Rabbit's IFComp 2021 reviews

Hello! I’m pitching in a few reviews for IFComp. I’m posting them on a Wordpress blog like I did in 2019, and I’ll cross-post here whenever I publish a new batch.

Here’s an explanation of how I’m approaching the entries. In short, I’m doing my best to engage with the games on their own terms, and I don’t want to be harsh on games I don’t like. (Luckily, that hasn’t been a problem yet, at time of writing!)

Just two reviews so far. I have one more review to publish, but it needs redrafting, because it’s babble. How do some of you write up such readable and insightful reviews so quickly? It’s amazing.

REVIEWS:
Finding Light (Abigail Jazwiec)
A Papal Summons, or The Church Cat (Bitter Karella)
And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
Ghosts Within (Kyriakos Athanasopoulos)
A Paradox Between Worlds (Autumn Chen)
My Gender Is a Fish (Carter Gwertzman)
After-Words (fireisnormal)
Funicular Simulator 2021 (Mary Goodden and Tom Leather)
Infinite Adventure (A. Scotts)
An Aside About Everything (Sasha)

14 Likes

Thank you so much for reviewing my game Finding Light! I really enjoyed your feedback and was so happy you liked the simplicity of it as well. (I am THRILLED you caught on to the “little mysteries” so to speak lol)

:scream: I’m so sorry for those bugs though! I thought I fixed those, but you were correct in guessing that Inform can be treacherous, so I will have to correct them as quick as I can!

I do have an idea for a sequel though and I would LOVE to make one if I have time in the future. :heart:

3 Likes

Hi, thanks for playing my game! Glad you found something to like about it and thanks for the kind words! :slight_smile: I hate to be that person who’s all “ACTUALLY LET ME EXPLAIN” when a reviewer notes an oddity in their game, but I will anyway XP… my intention was that the cat should say something different every time that you look at it. From what you and a few other players have said, though, it seems that the code to randomize the cat’s responses isn’t working properly XP I’ll have to finagle with that!

3 Likes

Ah, the cat did have a few different things to say when I checked on it, yeah. Sorry, I should have mentioned that in my review.

Don’t worry about correcting me. I appreciate that nobody wants to look like That Guy Who Can’t Take Criticism, but if I get something flat-out wrong in my reviews, please point it out!

3 Likes

Three more reviews:

And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One (B.J. Best)
Ghosts Within (Kyriakos Athanasopoulos)
A Paradox Between Worlds (Autumn Chen)

All great games! The personal shuffle has been very kind to me this year!

I’m going through the ballot slower than I would like - between my job and taking care of a new puppy, I’m not able to block off a lot of time for IFComp this year. I’ve got a few shorter games coming up in my personal shuffle which I can hopefully review more quickly!

6 Likes

Thank you so much @rabbit for your thorough and constructive review. Indeed, I knew from the beginning it was a bold choice to create such a big game for the if comp. But I didn’t want to suppress my creativity to make something completable within the two-hour margin. I’m glad you recognize the effort put behind it, though for me the whole writing and programming process was a very fascinating and enjoyable experience.
Also, thank you very much for your wishes. I’ve just completed my master at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Patras, Greece, about a week ago!
Last but not least, since you had a fun time with Ghosts Within, I suggest, if and when you have the time to, that you take a look at the updated version I uploaded yesterday, which fixes a lot of the typos and linguistic errors in the dialogues.
Have a nice day! :smiley:

  • Kyriakos
7 Likes

Now that you have your Masters Degree in hand, I hope you continue to contribute to IF. You definitely have talent.

PS. My daughter is a very successful EE. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Congratulations on the Master’s degree, and well done for finding time to create a game at the same time! I look forward to playing Ghosts Within when I get to it (I’m using a randomiser to select game order).

3 Likes

whoops I got food poisoning a few hours after writing this

I managed to carve out some time over the last few days to play and review three more games:

My Gender Is a Fish (Carter Gwertzman)
After-Words (fireisnormal)
Funicular Simulator 2021 (Mary Goodden and Tom Leather)

8 Likes

Two more reviews:

Infinite Adventure (A. Scotts)
An Aside About Everything (Sasha)

I think this will be my last batch of reviews. I’m a little busy this week, and I don’t expect to have the energy to write reviews. There’s one or two more games I want to play, but those will just be for me.

I really enjoyed what I played. I only saw a fraction of the entries, but it’s a really strong field this year. Good luck to all the entrants!

6 Likes