Shuarian’s Weblog

Part of the IF Comp 07 Reviews series.

This is the third Adrift game in the IF Comp, and it’s written by Robert Street. My Mind’s MishMash is set in a unspecified science fiction setting, and like earlier ventures of Robert Street, it includes some action sequences. The start puts the player right into such a scene, where he has to fight in a war against aliens. After said sequence, which is easy enough to win, everything is revealed to be part of a virtual reality (VR) world. Due to interferings by another player, called memoryblam, the player character isn’t able to leave the environment. Thus the task at hand is to play the different episodes (or levels) of the VR simulation and find a way to escape. This is made harder by memoryblam actively chasing the player. As the player gets through the levels of the simulated world, the different episodes appear to refer to recent events in which the player himself took part.

The setting is actually quite interesting to imagine and on a the surface well explained. It also makes for some good twists. For example, at first it’s not clear whether dying in the VR environment could lead to death in real life, and during one episode you have to work together with your rival memoryblam in order to escape the threatening VR simulation.

However, there are some downsides as well. For one, the whole motivation of the player character is explained near the beginning: “you haven’t backed up for a few days by now and you really don’t want to lose all that homework you did last night.“. And as it later turns out that the death of an avatar doesn’t affect real life conditions, this is not the most intriguing reason I can think of.

In addition, because of the way the environment is implemented, there are many repeating commands. While these commands make sense from the point of view of the VR setting, they are a bit tiresome for the player. Even more so as the playable map is quite big. As is the whole game, and I wasn’t able to finish it within the two hours specified by the comp rules. The room descriptions and other writings were fine, in a basic kind of way. Often, long text dumps signal the beginning of a new level or mark other important events.

At its best, My Mind’s MishMash is a nicely done but light science fiction game (sharing some similarities to Tad Williams Otherland saga). At its worst, its a repetitive map marathon for the sake of one’s homework. So in essence, it’s a solid game with a well done implementation, but with a story which leaves a lukewarm feeling of having played someone playing a video game. Score: 5

Part of the IF Comp 07 Reviews series.

This game, written by Plone Glenn, starts as a pretty standard secret-agent-on-rescue-mission type of game, but quickly turns to the bizarre and absurd. Despite the setting, there’s no action, and strangely enough, even no puzzles. Most (if not all) of Reconciling Mother consists of the player character wandering around through several distinct and large areas, collecting strange inventory items on the way.

The main theme gets replaced by multiple short references to a wide varity of topics - touching eveything from popular culture to psychology to the supernatural and more. I believe the idea behind the game is to unite these various traces, yet there’s too little substance to allow the player to form a coherent approach. It is as if the author tries to fit everything he finds somewhat interesting into the game.

As unfeasible as this may be storywise, such a game could be a light and fascinating collection of the weird; could be a thought-provoking experiment. Unfortunately, this game isn’t. Its arrangement is too confused, and the implementation ranges from sketcky to missing.

For my taste, most descriptions are poorly worded and too minimalistic. Despite this, the game still fails to cover even the most basic commands, and many objects can’t be examined, no matter how prominent they are in the room description.

You see a Cave Flashlight here.
>x cave flashlight
The word "cave" is not necessary in this story.

>x flashlight
You almost miss it but in the dim light, you notice a metal cylinder. It is a flashlight. You flick the switch and a clear, bright beam of light turns on.

The above example shows the rudimentary implementation and presents a second design mistake: I only wanted to examine the flashlight, yet the game automatically tiggered an unnecessary action without my consent. Not to mention that said description remains static for the rest of the game.

Wading through countless rooms without any clear goal or sign of progress soon became tedious. The supplied walkthrough wasn’t of any particular help, too, suggesting such universalities as Navigate from room to room by going North, South, East, West, up or down, if appropriate.. Yet as there were no real puzzles present, I reached the end finally - or what I believe is the end, as there’s no certain way to tell except the fact that for the first time during the whole game I wasn’t able to move in any direction and the story had some kind of conclusion.

Be that as it may, I wouldn’t want to continue with Reconciling Mother anyway. The confusing approach and the lack of goals or progress doesn’t help a game already hindered by poor implementation. Score: 2

Part of the IF Comp 07 Reviews series.

