Ratings and Reviews by iaraya

game map

A promising start! The premise here is that you are a student warrior poet, about to embark on a career of adventuring; however, just before graduation, your advisor steals a precious artefact and flees, so naturally you’re tasked with tracking him down to earn your degree. This game, the first of what I hope will be many instalments, takes place in the port city you’ve followed him to. Explore the city, talk to its inhabitants, discover the professor’s next destination, and secure passage to pursue him further.

The highlight for me was the writing and the characters. The locations are interesting and varied, with engaging descriptions that capture the dynamic vibe of a bustling city and market, which makes exploration is enjoyable even when there isn’t much you can do yet in a particular place.

The game is generally really responsive to what you know and what you’ve seen. Conversations with NPCs use the TALK TO command and are of the type where, instead of picking a topic, the conversation simply happens based on your knowledge; if you’ve encountered relevant information you automatically share it. This is nice as it makes the interactions feel more natural and integrated into the narrative, and the author’s good at writing interesting dialogue. However, sometimes this system works a bit too smoothly, because my character is making connections before I do. For example, I talked to one character simply because they were there, and the character immediately goes oh I see you have something I need, can I trade it from you? – even though I hadn’t yet realised that was what I needed to do!

Many puzzles here are narrative and conversation-based and follow that pattern: you do something or find a clue, figure out who to approach with that information, and hopefully gain more clues in the ensuing conversation. The progression is generally smooth and satisfying once you’re on the right track; however, one minor complaint is that the system feels somewhat rigid. There’s essentially one main chain of conversations that drives the plot forward, which you start by finding a specific clue. Talking to people before getting that the info to prompt the relevant conversations usually doesn’t work, and I spent some time aimlessly wandering around until I looked at the walkthrough and realised I hadn’t examine something thoroughly enough. This is a downside of the otherwise good conversation system, you can’t just go to the inn or the docks and ask if anyone has seen someone matching the professor’s description, as one might expect.

To mix things up here’s also a combat system that I found pretty fun. It’s simple to control – choose to attack with either a weapon or poetry magic and hope for a good roll. There are opportunities to increase your ability scores and acquire better weapons and armour, but the combat encounters feel fairly manageable even with the starting equipment. As a result, getting better weapons feels less about immediate necessity and more like preparing for the next stage of the adventure.

Overall, a very well put together experience, I’m very much looking forward to future installments.

I will say upfront that I did not manage to finish this game. I got softlocked about an hour in when (Spoiler - click to show)the flashlight battery ran out in the crypt, so I couldn’t examine anything, but also couldn’t leave to charge the battery since I hadn’t finishing examining everything… But I did enjoy my time with the game up to that point, and perhaps I’ll give it another go later on if there's a post-comp release.

I went into this looking forward to a classic text adventure experience, and that’s precisely what I found. The premise is that your father has gone missing while researching an ancient monastery, leading you to follow in his footsteps to search for clues on his whereabouts and his research.

Firstly, I was impressed by the presentation of the interface. Love the little maps for each location! And the music is well-suited to the game and not distracting. Only small complaints are that in some places (eg the tower) there is no space between paragraphs, and I don’t think the font is the most readable for small text on screen.

The puzzles are intuitive and fairly straightforward, mostly in the vein of picking up items and realising where to use them. In some places the hints may in fact be too obvious, such as one instance where the game explicitly tells you that (Spoiler - click to show)you need something long to push the stone (emphasis original to the game).

I enjoy a large map to explore and this certainly delivered on that front. The writing was excellent at establishing atmosphere and sense of place, with each ‘area’ (the semi-abandoned town, the forest, the monastery ruins) feeling distinct and immersive. Especially appreciated the illustrated map and descriptions of the entire landscape in-game, which gave just enough guidance to make exploration feel really exciting. Stumbling on (Spoiler - click to show)the lake beach and ruins in the forest was such a thrill. (side note, I appreciate the forest design with each room having different exit configurations, that make it a lot easier to keep track of where you are)

That said, it’s clear that some locations received more attention than others. For example most of the village is great, but the tower could do with more thorough testing: the tourist information panel has the exact same information as looking at the panoramal; the box explicitly says it has a transparent door but you still can’t look inside when it is cloased; it doesn’t quite make sense that you can’t sit on the bench. My excitement at finding (Spoiler - click to show)the lakeside beach was hampered by there being nothing to see or do there; (Spoiler - click to show)the lake, mountain, and embankment don’t appear to be implemented corectly despite those nouns being bolded. At one point the game describes a pile of artifacts, “and likely much more, if one were to dig” but the game doesn’t recognise digging as a verb.

