IF Comp 2011: Keepsake

Impossible to discuss without spoilering:

IF Comp 2011: Beet the Devil

I might be running out of steam for how to evaluate puzzle games in my reviews. There are a lot of games this year!

IF Comp 2011: Escape from Santaland

A Christmas-themed puzzle game, this felt suitable for today, as it's snowing like a winter wonderland outside in October.

This is basically purely a puzzle exercise, but it's very user-friendly. I particularly liked that exits were flagged with where they lead after you passed through them once, making traveling around the area easy. The puzzle content is easily understandable when you encounter it, with key items queued by their descriptions. The puzzle was also rewarding in a not-too-easy, not-too-hard kind of way. Some people might find it too easy, really; I didn't have to resort to hints, and I feel like I do on many "hard puzzle" IFs.

I won't really spoil the puzzles at all, in case you'd like to try it, but I'd give it a recommendation if you're up for something lighthearted and newbie-friendly. It has kind of a fun, dry sarcasm in the writing and I didn't encounter bugs or problems while playing it.

IF Comp 2011: Cold Iron

This is an interactive fairy story, of sorts.

IF Comp 2011: PataNoir

I have time for one more today.  There sure are a lot of detective games in this year's comp! Yes, I know I'm not the first person to notice this.

IF Comp 2011: Awake the Mighty Dread

Now this was pretty cool, a sort of Steampunk fairy tale told from the eyes of a little girl who seems to be dreaming it.  I'll spoiler-cut the rest just in case.

If Comp 2011: Luster

This one is pretty underwhelming, but I played it for over an hour anyway.  It's kind of the opposite of Cana According to Micah.  I could tell that one was "good," but it wasn't really "fun," whereas I found this one sort of interesting, but it isn't actually good.

IF Comp 2011: Cana According to Micah

This is a well-done piece, a retelling of a Biblical story: specifically, the wedding where Jesus turns water to wine, but interactive.  The verb implementation is great, there's some nice NPC interaction, clear writing, and multiple paths to victory.

It didn't really grab me much, though, which I blame entirely on the theme. I confess I'm not much of a Bible scholar, and maybe if I was, I'd have gotten more out of it.  I leaned on the hints a lot while playing it, but almost purely out of laziness.  It can be a little confusing if multiple characters in the same room are named Mary, but, hey, it's the Bible, I guess that's just how it goes.

I would say that it's pretty good, but just not for me. If you're really in to Bible stories though you might want to give it a go.

New Article on Tap

If you enjoy the writing I've done about games in general, you might enjoy this little feminist editorial I wrote today for Tap Repeatedly! It's about Halloween.

If you don't enjoy that, well, then... stay tuned for more IF Comp reviews a bit later!

If Comp 2011: The Guardian

I got through this one in about 15 minutes. That, I guess, is if you don't count the five solid minutes I stared at the first room thinking, "What is my goal here?"

If Comp 2011: It

So it's kind of unfortunate that I played Six before playing It, since they have a really similar premise.  Go and play hide and seek with friends.  It, however, has less friends, less cute stuff, and is shorter.

I don't really think it's a spoiler to say that the hiding place of the person you have to find in It isn't randomized, so, once you've found her during a playthrough, find her again, and win.  You can wander around and ignore the game of hide-and-seek, if you want, but I'm not sure to what end.

There's nothing obviously broken in the game and the NPCs seem to be fairly smartly programmed. It's just a little unfortunately similar to another game that had more going on.

IF Comp 2011: Sentencing Mr Liddell

The following review contains spoilers, violence, and bad language.

IF Comp 2011: Six

Well, yesterday was kind of a bucket of fail, for me personally. What does the random game order generator pick for me today?

... Oh. Well, this is quite nice, isn't it?  It starts up with some cute art of a girl in a fairy costume, and instructs  me that it will utilize music and color. It's got a little "Feelie" map, which you can view inside the game as well as outside.  It's so far from the implementation of Vestiges, where almost nothing even worked, that the contrast is startling.

Spoiler tags for the rest:

IF Comp 2011: Vestiges

Man. Maybe I was too hard on the last two games.  This one is a triumph of bad implementation.

Some highlights:

IF Comp 2011: Last Day of Summer

Here's another meh one I don't have much to say about. Sure are glad you're reading my reviews today, aren't you?

This one doesn't have any major problems, but sort of feels like My First Interactive Fiction.  The puzzles are easy and it's extremely short. It doesn't have too exciting of a character voice or setting.

It's competently executed enough; nothing seemed broken, but it's just nothing special.

If Comp 2011: Return To Camelot

When I first booted up this game, I thought that it seemed to have an interesting premise.  The main character is a detective who was, apparently, sent on a crazy adventure to Camelot, then whisked back to his home world after saving the kingdom!  Now having to deal with boring, ordinary reality, how will he cope?

I thought it might be really interesting to explore the premise of someone who gets sucked into another dimension on a magical adventure then just has to re-learn how to live in the regular world and get a job.  Only in IF, am I right? ... But, no, it really isn't Return From Camelot, it's just Return To Camelot, and, we'll be going back.

