, yet it paints a believable picture of this small island in the tropics.
It’s difficult not to rank it a “7” (average – particularly in terms of it being a decent game from beginning to end, and that it’s nothing even casual players haven’t seen before), but it’s so short and so simple (even if what’s here is expertly done) that a “6” seems more applicable. By the scale I’m using, this means “limited appeal" (“although there may be fans of games receiving this score, many will be left yearning for a more rewarding game experience.” – stolen from Game Informer). Although many IFComp judges are by now accustomed to poor and mediocre games outnumbering the worthwhile and exceptional ones, I think even the author would agree that Eruption is only a snack-sized diversion en route to more substantial works.[/spoiler]