Ratings and Reviews by dutchmule

"Choice of Robots" is among the best-known (and most successful) games in the Choice of Games brand. It's the first CoG game I've played, and this is a very good starting point for whoever wants to check them out: it is a really good game that everyone loved.

You are cast as a grad student in Stanford working on a new robot, and you get to customise your robot and its education, which will orient the robot's stats (Military, Autonomy, Empathy, Grace), as well as yours (Fame, Wealth). Those stats orient the narrative in a rather explicit way: the choices you are presented with are the same (I think), but some of them will result in failure because a stat is too small, or some will not be selectable because a corresponding stat needs to be high enough. In particular, there's a big choice near the end that seems to appear in every playthrough, that determines which of 4 different chapters you will play (and some of them cannot be selected if some stats aren't high enough); structurally, this kind of acts as a funnel towards the endings, reducing the number of possibilities to get a more focused finale, which is nice. In the chapters that come before, there are a lot of events that can happen rather independently, depending on choices you've made and the relationships you formed with people, and it's a lot of fun to try to explore all of them (the number of combinations seem to be huge!); whereas the finale seems to have less important variation and opportunities to change what happens: the game still takes into account, say, your romantic option, but I found it was rather interchangeable (for instance, in my first and third playthrough, I ended up married to a human or to a robot, but their reactions and dialogues were the same, and didn't seem to depend on the personality of the mate very much). Also re:interchangeability, I 'discovered' my partner's secret twice ((Spoiler - click to show)we discovered Elly was Chinese when we got married, and then she told me she had just found out recently when we both got arrested), which made it feel like the game hadn't planned for that and that my partner really was supposed to be interchangeable.

For my first playthrough, I played as truthfully as I could, choosing things that made me happy and corresponded to my personality; I was happy with the options that were presented to me and where I ended up, even though (Spoiler - click to show)I ended up having a second robot that wanted to be romantically involved with me, when I didn't want to, which was hard to navigate (but hey, that's how life is sometimes -- and maybe I shouldn't have chosen what I chose at the 'funnel choice'). I was really heartbroken at the ending, but that was OK: it was really well written and I didn't feel robbed, and it still felt satisfying. It felt like "my story" -- which is great!
However, I thought that the game was fast-forwarding through some interesting parts, including my main relationship, which is a shame. I kept thinking that we were spending so much time talking about robots and work that my partner was going to leave me, but out of the blue the game skipped to a scene where we got engaged and got married. In that sense, what followed the 'funnel' choice (I had the (Spoiler - click to show)Empathy route I think) was more satisfying, as it was dealing with human-human and human-robot relationships in depth; I just didn't like that, before that, I was trying to build a relationship but the game didn't really spend much time talking about it, which felt like I was failing at building the relationship. I have no idea if it's like that in other CoG games, but I heard the style was to present you with big important choices; but I certainly wouldn't mind having more details put into relationships (more scenes, partners aren't interchangeable, etc) instead of fast-forwarding it a bit.

I came back on my third playthrough to this route / style of choices to see what changed and what didn't, when my second playthrough was a much more aggressive character. That second playthrough in particular made me notice something else (that in retrospect was also present my other playthroughs), that sometimes choices failed without really any hint that they might fail. So, you have a list of choices, and you can kinda guess what could happen, but then something else happens and it turns out it wasn't a good choice. I don't know if that's really a bad thing, I guess; certainly there are choices in life that you make that turn out to be bad ones, and you couldn't have prevented it, and it sucks and you have to deal with it. But in a game, it kinda feels to me like it was pulling the rug from under me; I was interested in the consequences of the actions, but turns out that no, the game isn't going to go this way, and by the way you lose Wealth. (Such choices that come to mind: (Spoiler - click to show)letting kids play with your robot, waiting for a clearance to start selling robots to the US Air Force, attacking Juneau.) Just to clarify, I'm OK with actions having negative consequences for the player, I'm just not really thrilled with the prospect of having random events blocking my way; I'd much rather have the game lay out the situation, give me a choice, then explore the consequences, negative or positive, without pulling something from its sleeve at the last second.

