Okay, I love that.
2 Likes
Forsaken Denizen by C.E.J. Pacian
Playtime: 1 hour 56 minutes (to main ending)
The one with: a post-apocalyptic urban setting and a crack-shot PC
Probably the most video-game inflected of the games Iâve played so far. This is not my genre, but I definitely saw some shooter elements. To start: we shoot a lot. Also: ammo is limited but available by searching the map, limited save points, inventory restrictions (and the game tracks what you have in each hand separately), power-ups via special ammo, thereâs patrolling mobs (here meaning NPCs that move around and can be attacked) that sometimes chase you, the PC can lose health but can get it back through power-ups. Another video game element is the sort of cinematic area descriptionsâthe creepy giant tree sucking energy out of the city I could definitely picture in concept art somewhere.
I also really liked that Dor gets different bonuses from wearing different outfits, which was a fun bit of self-expression and also practical.
(Sad note that, as often seems to happen to me, the transcript got messed up [because I used save and restore?] so Iâm mostly relying on my memory here).
The game makes very good use of the shooter-elements I mentioned above. The PC is enjoyably competent, we explore the map for resources and figure out how to unlock areas. The game does a really good job keeping players âon the railsâ by providing hints through the error messages and through conversation with the hologram if you need it. And I LOVE the choice to display, right there in the inventory, the intended command that works with each item in your inventory. Really reduced guess-the-verbing.
In general the game is tuned relatively easy, which I think helps create a kinetic feeling with forward momentum. It takes some effort to die and the provided resources are generous. Although thereâs a decent number of mobs, most are skippable (in that as long as you keep walking they donât catch up to you).
I did use the walkthrough in the end sequence. This was probably a somewhat less than idea experience, but I really wanted to finish within 2 hours. (I think finishing on my own was possible, but would have required more âlook at this place I have been before and consider what is differentâ than I had patience for in the moment.)
The IF structure is interesting in that thereâs a distinct narrator (Cath) who is different than the PC (Dor). (At the beginning I thought maybe Cath was haunting Dor, but actually it seems like she can just see her all the time. If the mechanism for that was explained, I missed it.) This provides some interesting narrative benefitsâfor example, Cath has an entertaining narrative voice which we get to enjoy, although from what we see (and filtered through the fact that Dor is trying to act on, err, my ideas) Dor is a bit more straightforward. I enjoyed Dor and Cath both as characters, and they had a cute-and-decidedly-untreacley romance. (Also this didnât fit anywhere else but huge fan of the name âAlizarine Road,â using a banger word I have only heard in the context of paint.)
The plot feels of-the-moment, with a lot of âcritique of late-stage capitalismâ elements. The apocalypse is the result of creditors trying to recoup their investment from collateralized assets (i.e., the entire planet and populace??) Thereâs a lot of discussion of jobs that require people to expose themselves to shadow corruption, the main way presented to resist all of this is to . . . connect with a different corporation.
I had a very good time with this, itâs just really well executed, a solid chunk of entertainment. Probably my favorite scene is the slapstick âwait for the elevator in this extremely dangerous placeâ sequenceâI could hear in my head the âdingâ sound effect that would accompany the elevator finally arriving in a movie.
Two miscellaneous thought that are not really pluses or minuses:
(a) at one point I became convinced I had softlocked myself (pretty sure I was wrong based on something I realized later) and replayed about 20 minutes of the game, so it would probably take most people less time. This was when it wonât let you go up the elevator without a silver bullet, which I was out of because I shot the Viscount, but I also missed a room elsewhere. That silver bullet, by the way, is of course TRANSPARENTLY UNNECESSARYâ
(b) Based on other reviews, I think a lot of the expected value of this game is in the replaying. Thereâs not going to be a LOT of time for in the 2 hour window for anyone, and was none for me.
I also would have loved if the end-game point system was revealed earlier. I was mildly making efforts not to kill the mobs (I donât know what these things are! Are they . . . sentient? Did they used to be people? Iâm sure gonna feel bad if I find a way to fix them later but instead I killed a bunch just because the game gave me a gun!) so I felt vaguely annoyed at the end when that was a scoring penalty. Although if I had time to replay presumably I wouldnât have cared.
A few things I would have liked to see explored more:
- I would have been interested in seeing more exploration of the narrator / PC dichotomy. Conceptually, thereâs something interesting going on in the mix of who among me / Cath / Dor is âresponsibleâ for Dor doing things. For example, I recall at least one point where each *vetoed* the playerâs instructions (as I recall, if you try the command âreload gunâ or something similar, Cath will effectively refuse to pass that along, telling you that Dor knows more about guns; and as I recall I once tried to take a nice-to-Cath conversational option, which the game didnât object to, but Dor blew on past and said something else).