In general the fundamental design and structure of the game is excellent, but some more polish and thorough testing would be beneficial.

This was a confusing experience.

It began at the IFComp website listing which claimed this is both Twine and parser-based — how does that work, perhaps a Twine game with text input? My mind drifted to this recent forum discussion on whether certain authoring systems can only create either parser or choiced-based games. The downloaded folder has both a .gblorb and an index.html file, so then I thought perhaps this has both Twine and parser versions. I’ve seen that done before, it’s interesting to compare the differences in implementation. But the html files only led to a browser-playable version of the gblorb, so the Twine listing appears to be just an error and I was overthinking it.

Over the next 20 minutes I went through this cycle several times. Some aspect of the game would be thought-provoking and lead to interesting musings in my little notebook, only to realise the source is an error and I was looking for meaning where there perhaps is none.

Upon launching a parser game, the instinct is is to first type ABOUT then EXAMINE every noun in sight. We start the game in the middle of a bed in a small bedroom, with the bed, a bookcase, a nightstand, and a basket. And a baby. The intro, the ABOUT text, the game summary, they are all very insistent that there is a baby and the baby is crying.

So it was very disconcerting when X BABY was met with You can’t see any such thing. X BED? You can’t see any such thing, despite laying in the middle of it. X BASKET, X BOOKCASE, X NIGHTSTAND? The same.

At this point I thought this was intentional. The summary and game intro had a surreal, unsettling quality: the rattling windows, the too-big bed, the sense of isolation and confinement. None of the immediate nouns being apparently implemented gave the impression of floating in a void, strangely detatched from reality, which fit right in with the surreal first impressions. Maybe this is some sort of dream realm or representation of the protagonist’s mental state. Maybe you’re being haunted by this disembodied baby that you can hear but not see, why not?

Then X ME yielded the default As good-looking as ever, a distinctly not-surreal statement, and my hopes began to falter. Then I tried moving north and south, and realised what’s going on.

Different parts of the bed are implemented as separate rooms. I do like this as a design choice — it emphasises that the bed is, currently, the protagonist’s whole world, that just moving from one end to another take significant effort. I was particularly taken by the description of the “out of the bed” area, the protagonist dragging himself halfway off the bed and reaching out with one hand braced on the cold floor. Very evocative.

However, this does mean Inform assumes that objects (and babies) are not visible or interactable outside of the ‘room’ they’re in, and the author has not taken steps to correct this. Now I could try to rationalise this — if the protagonist is laying on his back he will see only the ceiling, and naturally cannot see a baby on the floor next to the bed, nor a low bookcase. But trying to read to the baby from the bottom of the bed does not work because you can’t see any such thing, and none of the furniture seems to be implemented at all, and the reasoning falls apart.

I could keep going with the overthinking. Maybe the response to LISTEN being the default You hear nothing unexpected means the baby’s crying is so constant it has become expected background noise. Maybe the the end monologue concluding with (the end) but not actually ending the game is saying something about the unending, inescapable demands of single parenthood. These were enjoyable musings, but almost certainly not intended by the author.

I realise I haven’t yet said anything about the actual plot of the game, which is revealed in a long monologue at the very end of the game. It is an unusual ‘twist’ that makes the story less surreal and more mundane that it first appears, yet I enjoyed the characterisation of the protagonist as a new parent exhausted and in pain, making a valiant effort to find humour and express genuine love for his child. The 6-paragraph-long passage, after a game mostly consisting of short (or non-existent) descriptions, felt like a cathartic release, a sudden outpouring of emotion.

Or mabye I’m just overthinking again.