Puny Seeds

Competitions
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21
  • prepare for return -(SeedComp)-

After a period of 737 cycles in deep Sleep Mode, the Core of Reconstruction Facility 05 (RF-05-C1) awakens. Time to resume its mission: prepare the planet for the return of the humans.

The Core is the conscious, volitional, self-reflective AI of a terraforming and restoratory facility. It has control over several subsystems which carry out the practical tasks needed to further the overall goals it sets.

Each cycle, the Core gets a report about the previous time period. Based on that, it can adjust its priorities to guide the subconscious systems through the next cycle.

That’s the practical side of things in a nutshell. Providing a home planet minimally capable of supporting human life. The player gets to decide what to focus on and sees the results in the next cycle-report.

Since the Core’s target population is humans, it is also fed tidbits of information about human history and culture by its subconscious Memory database. These consist of seemingly random fragments, some from literary masterpieces, some from more mundane sources. This is a built-in attempt from its makers to teach the AI about human aesthetics, morality, society,… Hopefully, when the humans return, they will come to a world which is tailored to their sensitivities in these less tangible areas of human experience.

The player gets to read these cultural sources from the perspective of a non-discerning AI. This produces a shift away from her preconceptions about quality or value of the sources. A fragment from Homeros’ Oddyssey (Be still, my heart…) might the next waking cycle be juxtaposed with a Wikipedia article about beans ( Bean - Wikipedia). [Neither of these are actually in the game text.]

During the sleep cycle, it seems that the AI is agitatedly trying to incorporate, re-organise and assimilate the information about humanity in its memory base. It does this in dreams. The dreams are not directly related to the information the Core received in the previous waking cycle. Instead they are more like contextless floating memory snippets, short stories told in simple sentences, or free associations of words and concepts.

I played through the game twice, with opposite strategies (aggressive <-> accomodating toward wildlife which may damage the base, reaching-out <-> self-sustaining toward other terraforming facilities that may be out there). Both times my efforts were fruitless and my facility was terminally damaged, unable to carry out its objectives.
There are many options to tweak the facility’s attitude toward the surroundings. I have not (yet) found a succesfull combination, but I will definitely keep looking. (EDIT: Failure is inevitable.)

The most intriguing parts of the game to me were the cultural fragments and the dream-sequences. Sadly, those were also the parts where I found the game most lacking. I would have liked to see more of the personal development the AI goes through in response to its growing experience with human culture and its own growing mind.

A very interesting game, and one I hope the author will expand upon.

5 Likes
22
  • Falling to Pieces -(PunyJam)-

This game has a very good idea behind it. The PC seems to be alone on a space station. Out the window are burning pieces of debris, bits of the station being pulled apart by uncontrolled and too fast atmospheric descent.

While the PC searches the station, he encounters more and more inconsistencies. Things on this space station are not … right…

A deep symbolic exploration. Or so it could be.

In practice, the game is woefully underimplemented. Maybe the sparseness of the surroundings, the lack of objects to interact with, is intentional. Maybe it serves to support the symbolic meaning.

It doesn’t aid in player engagement. Even if the surroundings are minimally interactive, everything should at least have a description. More so, actually. If the game is a symbolic journey without much puzzles and interaction, all the weight must be carried by the description of the setting. A description of even the smallest unimportant object is an opportunity to strengthen the double meaning.

I must admit I stopped playing at 128 points from lack of engagement.

Falling to Pieces has a good idea. The execution does not do that idea justice.

6 Likes
23

Hello Rovarsson, first off, thank you for playing my game. It was actually my first try at IF and I joined the jam to “force” myself at learning how to code with the Inform 6 language. For these reasons I was not completely sure about joining, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I will make good use of your suggestions and I promise to do better next time. Once again, thank you for spending some time “falling to pieces”.

5 Likes
24

Hi Gianluca! Welcome to the Forum.

I hope you don’t take my remarks too personally. I do want to emphasise that I think the underlying idea for your game is very good.
I hope that you expand on that idea, and that your next games will show the same creative thinking.

Best wishes,

Rovarsson

2 Likes
25

Not at all! Constructive criticism is vital for a developer, so thank you again for playing the game and finding the time to write about it. It motivates me to do better, next time.

