My Spring Thing Reviews
Dan Shiovitz
intend to reply to a couple more after this, but I thought I'd post
the reviews I wrote. As usual, if you're reading this after a couple
days there may be a more updated version on my website,
http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/springcomp.html
I would like to say that I thought all the games this year had
obviously had a lot of effort put in, and that, combined with the
smaller number of games, the larger size of the games, and (I assume)
the entrance fee, really made this comp a pleasure to play through. I
hope folks are already thinking about entering it next year.
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Authority
by Eva Vikstroem (Z-Machine)
It's hard not to feel like I must have missed the point of this game in
a major way. As far as I can tell Authority is a perfectly normal
simulation of office life -- as the game goes on, the PC talks to their
new coworkers, has lunch, collects office supplies, attends meetings,
and so on. But, I mean, this seems like a lousy idea for a game. There
are a few notes hinting that this might be intended as a satire of
office life, but if it is a satire, it's such a pitch-perfect one as to
be indistinguishable from the thing it's satirizing. Beyond that, I'm
afraid there seem to be a number of plot-related bugs -- on my first
playthrough I ended up triggering a lot of events that didn't quite
make sense, causing me to have lunch twice in one day and so on. It is
possible I am totally misunderstanding or misreading Authority, but as
it is I really can't recommend it.
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Bolivia By Night
by Aidan Doyle (TADS 2)
I am going to spoil more of this game than I usually like to spoil of a
game, but I don't feel bad, because the spoiler is: although it starts
off looking like it's going to be a boring educational game filled with
tedious historical-political fact nuggets, Bolivia By Night actually
turns out to be an excellent semi-fantastic ('fantastic' in terms of
genre, not quality, although it is pretty good) romp studded with
interesting historical-political tidbits of information. And since it's
set in Bolivia, and is semi-fantastic, I guess that would make it
magical realism. Which would explain the talking Che Guevara t-shirt.
Not to mention the ninjas.
Anyway, the deal here is that Bolivia By Night is one of those games
where the PC stumbles onto a problem, has their consciousness raised,
and is eventually willing and able to solve the problem (or at least a
small part of it). In this particular game there's a nice parallel
track where the political issues have supernatural implications, and
fixing the latter is intertwined with fixing the former. This kind of
thing can be done well or badly, and I'm pleased to say that Bolivia By
Night won me over pretty thoroughly by the end, with humorous writing
and an engaging plot balancing out the after-school-special nature of
the whole thing.
The only real gripe I have is that the pacing could be tightened up
substantially. The first two chapters have long stretches where the
player is doing something not all that exciting that really should have
been condensed, and then later on there are a few places where there
could be more direction as to what to do to move the plot along. This
latter is mitigated by the game having hints, but I didn't realize that
until almost the end of the game, and, anyway, that's not really the
optimal way to handle it.
So, yeah, I liked Bolivia By Night quite a bit. It manages to both
amuse and educate, and at some points it successfully does both at
once. Definitely recommended.
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Flat Feet
by Joel Ray Holveck (Z-Machine)
You're a cat detective, and your best buddy is a hyperactive ferret.
Together you fight crime! Specifically, in Flat Feet you fight crime by
bopping around the Bay Area, cracking jokes and (at least for me)
trying to figure out what you're supposed to be doing. The problem is,
basically, the author is aiming for an absurdist humor game (a la Sam &
Max, he says in the credits), which is good, but he's made the mistake
of also giving the game an absurdist plot design, which is very bad.
Like, at the start of the game you're sitting around waiting for a case
to come in. You might think the correct answer is to wait for the phone
to ring -- but no, the correct way to make stuff happen is to go
outside and make preparations for leaving the office, and then this
will make the phone ring, giving you a case and thus a reason to leave
the office. Funny concept, irritating in practice. The plot is filled
with situations like this, where you have to do things before knowing
why they're useful, either to solve a puzzle or to advance the plot.
Slightly more defensible are the puzzles that are obviously just stuck
in to make things harder (eg, Ralph and the elevator). There's nothing
wrong with this feel-wise in an absurdist game, except that they're
psychologically hard to solve: the author has plainly said "THIS IS AN
ILLOGICAL PUZZLE" so how can you expect to solve it by reasoning out a
solution?
Putting aside the plot difficulties, Flat Feet is a lot of fun. There
are plenty of zany hijinx and goofy remarks, and they take place in a
really well-done version of the Bay Area that strikes the right balance
between cartoon and geography. It's just a pity that the plot makes it
such a pain to see all the funny bits.
