Day Out

This is an Adventuron game designed for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It has simple puzzles and structure, designed as an introduction to IF.

The author often had trouble when playing Adventuron on mobile because it wouldn't save, so this game is based on a password system. An early choice in the game leads to 4 branches, each accessible by a password.

Most of the gameplay revolves around driving to work, getting an assignment, then carrying out a task involving riddles or metaphoric actions of various sorts, including solving number patterns and changing the emotions of animals. There's one big final chapter at the end.

Overall, the game has some heartwarming moments and some big ideas. The execution doesn't really pull through though. There are a lot of typos and grammatical errors; the author is a non-native speaker, likely using a mobile device based on the author notes, but it may be worth running the text through a spellchecker like grammarly (you can even put code into spell checkers, just ignoring the errors the code part causes). A lot of items are underimplemented; one important item is stuck in a gate, but X item acts as if it's not there; similarly, there is a billboard that you can't EXAMINE or LOOK AT but can READ. You have to GO OFFICE to go to the office, but if you try to GO ______ for an address, it says 'not yet'; instead, you must just type ______ (i.e. the address itself). Due to these issues, I found myself struggling to enjoy parts of the game. With more polish, I could see this being very fun!

There is some pixel art, which ranges from abstract and confusing to fun and silly. There is an odd part about buying underwear off models, leaving them nude, but otherwise it's pretty solid.

Overall, lots of fun stuff here, just needs some more care and attention to spelling and implementation.

This is an interesting Adventuron game that you can play through multiple times to experience different mini-adventures. The game has a pleasant aesthetic style, characterful tone and fairly trippy vibe as far as the story and puzzles are concerned.

The author is a non-native English speaker and there are quite a lot of language errors; sometimes this feels like sloppiness rather than just due to the language barrier. For instance, the game setting (the city of Torino/Turin, I assume) is variously referred to as ‘Torino/Tortino/Tourin’.

Occasional bugged responses, and also a few irritating non-responses due to the language issue - e.g. ICECREAM is recognised but not ICE CREAM.

There’s no tutorial to speak of as far as I can see - instead, you can type HELP for a list of basic commands. HELP and HINT do generally give you enough clues during each mini-adventure to get you through it, but I would have liked a defined tutorial section as set out in the jam guidelines.

There are a few places that could do with slightly better clueing/clarity. For instance, at one point you have to type YES after being asked ‘Are you free today?’. This is likely to throw a player expecting to have to type verb noun commands or similar - a simple ‘(Type YES to continue)’ would go a long way here.

Generally, items in the location descriptions are unimplemented, and directions are usually LEFT/RIGHT rather than the more standard NSEW etc. This fits with the style of the game, which in some ways is not really a traditional text adventure, but I do prefer to see those traditional elements (such as being able to examine things) included in games where teaching beginners is the aim.

The initial objective is a bit confusing. Am I having a ‘day out’ or not? I’ve suddenly been told I need to go to work. When you do get to the office, things generally become clearer… but never any less weird!

I really like the game design of playing through multiple times to get the final ending. However, I would like to see a bit more polish and clueing (especially in the early stages of the game) to make it more beginner-friendly.

I sometimes wondered as a kid if my life would be radically different if I, say, chose one flavor of ice cream over another one day. The Butterfly effect and all that.

Well, that sort of happens here.

You are driving to work, and you stop at a gas station to refuel. You have a choice of four snacks to buy. Each one opens a different mini-story, and each mini-story gives you part of a message you need to decipher. Once I solved two of the stories, I had enough of the message to decipher it. I don't know if it's the author's intent, but it's a neat idea. And the snack images are neat low-res things that give me nostalgia for Apple and TRS-80, in a good way.

There are some puzzles, too, mostly of the logic type. There's "three people, one may be lying" and numerical patterns and so forth. I got talking animals in a forest and then an elevator where the desired floor was the answer to a puzzle. I missed on the animals in the forest several times, but it was forgiving and looped back until I examined stuff and figured things out.

This means Day Out isn't big on story, but technically, it works. However, it seems as though it would work a lot better in Twine, and the author may have confused "tutorial for others" with "tutorial for myself." The verbs are sensible but they are force-fed to you. So it's not great on teaching the player what to try first, and what to expect from their tries.

Part of this may be because English isn't the author's first language. I googled their name, since it was relatively unique, and their artistic side is rather interesting, at least on Instagram. It jibes with what I saw, where you had interesting whimsical drawings, and it's good to see someone with a large Instagram following move over here. The interlinking stories and secret messages are creative, if a bit random. For instance, with the elevator buttons, PUSH RED/GREEN/BLUE could just have three buttons to click, saving keystrokes. So it doesn't really play to the strengths of the parser, especially when I typed BLUE. Thankfully the HINT command bailed me out. So the author made serious effort to make things robust, though Adventuron may not have been the best tool for the job, especially since Twine allows graphics at least as easily too.

There was enough of that that my usual "I couldn't write something in another language" caveats and praise for courage aren't just fluff. There are spelling and grammar errors, but it's not the sort a native speaker would make, and when you see those it's easy/easier to be forgiving. I was definitely left thinking, okay, this person did what they could, and with more time to proofread and translate, this gets ironed out, no problem. I mean, you get a password just before the puzzles start, which is thoughtful of the author, and the passwords are rather amusing on their own. The author has a legit sense of humor, as I found by playing theie 2025 TALJ entry.

Though between checking off to say, yes, this is what the author meant, and fighting the parser a bit to get to the "good" ending, I was glad to cut things short initially. Guessing the "real" path through is hinted at several times in the story and leads you to a fun small sub-game of its own, which has almost certainly been done before, but it's satisfying.

This points to good and bad: I needed a break after the two times through, but I was interested in eating the other two snacks before judging ended, for more than just completionist purposes.

Day Out does provide fun but also has weaknesses: it does feel like puzzles with story slapped on a bit (I've definitely been in that boat, too, as a writer,) but I did like the blocky way-retro graphics, and I don't think that sort of aesthetic appeal happens by accident. But the game also has limitations, because the parser inhibits the experience instead of adding to it. However, if it weren't written in Adventuron, we might not have the cool graphics Adventuron seems to inspire. So Day Out may not be a great fit for the jam, possibly due to some misunderstandings, but it's still fun if you have guardrails. The author for his part seems to have made a parser game that would be trickier to do in Twine for TALP/TALJ 2025. The tutorial feels more fleshed out. But looking back on Day Out, it does have a rough "shows potential" charm, and the author built on this potential.