Best wishes

Gianluca

6 Likes
26
  • The King’s Ball -(SeedComp)-

A cake so sumptuous the meagre word “cake” does not do it justice. A fruitcake so stuffed with raisins and nuts and confectioneries of all kinds, so soaked in the finest cognac, a Royal Fruitcake, if you will.

A cake fit for a King.

And that is precisely why you would have the King himself partake of this masterpiece, and humbly implore him to fund your expedition into the secrets of even more delicious Patisserie. If only that stubborn guard would let you through.

A game which starts with a seemingly simple premise, present a cake to the King, and builds on it, complicates and layers it until it becomes a hilarious obstacle-filled endeavour.

A small map with enough twists and bends to make it interesting, and a few locked off locations that take more than a bit of ingenuity and perseverance to get into.

The puzzles are heavily clued. A bit too much for my taste. At least, that’s what I thought at first. I realised though, that trimming back the generous clues and hints would also dampen the slap-stick farcical mood.

There are a bunch of bugs to be found in the SeedComp version. Indeed, part of my enjoyment came from chasing them down and thinking of new ways to exploit them to fool the game and create little funny scenes of my own making. The game is strong enough under the hood so that the bugs become more something you might find in the “Amusing”-section after finishing an adventure.

“Have you tried…”

Mind you, the bugs are naught but a small raisin in this wonderful fruitcake of a game. The tone is continuously funny, not (only) by cracking jokes but by the aforementioned layering of complications. The main NPC is a funny bloke to mess with, and the reactions of the unnamed townsfolk are a real treat.

Great fun. I laughed at my screen several times. Somewhat straining on my suspension of disbelief at times. Great puzzle collection.

7 Likes
27

Sorry about the bugs. I’ll fix them in a post-comp release. Might make it a bit funnier, too.

4 Likes
28

Changing the game’s responses to the “bugs” as if they’re features would be nice too, instead of cutting them out.

(“You now have a boiled egg. No use in a cake of course, but it’ll be nice for breakfast.”)

1 Like
29
  • Lucid Night -(PunyJam)-

You’re having that dream again…

Lucid Night uses the frame of an interrupted night’s sleep filled with lucid dreams to present the player with a collection of small puzzles which take place in the dream world.

The puzzles are easy, heavily clued and tiny. Each does give the player that bit of satisfaction of finding the solution, and of looking around to see what your dreaming brain has come up with this time.

A laid-back bit of easy fun. Some distraction while you wait for the potatoes to boil.

It might be, were it not for the glimpses of the protagonist’s life we catch. There are vague references throughout the game to previous, more powerful lucid dreams, and to the character’s waking life that imbue it with a sense of mystery, even an unsettling feeling of unseen threat.

I enjoyed the writing, smoothly transitioning the PC from waking to dreaming without drawing too much explicit attention to it. The PC is used to dreaming, so the lucid sequences come as no surprise.
There is a nifty implementation feature in this game, of the “blink and you miss it” variety.

The puzzles were very common sense, especially for a dream-setting. I had expected some more moon-logic and surrealism to pop up as the game progressed.

A good game. The untold backstory of the PC keeps lingering in my mind.

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Until now, apparently. Only one more day before voting ends so I’ll play Blorp next. I’ve tested Submarine Sabotage and Strike Force. While I’ve not thoroughly replayed them, I’ve poked around a bit in both and I feel confident that I can rate them in good faith. I’ll write up some remarks about both interspersed with the SeedComp games I’ve yet to play. The Fantasy Dimension is not up for rating, only for feedback to the author. I’ll play it at my leisure and add my thoughts to this thread later on.

7 Likes
30
  • Blorp -(PunyJam)-

It was not a good idea to let Dave oversee the workings of your undersea Brewery. Of course he messed up. Now it’s up to you to put things right.

First off: kudos for the setting idea! A beer brewery at the bottom of the sea is the kind of silly originality that gets me chuckling. It gets a bit of a handwave in-game as being a great selling point. Well I bet! Who wouldn’t want to tell their friends their beer was brewed underwater?

The game itself is rather unbalanced. The items that are there are mostly well-implemented, descriptions changing with the PC’s progress. But there are still a number of gaps, especially when an item is to be found in a later stage of the game. It is hidden and can only be taken at that stage in the game. But I had already checked that spot earlier in the game and found nothing of note. (the key, and in a lesser way, the repair kits)
Many reasonable verbs are not recognised, and some of the items could use some more synonyms for their names.