-
Itâs fine as is, but I would have loved if there were plot elements that put Dor and Cath in opposition or made the player decide if Dor was going to support Cathâs ideas or not, if there was a plot-relevant instance of Dor rejecting player input, etc.
-
I wouldnât have minded more lore or interaction with the NPCs, who were fascinating. (Maybe some of this is in the re-plays?). Can I introduce Saint and Zras and see how they get along? Are these people Iâm killing mutant versions of Cathâs relatives? Etc.
-
This is perhaps related to the fact that I felt pretty rushed at the ending and was in the walkthrough. But some of the ending seemed to come out of nowhere / not build in a satisfying way on the prior gameplay. (I take it there was some desire to give like a âwe need support networks to thriveâ message, but I think that could be accomplished in a way that felt more like it build on earlier parts).
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
I am on my knees begging for more of a description than: â(A text-only survival horror.)â
I will say I also agree with those who felt that âsurvival horrorâ is not quite the genre. Again, this is not my wheelhouse but when I think of a survival horror game Iâm expecting something more like a soulslikeETA: I wasnât familiar with any specific meaning of âsurvival horrorâ going in, but those words made me expect an experience where I would feel the PCâs life is constantly in danger and itâs difficult to keep them alive. This felt more like a horror shooter where the PC is OP relative to the mobs and the environment, and it wasnât particularly hard to survive. But perhaps Iâm misunderstanding the genre.
Overall, a gleamingly executed, wild action ride featuring two entertaining characters
6 Likes
Yeah, anecdotally the internet agrees with that a soulslike is not survival horror 
Iâve talked about this genre in other topics (Forsaken Denizen - #15 by severedhand and others) and being an old survival horror head, I admit itâs hard to guess how people interpret the survival horror label these days if they werenât around, or at least into the games at some point, that were characterised by that label as almost a brand before both that style and the brand name fell out of mainstream popularity.
In a sense, itâs the qualities of the games that possessed that brand originally that define âsurvival horrorâ rather than either of the meanings of the words in the brand label. I tested Forbidden Denizen (EDITâ FORSAKEN Denizen! Iâve been doing this ever since I met the game, typing Forbidden instead of Forsaken 
I assume because of Forbidden Siren) and it is laced with both broad and specific (i.e. sometimes quoting) elements from those original generation survival horror games. Thatâs why its tagline makes good sense.
Most players during IFComp have been finding it skewing not-too-difficult, which is potentially the most at odds element with the genre as a whole, and certainly at odds with the ghost of the idea of the genre. Particularly for the folks who were never into it. But even if itâs unusual on this axis, there is that long and majority checklist of specific OG survival horror boxes it ticks that home it there. People who donât come from that survival horror history already like the game a lot now. You or they may find itâs one of those games that has something extra to offer by opening a window onto other games and histories.
-Wade
5 Likes
Yeah, it was interesting to read the other thread and learn more about the âsurvival horrorâ genre and some of the references.
I should probably have been more clear I certainly donât know enough about âsurvival horrorâ the video game genre to say what does or doesnât qualify as part of the genre.
When I read all 13 words in the blurb for the game, it didnât even ping me as referring to a specific grouping of video games. I was perplexed overall, but just based on what those words usually mean one of like the whole two predictions I came up with was âhmm, I guess it will be challenging to not die.â (And then I was surprised in the game when that wasnât the case.)
So when I was criticizing the blurb I was trying to say that it didnât work for me in terms of previewing what the game was like. Now that I know that âsurvival horrorâ also refers to a specific group of video games I suspect the blurb was likely was more helpful to people familiar with that genre!
2 Likes
todayâs theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games ft. a major character who dies (this is not a spoiler)
Deliquescence by Not-Only But-Also Riley
Playtime: 8 minutes (3 min to first ending)
The one with a: deathbed vigil
(Not tagging spoilers, itâs a very short game if you havenât played!)
Oof. This game tackles a heavy subjectâwatching something bad happen to a loved one. You can offer comfort in various ways but you canât change the outcome.
Thereâs a strong horror element, focusing on the visceral disturbingness of watching the human body fall apartâa âluminous beingâ (Iâm with Yoda on this one thing) becoming a sack of malfunctioning proteins etc.:
Although, as that pull quote demonstrates, weâre maybe two ticks off from maximum body horror. There is a certain wateriness (as opposed to other bodily fluids) that makes things seem more sanitary than they might otherwise.
