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cobaltnineChunky Blues, subtitle: A Triumph of the Human Spirit, is a Glulxe game written by Scott Hammack and Jessamin Yu.
I played until I got to an obvious end-point, about 1.5 hours, not entirely continuously.
What could be a straightforward detective game is made interesting by the development of a few new verbs. It's an interesting way of making the protagonist's internal thought processes an active and able to be manipulated by the player. Once I got the hang of it - and figured out that the counter in the upper right was for the short term and long term memories I could hold on to - it was kind of fun to play with.
That being said, I did get temporarily stuck in a few places because the nature of the game does not permit much progression without the right memories or connections. I was stuck in the same way as a person without the right key, or puzzle, but the puzzles didn't require much in the way of objects.
I did manage to elicit a few unusual responses that might be language based (Trying 'o' for out told me at one point 'that cannot be corrected') and there's one significant instance that bothered me - 'you can't see any way to open that door' doesn't seem to restrict me from going in that direction anyhow.
Tone and settting were a bit uneven. Some parts worked well for a noir-esque setting, such as the actual places described, but others seemed odd. The protagonist is told he owes more in rent than seems conceivable in a world with ten-cent paperbacks. A direct reference to an old McDonald's slogan seems incongruous in the burger shop. Additionally, I'm not sure at this point if time plays any role, and if it really matters in the game, but it bothered me to have a bookstore open at the wee hours of the morning; if it *does* affect what areas are open at various hours in a full version of the game, that would be realistic from a story-telling perspective and lead to some challenges from a game-play perspective (For instance, perhaps the club isn't open until 6pm, but the bookstore closes at 7pm...)
Overall, I really like the memory inventory idea, but the ideas still seem rough at this point, like all the bits that sounded good are all still in there, but they need to be reduced for the game to find itself. Sometimes a joke or a scene or an NPC just won't fit - don't wedge it in, but copy and paste it into a file of 'good ideas' and let it find its real home in another piece somewhere along the line. As for memory - well, I think this has the potential to lead to a good few, different, endgames existing and that's one of my favorite things on IF.
Score: Good core, needs editing/firming up to be done after the planned expansion.
I played until I got to an obvious end-point, about 1.5 hours, not entirely continuously.
What could be a straightforward detective game is made interesting by the development of a few new verbs. It's an interesting way of making the protagonist's internal thought processes an active and able to be manipulated by the player. Once I got the hang of it - and figured out that the counter in the upper right was for the short term and long term memories I could hold on to - it was kind of fun to play with.
That being said, I did get temporarily stuck in a few places because the nature of the game does not permit much progression without the right memories or connections. I was stuck in the same way as a person without the right key, or puzzle, but the puzzles didn't require much in the way of objects.
I did manage to elicit a few unusual responses that might be language based (Trying 'o' for out told me at one point 'that cannot be corrected') and there's one significant instance that bothered me - 'you can't see any way to open that door' doesn't seem to restrict me from going in that direction anyhow.
Tone and settting were a bit uneven. Some parts worked well for a noir-esque setting, such as the actual places described, but others seemed odd. The protagonist is told he owes more in rent than seems conceivable in a world with ten-cent paperbacks. A direct reference to an old McDonald's slogan seems incongruous in the burger shop. Additionally, I'm not sure at this point if time plays any role, and if it really matters in the game, but it bothered me to have a bookstore open at the wee hours of the morning; if it *does* affect what areas are open at various hours in a full version of the game, that would be realistic from a story-telling perspective and lead to some challenges from a game-play perspective (For instance, perhaps the club isn't open until 6pm, but the bookstore closes at 7pm...)
Overall, I really like the memory inventory idea, but the ideas still seem rough at this point, like all the bits that sounded good are all still in there, but they need to be reduced for the game to find itself. Sometimes a joke or a scene or an NPC just won't fit - don't wedge it in, but copy and paste it into a file of 'good ideas' and let it find its real home in another piece somewhere along the line. As for memory - well, I think this has the potential to lead to a good few, different, endgames existing and that's one of my favorite things on IF.
Score: Good core, needs editing/firming up to be done after the planned expansion.