The writing is good, and the drama is well-managed, so that each playthrough feels like an exciting or interesting story. I also really liked that the world that is described is in the near future, and is very tangibly linked to our world; a lot of the times, I felt like I recognized the pattern from the present world that was brought up and explored in a section of the game, which made it feel very possible and grounded in reality. It's really not that far-fetched, in terms of SF, and I really liked it (see above: the game organically explores a situation we both know). There are also a few jokes in the game, most of them of the geeky kind (I loved the IF references), although at times they didn't really feel appropriate (there's a Konami Code reference at an otherwise pretty dramatic moment). Your mileage may vary. Also, the prose was mostly very good technically speaking: apart from a missing period once, I didn't really notice anything in 3 playthroughs.

To sum up, "Choice of Robots" feels very satisfying: the story is great, with lots of different possibilities each exploring different thematics; the world that's described is very interesting and grounded in reality, which makes it interesting even if you're not into SF. My only regrets are that the game fast-forwards a bit through the early relationships, and that some choices are unexpectedly bad. I'll definitely keep playing it and try to get as many achievements as I can, and I'll also probably check out other CoG games!

"18 Rooms to Home" is made of 18 installments telling a story in reverse chronological order; you start with the very last room, the very last moment of the story, and each new room moves you to the previous beat of the story. This is a very interesting concept, reminiscent of 'Memento' and other experiments with fractured timelines, but the fact that it's IF, or that it's a video game, adds much more: the choices the player makes in the room N carry over to the room N+1! This means that the situation that starts the game when Room, say, 18, may not be the one you get when you play Room 17 and then Room 18; even better, each new installment adds more possibilities for a room or a point of the story that weren't available with the previous one.

As a result, it kind of feels like exploring parallel universes, and it's hard to tell which would be the "main" storyline; the best situation you can get for one installment might not be the best one at the next one, because you start at an earlier point of the storyline and you can make a choice that makes the situation even better... or worse! That's the thing: my first playthrough usually consists in trying to reach the situation in the next room I was in at the previous installment, so then I only have to redo the things I already solved; then I focus more on the new room, and try to figure out what I could do to make the storyline diverge and reach a different point. It really feels like exploring a tree of possibilities; and since there's only one more location every time, you can just focus on this and the handful of objects to try to see what you can do. This is why I would recommend playing the games in the order they are released in, starting with 18 then 17 then..., because it's fun to see all the solutions and possibilities the author put in the game, and you can just chew a little at the time.

As I'm reviewing this, we're at room 15; the obvious question is "will the author manage to keep this up?". It sure looks daunting, because if you want to provide a few meaningful choices at each new room, you have to consider their impact on the other events, and it looks like the number of possibilites explode. However, I'm fairly confident that the author will be able to finish the game: not all choices have to lead you to branches that go to the end (there could be ways to be killed, after all), and not all choices have to lead you to branches that have as many choices as others. Sometimes, some choices you make in a room avoid the problems in the next few rooms and make them completely linear! (and it's awesome that the author also thought to implement those possibilites!) And I don't think that it'd be a waste if the puzzles and content of an installment could be completely side-stepped in the next one; again, a lot of the fun (and I think the most meaningful way to play it, to get the whole experience, and play and ponder about alternate timelines) is to play it in order, and I'll actually be happy if there's a way to avoid problems that appeared in other installments, since I've already solved them. In any case, it's a huge project, and the number of possibilites and different endings is likely to be huge by the end of the game.

All this talk about the major concept of the game, and I haven't talked about the stuff you usually talk about in a review. Well, the story itself is pretty interesting, as it casts you (well, not exactly you since it's written using 3rd person) as a superhero with interesting powers, and you have to fight other powerful people -- it seems that superheroes coexist with humans, but still have to hide their true identities. The details so far are a bit fuzzy, which is part of the fun: who are those people, what happened for the situation to be like that, why did that happen, and oh man, am I going to be able to change this? You get a few details about the world, and the game presents you events that happened in the past by showing their consequences in your scene -- which is awesome, because you can kind of guess what will happen in the next installments, and wonder how you can change it. Anyway, the situation, personalities and characters that are shown make me feel like a TV show (also possibly the short length of playthroughs), not a Marvel movie; this is a good thing, because the game can set its own tone and explore its themes more quietly and interestingly than a *ka-pow* *boom* superhero movie, and can also afford to avoid the gritty-bombing-death-civilians tone of other movies. The superpowers are limited, there's no impending doom and destruction of the whole world; it seems to be a lot more about relationships, and a lot more personal, which makes it deeper and carrying more weight and drama. And, as I said, we don't know all the details about the world just yet, so there could be twists, things we learn about the past that explain or cast a new light on relationships, or even dramatic changes.

I'm *really* excited about "18 Rooms to Home", and wish good luck to the author: I really like this experiment, and I hope she'll manage to complete it!

In "The Island of Doctor Wooby", you explore an island inhabited by a dozen felt dinosaurs that are randomly generated. The game is short, about half an hour and two or three puzzles (not really hard, you just have to search around), although it will take longer if you take your time and interact with the dinosaurs; the game even provides you an option to continue playing after you 'won' (solved the main puzzle).

This game is child-ey and very cute. Made for PetJam, it features felt dinosaurs that are randomly generated and carefully coded; they have quite a lot of messages and interact with each other, and you can even guess at some of their personalities. They get hungry, some eat only specific food, and sometimes they have been stuffed too much; you can spend quite a bit of time taking care of them.
I really like the fact that they were dinosaurs and their names were randomly generated; those two things seem to really fit well together. I mean, how do you create names of dinosaurs if not by combining some random words with a -saurus or -lodon suffix? That's how you end up with Edmontonsaurus, E. Saskatchewanensis, and Albertausaurus, right? And dinosaur names are the most complicated animal names (more common animals have simpler names), so when you're a kid, you see those great creatures with complicated names, and it just sounds awesome, and it's so cool you just want to learn all their big names and spout them off at the dinner table. Just like that kid in Ad Verbum, right? My point is, dinosaur names are as cool as the dinosaurs themselves, so having fun, procedurally-generated names is very fitting and a great idea. (And, if you don't like typing their names, which, yes, you have to type without typos and the game doesn't abide by the 8-char resolution of inform dict names, you can give them a different name, which is a cool feature.)
I also really liked the game's approach to the world, which felt very appropriate. The game describes a beach, but the sea is just waves drawn on cardboard, and a waterfall is just a pipe dripping water. The game will readily acknowledge this if you try to examine objects more closely, and it's really nice, because doing so clearly identifies the setting as a child's play: "it's a sea, well of course we know it's not really the sea, but let's *pretend* it's the sea". Same with the food, which is felt too: when you feed a dinosaur, the food doesn't disappear from your inventory, which means it's "pretend eating", just like a child would do when playing at cooking; furthermore, it solves very gracefully the problem of having to feed the dinosaurs but not wanting to have to go pick up more food when you're out or whatever.

The game is light on puzzle and story, but i don't think those are meant to be its focus; it's about the dinosaurs. The range of interactions you can have with them is not very deep, i think, so it's not meant to be a game that will take you long; exploring and solving the few puzzles will add a little bit to your playing time, if you're so inclined.
I have no idea how well the game would work with kids, and would be curious to know; it seems like it could be fun for them, but i could be wrong (not 'the real' dinosaurs, no pictures). In any case, it was fun for me!

"Voltage Café" is about a grad student trying to get some writing done at a café. Oddly, it seems to be a self-contained game, which is not what IntroComp is about... The game itself is pretty short, and somewhat repetitive: you need to type >write, except that sometimes your character is hungry or thirsty and you need to order something and eat it in order to keep going; this is a pretty simplistic mechanism, and not very interesting in IF, since you use 3 verbs and there's no time constraint or skill involved.

The way the game describes the central goal of the game, the thesis, is very odd. First of all nothing is described in any detail: we don't even know what subject is the thesis on, and the few details that are given are contradictory ("an alternate proof", "a new design space" and "Oulipo" - math or art history or literature??). There's also not enough messages cycling through when you >write: if you expect your player to type this 20 times to win the game, you have to have 20 responses, not 5. Finally, my biggest gripe about it is that it really doesn't reflect what writing a thesis is: the game's messages say "you discover new insights in your field", "you outline new designs" and "new ideas come pouring in your brain". This is completely the opposite of what a thesis is: writing a thesis is AFTER all this, after years of research in which you discover new stuff and feel excited (until you discover a flaw or you get stuck) and sketch new things. Writing a thesis is getting all your notes and ideas together, and trying to write them as clearly, cleanly, precisely and concisely as possible, maintaining a coherent flow and structure, explaining why your work is important, reviewing literature, etc.; it's not as exciting, but it needs to be done instead of thinking about more novel ideas and research, which is exactly why people procrastinate on it!!