Thereâs also some, err, societal horror beats:
The game is bleak but not in a way that I found soul-destroying, if that makes sense. Your friend seems to have reached a point of grace, and your efforts will let you be present for her in a way that seems to be what sheâs asking for.
Nor did the topic feel gratuitous, it felt like itâs reflecting an essential truth: On the day my ticket gets punched I doubt it will be precisely this scenario, but decent odds it will be unpleasant, disgusting, and lonelier than Iâd like (quick, whereâs the âtell a jokeâ option? I need to bring up the mood of this review).
As others have noted, good design choice to contrast the length of the available options with the futility of the set-up (sure, you can make conversation on ten different topics, but itâs not going to change the endpoint). I noticed that at least some of the options have multiple possible responses. I will also say there is a lot I didnât try / wouldnât want to tryâat least for me, âfriendâs last 3 minutesâ is a scenario where Iâm not going to be trying things just to see what happens and thereâs a somewhat narrow range of things I want to do. So in that sense the authorâs effort in writing responses to a lot of options wasnât seen by me.
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
Big fan of the title.
Overall, this was definitely an experienceâa bite to chew and try to swallow despite the bitternessâand it stirred some thinking. That said it felt a bit short/stubby as an experience and wasnât quite a âgame."
5 Likes
Miss Goslingâs Last Case by Daniel M. Stelzer
Playtime: 1 hour 36 min
The one where: we solve a murder with a dog and a ghost gives us a house tour
- the many excellent quality of life features
This game has SO MANY thoughtful features that make it frictionless to play. I think this is really importantâit just signals to me that the author wants people to have an enjoyable time, and has thought through the play experience enough to figure out where the rough edges would be.
- automatic transcripting!! we live to see it
- the option at every moment to use either a parser OR choice-based interface (I mostly typed because thatâs faster for me, but seeing the choices helped me focus on key items and avoid verb guessing)
- a âgo toâ command . . . yess
- AND typing the name of an item tells you where you last saw it, for when you realize 20 minutes (or a day) later that you actually need the x
- a map!
- love me an implemented âthinkâ command
- nicely progressive clues (I needed a few nudges, letâs see, for me the smoke alarmâI was way off on this one. Two things that might have helped me in-game: (1) putting the smoke detector in the description for the dining room (I donât think itâs mentioned until it goes off?), or (2) cluing how the upstairs cops react to other noises. Because they had no reaction when Watson barked outside the door, I thought maybe the doors were supposed to be so good that they couldnât hear anything? This is ultimately on me since itâs eminently solvable from the viewpoint of âwhy is the stove hereâ. Also opening the pill box)
The tutorialâneutral-warm feelings from me. Love the concept, but in practice I just kind of skimmed my eyes over it since it was interspersed with responses to what I wanted to do. But Iâm sure some need it and it didnât detract from my experience.
I will say I very much admired this type of explanation, which is completely clear and helps the player generalize for the future:
- characters and puzzles
One of my favorite elements was that weâre basically getting a posthumous tour of the house delivered by Miss Gosling. Itâs in her character voice and just a very entertaining way of conveying her personality:
There are various amusing knickknacks in the house but not an annoyingly large amount. The game is also full of fun easter eggs and descriptive notes:
(me: Iâm impressed Watson can read! [OK, another thought, it was unclear to me what senses Watson uses to perceive Miss Gosling. He can hear or see her, right? And she can hear and see the house? I spent a while during the cellar puzzle puzzling over whether Miss Gosling could just haunt at the door and yell for Watson. Or in the garden, she seems to be seeing what Watson sees, through his eyes? Anyhow this is not important.])
I was also a big fan of the basic structure of 4 self-contained puzzles plus an endgame. It gives the player a clear sense of what is available for them to work on. The puzzles did a good job getting me in a doggy mentality and I liked how they were relatively different from each otherâone focusing on eyesight, one on jumping, etc. (Those two I listed were also my favorites). And I liked anything involving a dumbwaiter, and how the tape recorder had multiple uses.
This is a quibble but I kind of expected there to be some kind of revelatory moment at the beginning where Miss Gosling tests and confirms that Watson can hear (and see??) her, but if there was I missed it.
- plot hooks?
I think it might have been more engaging if it came with a few more plot hooks? This is a strange complaint to haveâinvestigating oneâs own murder seems inherently compelling. But there were a few things about the set-up that were vague or off-screen in a way that I think made it feel slightly less . . . motivated than it could have felt.
