T'è fnì ad fè al patachedi?
An unconventional postmortem for «A winter morning on the beach»
“A winter morning on the beach”, a parser game by E. Cuchel started out with an inviting splash screen photo of the beach, an introduction to the character (whose physician told him he needs to get more steps in) preparing for a walk, then a play button. Almost everything went downhill from there.
which draws an immediate analogue with another, minor, work of mine, Return to Home, that is, a simple, cosy, walking simulator (cosy if we abstract from literal shitbombing from seagulls above…) in which one can enjoy the sea, sand and reading the occasional sign here and here. And is well-thought and designed, with an excellent polish
A winter morning on the beach has a lot of potential for being a chill, meditative exercise in taking care of oneself. Instead, the author tries to incorporate a timed puzzle that distracts from the game’s casual atmosphere. With some refinement I could see this becoming a successful walking simulator.
You’re on the beach. You can wander north or south along the shoreline, reading the informative signs (a regularly repeating series of eight quotes about the sea, environmentalism, and stewardship). If you walk too much without resting, you’ll get a cramp: game over. If you stop and look at things too long instead of getting your exercise, a seagull will crap on you: game over.
I thought the hybrid parser/link format was really neat and played smoothly. Unfortunately, after several attempts I couldn’t figure out how to finish this one. A seagull poops on you if you wait for too long. In the end, my seagull pursuer was inescapable.
A sharper challenge to slowly taking in the sights as you stroll down the beach is the world’s most poop-happy seagull; if you spend more than a couple turns in any location, one shows up to ruin your jacket and end your playthrough, which is the grossest ticking clock imaginable.
What was the point of this story? The walking is boring. Is that the point? That exercise in old age is tedious? The puzzle is trivial, and the auto-lose feature of the game is frustrating. Is it the point that old age is pretty frustrating?
In a famous scene from the well-known Federico Fellini film Amarcord, the protagonist's crazy uncle is seen at the top of a tree shouting, “I want a woman!”
No one can get him down until the «dwarf nun» intervenes. With a determined air, she climbs the ladder leaning against the tree and orders him "T'è fnì ad fè al patachedi?".
At that point, the «crazy uncle» climbs down from the tree and can be taken home.
The nun's sentence can be translated as: "Have you finished doing «patacate»?"
It's harder to translate «patacate», but essentially they can be «silly things». The Romagnol word «pataca», from which it derives, has many meanings, also depending on how it is pronounced!
«A winter morning on the beach» is a silly story set on the beach in Rimini, the birthplace of Federico Fellini (and the author). But why waste energy writing this «patacheda»?
It’s delightful to see Mathbrush’s Simple Multimedia Effects in the wild, and I found the game’s use of hyperlinks to be quite effective—sometimes using them and sometimes not, and the gliding between clicking and typing.
It’s some impressive styling and I admire the work that’s gone into it, though I do wonder if it’s the right choice for this game. The lurid green and black colours and the pixelated font are pulling in a completely different aesthetic direction from the coastal setting and the picture of the ocean in the background.
The clickable hyperlinks would be really helpful (especially for inexperienced parser players) to avoid the friction of parser errors and facilitate immersion in the game’s world, so it’s a shame that the styling breaks that immersion again.
So overall I’m very happy with the technical side of this game. On the other hand, the story is pretty thin; most of the game is either a sudden bird poop-induced ending or walking past several almost-identical rooms. There are some kind family moments near the end but there’s not a big build up. So I’d see (from my obviously biased perspective) this game as a successful tech demo that could be the foundation of an even stronger future story, but it would likely take a while to develop such a story.
Yes Brian, this is tech demo.
There were a number of things I wanted to test before embarking on a more sophisticated project: the use of hyperlinks for hybrid parser/choice management, the use of CSS, and the possibility of distributing the story as a progressive web app that could be played offline on multiple devices.
The last point could only be tested partially, as the IFComp website does not allow you to download the “manifest” needed to enable PWA management. I solved this by downloading the manifest from my website, but this cross-site activity prevented the “service worker” from functioning, making it impossible to use the application offline.
