Ratings and Reviews by Vivienne Dunstan

This parser game sees you as a barbarian king, try to avenge the loss of a friend, and defeat an evil enemy.

This was really something special. The implementation isn’t flawless, but the way that it uses a special gameplay command to change the narrative - without going into spoilers any more about this! - is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a piece of IF before. Initially I was a bit puzzled about what to do at a certain point, then went “aha!” and carried on. And it was enormous fun. I played right through to the end, in about an hour.

Because you are a barbarian you have special commands like SMITE and LOOT. That reduced verb set worked well. But I was most wowed with the world building, the playing with the narrative (which I want to talk so much about, but am trying to stay spoiler free), the use of locations, and the writing of various NPCs.

There’s no detailed walkthrough included with the game itself, but if you get stuck HINT will be a big help. Though at a key point you still have to figure out what to do for yourself.

Yup, that was good! Oh and there’s a story mode you can turn on to step through the game at any point if you get very stuck. I didn’t turn it on though, and enjoyed solving for myself.

This is a choose your own adventure piece exploring the experience of having a psychotic episode (or more than one …) and how you might deal with it. It’s presented as a PDF with active clickable links. Or it can be printed out and read that way.

It definitely made me think about things in a new way. Each time you experience a psychotic episode in the game it feels like an escalating situation, despite much that you try, where the panic is visceral, and it’s not clear what to do. Ultimately time and experience gives the player perspective, and I was eventually able to break out of the loop and get a better ending. Though I’m very unsure how representative that is of real life generally. I’d also have felt more comfortable if the game’s information was coming from a mental health professional (apologies to the author if I am mis-representing you here).

It’s a quick read anyway, and worth your time, either in the PDF version or printed. And it’s likely to make you want to read more about how you might help someone in this situation. Thanks to the author, and to artist Gina Fringante, whose drawings in the PDF were delightful, and really captured the mood.

This is an atmospheric horror parser game, where you play a film actress, and end up caught in a bizarre series of events in 1970s Venice. If you’ve seen the film Don’t Look Now it absolutely has the feel of that. And the terror is real. Especially for me as a woman playing. Yet it was still an appealing world that I felt happy to be immersed in, as much as I didn’t want bad things to happen. Venice is one of my favourite places in the world. We go there in the depths of winter, when it’s so spooky. And quiet.

Where the game falls down is in the implementation. Timing is critical in many scenes, so it’s a special problem if you run into fight the parser problems. So many logical alternative commands are not supported. It makes it less smooth to play than it should be. There are also quite a lot more typos than I expected. I wonder if the game writing time was a bit tighter than the author might like. More playtesting could definitely have helped.

However it was a very atmospheric game. It captured much of the Venice I recognise. And I enjoyed playing. I just wish the implementation had been a bit smoother.

This Twine piece sees you stranded in the wilderness of Africa, threatened by lions, and recounting time rescuing a young lion cub. I don’t know if there is a “good” ending to be got. I couldn’t get out of a loop in the game, which I’m not sure was intentional. (Spoiler - click to show)I’d released the lion, and seemed to get the car started, and it looked like an ending. But then after clicking on “You manage to get the car started again, and drive on.” it restarted again. Maybe it was meant to loop like that? I was honestly puzzled. But I did enjoy looking after the young lion cub that I rescued. I spent ages picking a name for it ((Spoiler - click to show)Pawamba!). Or (Spoiler - click to show)imagined I rescued it, because the game seems almost hallucinatory.

This ChoiceScript piece is a simulation of a cooking competition, that’s seriously inspired by Lord of the Rings, but is slightly twisted sideways. So eg you have a fellow competitor called Sour Ron, you can play Froyo with life partner Samfool, and so on. The writing is really funny, and I enjoyed playing through, including picking which mix of ingredients to go, and how to balance cooking and interaction with fellow competitors.

