At Night

This is a fairly short game, and the author’s first game. Because they mentioned trying to learn things, I’ll keep that in mind.

This is a multimedia-heavy game, and it encourages you to use headphones while you play and uses timed text, sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

The game is translated from Spanish, but I didn’t notice for a while because it’s a fairly good translation. But it needs some more work; when running around the room, for instance, one of the links was ‘pedizquierda’.

The story is about being creeped out and attacked by a demon at night. Interaction-wise, you have a sort of maze (that’s not really a maze), a couple of ‘guess the right option’ things and some battles.

Knowing your audience is important. A couple of things to keep in mind about IFComp are:

1.The winning games are often very polished, having been worked on for dozens or hundreds of hours. Not every game does this, but
2. Having your games tested is a plus. Having it tested by people who’ve done IFComp before is an even bigger plus. Having it tested by a lot of experience people, responding to their feedback, and improving your game over months is best.

3.Making fun of the player isn’t as popular as it once was. For instance, if you choose the wrong thing, the game has the demon say:
I think you’re too stupid for me to feel like playing with you.It was the worst decision you have ever made, but thanks for being so stupid.

As a player, that’s not super fun to read. It’s not horribly bad, and I know it’s about the person in the game, but it was my decision, and saying I’m stupid is kind of frustrating.

4. Multimedia and timed text can make a game look a lot cooler, but if you think about, why are people even interested in a text competition? Some people like it because the games are easy to make. Others are blind and use text to speech readers. Some (like me) like having games you can play as fast or as slow as you want, take breaks, play without sound while taking a break at work or at home. So having a lot of your game dependent on keeping up with the text or having to listen intently to the sounds can be hard. That’s why games like Limerick Quest that have timed text have options to turn it off.

Overall, I think this game shows cool programming and a fun writing voice. It’s okay that it has some faults, because it’s your first game. Nothing would be more depressing than having your first game be your best game, because it’s all downhill from there. I think of Victor Ojuel and Ruber Eaglenest who both entered IFComp for the first time with games that were heavily criticized. They listened to the feedback, tried again and both placed in the top 10 with excellent games (and Victor has a job as a narrative designer now).

+Polish: There are bugs and typos, but the sound effects and art are fancy.
+Descriptiveness: The game makes its world come alive.
-Interactivity: I was frustrated by having to choose exactly the right option.
-Emotional impact: This game didn't really impact me.
-Would I play again? As it currently is no.