The game is sparsely implemented, with not a lot in terms of scenery, a protagonist you know nothing of, and an NPC that's not very interactive; and the writing is not very good, with everything being very generic and short descriptions that don't say much. The implementation is not very good either, with messages crashing into each other, lone periods and typos.

I wouldn't recommend this game, and don't want to see more, if there is more. I would advise the author to do their research (heh) so that they know more about the topic they are writing about, which will allow them to be more specific and truer; and attempt to tell a story in the game if the mechanics are meant to be simple. For what it's worth, the introductory sentence "you heard this café is supposed to be particularly good for students who want to finally write their thesis" made me wonder 'why? what is it about this café that makes it that great? is there a magic spell? an old sage that can help any graduate student in any topic? that could be exciting' -- those kind of ideas would put a fresh spin on the well-worn scenario, which is exactly what is needed.

"Meld" is a parser game in which your character can >meld x with y, which combines two objects to form a third one, or >unmeld x, to create two objects from one.

The setting is a contemporary town with a few locations and characters; apparently melding is a sought-after capability in this world, and nobody objects to people doing it in plain view. However I felt that the story was kind of odd: an absolute stranger decides to test you, makes you (Spoiler - click to show)meld your ID card to get (Spoiler - click to show)the key to a park with a tavern full of gamblers. This lacked stakes for our character: why is she acting like that and not just going back home, why is she humoring the stranger who claims (Spoiler - click to show)to know something about your sister when he could have just Googled that? This is a bit naive, not really the attitude you have when meeting a mysterious stranger... Besides, why (Spoiler - click to show)does she even use her ID and risk losing it for a total stranger? why doesn't she unmeld the key and just go?

Mechanically, the game is based on this melding capability, but it's not really explained how this works. Actually, the game explains that it's totally unpredictable. (At first, I thought that it was (Spoiler - click to show)about plays on words, since ring + ID card = key, keyring, keycard... but it's not an Andrew Schultz game :)) Personally, I understand "unpredictable" as "here's a way to get random objects to solve puzzles that the author dumped in the game" and "you're going to have to try all the combinations to figure out what the author wanted of you", and when the game explained that there was (seemingly) no connection between input and output, I was disappointed and couldn't see how this could be fun; I don't want to guess the author's mind as a puzzle.
If you wanted to use this mechanic, you could make it really random, i.e. the result differs on each playthrough, and like, you say that objects have an "energy level" so that two objects of level 3 can be melded in a random object of level 4, and this becomes about resource management / roguelike-y and could be fun. That's kind of the only way I see to have an uncontrollable mechanism as the basis of your game and to make it fun.

The implementation is mostly good, even if there are a few bugs (Spoiler - click to show)(can't >unlock gate with key, jacob doesn't react to the ring...). If your game is based on a systematic mechanic, though, you have to be ready and expect emergent gameplay and players being smarter than you, and at least provide several possible solutions to the puzzles. I don't really know if "Meld" does that in the introduction (not that I could see I guess), but that's something to be expected for a full version of the game.

In short, "Meld" left me unconvinced, because its central mechanic is not very interesting for the player since it cannot be predicted; it seems like the player would spend their time trying all the possibilities to find what the author intended, which isn't fun. It'd be better if this mechanic had some kind of rules the player could then attempt to exploit freely and to the best of their ability.

"Lair of the Gorgonanth, Part 1" is a Twine in which your character's goal is to kill Nimrod Supertramp to get the bounty on his head. The world is fun and colorful, with ogre with machineguns and a biker gang of bounty-hunting witches, not to be taken too seriously. However, the problem is that the writing is not taking the world seriously, and add a mixed bag of throwaway jokes, crude jokes, silly jokes (Spoiler - click to show)(vanish) and over-the-top actions. A perfect example of this: (Spoiler - click to show)the strength of Nimrod Supertramp lies in his beard, which is interesting symbolically, and then the game adds that his soul is in a boil on his ass, which, I don't even want to get to that scene anymore. This undermines the game, when the story and the situation seemed perfectly good: the goal is clearly identified, you have a nice add-on with the person who was captured by Supertramp and their relationship, which raises stakes and anticipation, you have a bunch of very distinct and fun characters who all want to best/kill each other to get this bounty... The humour here shoudn't be in the writing and the silly jokes, which affect pacing: they should be about the characters clashing, Wacky Races-style (I love Wacky Races), each with their own strategies and personalities that create a funny, explosive mix. The writing shouldn't get in the way by trying to be funny too, otherwise it feels like it's not very sure if the game is fun; the best comedy is played straight.