However the balance between volume of text early on and interaction wasn’t good for me. There was far too much of essentially reading masses, then clicking “next” or equivalent. Then repeat. There are significant choices to make later, but early on was a bit much. And even when I replayed - which I wanted to do - and played quickly, and was able to skip the intro (thanks authors!) there was still an awful lot of early text to wade through.

So I don’t think the balance was quite right. But it was very funny, and I enjoyed it. It definitely merits replaying. It will work best for people who know Lord of the Rings (either book or film versions) and also competitions like Great British Bake Off. I just wish the balance had been tweaked a bit more.

(Note this is a review of the game version available part way through IFComp)

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to run this parser game. The competition listing gives no clues re interpreters etc. The game file is AGT format. But luckily Gargoyle and Spatterlight on my Mac will run it. Gargoyle coped best with visual layout, so I used that.

This is a very short game, nowhere near the hour and a half playtime suggested on the competition site listing. You have to gather a set of ingredients to cook with, and that’s it. They’re not hard to get, and it’s nice to get to the end. I would like to see the game finished. This is very much just a taster - an “amuse bouche”! - for the planned full story.

However the game is plagued by unimplemented objects that are referred to in the description. And that makes it quite frustrating to play. For example in my second location as I started to play I had this experience:

> w

My bedroom
My bedroom, with its large, welcoming double-bed (welcoming not only
for me, that is...) is against the west wall, and a round table is in the
centre. Two doors lead east back to my lab and west to the backyard,
and stairs lead down to my closet.

> examine bed
I don’t understand the word ‘bed’ as a noun.

> examine table
I don’t understand the word ‘table’ as a noun.
The same thing applies elsewhere, far too often. For the author please implement objects like this. Even if they aren’t necessary to complete a game on a simple run through some players will try interacting with them. And it breaks the player immersion when you can’t.

In another location I had a similar problem:

Garden
The garden, which is also the common green, is not only where the
zarnest trees are, it is where the people relax; there are many benches. I
can only return south to the upper plaza.

> examine benches
I don’t understand the word ‘benches’ as a noun.

> sit
I don’t understand ‘sit’ as a verb.
Fair enough maybe that it didn’t understand SIT, though can it be added in game? But the benches are right there, and I’d maybe like to do something with them.

There’s a more serious problem with one object that you need to do something to after you get it. I’m going to put this in spoiler text. (Spoiler - click to show)You have to soak the yardvine in water in the pond. I tried SOAK YARDVINE, PUT YARDVINE IN POND (or WATER) [either gets response “I can’t move the blue yardvine.”] and DROP YARDVINE. No good. Only THROW YARDVINE seems to work, which to be fair is in the walkthrough, but wasn’t intuitive.

The fantasy world setting is intriguing, and I was happy exploring it. The author is clearly putting effort into developing the ideas behind it. But constantly being unable to interact more with elements was very frustrating. Please, please in the full version of this game flesh out the objects in locations more. People will try EXAMINE X where X is lots of different things. And if you can support this it can make for a much better player experience.

So yup, folks may be like me initially thinking they can’t run the game, but very possibly can. It’s a short, simple game. But needs a much fuller implementation. And I don’t think that’s a problem of the Magx system, but just more author coding that was needed.

This Texture piece sees you as rather a jaded musician who’s got secrets and finds that things are catching up with you as you go to make another performance.

I liked the core setup, and what you uncover about your past. But it didn’t feel as though I was in control enough, or had enough agency. There’s one particular point where you are offered two choices, and I wanted to choose one, but the game wouldn’t let me make that choice, even as I try dragging the verb word over the highlighted noun. It just wouldn’t register that option. I’m assuming this is a deliberate choice by the author, to force you to take the other approach instead. But it was frustrating.

Shortly after that section you have a two-way choice, one of which leads to a sudden game end, where you need to restart and replay to try again if you want to. The other choice leads to a slightly longer bit, but then ends abruptly with “To Be Continued”. Which felt like a very abrupt ending, and felt too unfinished.

So problems with choice/agency, and a feeling of being unfinished. I think this could be smoothed with more work. There’s a good idea there, but it’s not polished enough.