That happens soon enough that I don't consider it a spoiler, and from there, the game sort of played as if it were a sequel to a game I hadn't played before.  The premise and setting didn't actually grab me that much, despite fairly competent execution, and, up until the point of "departure" your actions in the real world are on rails.  I don't have that much more to say about it, sorry to say!

IF Comp 2011: Andromeda Awakening

Is it my fault I couldn't figure out what to do in this game? I narrowly completed it in two hours, but only after resorting to the walkthrough when I hit a literal wall.

More after the jump.

IF Comp 2011: Blind

I've never subscribed to the idea that blindness in and of itself is some kind of amazing superpower. Blindness is part of the power suite of Daredevil, the Man Without Fear, because he was hit by the toxic chemical that fell off the truck and gave him super hearing and touch and echolocation and whatnot. I also created a blind psychic in City of Villains, mostly inspired by the game's amazing variety of different blindfolds in costumes. I am not blind myself, so I can't really claim to identify with what it's like to live with blindness.  But the idea that being blind, by itself, somehow makes you a superhero with your other senses has always stuck me as kind of a patronizing cliche.

So I was fully prepared to feel patronized by Blind, this year's IF Comp entry where you play as a blind protagonist.  I was surprised that I wasn't. Your character is in fact blind, but this is a pretty interesting use of IF as a medium, since in portraying the protagonist this way it's doing something a standard video game couldn't easily do. In my opinion, doing things graphical games can't do (as opposed to, say, fighting zombies) is a big part of the point of IF and I have to give the author credit for this experiment.

I don't think the rest of my review is terribly spoilery, but I'll cut anyway as a courtesy if you don't want to be spoiled by the rest of the premise.

IF Comp 2011: How Suzy Got Her Powers

I had no technical problems with the game, and it's easy and short.

This game is stated to be part of a larger work, and though there's a couple ways, it seems, to solve the situation presented by the game, all routes lead to the same ending, with a different score.  To say much more would be spoilery, but I haven't got a lot more to say about it. It's really short.  It's obviously a labor of love from the creator and part of his interactive text game magnum opus in some meaningful way, but it didn't feel like a complete game in and of itself.

IF Comp 2011: The Elfen Maiden

The title of this one may make it seem like a fantasy game, but the subtitle is "A Comedy of Error Messages."  It's about fantasy in the context of an MMORPG, and you play the game as an intelligence resting inside someone's computer.

Edit: Since I played this last, it apparently got a big update, which includes changing the name. So "A Comedy of Error Messages" is now the name of the game. That's interesting.

Spoilers/review:

IF Comp 2011: The Myothian Falcon

Short version: I kind of wanted to root for this game, because it tells a good yarn and the setting is interesting, but it's got too many technical problems.

Long version:

IF Comp 2011: Tenth Plague

No spoilers on this one, short review. It's a Biblical game, and not the only one in the comp apparently!

All I otherwise have to say about it is that I'm too desensitized for its intended inherent horror to have much of an emotional effect on me.  But it's cleanly executed otherwise.

Spoiler tags

By the way, just a reminder that if you're reading my blog on an RSS reader, the spoiler cuts do nothing. So be careful about that.

If Comp 2011: The Binary

I actually played this yesterday, but I had to sleep on it because I wasn't sure how I felt about it.  My initial impression was kind of lukewarm, but, when I started playing a little I realized that this game had plenty of elements that were really up my alley. In spite of that, however, it didn't blow me away, and I've determined after some introspection that most of the problems I had with it were on the implementation side.  Those problems are best discussed beneath a spoiler tag.

IF Comp 2011: Taco Fiction

I see what you're doing here, Taco Fiction.

IF Comp 2011: Dead Hotel

Spoilers, in the form of screenshots.

IF Comp 2011: Operation Extraction

So, I figured since I started on the bottom of the games list with the web-only games, I may as well continue that trend and work my way up from there.  This particular game then comes up next on the list. At the very top it says there were no beta testers for it, which is kind of like a Hollywood movie that doesn't screen for the critics: not a great sign.  One wonders why he'd be so proud of that fact as to put it at the top of the screen like that. Nevertheless, I'll continue.

Potential spoilers:

IF Comp 2011: The Play

The first game I played was Deirdra Kiai's The Play.  My review of this one will be short and spoiler-free for a few reasons:

• It's hard to top the depth of Emily Short's review and the discussion that takes place there about the game thematically (though that will spoil)
• I already know I like the author and her previous works so I was kind of primed to like this one
• You have no excuse not to play it yourself.  It's short, simple, doesn't involve downloading a parser and doesn't involve learning any new vocabulary or typing. Just point and click!

I myself played it three times in a short span, and got three different endings.  When I got the ending that satisfied me the most (with just a hint of romance) is when I stopped.  But I know there have got to be several more beyond that.

So, in short, a one-room game with multiple endings, a distinct protagonist, and fun NPCs.  This is a game I'll probably direct Interactive Fiction beginners to in the future and a fun way to start off the comp!

Time again for IF!

As I mentioned on Tap-Repeatedly, the Interactive Fiction competition has started up again. I'll post some (probably short, given my other commitments, but who knows) impressions of the new games here, like I did two years ago when I judged.  Stay tuned!