I also thought that the main character's deal wasn't very good and didn't bring much to the game. I mean, we don't know a lot about the main character, or their institution; their plan is not a very good one (Spoiler - click to show)(wait until the bounty hunters kill the guy, then kill all the bounty hunters? isn't it as hard as killing the guy directly?), and what happens is not very coherent (Spoiler - click to show)(if you're in a world where hecklers are shot on the spot, are bounty hunters really going to knock out someone who betrayed them, or straight up kill them?). Just have the character be another of the bounty hunters, and say them don't trust him fully but they don't have any particular beef; you don't need an extra reason for bounty hunters not to trust each other, and the PC could be (Spoiler - click to show)a government spy without it affecting much (it could just be his thing/personality he uses later on). Because right now, you set up a secret, then it doesn't matter anymore, and so it's kind of pointless.

In any case, I'd like to see more from this game, but only if the author commits to and exploits the funny that's inside the setting and the characters; no need to add silly jokes, and it fact it trips the game up more than it helps. Just play it straight, clear up the situation with the PC, and use your characters and the way their personalities have to clash as they all go for the gold as what drives your game and makes it funny. Wacky Races, man.

"Deprivation" is an 'apartment game' in which your character has insomnia and is rather fragile following a sad event.

The game is fairly well implemented, although sparsely; I'd expect from an 'apartment game' that the objects have lots of responses and messages, but they don't really. (Among the problems, (Spoiler - click to show)read book = x bookcase, >think doesn't do anything although I'd expect it to do something in this case, since our protagonist is brooding, you can't open the bottle of mustard, there's empty scenery, "sleep: go to bed then; >go to bed: it's right there", etc.)
Look, maybe I'm biased because I just spent a lot of time on it and its source, but the best 'apartment game' is _Shade_, in that it does everything almost perfectly. Each object has 15 or 20 different responses, moving is super smooth, etc. I'm also mentioning _Shade_ because the readme of Deprivation says it's a "state-based game", when I didn't see any real difference in the setting or in the protagonist as the game progressed (and _Shade_ is an amazing example for that).

The setting is different here, and it could go several interesting ways: exploring the relationship, fighting the blues, paranomal/surreal, etc., so I'd like to see more; but for now, it seems like the game is missing direction. As a player, I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to do: I poked around a little bit, but I don't know if I'm supposed to make the PC feel better, or worse (I tried acting as self-destructive as I could, just to see if that was the way the game was trying to make me go), or whatever I want, or am I supposed to watch out for surreal elements, or did I miss something... The game doesn't really say anything, and I also found that the descriptions weren't really setting a particular mood; they're kind of neutral, when the PC's inner state should be more reflected (I was surprised when (Spoiler - click to show)the game denied me cake out of self-loathing - I hadn't realized it was that bad). Also, there's a few instances of "tell, don't show": for instance (Spoiler - click to show)the movie on the TV is described as "you've seen it before, you identify as the protagonist and it makes you feel better": how? why? what is the movie, what is it about? tell me about the movie so I can imagine it and thus imagine how the protagonist feels like: show, don't tell). And same things for (Spoiler - click to show)the texts and the emails.

So, I'd like to see more, but not really thanks to what the game showed, since there really isn't much there in terms of story or hints of events to come; the setting could lead to an interesting game, but also to a boring one unfortunately, so it's a bit tricky. There are problems in this introduction that need to be addressed for it to really work and not be just a "my apartment sucks, my life sucks" game; we need stronger characterization or direction in the game, and more stuff happening, and a stronger-than-average implementation. Really, _Shade_ is a good example that gets it right, and there are lots of ideas to steal and principles to follow in there.