Also minor-ish point, but every time the game referred to “crewmember” (or “crewmembers”) I kept wishing it was two words with a space.

This is a warm-hearted ChoiceScript coded simulator where you have to temporarily run your grandparents’ B&B in Indonesia, and get through a week of surprises that pop up in the process.

I liked a lot about this. The writing is strong, and I felt immersed in the game world, and also the culture that it was depicting. I don’t know if this is at all autobiographical, but the tale of an Australian grandchild negotiating their relationship with their Balinese roots and grandparents was nicely handled.

There are a lot of choices to make in the game, and I felt in control. Albeit with a lot of jeopardy to contend with. And yes there were cats - thank you again to the author for another year of cat content! The animals in the game were all well written. But so were the humans, and you have to negotiate your way through lots of interactions, not least with the B&B’s guests.

I was relieved to make it to the end of the week in just about one piece, and very much enjoyed the experience. I now want to read more about Balinese culture and society. So that’s good.

(Note: this review was based on the mid competition version of the game. Some issues it refers to may have been since ironed out in the latest release.)

Ok my longest game played yet in the competition. This is an old style parser game, that’s a direct sequel to Infocom’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game, which I know well. I’m not sure how well this game would work for people unfamiliar with the Hitchhiker’s universe, but would be interested to hear!

I played for two hours and nearly got to the end, but ran into a bug with an object that kept disappearing ((Spoiler - click to show)the heatproof tray has a horrible habit of disappearing at times after you’ve got it) so couldn’t finish it. The game has some bugs, over and above it being traditional old style. To be fair it would be an almighty task for playtesters to work through thoroughly! And I do admire how so much has been coded by a modern author in ZIL.

However ... I was wowed by the imagination, and the use of Hitchhiker’s locations, and characters, and jokes. And I just had a very happy two hours of play time. Again I’m not sure how well this would work for someone unfamiliar with the Hitchhiker’s world. But this Hitchhiker’s fan was very happy. I also liked the hub like structure based on a classic Infocom puzzle, which was rather forgiving, albeit with so many more spokes than in the original Infocom game that sometimes it could take you a while to get to where you might need to go next, and you could be cycling through a lot.

The game has a comprehensive walkthrough which I peeked at at times, especially one place where I was ridiculously stuck ((Spoiler - click to show)the philosophical word), but wanted to play on. And in game hints, which are appreciated. You also have the Guide that you can look things up in mid game, which is a lot of fun, and like Infocom’s game.

I’d like to see a polished version of the game produced in future that irons out some of the bugs and also adds a little better object handling re disambiguation. But this is very good.

This is a really thought-provoking Twine piece about speech impediments and specifically stuttering. It puts you in the shoes of a chronic stutterer, trying to get through a busy day, and experiencing lots of problems as a result.

First of all I need to address the timed text issue. It’s used throughout. Timed text is a bit of a nemesis for me. I read really fast, and hate waiting for text to slowly appear on screen. However given some of this timed text was capturing someone struggling to speak and get sounds out I feel guilty for saying I didn’t like it. In fact I think that particular use of it was fine, and appropriate. I just wish that the rest of the game’s text e.g. the descriptive sections in between hadn’t been often timed/slow too. Let people who want to read those quickly.

The story is a mix of the current busy day and flashbacks to younger you. Initially there aren’t many real choices, but later they are more numerous and significant.

Colour coding is used to indicate how approachable different things you might say are. The default colours could have problems for colour blind people. Fortunately there’s a setting at the start of the game that can switch them to a better palette. Though this is still likely to be problematic for someone who can’t actually see any colours. At first I thought showing the colours before you make a choice was revealing too much too early. But then a chronic stutterer probably has a good idea of which phrases might come out most successfully.

Overall I found this really evocative, leaving me with lots of thoughts and a better understanding for what someone in this position experiences. I wonder if it was semi autobiographical. It definitely felt as though the author knew what they were writing about, and communicated the feelings of the stutterer so well.