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The Computer Is Your Friend, July 12, 2023Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review
Played: 4/12/23
Playtime: 4.5hrs of contradictions, finished
NCBFFTT seemed like it had an attitude about it from the start. It simultaneously flies in the face of convention, and embraces what consensus seems to categorize as the worst aspects of early IF. Instant, not always clear why death. Magic nouns and verbs with incomplete synonyms. Extended puzzle sequences that can play as hurdles for the sake of hurdles. Incomplete descriptions that require just the right sub-component EXAMINE to shed important details. Repetition of lengthy, specific, random interaction scenes. A CONVENTION-DEFYING NAV SYSTEM THE AUTHOR THEMSELF STUMBLES ON.
It is reasonably fair play, in that most of these things are told to the player right up front. There isn’t any confusion of mismatched expectations. Just confusion of WHY. Any one of these things could just sink an IF work outright, vanishing without a trace in the pool of “too much work.” Most of these have established best practices to manage or mitigate. Punters, sez NCBFFTT. So how on earth did I manage to last 4.5 hrs?
NCBFFTT has a big thing going for it. Its setting is loosely based on an ancient sci-fi satire rpg, Paranoia. For the uninitiated, this was a deeply cynical, deeply funny sci-fi dystopia where the main feature was repeated, arbitrary death at the hands of a dysfunctional bureaucracy. Where incompetence was if not a virtue, certainly a pervasive force to be reckoned with. Where the resistance was basically as disfunctional, just with less resources. So much good satire and slapstick to milk from that premise.
And NCBFFTT is pretty good at it! For a while. The protagonist’s back story, death scenes, the wry newspeak descriptions of locations and items, the random newscasts and interactions with NPCs, these are consistently funny and biting and kind of sad. It buoys things along for quite a while. It is fighting the good fight, but man the moving parts of the game do not make it easy. Opaque descriptions, usually unclear paths forward, inconsistent levels of detail, all challenge the player. In an environment where the learning curve is punctuated by constant death/restore/undo. In the first 3 hours, I found myself on the verge of rage quitting practically every 5 minutes, but something about the alchemy of the setting, the wry text, *just* enough unhinted progress kept me afloat. Even though there was no escaping the Hint System.
So yeah, the hint system was used early and often. It is complete, I’ll say that. There is a special kind of anger though when consulting a hint “How do I open door?” (Spoiler - click to show) “Turn the Wheel” When the room description mentions the door but no hint of (Spoiler - click to show)wheel. >X DOOR Oh yeah, did I not mention there’s a wheel on it? That’s my own paraphrase, btw. Doesn’t it seem like its trolling you on some level?
To make matters worse, here’s my analogy for the hint system. Take a complete set of progressive hints and navigation menus. Then shuffle them. Shuffle them, like you’re a Vegas blackjack table on the Card Counters World Tour. Shuffle them like the penalty for two spades in a row was death. Then tell the player to find the Queen! Every trip to the hint system felt like a minigame of its own, trying to guess where the relevant clue was. It was actually perversely engaging (because I am damaged), in that it felt less like cheating, more like you EARNED that daggum hint.
For the first 3 1/2 hrs, it felt like the game was crossing the room with a towering, inverse pyramid of jello desserts. Every step pitched dramatically one direction, its thundering crash a seeming certainty. Yet somehow a quick sidestep changed the angular momentum enough to forestall disaster, only to wobble precipitously in a different direction. FOR 3 1/2 HOURS! I mean that exhausting endeavor alone kind of has its own majesty.
At the 3 1/2 hour mark though, there is a narrative choice that ultimately torpedoed me. (Spoiler - click to show)To solve a puzzle, the protagonist commits mass murder. Including of innocents and children. And seems fundamentally unaffected by it. On the strength of the hint system, I assume this is an unavoidable outcome. I might complain that the text (and a death-fail) kind of led me to believe that would not be the outcome, but really, the clues were there, I just ignored them. (Spoiler - click to show)I mean it was called 'Cleansing Fire of God" or somesuch.
Now even that didn’t HAVE to be a destructive narrative choice, but in the version I played, somehow the wry comedic tone that had kept things from crashing until this point chose that moment to take a bathroom break. (It probably says a lot about me that I’m half convinced even a choice that dire could be salvaged with the right tone. I accept your judgement.) The text shifted to a near cold, journalistic description, and THEN tried to overlay a jarringly light comedy puzzle.
To be fair, I understand the current revision to have modified tone somewhat here, which will DRAMATICALLY improve the experience, at least for me.
There is some subsequent fun business in the final boss, but in my play the jello was already on the floor so to speak. Which is ABSOLUTELY going to be a catch phrase in my reviews going forward.
So in retrospect, I still grapple with this one. Far and away the biggest time investment of the Thing so far. So much of it in fighting the parser, the physical descriptions, and omigod dying. A lot of it skimming big blocks of repeated text. A lot more of it fighting the Hint system. But the breadth of the puzzles was cool, the amount satisfyingly large. Often, the hints left me with, “hey pretty cool, wish the text had given me more to go on.” The fact that the amusing text and puzzle mix kept the jello aloft that long, against those challenges, is noteworthy. Fixing the tone of that one plot turn probably gets the jello to the table.
Spice Girl: Ginger Spice
Vibe: Dystopian Satire
Polish: Distressed
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! I mean if it’s mine, it’s gotta be rewriting that climactic scene/puzzle, no? At least for tone if not rethinking it completely. You could assemble a year’s long to do list of text/puzzle/hint cleanup, but without addressing that I think you’re still back to “Oh, no. No no no.” Author agreed?
Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
Rating omitted from total, as from previous version