Review: Not Just an Ordinary Ballerina

I have also wandered around 1893: A World Fair as a tourist many times, without even trying to solve it.

I’m putting off really playing it until I have at least two weeks to fully devote my attention to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it tops even Ballerina.

Having played both I think Warp may be larger, however that is a mainframe game. I suspect Warp’s endgame is bigger than 99 percent of text adventures on its own.

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As would be Mike Arnautov’s 770 point version of the original Advent (476 locations). This is a great version in which you can examine virtually everything.

The great (in both senses of the word) Acheton has 403 locations.

The somewhat less than great Weird Wood II has over 500 locations but a lot are empty maze rooms and the general room descriptions are often monotonous and threadbare as well as having dreadful grammar and spelling.

The original mainframe Zork has 191 rooms but the database is big.

The Lost Crystal by Epic software has 400 locations but I tend to fight shy of graphical / text adventures. You can turn the pictures off but the horrible font sends me for the Ibuprofen.

Hezarin from the same stable as Acheton is now only available in its Topologika version only as the mainframe version is lost but this may be at least as big as Acheton as well.

And Gorm for the Archimedes has at least 300. Now that is an obscure game.

I am sure there are some others.

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The large number of locations (and the admittedly excellent parser) was a major selling point for the Epic games, but most of them were empty and repetitive, as I pointed out in my review of Kingdom of Klein. The Lost Crystal even had an extra command, “c” for “continue”, which meant “move as far as possible in the direction last entered”.

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Yes I find the Epic games rather sterile JJ. I know they were made in an era when a large number of locations was a selling point but so much of them are comprised of such banalities as “you are in a rocky east-west corridor” for about a dozen moves each way.

By the way have you considered a sequel to Goldilocks is a FOX? Now that would be worth playing! The return of the creaking old would be thespian the wolf who is my favourite NPC character in the whole IF canon would be most appreciated.

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Wow, that’s quite a compliment, thank you! I loved writing the wolf and I have indeed considered making a Three Little Pigs or Red Riding Hood game with him as the PC. It never got further than a handful of notes though - perhaps I should revive it!

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Oh definitely. The lupine equivalent of darling Johnny Gielgud. I can imagine him with several pairs of tights hanging from hooks in the hallway and some black and white photographs of less than great repertory performances in pride of place on the mantelpiece.

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Nobody should be put off Mike Arnautov’s version of Adventure 770. It is truly enormous but sensitively adds puzzles and environment seamlessly. Very humourous and you can examine almost anything in the location you are in. If you are lucky you may meet George the bane of those who drop litter as well as a large jelly and a secret way back from the island and an imp with a story book to tell.

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I spent three weeks on it, with occasional hints. Three weeks of fun.

That’s exactly what attracted me to text adventures back when three weeks were just three weeks to spend, and not 0.06 % of my entire life span. :frowning:

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True Grueslayer. I spend far too much time playing IF but I love it. Although where a hobby becomes an obsession I’m not sure. At least it’s safer than crack cocaine or tombstoning (although the Phoenix games may be close to mind and body shattering).

I hadn’t noticed this thread. Thanks for the kind words! It was my first game, and at the time I honestly didn’t know that people don’t like mazes.

I did include an interactive Help system, which I hope alleviates some of the pain. This was an I6 game, of course, so the help was all hand-coded, no menu system or anything.

The sequel, if I ever get around to finishing it, is at least twice as large. It’s a return to Stufftown, only now Samantha is 17 and in desperate need of a replacement prom dress, the prom being mere hours away. If you think getting your hands on the ballerina doll was hard work, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

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I liked the premise and the setting of this game. Related to this, one thing I found kind of offputting was the puzzle early on where you shoot the gun to distract the guard. It just isn’t something I would even think of doing in this situation in real life. Or at least I would waste time looking for other less drastic ways to accomplish it. Not sure if this comment is helpful at all… :slight_smile:

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I hope you don’t let this guide you too much in your work on Ballerina 2. Innovative mazes are still very cool (to me).

I loved finding the solution to the mirror maze in NJAOB. Hard and simple at the same time. And when it clicks… fireworks in my brain!

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Well, the mirror maze is still there in the sequel, but the solution is different. The model train set was a PITA to implement – all those ASCII diagrams – so it has been replaced with something entirely different but not entirely unrelated. That thing with all the bamboo poles, though, I don’t even remember what I called it, has collapsed into a pile of sticks since the first episode.

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Wait, where you could go down using a rope on a bamboostick but then the stick broke and you had to find the long way back? Or something remotely like that?

Yeah, I cheated for that. (Thank you @David_Welbourn )

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Bumping this review because THE SEQUEL IS IN IFCOMP THIS YEAR.

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I saw! Very cool!

I started on Ballerina, oooh, last year? I was looking for a big, puzzly game with a large map. I consulted a walkthrough early on and found that the first two puzzles were things I wouldn’t have figured out on my own (I understood the idea behind getting all the screens to show the TV show, but couldn’t work out why this particular solution worked; I would never have guessed that the code for the electricity would be in base-6 numbering). Once these bits were done, the map opened right up, perhaps too much, as I felt a bit overwhelmed: I like maps that get bigger and bigger as you play, but maybe more incrementally.

That said, I do keep thinking that I will go back to it one day: a couple of people have described it as a very atmospheric game, which is always a major attraction for me. 1960s shopping centres have always struck me as deeply unatmospheric, but who knows where the game might go? I might also give the sequel a try, and see how I find that.

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According to @mathbrush’s review ( The Only Possible Prom Dress - Details (ifdb.org)), the sequel is similar in its huge goody puzzlyness, but is also more player-friendly with in-game help systems.

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