- Miss Gosling comes across a bit quiescent, seemingly having 0 leads on who killed her until the police name 4 suspects. When hearing the police suspects, she reacts a bit, but it wasnât clear to me if that was like âI am confident none of these did it, and thus I must find the real killerâ or if that was âhmmm, I guess I should investigate them all to make sure, although I donât think any of them did it,â which felt slightly like I didnât know why I was taking the rest of the steps. Itâs especially mystifying since we find out at the end that she suspects the Inspector for reasons that would have been equally apparent to her at the beginning, so I guess she was just not mentioning that where the player could hear? This passive feeling from her didnât match what I understood to be her general firecracker personality.
Iâm not sure if thereâs a feeling that the player will want to be more in the driversâ seat (or try to solve along? But the game doesnât really present clues that would let the player solve).
I just wonder if it would have felt a bit more cohesive if Miss Gosling had come out at the beginning and directly thought something to convey to the player that she wanted to clear the names of the 4 suspects, since she was sure they were innocent but didnât trust the police, and also that she had some ideas about the real suspect that she would get to later. Just to lay her goals on the table for the player.
It also might have helped if a reason had been provided why waiting for the police isnât enough. For the majority of the game the player is turning up evidence that the police could presumably retrieve themselvesâprobably more easily since they have opposable thumbs! So I kept wondering why I had to get Watson to do it. In the end there is a good reason but thatâs not something thatâs conveyed to the player at the beginning. I would have taken pretty much any reason, teh narration could have just told me she was such a busybody she couldnât rest until she saw it done herself or something!
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
I like how clearly the blurb establishes Miss Goslingâs character voice.
Miss-Gosling-s-Last-Case wolfbiter - Copy.txt (261.0 KB)
Overall, a delightful crime-solving romp with a canine assistant
Gameplay tips / typos
- This didnât bother me, although I was confused momentarily, but note the descriptions for the dumbwaiter use the British convention where the first floor is the one above the ground floor (in american usage generally the first floor and ground floor are synonymous, and the one above that is the second floor).
5 Likes
Thank you so much for the review, and Iâm glad you enjoyed the game! You raise a very good point about the narration on the suspects, and Iâll see about adjusting that after the comp!
The intended reason why Watson has to do everything is someone has sabotaged the investigation (Phillips is spending hours searching for keys that donât exist anywhere in the house, Davis is overloaded with paperwork instead of going out and finding those roses, and everyone on the task force was specifically chosen to be lacking in creativity and initiative of their own) but in hindsight that could very much stand to be more explicit.
3 Likes
todayâs theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games ft. a group of offscreen NPCs hoping you succeed in your quest
Bad Beer by Vivienne Dunstan
Playtime: 19 minutes (17 minutes to first ending)
The one where: a pub owner asks us to fix a problem
Beer is a subject I know very little about, so I was initially worried when drafted to investigate a beer-related issue. (Lest you think the PC had subject-specific knowledge that I could draw on, they did not:
)
I enjoyed the game, it was well implemented and well conceived to its scale, I think. I appreciated how the entire present-time sequence is basically to teach you the layout of the building for the past-time sequence..
The settings had a good feeling of history / authenticity, I would believe the pub was based on a real place.
It contained basically one puzzle, but placed at an emotionally resonant place. Somewhat interestingly to me, in contrast to other time loopgames from the competition, you get finite tries in the past. (And I, errr needed one more than that, although thereâs a nice quality-of-life feature where the game offers you another try at the end.)
One thing I would have liked to see is more game-specific treatment of the range of things people might plausibly try in the past section. Particularly given that that section is short and geographically bounded, I think it would be possible to write custom responses, and I find it immersion breaking when the parser refuses to do things that the PC would clearly be willing to do in a life-or-death situation:
I was also invested enough in the characters and setting to want slightly more! As others noted, it would have been satisfying to get reactions from the pub characters at the end, since they asked us for help initially.
And this game had a somewhat literary feeling to itâmaybe because of that, I also wouldnât have minded getting a bit more shading in on the PC. (I guess to complete the literary feeling, I was wondering if they had thematically relevant backstory to the past sequence, or how that affected them.)
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
The blurb left me wondering if this was more like a brewpub simulator or more like a murder mystery. Actually, itâs neither of those, but I can see why some ambiguity is desired.
Overall, a short (maybe a hair too short?) game in a well-sketched and realistic-feeling setting, with an interesting puzzle
Bad Beer wolfbiter - Copy.txt (37.5 KB)
11 Likes
A Dream Of Silence: Act 3 by Abigail Corfman
Playtime: 1 hour 1 minute (31 minutes to first ending)
The one where: we join the cast of Baldurâs Gate 3
Recklessly, I played this game without playing BG3, although I had some familiarity with Astarion through cultural osmosis. (The Baldurâs Gate franchise is set in some kind of licensed D&D setting, which I have moderate familiarity with. Since it didnât fit anywhere else, I was moderately disappointed at the D&D integration in this gameâyou class yourself at the beginning [I took warlock] but as far as I could tell it didnât affect anything? I donât think I ever had the option to cast a spell.)