The second game I played was In The Mind Of The Master by David Whyld. A short introduction, done in the style of a voice-over, leads right into the first scene where the player has to escape quickly from a yet unknown enemy. After successfully retreating, much of the game is about finding out what’s happening and how to act accordingly.

The player character, who describes himself as a master of disguise, is able to assume three different roles right at the start. The decision for one of them leads to varying routes, and thus even after loosing (which is possible at various moments during the game), there’s an incentive to restart and try again, using a different roles.

Despite several attempts, I wasn’t able to win the final confrontation between the master and the antagonist. Reading through the notes on the game written by the author, it seems there must be a clue somewere, but either it’s too obvious or too hard to find out, although I’m admittedly not good at such stuff.

***

I enjoyed the high replayability of the game, although that doesn’t describe it exactly. Failing and trying again seem like an integral part of the game, so it’s not the same concept as replaying a game after having finished it. The aspect of being able to play the same game as different characters is intriguing, yet not fully utilised - the different routes have unique scenes, but unfortunately they only affect the gameplay and not the game experience or the story.

The writing and the use of the narrator are nicely done (apart from some missing object descriptions in a certain location), thus setting the right atmosphere for exploring the game’s world to find answer to the many mysteries. However, the reward for such curiosity is a bit disappointing; the background never gets explained properly, and the story has many loose ends.

Thus, while the game is certainly well crafted and done, it leaves something to be desired; it misses something to put it ahead of other entries. In my opinion, that special something wasn’t far away, but still not there. With the impact of choosing different roles expanded, some more scenes allowed for exploring the world, and the story better balanced, In The Mind Of The Master probably would have made an excellent entry to a Spring Thing competition. Score: 6

Part of the IF Comp 07 Reviews series.

A Fine Day For Reaping is written by revgiblet, author of last year’s The Sisters. In this game, the player takes on the character of the Grim Reaper (for my German readers: = Sensenmann). Yet make no mistake, this isn’t a gory horror game.

Right at the beginning, the player receives a letter with a list of his assignments - people who are fated to die but by some means or another try to oppose death. It’s the job of the player to send them all to the afterlife. For this, the player is allowed twelve in-game hours. While the timer moves only slowly, it does add a little urgency, thus ensuring the player stays focused.

With the help of my skeleton horse, simply called Horse, I visited the first ‘case’. And got stuck rather soon. Turns out the game is quite non-linear, meaning almost no puzzle can be solved right away on location; some back and forth travelling is unavoidable. As the locations are compact and visits reveal hints to other cases, it didn’t hinder or slow the flow of the game. Once I got used to that, I was able to solve most puzzles by myself - probably also thanks to the multiple solutions possible.

The ending is very rewarding; an epilogue tells the story of the finished cases from a more neutral perspective, and the player learns how his actions affected not only the death but also the life of people.

***

In conclusion, this game makes many things right. The introduction is short but helpful, and the first location gives the player enough space for exploration - a fine way of introducing the player to the main character and setting the humorous tone. All locations are well-designed, neither too complex or big, but also not so small as to restrict the player. The writing is well done, tongue-in-cheek, and adds quite a lot to the game. And as mentioned above, the puzzles have multiple solutions and are certainly solvable.

There are, however, some negative aspects as well. I had some troubles repairing and starting a time machine. The commands for this could have been covered better. Also, said time machine is (if I remember correctly) part of three solutions/stories, thus it gets weighted a bit too strongly. As much as I liked the use of the timer, the environment of the player remains oddly static. For example, a NPC remains on the same location no matter how much in-game time passes, always being described the same way.

I didn’t encounter any bugs, yet some interactions with the skeleton horse ended in unreasonable responses; although for that I blame the Adrift runner as much as the author.

All in all, I really enjoyed playing A Fine Day For Reaping. It certainly won’t win the competition, but it’s a charming and humorous puzzle tale which works well on many levels. Score: 8

Well, the games for this year’s IF Comp are available since September 30. I want to use this and next weekend to post short reviews of the games I play on the go.

In appreciation for the rules of the IF Comp and its traditions, I won’t reveal my final score until the competition is over. While some minor spoilers might find their way into a review, it’s my intention to focus on my perception and liking of the games, as well as on their design and implementation. All reviews will be titled Comp07 Discussion, the tag IF Comp 07 has been added for this occasion.

Instruction for downloading all the games of the competition are available on the the IF Comp 07 site.

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