The great setting could also use some more filling. More stuff not directly related to the main objective, just for exploring, investigating, and fiddling with.

A special mention of the first puzzle is in order: simple, elegant, and perplexing at first. At least to this player. I needed a night’s sleep to tackle it succesfully.

Good basic game that could use embellishments.

4 Likes
31

Thanks again for your great review!

3 Likes
32
  • A Thousand Words -(SeedComp)-

You and an Art. An Art and You…

A Thousand Words is a Galatean work of IF. But whereas Galatea is responsive to your prying questions, here the Art is still. You must wrestle its meaning from it. If there is such a thing…

Numerous ways to engage with the Art are accounted for, depending on the player’s focus.

Thoughtful contemplation or more direct sensory impressions elicit various responses. The work as a whole is open for interaction, and it’s possible to zoom in and confront the details from a closer distance.

When I’m visiting a museum and looking at the works, I tend to look carefully at the craft involved, the strokes of the brush, the roughness or smoothness of the material, the chip of the chisel. In this case, the stitch of the needle. I found A Thousand Words lacking in that area, as if the Art was only accessible at the layer above (or below) the craft. (Although there are ways to physically interact with the Art, none seem to refer directly to the technique of the artist.)

A deep exploratory work, worth playing and replaying, letting the fancy of the moment guide you in your appreciation of the Art.

5 Likes
33
  • The Fantasy Dimension -(PunyJam)-

A stroll in the woods…

This game is a very traditional fantasy quest played completely straight. Lots of classic tropes in there, none of them subverted or turned on their heads. I really like this sort of adventure, eschewing the irony or satire that is often added. It plays on my nostalgic tendencies.
(Mind you, I love reading more complex greyshaded fantasy too. And classic fantasy can be filled with some problematic tropes that are not sweetly nostalgic at all. But that’s another discussion. This game does none of that. Well, almost none, depending on your view on dragon-slaughter)

The Fantasy Dimension is beautifully written. The locations get long paragraphs bringing the surroundings to the player’s mind’s eye. Fantasy has its solid collection of go-to settings, and this story does not try to get away from them. Indeed, it embraces those settings and draws them with a loving pen.

I particularly liked the descriptions of movement between locations, giving you a sense of real travel instead of zipping instantly from forest to castle.

I hesitate to call this a game. Rather, it is a near-puzzleless journey through the setting to fulfill the objective of your quest. Almost a walking simulator. As such, it is sorely lacking in depth. To hold the player’s attention and engagement, the world in such a work must be meticulously detailed. It is, in The Fantasy Dimension, but only in the initial descriptions. It would need much richer layers of implementation and perhaps some randomised scenes to bring more life and depth to the woods and the ruins.

I enjoyed this a lot, but a lot could be added to make it so much better.

8 Likes
34
  • In a Minute there is Time -(SeedComp)-

“…those were the days of roses, of poetry and prose…”
Tom Waits - Martha

A poem draws the reader into the mood. A loner, anxious, on the sidelines. Choice anxiety, overwhelmed by a myriad options.
The poem, in its closing verse, promises comfort, soothing. A chance to see all options. Choice without choosing for it will all be turned back on itself.

Beautiful well-chosen prose drops you in the middle of a scene. A multitude of scenes, theatre stages next to each other to wander through. The setting is an expansion of Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, with its oyster bar, its foggy streets,…

But there! There is time. A minute counting back… Pressure to explore!

Until the minute has passed and all is restored, ready to revise.

The repetition renders the sixty seconds pressureless, devoid of tension. In effect, you have a free-floating minute, disconnected from external time and causation.

The result is a narratively empty (isolated from cause-effect, plotless), exploration-rich discovery of relations between locales and passages of text, streetlamp-lit alleys and overheard conversations. An endlessly revising everlasting minute wherein to choose all options and be returned to poetry.

A captivating, mindful experience.

8 Likes
35
  • In the Deep -(SeedComp)-

I love an underwater setting. It’s like the reverse-but-same of outer space, low visibility, immense pressures, weird life-forms,… The overwhelming otherness and inhospitable threat are all the more impressive because they are right here, a few hundred meters under that soothing wavy surface we like to paddle our feet (or go skinny-dipping) in.

