Day Out

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Average Rating:

This is an Adventuron game designed for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It has simple puzzles and structure, designed as an introduction to IF.

The author often had trouble when playing Adventuron on mobile because it wouldn't save, so this game is based on a password system. An early choice in the game leads to 4 branches, each accessible by a password.

Most of the gameplay revolves around driving to work, getting an assignment, then carrying out a task involving riddles or metaphoric actions of various sorts, including solving number patterns and changing the emotions of animals. There's one big final chapter at the end.

Overall, the game has some heartwarming moments and some big ideas. The execution doesn't really pull through though. There are a lot of typos and grammatical errors; the author is a non-native speaker, likely using a mobile device based on the author notes, but it may be worth running the text through a spellchecker like grammarly (you can even put code into spell checkers, just ignoring the errors the code part causes). A lot of items are underimplemented; one important item is stuck in a gate, but X item acts as if it's not there; similarly, there is a billboard that you can't EXAMINE or LOOK AT but can READ. You have to GO OFFICE to go to the office, but if you try to GO ______ for an address, it says 'not yet'; instead, you must just type ______ (i.e. the address itself). Due to these issues, I found myself struggling to enjoy parts of the game. With more polish, I could see this being very fun!

There is some pixel art, which ranges from abstract and confusing to fun and silly. There is an odd part about buying underwear off models, leaving them nude, but otherwise it's pretty solid.

Overall, lots of fun stuff here, just needs some more care and attention to spelling and implementation.

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This is an interesting Adventuron game that you can play through multiple times to experience different mini-adventures. The game has a pleasant aesthetic style, characterful tone and fairly trippy vibe as far as the story and puzzles are concerned.

The author is a non-native English speaker and there are quite a lot of language errors; sometimes this feels like sloppiness rather than just due to the language barrier. For instance, the game setting (the city of Torino/Turin, I assume) is variously referred to as ‘Torino/Tortino/Tourin’.

Occasional bugged responses, and also a few irritating non-responses due to the language issue - e.g. ICECREAM is recognised but not ICE CREAM.

There’s no tutorial to speak of as far as I can see - instead, you can type HELP for a list of basic commands. HELP and HINT do generally give you enough clues during each mini-adventure to get you through it, but I would have liked a defined tutorial section as set out in the jam guidelines.

There are a few places that could do with slightly better clueing/clarity. For instance, at one point you have to type YES after being asked ‘Are you free today?’. This is likely to throw a player expecting to have to type verb noun commands or similar - a simple ‘(Type YES to continue)’ would go a long way here.

Generally, items in the location descriptions are unimplemented, and directions are usually LEFT/RIGHT rather than the more standard NSEW etc. This fits with the style of the game, which in some ways is not really a traditional text adventure, but I do prefer to see those traditional elements (such as being able to examine things) included in games where teaching beginners is the aim.

The initial objective is a bit confusing. Am I having a ‘day out’ or not? I’ve suddenly been told I need to go to work. When you do get to the office, things generally become clearer… but never any less weird!

I really like the game design of playing through multiple times to get the final ending. However, I would like to see a bit more polish and clueing (especially in the early stages of the game) to make it more beginner-friendly.

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