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Number of Ratings: 29
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8 people found the following review helpful:
An excellent optimization-based treasure hunt with good humor, November 19, 2019I beta tested this game, and I love it.
You play as a contestant on a reality show that apparently involves finding antiques while wearing a chicken suit (?).
You run around a mansion gathering items while a timer ticks down each turn. Some items are easy to find, while others require a great deal of ingenuity.
Knowledge is the key in this game, player knowledge and not character knowledge. You can learn secret codes that help you succeed. There are secret bonuses. On top of all of this, all of the items have an 'optimal placement location' that gives you even more money.
This game has more narrative than most shameless treasure hunts, and a lot of funny lines, but the focus here is on getting the best prize. Your host comments on your score each time, and you are able to replay as much as you want in-game, with it being interpreted as re-takes of the show.
Love it, think it's great, and I think people will be playing this one for years. I play IF for many reasons: love of stories, love of characters. This game satisfies my itch of 'take/drop/N/E/S/W', which is the same reason I love the original IF game Adventure.
This game takes about 30 minutes to finish the first time but hours to get a good score.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Optimization problem with easy and hard puzzles, November 18, 2019In this game, you are participating in a reality TV show on the Sugarlawn Plantation. Your objective is to earn as much money you can within 30 minutes. You earn money by finding valuables and return with them to the foyer. Even better, if you can find out what the target location is of a valuable and put it there, you will get a bonus. In addition, you get a bonus if you manage to escape from the house. There is also mentioned a secret bonus. Bonuses will be doubled if you do not bring the sack to carry stuff. In other words, if you accept an inventory limit, your bonuses will be doubled. So this is a rare example of a game, where it makes good sense to have an inventory limit, since it makes the game harder but you earn more points.
This game has a lot of original puzzles it seems. The fundamental gameplay is quite similar to Ryan Veeder's "Captain Verdeterre's Plunder", which isn't a bad thing. This game is however bigger and some of the puzzles are harder. In both games you need to optimize your playthrough to earn as much money you can, which is hard, since there isn't time to get all valuables and bonuses. I like both games very much.
This game has a lot of humor in it, and it is very well implemented. Within the two hour limit I kept increasing my score, and I feel quite addicted. I hope there will be an online high score list at some point, which is the case for "Captain Verdeterre's Plunder". Such competition would give the player an incentive to keep improving. As it is now, you are mainly playing against yourself, which is also fun but could be even more fun with a high score list. Anyway, this is a very fun game I highly recommend.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
A new twist on the traditional treasure hunt game, November 17, 2019This has probably the best blurb in IFComp 2019; I read it and I just had to find out what that was all about. What it’s about is a reality show in which you run through a historic Louisiana mansion in a chicken suit trying to grab historical antiques for big cash prizes. You’ve got thirty minutes to find as many as you can, and you’ll get a bonus if you can not just collect them, but leave them in the appropriate locations. The unique setting and focus on history puts this several cuts about the traditional IF treasure hunt it resembles. The game doesn’t just want to give you a bunch of valuable stuff to snatch – you actually have to engage with the purpose and background of the items to figure out where they go, and sometimes using one properly can give you hints towards another.
I made $10104 on my first runthrough – not that hard, as many of the treasures are in plain sight. I didn’t figure out how to get any of the locked-away ones, though, and I only figured out the right location for three. This is a game that demands multiple playthroughs to figure out everything and optimize your path – the fact that knowledge from previous playthrough is required is cleverly justified in-game as you being offered the chance to do multiple takes. I'm not mathematically inclined enough to tackle the problem of complete optimization, but I've seen a lot of other people playing and enjoying the game on this level.
I didn’t find any bugs at all, although I did mostly just run around and grab things, so I’m not sure how it holds up to playing around more with the items. Overall, a lot of fun.
- jaclynhyde, October 18, 2019
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Treasure hunt with a stiff timer, October 11, 2019Here’s a classic run-around-and-grab-stuff treasure hunt in a mansion, although Spivey elegantly bypasses any questions of the ethics of stealing someone’s stuff by framing the entire game as reality television, complete with a host providing color commentary on Louisianan architecture.
The game has a lot of lock and key puzzles, some that require the use of a good-old pen and paper, as well as an interesting mechanic of treasures being worth twice as much if placed in the room they belong. I think this does a pretty good job of adding an additional layer of gameplay – it’s easy to drop off the loot in the room as you run around completing other puzzles.
This frame story also includes the additional caveat of a thirty minute timer, which gives the whole game a sort of Hollywood Hijinxs meets Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder feel. This I was less jazzed about. Building a parser game around replayability is tricky: too short and it isn’t worth replaying, too long and replaying seems arduous. Sugarlawn hits right at the “almost too long” mark. Once I finished the game for the first time I immediately started again, but after realizing I hadn’t noted treasure locations the first time it felt more like a chore.
If you haven’t played Sugarlawn yet, I highly recommend it, with this advice – take detailed notes the first time.
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