Akkoteaque

This was part of Introcomp 2013, an IF competition whose entries are meant to be introductions of full-size games, so many entries are necessarily less well-implemented than the author might have liked them to be.

In Akkoteaque, you're being taken to an island to see your biological grandmother, which is kinda a bummer because you've not ever seen or heard of her all these years.

First impressions: this game is technically strong. Keywords and exits are highlighted, and the exits change to reflect the places they lead to. There's an inbuilt hint system, which I thought presented hints quite elegantly. All very nifty, and reflecting a good amount of polish. The writing is pretty good, and its occasional snarkiness helped to create the impression of a teenage PC who is growing into that age of sarcasm.

The problem is that there feels like very little content, for all the polish. The game is quite obviously unfinished, with areas you can't reach, and as it stands there isn't a post-comp release up on IFDB yet. A pity: I would very much like to play the finished game!

Some things I think are bugs: the suggested conversation topics unfortunately reveal puzzle clues in a way which I think is unintended. At least the way I read it, the PC shouldn't know of the topics suggested quite so soon. There are prompting sentences which appear if you wander around too much, but those don't seem to change with the game state.

Akkoteaque has some quite enjoyable writing and a PC interesting enough that I wanted to know more of their story. It's just a pity that it was so short, even for an introduction.