I thought In the Deep captured the murky depths under the oil-rig pretty well, with half-seen shadowy plants and glimpses of the submarine circle of life.

The game itself, however, I couldn’t really connect with. There are many choices to guide your PC’s behaviour and navigate the text passages, leading to quite a few different endings. This was great.
The passages themselves didn’t seamlessly click together though. In the process of chopping up the narrative threads into linkable chunks, a number of loose ends were left hanging. As a result, the story in any given playthrough feels jittery with the connection of one chunk to the next not quite lining up.

The scenery descriptions, the mood of the undersea surroundings are evocative. I felt I could place myself there, under the pylons of an oil rig looking up toward the sparkly light from the surface overhead. I didn’t succeed in placing myself there with the characters though. Their demeanor and conversations felt distanced and robotic, without feeling.
In fact, rereading that previous paragraph, In the Deep would probably make a great sci-fi B-movie…

A vivid setting with a threatening mood. The adventure that takes place within that setting lacked emotional engagement for me.

4 Likes
36
  • free bird -(SeedComp)-

A masterly example of sparse efficient writing. free bird relies on adjectives and nouns alone to paint the setting and the elements of note within it.

Without elaborate (or even short) sentences and turns of phrase, it highlights only those words that are crucial to the game. However, the game world feels rich and open because of the very clever choice of words and particularly of adjectives. An adjective-noun description of a sickly iguana reviving when its warm light is turned on triggers an entire story and a sequence of rich images in the mind in a lot less words than this paragraph I just wrote about it.

The puzzles are clever, it took me some time-outs to get the solution worked out in full. Because free bird is a click-based game, it would probably be possible to mechanically brute-force the solution a bit easier than it would be in a parser. But then, why would anyone play just to take the fun out of it…

Very clever use of language, nifty puzzles with limited resources.

A great protagonist accompanied by an interesting cast of supporting characters too. Again, despite (or thanks to, depending how you interpret it) the self-imposed language limits, their personalities are clear, with a few poignant details shining through to mark their most important traits.

I liked this very much.

11 Likes
37
  • Cozy Simulation 2 -(SeedComp)-

What could be more comforting than sitting in front of a crackling fire, reading a book, sipping from a cup of steaming hot cocoa…

But it feels like something is behind the metaphorical curtains…

Very effective juxtaposition of atmospheres. Both the writing and the visual presentation draw the player into the intended moods, preserving a lingering taste of what the surroundings felt like before while submerging her into the present situation.

Some links could be elaborated upon a bit more. (The effects of the drinks or the books for example.) On the other hand, having the choices not have much causative power does fit the premise.

It would be ruinous to divulge more. This is one to experience, eyes and ears and imagination wide open.

5 Likes
38

Thanks for playing my game and for this wonderful review. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

1 Like
39

I did. Very much.

Another favourite moment was when I looked in the mirror where I could see a pitiful gathering of birds, sickly, underfed, ruffled feathers,… and me, “handsome macaw”!

Those two simple words, in that situation, immediately opened up the main character to me. Brilliantly done.

2 Likes
40

There are two games from PunyJam #3 I tested. I had quickly replayed them during the comp, but only now realised I didn’t yet put up some thoughts about them.

  • Strike Force -(PunyJam)-

Essentially a two-puzzle game. (The puzzles are both sequences of multiple steps, but they are clearly conceptually linked.) Especially the final puzzle of the two I found very good. Clear in its objective, but necessitating some careful planning and out-of-the-box thinking to execute.
The player switches between two PCs with their own specialties. I understand the post-comp version will have more team-members to complete the Strike Force from the title. (Reminded me a lot of G.I. JOE.)
Cool setting and premise, but incomplete. I hope the addition of more Strike Force agents (and their corresponding tasks) will bring the game more to life.

  • Submarine Sabotage

Very cool setting.The crampedness of a submarine, the many rooms crammed together in such a small volume, lends itself well to a tight and tense parser game. A few of the rooms could use a bit more interactivity, some of them feel like obligatory window-dressing.
Anyone with an ounce of genre-awareness will probably figure out the ending beforehand, but it’s still cool.
I particularly liked how the setting triggered my brain to come up with possible solutions all the time, even when they weren’t at all practical.

4 Likes