Pirateship

Competitions IFComp
1

Pirateship by @robinjohnson

https://ifcomp.org/ballot#entry-2040

I ran into a bug where I was unable to talk to the Colonel, the horizontal bar with the conversation options never appeared. :slightly_frowning_face:

Things I liked:

  • the die to get stuff mechanic :+1:
  • the vertically split mermaid was amusing
  • overall a rather funny game

Things I liked less:

  • the world felt too large and empty to me, I never really got a good mental image of what the map looked like
  • the parser/hyperlink interface isnā€™t my cup of tea
1 Like
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Thank you for the review! Apologies for the bug in the colonelā€™s conversation - another player reported that and Iā€™ve fixed it now.

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Iā€™ve also posted a review of the game on my blog.

1 Like
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This was pretty fun. Itā€™s a tropey pirate game, doesnā€™t really do anything new with the material, but it doesnā€™t pretend to be anything else, and I thought the puzzle progression in the middle was solid and enjoyable. Actually, thatā€™s a lie about not doing anything new: the bit with the mermaidā€™s sister, who is a fish hanging on the wall, was interesting. It was also one of the best puzzle sequences for me, since it had a little more depth of character, and felt like a minor espionage/prison-break quest.

The beginning and end were the weak points for me. I felt unmotivated at the start, but once the puzzles kicked in, I became more invested. The end was anticlimactic, however. Just a few sentences. It couldā€™ve had more punch.

I had to use the walkthrough twice: to dip the map in the tea, and to figure out that I could dive in the swamp. The descriptions are very sparse, and when I read that the swamp was a ā€œwide dirty pool,ā€ I didnā€™t imagine it had much depth. I was thinking more like a big mud puddle. Not something you could enter with a diving suit.

I also struggled a lot with the map. Iā€™m awful with compass directions. I always get turned around. So many of the rooms here are basically just a list of compass directions, so I couldnā€™t visualize the island in my head or picture where I was oriented. I just bumped around. But this happens to me in tons of parser games, so Iā€™m not really faulting this particular game for my own problem. Since itā€™s a pirate game, though, it wouldā€™ve been cool to have the map visually presented in the background or in a sidebar or something.

As for the ending: the second one was neat. Definitely the secret ending! Even though I ate the mushrooms and anticipated a psychedelic puzzle, I wouldā€™ve never thought to use the eye patch like that. But Iā€™m glad I saw it when I went to the walkthrough. I almost wish this were the main ending!