But the most important thing is the hyperlink system.
I really appreciate the freedom that parser-based games give the player. In certain situations however, especially dialogues, being able to guide the player towards certain options prevents them from getting stuck.
I was very curious to see what the reaction to this mechanism would be, and having a large audience like that of IFComp was certainly a good testing ground.
Furthermore, the IFComp website provides a facility that captures transcripts, which I was able to examine carefully.
But there was a big problem: when you clicked on the link, the command and the corresponding response did not appear in the transcript.
This is because the command contained in the link is not passed to the command field during the saving routine, but as part of the response; the routine discards all empty commands, so it is not saved.
Once you understand the cause of the problem, you can also find the solution, so I modified the "recording_send" function within "glkote.js" and from that moment on I was able to read the complete transcripts.
If anyone is interested, here is the modified function.
Last but not least, the icing on the cake.
The seagull is the most mysterious thing. It actively discourages one from exploring the beach; but, on the other hand, it doesn’t really create tension.
I’m all for a relaxing low-stakes walking game. I’m all for just exploring a place by sense. And I live by the seaside, so this is all very familiar. But so many things I wanted to do the game wouldn’t support. And then I’d get pooped on by a seagull again. Which to be fair is fairly authentic!
Of course, I had to be as anonymous as possible, so I used a pseudonym.
In «rumagnol» "e cuchel" means "the seagull".
No, don't think of Jonathan Livingstone: for someone from Rimini, being called a “cuchel” is not exactly a compliment.
A «cuchel» is someone who is spellbound, immobile, gullible and not particularly intelligent. They follow in the footsteps of others because they don't know how to stand up for themself.
What better name for the author of a silly story, «'na patacheda»?
At the end of the competition, it ranked 76th, but that is the least important thing.
More interesting is the number of rates: 69. Few games performed better, none of which were among the top 29, and only two exceeded 50 votes.
The thirtieth received 70 ratings (so essentially equal), then we have to go down to the 44th to find a significantly better result.
They are objectively better games than mine, but if few people play them, it's not very rewarding.
But the most interesting thing is the number of (public) reviews received: 12, placing it in second place in terms of number of reviews.
I should have mentioned all the reviewers. I would like to thank them for their attention to my work and for the suggestions they have provided. Almost all of them pointed out that the story was practically non-existent, but as I explained above, there is a reason for that.
A good number of judges also left feedback: some simply wrote Cute little game! or The seagulls sneak up on you, not sure this is best served by being a parser game. others have elaborated further on the comment: in any case, thank you too.
One in particular, in addition to various graphic suggestions, writes: I wondered if when you wrote it, you were tempted to include your own photo of your favorite beach!. This text was written largely before the conclusion of IFComp and already included images, as I do in my «Photography tales», but if you read on, there's also a surprise!
From the transcripts, I saw that it was played quite a lot: clearly, it attracted attention, which is definitely positive.
Hyperlinks were also used very frequently (they were easy to spot because the commands were ‘decorated’) and were also well received in the reviews.
Many complained that the undo function was disabled, leading to the game being labelled as cruel.
It would have been worse if it had been active: the "poop-happy" seagull strikes after 5 turns in which you perform an action other than walking or reading signs from the start of the game. Cancelling the last action is of little use because with the next one you would still be at that point.
I have no feedback on the installable WebApp feature, but that is of little importance.
What happens now?
Let's start with the unexpected: a few days ago, a friend launched a challenge in a photography magazine, and so a photographic version of this story was born, which I will publish soon.
The project for which I had begun studying the use of hyperlinks is currently on hold because I found two little adventures I wrote 40 years ago on the Commodore 64 that I would like to bring back to life.
For Italian readers: they are not developed with Colombini's famous «modulo base», but with an adapted table-based system from a program published in Adventure per tutti... di Guglielmo Nigri - Montesilvano (PE).
So many ideas, so little time, I'll have to make some choices.
See you soon.
