By All Reasonable Knowledge
A game like By All Reasonable Knowledge makes me feel sad. The author has spent more than a little time with Inform 7 to create this game. And they put some thought and heart into it. The puzzles that I’ve seen work. And this is not just a ‘your dingy apartment’ game either, as flashes of backstory reveal that there is more going on and that what is going on is quite serious. I’m actually interested and would like to know where the story is going.
But it seems the author did not take the step of getting some testers to help out. That step is not optional; it is necessary. And it is even more necessary if you are just dipping your toes into Inform and parser games, and you do not yet know that (and why) it is a terrible idea to put the room description of the starting room in the opening text of the game rather than in the room description. Any tester would immediately have sounded the alarm when the ‘look’ command didn’t repeat the absolutely crucial information about what there is in the room. No testers, no alarm.
Testers might also have pointed out some of the many typos, or the fact that the hint system is completely broken – I have not been able to get a single hint out of it, and the same happened to B. J. Best. Since there is also no walkthrough, I was unable to proceed once I got stuck. It didn’t help that I ended up with no confidence that the game had been designed in a fair and winnable way. For all I know, one has to interact with objects that are not described anywhere. I’m not saying that you have to, but I’m saying that the state of the game makes this seem a distinct possibility, and this drains me of the willpower to proceed.
So, I end up a bit sad, and mostly I just want to say: look really well at these early reviews, perhaps enlist some testers now during the comp, and get a new version out as soon as possible!