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Review
Dinosaur Island Escape
This is another shorter Hosted Game that breaks the traditional mold. It has a lot in common with text adventures; instead of a forward-moving plot arc, it has a world model with keys, door, and items, just like parser games.
Unfortunately, I love parser games and just got through replaying the 50 or so best parser games of all time, and this doesn't quite measure up as either a text adventure or a CoG game, perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with what's possible in that puzzle space. But, I did still have fun! (until my untimely demise).
You crashland onto an island that is essentially Jurassic Park, which the game calls out several times (using character names or a city with the name 'Jurassic City' but a lot of letters are missing). You then explore the island from a central hub, with interesting things in all cardinal and ordinal directions. Essentially, there are locked buildings, keys, and pieces of rescue equipment in all areas, as well as dinosaur encounters. Grabbing a key unlocks other keys, etc. The game ends once you complete one piece of rescue equipment.
Then there is a part 2 with another character along with you with similar themes. I got close to beating this but died when I tried running past a t-rex with an athleticism of 5 (which was enough for all other athleticism checks). There were no savepoints or retries and I didn't feel like replaying the entire game 2 more times to get back to that point, so it sadly ended there.
Overall, the writing is generally utilitarian, and the code has some errors or inefficiencies like posting the 'you've come here already' text right after visiting a place for the first time, or repeating messages that should only happen once, or keeping the underscore in stat names.
All that said, the game is still fun. For $3.99, I'd say it's worth it; I could see me or my younger family members playing this in the airport. The dinosaurs are cute and interesting. I see this author has 3 more games; I am looking forward to them because of the non-traditional setup.