I also havenât played Acts 1 or 2, although I had seen some spoilers in reviews. The game was clearly prepared for this though, since you must either import a save or play a âsummarizedâ version. (I did the latter, it took 12 minutes of my playtime.)
I admit, I lowered my expectations based on the apparent gaps between me and the ideal player of this game. So I was surprised in a good way that I actually had a very good time and got super invested. (It helps that the mood is âdark, angsty, you might walk into a torture chamberâ which is exactly my jam. Itâs also a game of tradeoffs and least-bad options, and that is also my jam.)
- overall game structure and game mechanics
So, I really liked the overall structure, I thought it was creative and also very effective. Although, as Iâll explain below, I liked it the BEST on my first playthrough, and after subsequent playthroughs, perhaps a bit less.
Basically, the PC is a mandatory support character. Youâre not going to be the main driver of the plot or the interactions or the combatâAstarion is. And the player is playing a resource management game to decide how to deploy their limited actions to helpâideally at the key moments.
Now one, this is just pleasantly fresh and different. But two, it gives the potential to deliver pacing, plot beats, and character beats in a more intentional way than a lot of games, because Astarion is the one deciding where to go etc. (rather than the PC stumbling around for turns because they donât know the map or havenât figured out what to do.)
I played on the harder mode (Balanced) and it took me maybe 3-ish tries to get the normal-good ending.
At every point in the game, you have the choice between âwatchâ and âexplore.â Under âwatchâ you get the actual dialogue, and descriptions of what Astarion is doing with the other characters, and you can interject if you want. You can also go to âexplore,â where you can look at other things in the room and do some other useful things, but in exchange you just get general announcements âAstarion is still talking to Aureliaâ (not verbatim), etc.
I decided to spend the first playthrough purely watching. Now, partly this was because I didnât understand you could swap moment to moment (I thought maybe you would be stuck for the entire scene), but mostly it was because I wanted to see the plot and see what Astarion was going to do. I would highly recommend this from a story point of view (if you explore, youâre going to miss some of the plotline, which presumably is less engaging).
Now, it turns out that there are ways to restore your action points, and 90% of those are only accessible through âexplore,â which means that I also did my whole first playthrough with, err, 10 + 10 = 20, so TWENTY whole actions.
So my first playthrough I was extremely starved of actions. And honestly, I loved it. I was playing this really dark, really challenging game that strongly incentivized me to âwaitâ even when terrible things were happening, even when my companion was asking me for comfortâbut I was ignoring him because I might need that action point later! I think that was actually peak engagement for me in the gameâI was experiencing all of the emotions during the âthat was luckâ screen, partly because I just spent like five seconds deliberating if I should try to help or save myself, and I chose save myself and then felt guilty about it. (Although I think it would be pretty hard to win this wayâthere are rng elements so it may be possible, but I think safe to say it would be hard.)
So on my second playthrough I started using âexplore.â And let me tell you, there is definitely stuff there that will help you win! (Although can I register a complaint about the subquest to make a special dagger out of fangs, a dagger which is apparently totally useless if you didnât specialize in touching things, cough cough, because you canât give it to Astarion either? Semi-related, I think putting more focus on âtouchâ would make it quite a bit easier to win.). Also, you can regenerate your 10 action points basically once per scene. I actually found that a bit too much. Rarely are there 10 useful things to do with the points in a scene, so it basically means you donât have to ration your actions at all.
So overall, still engaging, although not meeting the peaks of my first playthrough. I do think it could have been tuned leaner on the point refills, which would have forced more hard choices
And I also have no ideas about how to fix the issue of people not being as engaged because they missed context using âexploreâ on their first playthrough, which does seem like a serious issue.
- story
I enjoyed the story. The plot is adjacent to one of my favorite plots of all time (revisiting connections with people you were close to during a difficult time and finding closure / not), in that we get to see a bunch of Astarionâs old (siblings? Roommates?) and how he relates to them.
I will say I think a bit more backstory would have helped me get more catharsis out of it. Presumably the BG3 players wouldnât need this, but I did. (For example, the scene where you have the option of influencing Astarion to help Violetânot really knowing her except as ârude but probably traumatized chick I met 5 seconds agoâ I didnât feel a lot about that choice). But, to compensate for the handicaps I felt this was imposing on me, I used the internet to look up the name of Leonâs daughter during play, so, err, take that.
There was also one scene (probably only accessible through specific choices) where the PC was asking Astarion for help, and that reversal gave me a real jolt.
I definitely didnât explore that much, but I had the feeling that this is a big, branchy game. I could see quite a bit of variation from where I was interfering, and I didnât even ever have the option to participate physically because of my build.
- misc
OK, batting clean-up on my notes here:
- the text effect on the shimmers is great
- the writing was solid throughout
- I was a bit thrown out of it by the initial warning screen, which I think I got because I took the âmy character keeps Astarion around because heâs usefulâ (not verbatim) option. It seemed like it was saying, donât play the game if youâthe playerâdonât like Astarion (presumably if the concern was that the PC had to like him, there would just not have been an option for that?). But also I didnât pick that option because actual-me doesnât like Astarion, I just thought that had the largest potential for fun drama. So I wasnât sure what to make of the warning. (And I mean, to play devilâs advocate, having played the game actually there is some content that a person who hated him might enjoy, but I digress.)
- after I was done I did peek in the walkthrough and it could probably be a bit more comprehensive . . .
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
This felt too small to ding, but I would have liked it if the blurb previewed that a lot of the plot involves Astarion going back and interacting with people from a dark part of his past (it covers what happened before the game starts [trapped in tomb] but doesnât really preview the plot you actaully get).
Overall, a pacey and adrenaline-inducing game with a particular focus on story. Also the story has beats of âI have been trapped here forever with these people, and weâre all terrible,â which is delicious.
6 Likes
Thanks for the review!
3 Likes
todayâs theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games with 4 word titles.
Breakfast in the Dolomites by Roberto Ceccarelli
Playtime: 38 minutes
The one where: we check into a hotel and eat breakfast there
One generally applicable comment:
This game ships with a 52-page user manual. I skimmed through it first thing, and so the first note I wrote down was observing that the PCâs girlfriend is âvery beautiful, but also shrewish when something doesnât go her way.â Intentionally setting out to write a âshrewishâ girlfriend is a lot of baggage for a game to intentionally to pick up.
OK, into the game proper. Itâs a bit of a rorschach test.
I played the whole game and came out thinking, hmm, fancy-hotel-breakfast but that parser sure was fiddly. Then I saw reviews taking the view that the game is in fact trying to generate humor from an overly fiddly / detailed implementation. This wasnât my immediate sense from playing it, but certainly thatâs an available reading and would make sense of the âscrewball comedyâ tag, which is otherwise a bit mysterious. I ruminated for a while but didnât reach clarity either way.
So, take your pick:
review of a game intending to be a straightforward vacation simulator
This game was written with a real love of thorough implementation. Many pockets, many containers, many food products. It had an authentic sense of one specific hotel.
I think it would benefit through from smoothing the implementation so players spend the most time focusing on whatever part of the experience the author thinks is most interesting / enjoyable. Maybe this is examining the delicious foods in the buffetâI doubt itâs looking around for a water glass while being criticized.
(I think choice-based simulators get a bit more leeway on thisâif they just include, as the only clickable link âlock the car,â that imposes very little friction on the player, and may increase immersion. Itâs a bit more annoying in a parser when you have to go back, fiddle around until you realize you need the car key, find the car key, lock the car, etc.)
By âsmoothing,â I mean adding automatic actions (e.g., instead of the player having to turn on several lights, they are turned on automatically), making an inventory list that actually shows what is in your pockets, going up a level of abstraction perhaps.
If thereâs a desire to include an NPC to prompt the player on what they should do, it would be less grating if they intejected with say, 1/5 the current frequency. Letâs not punish people for wanting to use their âturnsâ to examine the scenery etc!
review of a game intending to generate humor through fiddly parser implementation
Well, first of all, I would offer a caution. Itâs a high-risk move to think âaha, my gimmick will be [something that will deliberately torment the player].â As a player, I dislike being tormented! Thus the gimmick is going to have to be extremely successful, moving, etc. to make it worth it to me!
(And games are immersive, so itâs easy to create strong feelings of say, annoyance if the gimmick asks the player to clicking every letter in the phone book for 20 minutes.)
I think the other key things would be: (1) signal unmistakably what part is supposed to be funny, so the player feels like they are in on the joke, rather than the butt of the joke (starting clearly in the blurb), (2) maybe go more over the top in some regards to convey this? give the player an updating list of goals which at first appears simple (âcheck in at hotelâ âsleepâ âeat breakfastâ) but becomes increasingly detailed and expansive as the scope of the implementation becomes clear? Give a visible point system, but actually everyone ends up with a negative score because points get subtracted for everything? Etc.