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Second Chance
by David Whyld (ADRIFT)
I started off figuring this would be pretty similar to other games by
Whyld I've played and haven't cared for. But for whatever reason --
maybe because there's no time limit on the springcomp games and so the
game didn't feel so rushed, or maybe because it wasn't trying for wacky
humor, or maybe because the plot was more linear and the puzzles were
simpler -- I ended up quite liking it. It's one of those "go back in
time and change your fate" games where you play through little
vignettes for several of the characters involved, and working out how
to win each vignette and how they tied together was pretty satisfying.
I don't think this is going to win over everyone who hasn't cared for
Whyld's stuff in the past. The individual pieces aren't really
challenging enough to feel puzzly, but the overall game structure tends
to force a lot of replays and hence requires some time investment (and,
again, the lack of a time limit for the spring comp makes this game
viable in a way it wouldn't be in the fall comp). The writing is kind
of enh, and the character's dialogue feels slapdash (the old woman's
manner of speaking, in particular, wanders all over the social class
hierarchy). Oh, and what's up with the anti-climactic ending? When the
player gets the best possible solution, say something about it -- don't
give them the same summary that everyone else gets. But nevertheless,
the game all came together for me and worked pretty well -- I don't
have any problems at all recommending Second Chance.
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Threnody
by John "Doppler" Schiff (TADS2)
Man, I never thought I would see the day when I would be recommending a
fantasy adventure where the PC has a cat buddy. A magical cat buddy. A
magical *talking* cat buddy. Furthermore, the game does another thing I
can't stand, where the PC in this fantasy world finds this magical cape
that makes the wearer hopeful, so, hey, we'll call it the Cape of Good
Hope ha ha I kill me. Repeat fifty times or until dead. But, ok,
putting aside all the lame anachronistic puns (and the entire backstory
involving them), Threnody is basically a really good puzzle adventure
of the kind I haven't seen in a while. It took me about three and a
half hours to get through one playthrough; I used the hints maybe once
or twice at most.
The puzzles were in general really good, sufficiently difficult to feel
satisfying when you get them but not so difficult that you spend hours
on it -- but, hey, since this is a springcomp entry I was able to spend
as much time as I wanted without feeling like I was hitting a limit.
The only time the puzzle quality broke down was in the last bit of the
game, when there was one puzzle of a kind that's starting to approach
the fifteen puzzle in terms of tedium for me, and then one puzzle that
was really much too easy. But besides that, excellent. Oh, and did I
mention that this is one of those games where you have three characters
to choose from, and the puzzles are different depending on what you
pick? I don't think many people are going to have the stamina to play
through the whole game a second or third time, but I enjoyed getting to
pick one to start with, and then spent an hour or so exploring the
walkthroughs of the other two once I'd finished the game.
Threnody is, unfortunately, not totally bug-free. I found a number of
places where descriptions didn't accurately reflect that I'd picked up
an item, and there's at one important place where >IN works when >ENTER
THING doesn't. Oh, and somehow I didn't get credit for picking up one
of my treasures on my first playthrough. But these are pretty minor,
and I imagine they'll get cleared up in a post-comp release. Even
before that happens, if what you want is a good-sized meaty puzzle
adventure, Threnody would be an excellent choice.
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Whom The Telling Changed
by Aaron A. Reed (Z-Machine)
This was the last game I played of this year's spring comp, and it was
an extremely satisfying note to close on. It's always nice to play
something that is a little experimental, and it's especially nice to
play something experimental that *works*, and Whom The Telling Changed
totally does. The concept is sort of like The Space Under The Window
with a plot and momentum, but in ancient Sumer, hearing one of the
tales of Gilgamesh. Isn't that awesome?
Normally I'm a little suspicious of games with conversations where the
key words are highlighted, but I thought it really worked well here
(though if you don't care for it, you can turn the highlighting off).
Probably this is helped along by the occasional presence of a third
option not listed -- even though a lot of it is effectively menu
choices, you don't forget that this is a game with a parser. And the
"menu" system definitely doesn't fall into the
exhaustively-try-every-option trap that Andrew Plotkin has complained
about in the past: when you make a choice, the story moves along, and
you can't just go back and try option B to see what it would have done.
Naturally, even though I really liked Whom The Telling Changed, I do
have a few gripes. One is that it's not always clear what effect a
particular word is going to have: while that doesn't matter in The
Space Under The Window since it's just an art piece you're exploring,
here it seems like you're nominally participating in some kind of
moral/philosophical argument, and you ought to know what statements
you're making before you say them. The other is, well, this was good,
but now I want more. Lately I've been really interested in IF games
that let the player make a few serious choices that have real
consequences -- this *feels* like it does that, but the basic plot
seems to be pretty fixed. There is one significant change you can make,
but it's predicated on a choice you have to make early on and without
understanding the implications. But, yeah, these are relatively minor
complaints. Whom The Telling Changed is an excellent game, well-crafted
and innovative, and I absolutely recommend it.
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW