Face Your Fears

This game has you try to encounter 13 different phobias as you explore a small area with some woods and a bar.

The range of possible phobias is pretty big and I learned some new ones (like halophobia and ailuriphobia).

This game is written with PunyInform, a version of Inform shrunk down so that compiled files can run on smaller/retro devices.

However, it doesn't take full advantage of the platform, and is weak in many areas. For instance, there are shelves that have several items on them, as seen from decompiling the code. However, X SHELVES, SEARCH SHELVES, and LOOK ON SHELVES all show them as empty. As another example, the barman tells you to 'try buying <a certain item in the game>'. But BUY <the item> doesn't work. There were many such frustrations with the code. There is one person listed in credits who might have been a tester, but this could have used more testing.

-Polish: There is some rough implementation and some bugs.
+Descriptiveness: The setting is mundane, but the phobias were interesting.
-Interactivity: I felt frustrated by the responsiveness.
-Emotional impact: The storyline and fears didn't really draw me in.
+Would I play again? It's an interesting concept, and I never found 4 of the fears.

Face your fears plays around with the theme of PunyJam 2 in a fun way. There is lots of creativity in the phobias you encounter. There are not many rooms, but they are well implemented and described. What is a bit puzzling is that some interaction runs counter to what you normally would expect in an IF game. There are situations where the same command yields different results the second or third time without being hinted at in the game text, and conversations with NPCs are handled more like a conversation tree with keywords. This confused me, and made the game harder to solve than a more traditional approach would have done. This is not bad, just something to keep in mind if you want to play the game.