"Beyond Division" tells the story of an Earth under an alien invasion, and how a discovery in Siberia holds promise to fend off the aliens. The point of view changes and alternates between a wolf and a human, which I thought was interesting; especially the part where (Spoiler - click to show)we alternate and see both sides of the same conversation, which is interesting and I hope to see more of. The parts about the wolf feature non-standard library messages, and a stronger emphasis on some verbs, which is a very nice feature and contributes to setting the mood. The game takes an interesting keyword-based approach to conversations, which I found pretty effective. The writing is mostly good, although there are a few times where I didn't understand what the author meant by the turn of phrase (Spoiler - click to show)('the scars are the same' to say they haven't healed, 'the span of the tree is more horizontal than others' to say the tree had fallen). The implementation is overall good, and if the game keeps being made of short vignettes, it will probably be easy to keep the implementation level sufficient.

What I found the most interesting in this game was how it was framed: the story is, apparently, told by someone else, who also (Spoiler - click to show)provides footnotes throughout the story. The thing is, the game doesn't really explain how is this framing useful and connected to the story, which managed to leave me both scared and excited about what's to come. I mean, what does the game have to do with Latin? Who is talking? To who? Is it another character talking to my character who is then imagining him/herself as other characters in the story? (Spoiler - click to show)Is the author talking to the player directly? (cf the reference to the title in footnote 5) Is the author in 9th grade? I don't really what to expect from the story: am I supposed to play it straight, or is this the extended setup for a terrible pun in Latin that will be the last sentence of the work, like one of those Asimov short stories? Is it (Spoiler - click to show)going to be a 9th grade type of story, should I expect robots punching each other and Mountain Dew? Or a parody/deconstruction of those?

This is the game that piqued my interest the most among the Introcomp games this year, but I really don't know what to expect. However, it sets up several interesting ideas and threads, and if that all comes together and the author can pull it off, it could be very interesting and daring; let's hope this is the case!

In "Walker's Rift", you are the director of a new station, in a futuristic city inspired by Singapore with a monster problem. The world depicted is interesting, with monster hunters who have to go explore sewage systems to eradicate them, as well as the depiction of a high class which doesn't know a thing about what regular folks endure down there; it may feel like a classic device, especially in SF, but I like if the contrast safety/monsters and the need for monster hunters to go crawl in the sewage is explored further.

The game gives you several options to personalize your character, including how they should be referred to, what kind of job they have, how they got there and how they feel about it. However, I didn't feel like it mattered very much from what I saw, and there is one instance where the game contradicts itself (Spoiler - click to show)(asking you what you think about coffee when earlier in the game they say you are at your third cup of coffee); I don't think it leads to radically different playthroughs, but I could be wrong. I didn't really like that (Spoiler - click to show)the game litterally listed 3 reasons why you might not like coffee when selecting this option, as if you need to make up your own: I prefer it when the author is specific, and uses the info I provide to write a specific character, justifying my choices, instead of 'just picture it in your head'.

The writing is okay, although some sentences didn't really work for me ((Spoiler - click to show)'the girl lingers outside like a bad smell'...). Some parts, again, would be improved by more precise writing; there's mention of "gossip on the internet", but didn't really say what, and other parts were maybe too long or had choices that weren't really interesting. The biggest gameplay part was (Spoiler - click to show)investigating the disease, but this doesn't really work mechanically: you are presented with, like, 6 options, with no real idea on what you should do first (and it's "timed", you can't do them all), and if you don't do things in the right order you frustratingly go down a completely useless branch (and sometimes the branches repeat text, which is even more frustrating). There was no real guidelines anywhere, nobody to ask about either, and even when you do something that's not optimal, the game doesn't really tell you "oh, maybe you should have done ..." or something; so I thought that was frustrating, since I interpreted it as "lawnmowering to find the author's sequence of events" rather than a problem of method (which it might have been, but since the game didn't help me figure it out...). Which is a shame, really - that sounded interesting, like a futuristic (Spoiler - click to show)House, MD episode, and there aren't enough games like that, especially sci-fi ones; but it's gotta be logical or have some kind of rules or method so that the player feels they understand what's going on a bit.

I would like to see more of that game, especially given the setting, but the gameplay elements were unsatisfying for now, and maybe I would have liked to see more in this introduction to know what to expect (is it going to be all investigation, or will there be action sequences? also, more details about the world).