IFComp is quickly coming to a close. I personally enjoyed a ton of the games this year and thought it was fantastic!
I wanted to see what people’s favorite moments were from different games in this year’s competition, especially ‘underrated’ ones. By that, I mean from games that have lower amounts of revies on the spreadsheet: IFComp 2024 Review Spreadsheet - Google Sheets
or small moments from highly-reviewed games that you haven’t head people talking about much.
For me, I really enjoyed certain moments in The Bureau of Strange happenings involving the directional system. It was fun to see how the game handled unusual directions and navigation systems.
I was about to say the same thing—the “navigating the hyperplane” puzzle in BOSH is eerily close to an idea I built for Scroll Thief but never ended up using, and I loved that a lot.
In Killings in Wasacona, I really liked the map to navigate between the locations, instead of just a list of options. It made it feel like an actual city with actual geography, which is something I often struggle with when playing choice-based things (where I’m not being forced to build a mental map like in standard parser games).
In Redjackets, I liked how the narration changed when you were starved for blood (“feral”).
The infinite hyperplane with the funky coordinate system is one of the first things I ever built in Inform, about 2.5 years ago. I was consumed with seeing if I could push the limits. Now I kind of wish I had cut it and let players get to the meat of the game sooner!
Slightly off-topic, but I think it would be a perfect puzzle if the first step figuring out what LOVE means was removed. Figuring out the rest is great.
Of course, I also designed a puzzle where you have to figure out numbers in balanced ternary to navigate using spherical coordinates through an infinite hyperplane, so I’m biased.
Back on-topic, I’ve just started Hildy, but I laughed out loud at how this moment uses the standard Inform parser responses to make the humor land. It’s much funnier this way than if X OUTFIT gave a single coherent description.
The noogle spell (dress the target in an outfit perfect for his or her personality).
> remove towel
(first closing the room door)
You take off the fluffy pink towel.
> noogle me
POOF! You are surrounded by a cloud of pink smoke. When it dissipates, you find that you are wearing the perfect outfit!
> x outfit
Which do you mean, the orange high tops, the yellow leggings, the pink shorts or the oversized T-shirt?
The Curse - Add this to my list of “paranoid gameplay moments”. Not enough was said about the ending. I was convinced that the character rescued in the pyramid was going to turn out to be Shamir in disguise, and we essentially helped release him into the world at large. I remember feeling deeply distrustful of her and thinking that by uncritically helping her, I was falling into a narrative trap. That seems not to be the case, but I would’ve liked to hear more about how players experienced that. I think there was not much discussion of the endgame because (1) so few people played the game due to its less accessible format and (2) it was difficult to get to the end within two hours.
Garbage of the Future - Because people were so intent on criticizing the user interface and click through game mechanics, I thought that there wasn’t a proportionate discussion of the atmosphere and sensory experience of pollution that oozes through the game’s description, and the thematic quality of complicity in that pollution. This game feels really rich and interesting to me in a way that the collective granular dissection of its menus etc. doesn’t adequately encompass.
The Quest for the Teacup of Minor Sentimental Value - Actual, Literal Satan’s adorable house tour, of course. When is he finally going to admit his True Feelings™ that he just stole the teacup to get my attention and didn’t know how else to talk to me? Should’ve been the Best Ending, honestly.
The Master’s Lair as the dark mirror version of An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There. It’s essentially, what if the master of the magic house was a cool person vs. a toxic and abusive person. Both games even have you make some really questionable recipes! These two games, along with Forbidden Lore, feel like they could be productively discussed as a set for how they modulate on the theme of a magical person’s inner sanctum.
Not enough has been said about the abundance of biscuits (in the British sense) across several games, though perhaps too much was said about the abundance of biscuits (in the q̵̢̠́ẋ̷̲̼͂̆w̶̡̟͆͆̕q̵̠͕͍͂̏͆́ṿ̵̤̗̗̒p̶͔̽z sense) across Verses. That poor collie in Miss Gosling must have suffered quite the stomachache thanks to my loathsome stewardship of their behavior.
(I could probably think of more of these but maybe it’s best just to stop now before I just end up re-summarizing my responses )
In Cognomen, feeling horror and dread as it seemed more and more likely that Poe had made a deal with the devil, and then immense relief when it became clear it wasn’t him after all!
In Forbidden Lore, finding the spell that let me travel to the moon.
The UI change if you buy into the idea that you’re actually a child pretending in A Death in Hyperspace.
I’ll play! Here at the end of comp, am calling anything in ORANGE “underrated”, here’s my standout moments:
Yancy at the End of the World: I found the entire implementation of the toxic Mom storyline crushing and sublime.
Redjackets: buried in the middle of this is a romantic back and forth of really excellent writing
Death in Hyperspace: encountering the realtime 30min clock was maybe the biggest charge of the comp, and my most engaged moment
String Theory: I found the understated gap between protagonist and father so subtly played that the realization of it after the end of the game hit like gangbusters.
No specific moments, but I found both Unreal People and Lost Artist: the Prologue to have delightfully fun and distinctive authorial voices.
Also no moments to quote, just surprised Winter-Over was “underrated” It is one of the COMP highlights for me! Ditto Under the Cognomen…
Under the Cognomen… is both long and fairly cerebral, so I’m not surprised that it has fewer reviews. I suspect that when the rankings come out it will not be under-appreciated at all!
(Winter-Over is either a victim of the randomizer and/or the fact that it’s in a common and recently over-represented-in-IFComp genre. I’m glad you feel it’s a highlight! The content of the reviews we’ve gotten, from both you and the rest of the field, certainly don’t make me feel it’s under-appreciated regardless.)
More on-topic, piecing together what was going on in the early parts of 198Brew was sublime. I really enjoyed the setting and how thoroughly the worldbuilding was baked into the story and the puzzles. Definitely going to keep my eye on other games by this author.
Somehow the thing that really tickled me about Rod McSchlong is the accurate Irish-language orthography of the dong-punching leprechaun’s name. Like, okay, we’re trading in silliness and a moderate amount of stereotype here, but we don’t have to be lazy about it.
The comic convention Superman bit is pretty great too.
And I suspect that I can count on Mr. Belyle’s support in this and related matters.
(To add something substantive, I’ll mention another underrated moment. From A Very Strong Gland (puzzle spoilers) realizing that you need to use the “red” power on something that isn’t red! That’s a super satisfying moment that I think should get more credit! )
No specific moments, but I found both Unreal People and Lost Artist: the Prologue to have delightfully fun and distinctive authorial voices.
Now that the results are out, I’d agree that The Lost Artist: Prologue is underrated. It’s incomplete, but that’s not really different from other short games that are light on plot.
A small moment in a less-talked-about game Final Call: Finding a code carved into the roof of the mouth of a corpse. This will haunt me to the end of my days.
I was delighted by a tiny detail in the prologue of Hildy: the fact that your character automatically closes her dorm room door if you have her undress without having done so. The vast majority of implementers would have overlooked this, and that was when I knew had I a thoroughly polished experience ahead of me. And then much later in the game, Hildy’s modesty actually became relevant to a puzzle!
The flash of insight in Hildy's endgame. It brings the story around full circle with added impact.
The realisation was strengthened a moment later, when I remembered that Yes, Another Game With a Dragon also delighted me with this structure, and the two experiences elevated one another.
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