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cobaltnineMy note-taking for this comp - my first comp to really try to do each game - has changed over the week. I have a long steno pad, half of which is taken up by map and half of which is now notes. Originally it was mostly map, because that's how I tend to play IF. I'd really not played much in a while, and I forgot how much random stuff I need to write down during the course of a game.
That being said, let's look at 'Berrost's Challenge' and look at the first thing I wrote down:
'grammar eh'
'Grammar eh' was only the beginning. The second thing is 'manna.' Are we keeping track of my divine food? No. The supernatural power/life-force concept is a Polynesian word common in many Oceanic languages. It's got one 'n'. It's got one 'n' in every goddamn discussion of magic and culture I dragged my ass through in grad school for anthropology. So. Yeah.
That being said: what the fuck are we keeping track of here? Power (for spells, presumably,) and then my score, my concentration, my hunger, my sleep, my weight, my bulkiness, and my impatience.
Oh, no? I have to keep track of my own impatience? But you've outlined the map for me. That's...strange. I've never seen that before. The about file almost tells me too much. I don't necessarily want to know the game mechanics - there's a d100 involved, etc - unless I'm planning on developing another similar game. Additionally, telling me I shouldn't even be using my magic for a full score seems unnecessarily complex - why add all this concentration/mana and spell-casting knowledge if I'm dissuaded from using it?
Despite this, and despite the game's reach at keeping track of far too many variables (nice touch, dropping my score for saying Fuck You to hunger/sleep; I'm glad I saved before I toggled that irreversible switch), I feel like I'm playing an old game. The spelling does it, as does the theme. If someone told me this was a very, very large and detailed game released in the early 1990s, I'd believe them. In fact, it feels very much like someone's Dungeons and Dragons game that got implemented as IF. It sort-of works. It sort-of feels like a chore, though. It's not terrible - no errors, objects are implemented - but it's repetitive.
I dragged myself to start it last night, felt but wasn't hung-over and quit, and restarted today. Will I continue this save game, especially as it's on the laptop versus the main computer? That's a big maybe.
Suggestions:
Give me two goals instead of five, and make each more complex. That seems like it might be a hard fix, and surely one review isn't going to make you re-write a significant portion there, but despite the familiar (overused?) premise, there's a decent game here if it were tightened up. A beta just for spelling/sentence construction would be nice. Also, an in-context hint that one could return to one location to retrieve more of a certain resource would have been good - I wouldn't have thought it possible, and I didn't like having to find it in the walkthrough.
Hunger is a bitch. I hate hunger and sleep. Now, if the game only had me finding two objects instead of five, you might be able to realistically only make me solve the hunger problem once, which is fine by me. Make me create some sort of Wizard Student PowerBar, but only make me do it once. You're in a fantasy world; you have leeway to do things like this. Realism is boring, which is one of the reasons I voted that stupid I-work-in-IT game down.
Final Score: 6. Yes, even with the complaining. It wasn't broken, and I'm not too burnt out on fantasy personally. I know other people are. I solved some of the puzzles and I felt decent after solving them. It won't flex up, though; I see too many flaws to punch it into repeat territory.
That being said, let's look at 'Berrost's Challenge' and look at the first thing I wrote down:
'grammar eh'
'Grammar eh' was only the beginning. The second thing is 'manna.' Are we keeping track of my divine food? No. The supernatural power/life-force concept is a Polynesian word common in many Oceanic languages. It's got one 'n'. It's got one 'n' in every goddamn discussion of magic and culture I dragged my ass through in grad school for anthropology. So. Yeah.
That being said: what the fuck are we keeping track of here? Power (for spells, presumably,) and then my score, my concentration, my hunger, my sleep, my weight, my bulkiness, and my impatience.
Oh, no? I have to keep track of my own impatience? But you've outlined the map for me. That's...strange. I've never seen that before. The about file almost tells me too much. I don't necessarily want to know the game mechanics - there's a d100 involved, etc - unless I'm planning on developing another similar game. Additionally, telling me I shouldn't even be using my magic for a full score seems unnecessarily complex - why add all this concentration/mana and spell-casting knowledge if I'm dissuaded from using it?
Despite this, and despite the game's reach at keeping track of far too many variables (nice touch, dropping my score for saying Fuck You to hunger/sleep; I'm glad I saved before I toggled that irreversible switch), I feel like I'm playing an old game. The spelling does it, as does the theme. If someone told me this was a very, very large and detailed game released in the early 1990s, I'd believe them. In fact, it feels very much like someone's Dungeons and Dragons game that got implemented as IF. It sort-of works. It sort-of feels like a chore, though. It's not terrible - no errors, objects are implemented - but it's repetitive.
I dragged myself to start it last night, felt but wasn't hung-over and quit, and restarted today. Will I continue this save game, especially as it's on the laptop versus the main computer? That's a big maybe.
Suggestions:
Give me two goals instead of five, and make each more complex. That seems like it might be a hard fix, and surely one review isn't going to make you re-write a significant portion there, but despite the familiar (overused?) premise, there's a decent game here if it were tightened up. A beta just for spelling/sentence construction would be nice. Also, an in-context hint that one could return to one location to retrieve more of a certain resource would have been good - I wouldn't have thought it possible, and I didn't like having to find it in the walkthrough.
Hunger is a bitch. I hate hunger and sleep. Now, if the game only had me finding two objects instead of five, you might be able to realistically only make me solve the hunger problem once, which is fine by me. Make me create some sort of Wizard Student PowerBar, but only make me do it once. You're in a fantasy world; you have leeway to do things like this. Realism is boring, which is one of the reasons I voted that stupid I-work-in-IT game down.
Final Score: 6. Yes, even with the complaining. It wasn't broken, and I'm not too burnt out on fantasy personally. I know other people are. I solved some of the puzzles and I felt decent after solving them. It won't flex up, though; I see too many flaws to punch it into repeat territory.
