IFCOMP 2016 Reviews

I've been playing a few games from the 2016 Interactive Fiction Competition at random that have interesting cover art or concepts to me, and have written a few short reviews for 7 games out of the bunch. If I have time to play and review more, there will be a part 2 to this blog.. but I wanted to go ahead and get a few out.


*** SPOILERS BELOW! **

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*** Color the Truth by mathbrush ***

 This is a mystery game that looks like it will have a lot of conversation in it. After reading the ABOUT text, it looks like the gameplay system will be more complex than the old Infocom mystery games.

 Actually, at the very start the game throws out a handful of conversation topics and the system of choosing topics and "linking" them feels pretty smooth. Changing characters when an NPC gives a statement feels a little weird. I started to think perhaps just a wall-of-text would suffice for these events, but that would eliminate the possibility of throwing in a couple of puzzles here and there during the flashback.

 Repeating actions in the flashbacks can seem a bit annoying, but is nessasary for revealing new bits of the investigation. Pretty cool game.


*** Snake's Game by Nahian Nasir ***

 First "web" game of the bunch I tried. I'm partial to parser games, but I do really like a CYOA once in a while if the story is good. The story is definitely weird, but actually wasn't as weird or creepy as I was expecting. The choices seemed pretty linear. This one really isn't bad, but I didn't enjoy it all that much.


*** Ariadne in Aeaea by Victor Qjuel **

 This is a parser-driven game written in Inform7. It's a pretty amusing story, but none of the humor made me laugh out loud. I was hoping the topless ceremonial lady in the cover art was somehow depicted in the game, and she was! Old auntie. Nice.

 The environment of the game itself seems well-rounded. NPCs react different when you walk by in in different attire than you did previously and other features. I did end up glancing at the walkthrough probably a bit too more than I should have early on, so I can't really speak to the difficulty of the puzzles.. but for the most part they seemed fairly easy and not too obscure with exception to probably would have had a bit of back-tracking to do had I not skimmed the walkthrough early on. There perhaps could have been less rooms and more time spent on more parser understandings.. such as "herder" when referring to a "goatherder".


*** Riot  by Taylor Johnson ***

 Another CYOA game. This one got me interested in the beginning, but then I end up with the same complaints I have with many of these types of games. My choices seem either too linear, and at times I'm asked to make choices that I wonder if any sane being would do, like correcting a random strangers broken nose. I straightened a friends dislocated finger in RealLife when I was about 12 after making an impulse decision, but I was young and he was no stranger. I don't think it ever healed correctly either..

 I felt like this story was ok, but not great. I did get into it more than Snake's Game.


*** Toilet World - by Chet Rocketfrak ***

 This sounds promising. Though on closer examination, it's just a "joke" game. Whatever, let's give it a shot. I'm told I'm in this glorious world of toilets, surrounded by toilets. Cool. I think I got this.

> X TOILET
You can’t see any such thing.

 Oh hell nah. So, in short what we seem to have here is a "joke" game that's basically a few room descriptions filled with typos, no implementation of objects, nothing to really do. Or maybe I'm missing some grand game behind the scenes that I couldn't figure out how to throw the right parser commands at to unlock. Probably not however, considering there is no walkthrough included.

** Ventilator - by Peregrine Wade **

 Ha! Now this one has some humor to it, at least in the death messages. There's no walkthrough included either with this parser game, so I didn't expect it to be too long. The few puzzles are pretty abstract, but it didn't take me long to figure them out. The ending was kind of a head-scratcher, but I found this more fun than the web-based games so far.

*** Cactus Blue Motel - by Astrid Dalmady ***

 A web game with some cool-looking text upon starting up. You play a girl on a road-trip with two of your friends traveling across the desert until you come to a stop at a desolate hotel. The game has nice visuals, but oh man these choices. The actual path to the finish line seems like it's fairly linear, but I'm forced to re-ask various NPCs questions over and over again until new options pop up. The author perhaps should have made previously asked questions that you've already read responses for disappear. The story seemed kind of interesting but the gameplay system made it very difficult to enjoy.