IFComp 2008 - The Ngah Angah School of Forbidden Wisdom

[cobaltnine]

If you haven't realized it by now, yes, all of these reviews have spoilers. If I didn't think they did, I'd not cut-tag them, but it seems that a lot of reviewers are doing what I am: playing game and then looking at other people's already written reviews of the game. So, on we go.



I'm going to retitle this one The Cut'n'paste School of IntroComp.

I didn't read half the text and I got into this weird mental block where I kept thinking there were five guards. There are six guards, of course, which might have saved me some swearing. People who get the game to play (not Mac users, apparently) seem to be praising the puzzles. The final one was totally straightforward to me, while the first one, while really simple (as soon as I realized Guard #6 had gone out for coffee tea with rancid yak butter in my mind), relies on a graphic.

Gemma Bristow's review questions the necessity of graphics in IF; while it does hearken back to the old days of gaming with feelies, it isn't the best for accessibility and it relies on matching a description to a picture. In this case, I could make an argument that at least three of the symbols could resemble bow-and-arrow setups.

Let's mention the last bit, too:

"Now, take me by the hand", she says smiling, not seeming to mind the tiger at all.

> hold hand
[Invalid command. Please rephrase, or try something different.]

> hold diridu's hand
[The word 'diridu's' isn't recognised in this story.]

> take hand
[Invalid command. Please rephrase, or try something different.]

> touch diridu
She replies by flashing you a smile.

> grab hand
[Invalid command. Please rephrase, or try something different.]

> hold diridu
That's not possible.

> take her by the hand
You take her by the hand and tl;dr

Good! Because if I see 'isn't recognized' or 'invalid command' one more time, I'm going to think I'm an bed-ridden amnesiac land-holder.

Final Score: 4. It's a bit broken, there isn't much implemented (please implement some responses to scenery), but it isn't that broken from my point of view, the puzzles are perfectly fair and appropriately complex (they could get more complex as one goes along in, say, a longer game), and, frankly, it's a refreshing setting.

Comments

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

I went through a similar set of variations on 'take hand' in the endgame, before realizing that the game wanted me to type the exact syntax it had given. I suppose there's a use for this deliberate, clued 'guess the verb' in that it can prompt the player to try commands unusual in IF, but of course the game should also support common equivalents where possible.

(Gemma Bristow - thanks for reading my review!)

[imrihamun.livejournal.com]

I think what bothered me the most about it was that the lack of other implementation felt unnatural. There's natural for speech, and then there's natural for IF. When I come across games that don't implement what might be thought of as 'natural [for IF] verbs', I feel like that author doesn't really play much IF and isn't quite speaking my language.

Between this and the graphical alphabet, the game didn't feel like it was trying to get me to think different; I felt as if I was being led somewhere instead.

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