The Wand

by Arthur DiBianca profile

2017

Go to the game's main page

Member Reviews

Number of Reviews: 7
Write a review


0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Fun, good range of puzzles - could do with better vocab, February 12, 2018

On the whole, this was very enjoyable. The puzzles were mostly straightforward and fun with a good few trickier ones further in.

I have one particular gripe. Yes, I know it warns me it is a game with limited verbs ('examine' 'use' and very few others) but the key reason for having excellent modern parsers is to avoid parser-'don't understand'-Hell and give a rich experience to the reader/player.

For example:

I'm in a room, with a closed wooden door and a wand in my hand.

I try 'open door' and I get "That's not a command I recognise"
I try 'wave wand' and I get "That's not a command I recognise"

I nearly stopped playing at that point.

Yes, I can see the reason for limiting the verbs and, yes (without giving spoilers), it does eliminate a lot of wasted parser-Hell later but there were plenty of other examples of 'examine' not working with things described in rooms.

IF should try to give a reasonable response to everything that can be seen/described, so I think it needed a bit of work sorting that out.

In the end, though, I'm glad I stayed with it because it was a very good little adventure and I enjoyed it enough to give it an extra star.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment