First and foremost, thank you to those who took the time to play The Deserter, especially those who took the extra time to review it. It’s my first IF and first time interacting with the IF community. It’s clear I’ve found people who are passionate about this medium, and who want to encourage and push each other to do their best work.
Also, while I played several games from the competition I failed to give others the feedback which I myself am so grateful for. If you are looking for more feedback on your work please PM me.
Post Mortem
Anyone who has played The Deserter is no doubt aware of its half-baked condition. Embarrassingly, I didn’t heed the many sources which advised against rushing a title into the comp without thorough testing. The result is a buggy, typo-ridden game with almost no exposition and a rushed ending.
A summary of the most prominent feedback I received:
Many typos (both the simple, embarrassing kind as well as more perplexing ones resulting from badly written variable text in Ink).
Bugs involving the misplacement of the Mech or some other variable.
Not enough exposition. The MCs ambiguous motivation weakens the narrative and players had trouble investing themselves in the story.
Related to the above, suggestions to work more on my writing. I feel these are completely called for. The narrative voice is terse and detached for much of the story.
The straightest most obvious path is the most boring and provides the least story of all routes.
Uninteresting choices which leave the player either poorly informed or instead apathetic.
I’ll be submitting a revision sometime in the future, if only to have something more presentable to share. I wish I’d entered the game at a higher standard, but my big fear was that without the goal of IFComp2024 I’d lose steam and abandon the project altogether.
Thank you for sharing the game with us! Honestly, I think you’re being too hard on yourself here; just completing a game for IFComp is an achievement in and of itself, and it’s good to take what people liked into account along with the constructive criticism. Now that you’ve broken the ice with this first entry and gotten lots of feedback, you have a step up for the next game you enter.
I agree with Jaclyn Hyde, it is good to get a game out at all. Your game sparked my imagination and was enjoyable to play; I think that you’ve shown that you can make something good and the flaws you point out show that you could make something even better next time. I was going back through my own game history recently and I have two games rated lower than The Deserter on IFDB, but that helped me figure out my writing and helped me do better the next time. I like your mech world!
Just adding to the chorus to say that there were definitely places to improve and it’s great you’re taking feedback, I personally enjoyed the game and thought there were things it did very well - and looking at other reviews I’m pretty sure I’m not alone! So thanks for entering, and looking forward to what you do next too.
Thanks very much for the encouragement! My post mortem may sound negative, but I thoroughly enjoyed writing the game. I managed to achieve most of what I set out to do:
Make a minimum viable product choice-based game.
Multiple paths that split and branch together.
Various character encounters, that can be entered into in different ways.
I wish I’d left more time for testing, but with the feedback from the comp I feel like I can really make some good improvements.
I actually had the opposite response. My review starts with the observation that we know nothing about the PC, except that he defects. And the expectations, possible subversions of those expectations, the what-if scenarios that were sparked by this flimsiest of character information did not throw me off, but instead motivated me to stay with this character.
And I’ll echo the posts above: congratulations on finishing and submitting a game for IFComp!
I did appreciate your review, and your reaction was exactly what I was aiming for. Thanks so much for that encouragement! However, I realise now that I was depending heavily on player’s patience and perseverance with little assurance it would be rewarded (especially considering the bugs and typos).
Initially the game started as it does now, then a few brief paragraphs explained the character and their motivations, but it was rather heavy handed. Then I ran out of time to find an approach that felt organic. I feel like there’s a way to give a little more to the reader without spelling things out.