Made a start on playing through the games. I’m aiming to - fingers crossed! - play them all before the ribbons deadline.
I’m pretty much lurching at them at random / what grabs me as I scroll through the list. So this is pretty much in any order.
Tonight I managed to play 5 games. Very positive first impressions.
Here are my first thoughts, with more to follow re other things on another day.
The Empty Chamber - nice whodunnit, which I couldn’t solve, but had enormous fun playing. Generally worked well, though some bits were under implemented. But yes, fun.
Writing Program Five - liked the premise, but I think I got rather stuck trying to uncover what was going on. I liked hacking into the underlying DOS-like interface, but never quite worked out what to do beyond that.
The Ballroom - liked this a lot, though I think like at least one other player it wasn’t what I expected. I thought changing things would subtly change the story, but it morphed vastly more than I anticipated! At the end - I think the end - I got to a bit with no more changeable options. Which felt like an ending, and a good one.
Porter Cave Adventure - ok this was a course project, and written as such, but I found it fun. Could have done with more implementation in places, but as a retro-style game - especially going back to Adventure / Zork era - it was fitting. Slight, but nice.
The Missing Ring - this is my favourite so far. I rattled through it at speed in about 25 minutes, skim reading a lot of the text, but very engrossed in it. To an extent playing was a process of rattling through lots of clickable sections in sequence, but I felt engaged, delighted by the story, and intrigued by the whodunnit. I didn’t solve the ending properly, but liked the ending as handled. All the characters felt unique and individual, with motives etc. Very well crafted.