Testers for "The Web of Shadows"

Playing Beta Testing Requests and Discussion
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I began this project with the intention of writing a quick experiment to explore the possibilities of Dialog. My idea was to translate Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott into an adventure game. I thought the mechanics of the poem (A curse precipitated by sight, negated when looking in a mirror) were ideal game mechanics.

Several weeks’ work later I think it has reached the point where someone other than me needs to play it, if only to gauge the difficulty level. It is still potentially quite short (55 turns in my walkthrough, including waiting) but I suspect it seems much longer when you can’t see the inner workings.

The game is on itch.io (currently behind a password) and comes with a manual which contains a handy list of verbs and also a pointer to some cryptic hints.

Edit: I just pushed the latest version and itch.io has gone down. I hope I didn’t break it.

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Oh man, this seems really cool! I’m pretty jammed up right now with various other IF commitments, but I’ll try to take a look at your game in a couple of weeks since the concept is extremely up my alley.

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That’s great, thank you. I know there’s a competition on at the moment so it’s perhaps not the ideal time to be looking for testers.

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I want to say the exact same thing as Mike Russo.

Things will quiet down after EctoComp (20th November), so if you’re still looking for testers then, I’ll happily try to disembowel your carefully crafted work.

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What a kind offer - and he really will!

(@Ptolom PM me the password and I’ll have a look at it.)

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Thank you both for your offers of violence. I’m sure there will be bugs but I’m also keen to know what’s missing: Actions which should work but don’t or descriptions which don’t provide enough information.

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Oh, indeed! I am immensely fond of both Tennyson and translating the canon into immerse platforms. This is in fact the topic of my thesis! It would be an honor to spend time with your project. I hope everything is ok, regarding itch.io

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Thank you. I hope I haven’t done an injustice to the original work. The difficulty is that the poem is a tragedy, which would translate into a fairly unsatisfying game where you inevitably lose. I had to devise an alternative happy ending.

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Everyone dies.

And they all lived happily everafter.

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I have added a new hint system which should be able to walk you through the entire game if you keep appealing to it. You can type “hint” or select “read a HINT” when you die.

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I’d love to play it. Can you PM me the password?

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Oh man I had forgotten this post when I started testing the game a couple days ago! I spent a bunch of time trying to reenact the exact unhappy ending of the poem! Sorry, Shalott-Lady!

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