I got everything done very basically. A lot of tags and blurbs can still be added.
Also, I was unable to decide whether to add Cost of Living. A thread on itch mentioned it was DQ’d as it couldn’t be considered a parser work. So on the one hand I’d like to include it, but on the other hand stamping it with “DISQUALIFIED” or whatever seems a bit cruel.
Also Euripedes Enigma is spelled Euripides Enigma on itch. I think 2 E’s is correct, but there’s a clear discrepancy.
I’d love if someone else could fill in some details. I wanted to have something for every entry, but I didn’t want to put in false information.
Cost of Living is disqualified but still visible and can be rated. But we’ll exclude from the final rankings. It’s a strange one: doesn’t look at all like a parser game, author insists it is…
The other one: use whatever the title is on the actual game, I suppose.
The itch page, as well as the in-game title and cover art have “The Euripedes Enigma”, meanwhile the description the description text and the game itself repeatedly use “planet Euripides”, “Euripides Base”, and so on. That would be a pretty large oversight on the part of the author and his playtesters, so perhaps it’s on purpose…? (Fwiw I’ve changed the IFDB listing to “Euripedes”, since that does appear to be the title of the game that’s listed everywhere else.)
Just add an additional category named “BEST OF SHOW”. Just rate what’s your overall satisfaction with the game. THAT IS!
Then, Itchio will provide a ranking… just dismiss it, and consider the official the proper ranking of the BEST IN SHOT.
I do this in ECTOCOMP. I don’t mind the itchio’s automatic ranking, I later make a separate list to discriminate between Grand Guignol and La Petite Mort entries.
Εὐριπίδης, so iota, although how to transliterate that iota isn’t as straightforward as it seems; eta and iota can overlap in pronunciation, and Ancient Greek pronunciation is a reconstruction based primarily on disambiguating the ways that more modern Greek (as in, since Byzantium) presents struggles when referring to ancient texts. Depending on who is arguing with you, the classically rigorous pronunciation would probably be eh-ouyr-ee-pee-dehs, but often the more Modern pronunciation tends to be eh-eur-ih-pih-dees, which gives the common English form eur-ip-ih-dees. When you factor in the complex orthographic evolution caused by humanity’s dispersion amongst the stars, the variative capacity is immense! Indeed it is entirely possible the planet is actually named after the great Greek star captain Εὐριπεδες, who is of course famous for discovering nebula feta.
I know - still not working. Itch admin have been contacted to sort this out. In the meantime, we’ll all have to make polite and awkward conversation until it is fixed.
Isn’t that the movie where he spends 90% moaning about guns and liquor, while being harassed by bad guys. Then finally he loses his sh*t, drinks a bottle of whisky, and shoots the lot. Problem solved.
Don’t worry – controversy is always good for sales!
(I do hope folks check it out, though I agree with the organizers that it doesn’t quite satisfy rule #1… a neat take on interactive narrative. Reminds me of the eponymous Interactive Fiction games.)
Side note: on my entry’s comments thread, Denk alerted me to his ParserComp reviews outside this forum. Which I’m all for … spread the word. It’s always good to see past competitors writing reviews, too.
Groggydog wrote reviews, too, that I found from Twitter:
Did something happen to Lantern? I had it next on my to-play list, but suddenly it’s not showing up on the submissions page, and even searching itch.io doesn’t seem to turn it up (there are a bunch of games named Lantern, but none of them have the right cover image as I remember it).
EDIT: just found there was some discussion of this in the itch.io forum for the competition (sidenote: there’s an itch.io forum for the competition), and it looks like the author took all their games off itch for unknown reasons. That’s too bad, hopefully they get put back up!
Fortunately, I downloaded it and was able to play it before the author removed all his/her games. It’s Windows only (I think) with an interesting concept, lots of spelling errors and a couple of bugs, but the puzzles are okay. The parser is pretty awful (if it even has a parser), so you really need to use the point 'n click input.
