Lulu and the Asteroid of 100% Guaranteed Doom

This game was entered in the Text Adventure literacy jam. It includes a brief tutorial where you take a nap, encounter a violent earthquake and are led to another world lying underneath yours!

The gameplay revolves around exploring the fantasy world, picking up items, often magical, and using them, frequently through the use of riddles.

The game makes heavy use of AI art to provide location images. It provides vivid and detailed images, but due to lack of consistent themes it made it difficult to really imagine the way things were.

I found the gameplay both polished and unpolished. On the one hand, several puzzles were well-clued and suggested the commands to be used. On the other hand, some simple things were difficult to do (to go to sleep, I couldn't SLEEP or ENTER BED but had to LIE DOWN ON BED, for instance). A frequent issue I encountered was that the solution to one problem was often very far away from the problem itself, which meant that a lot of the game involved just grabbing everything and hoping it would eventually be useful. You may say, 'but all games are like that! Zork! Adventureland!' and that is true, so if you liked the gameplay in those games you may like this style. I played about 1/3 on my own and used a walkthrough for the rest.

Somehow the story and setting felt like it was consistent in each scene but not consistent altogether. There is an overarching story with recurring characters, but outside of that a lot is random. The world is accessed through a ravine in your world, so it's like a 'portal' story. But then you go through another portal, so it's like an isekai within an isekai, but the second portal journy isn't really remarked on. You go from unused stairways to a city and from descending a dungeon area to being outdoors. Things like a pirate are included, but why? Plot points are repeated, like your cat running off and you rescuing her. Nevertheless, each component was fun.

Overall, it was interesting, and felt a lot like a playthrough of AI dungeon, except it's a single story, not a collection of them. So the best part of the game for me was the sense that everything would be new and unexpected in each new area, but I missed a sense of cohesiveness and purpose.

This was the first game I played in this TALP Jam that came with a walkthrough. This is always such a welcome bonus when playing through lots of jam games!

It’s a large, sophisticated and well-constructed game with an interesting story and an engaging objective for most of the game (find your missing cat). There’s clearly been a lot of worldbuilding and it kind of feels like there’s something much bigger going on behind the game story. A lot of the locations and scenes feel a bit disconnected, like you’re floating from dream to dream, but the plot is mostly coherent and interesting.

The tutorial is well set out - you are led around the basic environs of your own home and guided through the basic commands. Once the story starts, though, you’re very much on your own.

My feeling is that this would be a difficult game for beginners. The game uses a complex parser and sometimes the commands are a little hard to figure out - I was often reliant on the walkthrough. As someone more familiar with the tropes I could also have done with better clueing in general. At some points it’s not very clear what you need to do to progress the story.

A few slightly wonky moments with responses and implementation, but on the whole the game is really solidly coded. I really liked the ending puzzle and final scene – it was very satisfying.

It’s a big game for a TALP game. It felt nice and meaty – but I think it would need to be at a slightly easier level to be friendly to beginners.