Alana's Dungeon

It's a four-room game, and it's buggy. You'll go downstairs to kill an orc, but once you kill the orc, the room contains "an orc and a dead orc."

(It's cool that the game was co-developed with a child, but entering it in the IFComp makes it a subject of judgment from adults. My feedback below is directed toward Clyde, and not Alana.)

No playtesters are credited; I think there may not have been any testers for this game. Playtesting your game and crediting your testers is the #1 guideline for IFComp authors.

Furthermore, as I write this, the authors have incorrectly listed their game as "Browser based" on the IFComp site, instead of "Glulx, using Inform's 'Release with a website' feature" which is what the authors actually made. That's a bummer, because it means that IFComp won't send transcripts to the authors, which might help them find bugs.

When you find the orc, he's in a cage, but, for some reason, you can't attack him while he's in the cage, even though you have a sword. You have to unlock the cage, allowing him to attack you, in order to attack him.

When you do attack him, the game includes an RPG-like combat system, in which you type attack orc over and over until he dies. In my opinion, combat systems should give the player some tactical options, or there's no point in having them. Let the player make some risk/reward tradeoffs at least.

There's no alternative to fighting the orc; the orc attacks you mindlessly. (Orcs as monsters reflect an uncritical attitude to the idea that there are "evil races". Another monster, one that isn't steeped in a history of racism, would have been a better choice.)

In my opinion, the solution to leave the East Basement is unfair. (Spoiler - click to show)When you enter the East Basement, the stairs retract into the ceiling. To bring them back, you have to examine stairs, even though the stairs are no longer described in the room. When you examine stairs, the game says, "There are no stairs here. There is a small keyhole beside where the staircase once was." Everything that the player needs to examine should be described in the room's description, or revealed by examining objects in the room's description. I had to use glulx-strings to even figure this out.

Other than the fight with the orc, the game is nothing more than opening containers, taking keys of various colors, and unlocking things with those keys.

In my opinion, games with puzzles need to be surprising, but inevitable in hindsight. None of the puzzles in this game rise to meet that bar, not even for other children, in my opinion.

Overall, the game seems to have been developed with a sense of "this is just what would/should happen in a traditional dungeon crawl."

To add some depth, (perhaps in your next game,) ask Alana what's happening in the game and why.

• Why is there an orc in this game?
• What's fun about fighting games, and how can you put that fun in your game?
• Who made this dungeon? Who put these keys and these locks and these chests here? (Who put a golden key around the neck of a caged orc? Why did they do that?)
• How do you want players to feel as they're playing the game?