In hindsight, the two scenes that were most effective as comedy for me were:
-
the bit where Mo takes my wallet out of my pants for me. (Possibly this only happens if youâre doing a really dire job finding your ID, which I was. It had not even occurred to me to search my pockets, given both that Iâm a woman irl and that nothing was listed there in my inventory. I was still trying to open the backpack I was carrying . . .)
-
The ending where (not verbatim) âeveryone in the hotel appears and claps for youââthis was a bit over-the-top as a response to eating breakfast and using a toilet, I could see it working even better if paired with say, a deceptively simple objectives list.
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
The blurb gives a detailed description of Mo and Francesco, it would have been nice if it also mentioned it as a hotel since we spend a lot of time there. And, it would also be useful to address in the blurb the âwhich part should be funnyâ question from above.
Overall, a persnickety breakfast experienceâIâm unsure if that was the point
Breakfast wolfbiter - Copy.txt (46.9 KB)
Gameplay tips / typos
- Mo keeps saying âon dearâ. . . is this a phrase I am unfamiliar with, or a typo for âoh dearâ?
7 Likes
Welcome to the Universe by Colton Olds
Playtime: 33 minutes (23 minutes to first ending)
The one thatâs: a whole-life simulator and a series of academic summaries intermixed
- the writing
The writing in the academic parts was pitch-perfect, really nailing a sort of dry, high-jargon voice.
I had a love / less-than-love relationship with writing in the life simulator parts. It had a very appealing energy which perked me right up. When it was working it was really working (I liked the opening screen and the goop joke particularly.)
But there was also a sense of manicness, or swinging really hard at every sentence.
behind the cut because I feel bad being so nitpicky
Is âpanaceaâ the right word here? I read the sentence more to mean that the playground is a place where shower thoughts and pointless conversations flourish, not where they are cured.
I take it âcatch ardencyâ is âcatch fireâ zhushed up. At sunset a palm tree might appear like it was on fire, but I take it weâre talking about the middle of the day. So I guess the palm tree is literally catching fire because itâs so hot! A palm tree literally on fire from the heat is a sort of striking, post-apocalyptic image that I would expect to be emphasized in a sentence, but the way this is phrased actually buries it.
In line with the manic feel, the life simulator loves to offer dichotomous choices, which the game follows up by intensely hyping up whichever option you chose. (You still get the same vignettes in the same order, either way. The contrast between what you get on option A and option B was sometimes pretty funnyâon âI like good jokesâ you get an entire screed railing against clowns; on âI like bad jokesâ you get âHahaha! Clowns!â)
Some of the description could also be more specific:
- overall
I think that weâre later told the academic-guy wrote the life-simulator, which I found very hard to believe (the voice the life simulator is written in is consistent, not like someone was writing it across their entire life. And Iâm to believe someone with tenure wrote that survey?)
I think my biggest issue was a pervasive feeling of insincerity. At some level, the meta jokes and the âhaha look at what weâre doingâ is corrosive to the kind of true-ness that would make a âthis game sums up a human lifeâ ending land. (I mean, the first ending I got was literally a link to the tvtropes page âJoke Endingâ.)
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
The blurb conveyed very little to me, which was a missed opportunity for me to get in a receptive frame of mind.
Overall, invigorating writing and some interesting ideas, but too over-the-top and uneven to make an emotional connection with me
Gameplay tips / typos
- âMenthosâ should be âMentosâ
7 Likes
Thank you for playing my game and leaving the review.
This Is my first attempt and I have a lot to learn. These reviews help me a lot.
4 Likes
Itâs a strange word choice indeed, but the author self-identifies as an Italian âboomerâ so there are likely some cultural and language differences at play here. I expect from the context that a native speaker might have chosen a softer adjective like âimpatient.â
That 52-page beginnerâs manual is high-effort and I didnât pick up on any sideways glances towards the camera, so to speakâmy sense is that the game is earnest, but implemented in an ultra-high-detail style that defies the conventions of parser IF. I could be wrong, though!
4 Likes
I will address this topic more in the postmortem. I am a professional programmer, I started this game as an exercise to discover the potential of Inform 7; my aim was to create a model in which the player could move.
The game was passed on to friends who were completely unfamiliar with IF and so suitable instructions were needed, including the answer to the question: âWhat commands can I write?â
I entered the game in the competition hoping to gather opinions and suggestions, which came in and will help me develop something better.
3 Likes
Eikas by Lauren OâDonoghue
Playtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
The one where: we run a cozy community kitchen
Wow, this game really sucked me in. âIâll just play the opening,â I thought. âOh, let me put together one dinner.â Well, 1 hour 35 minutes later . . .
So, one confession is that I was playing with an unshakable confidence that I was not going to be fired. Perhaps I was gloriously deluding myselfâI saw some reviewers who thought there was a pass/fail cut-offâbut it was what it was.
This is not to say I was serving sloppy meals. But it does mean I was assembling meals based on my own exacting but idiosyncratic standards, and pretty much ignored the gameâs hints about how to maximize your score. (Which, I mean, the origin bonus is mildly puzzling. *I* know mujaddara has origins in the Levant, etc. but I donât think thereâs an in-game source of this knowledge? I assume because itâs awkward for the recipe game to state that chow mein is from China, thus implying China exists in-game? which I am now thinking about anyway . . . )
Iâm a big fan of the concept of a game themed around meals and community building. I wish this system existed where I lived! And there was enough background criticism of the council etc. that it didnât feel too fantastical.
The core game mechanic of preparing meals is abstracted in a way thatâs pretty forgiving (food keeps forever, planting seeds takes zero time, a lot of actions [selling snacks] also take no time). But, it still felt plenty engaging, perhaps because it required resource management and spreading out chains of actions across multiple in-game days. It was tuned pretty easy (I think at the beginning you could serve a dinner without buying anything, there seems to be time to âmax outâ all of your relationships and serve good meals). I donât think this is a problem, but on the last day or so I started running out of things to do with all of my slots, so it might have been nice to have a few more unnecessary-but-interesting bonus locations. (Although it did take me until the last meal to have all 3 of my friends come present.)
The relationships with the NPCs were satisfying. They each had not-easily-resolvable emotional issues which they nonetheless made progress on. I liked their general arcs, but wouldnât have minded if the progression was even a bit slower (sometimes it seemed they were finding insight too quickly). And I liked how each eventually unlocked a new foraged food.
Iâm not sure if I had a romance with an NPC or not. I wouldnât have minded a bit more foreshadowing / development about that, I had gotten purely platonic vibes from all of them so that line at the end was sort of a shock.
One NPC-related note I wouldnât have minded seeing that wasnât present was an answer to the question of what happened to the last chef. How do people in the community feel about them?
The writing was enjoyable / unobtrusive:
I saw a few repeats in the âhelpâ sequences but not very many (and I was doing at least one a day). The cooking-themed romance novel excerpt was also funny.
The UI had some great background colors, and I liked the way that actions which consumed time were clearly marked (and also the remaining time was clearly marked). Navigating required a lot of clickingâI think ideally there might have been a permanently visible bar allowing you to go with one-click to the greengrocer, the main village square, etc.
And this is very much not needed, but a really superlative feature would have been like a grocery list you could add recipes to and see what you still needed. I ended up making a spreadsheet so I could keep track of my shopping, especially for the first few meals where money was tighter. On a similar note, ideally the feats would still be viewable after you finish the game.
Somehow I failed to ever complete a quest from the noticeboard? I looked and saw one, and it kept telling me I didnât have the ingredients yet, and that persisted until the game was over. (In hindsight I guess I should have started buying extra ingredients from the market to see if I could find the mystery one? But I was confused because the quest text suggest the key ingredient was garlic, which we have in unlimited amounts, so no leads on what other ingredient it might have been.).
| Front matter | ||
|---|---|---|
| Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
I thought the blurb was really well done! I kind of expected the title to be explained at some point in the game though, which it was not.
Overall, a highly engaging and soothing chef simulator
7 Likes
Whew! Thatâs all I expect to post for this event.
(She said, 57 hours and 52 minutes of play time later.) Did I religiously track my play time just so I could present you with this factoid? Well, you have no proof. 
My friend was telling a story that involved walking by shipping containers on a dock, and I almost said âdid you try to push them,â so itâs probably time for me to rest my brain.
There were many great games this yearâthanks to all the authors and to all of the other reviewers! I hope I at least somewhat successfully conveyed this, but had a lot of fun with the games and hearing everyoneâs thoughts.
And of course feel free to keep stopping by if folks have more thoughts.
20 Likes
This one confused me for a bit too â I think they want Broccoli in Garlic Sauce.
I would have also loved a grocery list feature â I wound up making one myself too, which was fun, but it would have been even more fun to do it in the game!
6 Likes
Yeah, I mean, I enjoy making spreadsheets so this was sort of a âtwist my why donât youâ situation. But it might have been even sleeker in one window!
5 Likes
Congrats on finishing them all most! I am still catching up, but I am a fan of the format you chose for this review suite, including the bottom boilerplate which felt well considered. I always feel at least a little vindicated when I see others come to similar (and probably better expressed) conclusions. It is echoey in my brain, this helps convince me the outside world is real! 
I do recommend Under the Congnomen when you have some free timeâŚ
6 Likes