Reviews by E. W. B.
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Not even the appearance of choice, March 24, 2016At one point, you are asked to choose between different ways of instructing people to operate telescopes. You are not told the advantages and disadvantages of each, neither before or after. None of your choices make any difference.
Creatures Such As We is a story about someone who has a crush on a generic video game character. He is upset because there is a obviously scripted fight at the end and a boring ending. The game in question is said to be otherwise be good.
At one point, you can complain about female representation in video games. The main character is having trouble telling the difference between games and reality. The other characters feel this is perfectly normal.
Creatures Such As We is a story about games written by someone who has never played one.
Intentionally Simplistic CYOA, March 18, 2016The choice of random input based solely on the player's aesthetics in not a new idea. From pretentious to extremely pretentious, the virtual human did it, First Draft of the Revolution did it, Hollywood Visionary did it. In A(s)century, Austin Walker does it, and does it right. Most of the choices raise one attribute or another. At first it's not clear what these are and how the options are related to them, but this gets increasingly clear as the game progresses.
What differentiates A(s)century from there is a bonus ending. (Spoiler - click to show)The game mocks its own shallowness and lets you write your own end. Still, the presence of something to search for makes it interesting, a little like in One Week.
The game has two technical faults: the script for moving from one certain point to another freezes the page up, and the soundtrack is on Youtube, rather than included normally. There is a certain irony in making a JavaScript-based game unplayable on phones.
A Simple CYOA, March 18, 2016Escape! is a brief, random cyoa. It's not particularly funny or interesting, although it includes a game of Nim.
Escape the Lab, March 18, 2016Chemistry and Physics wants to have both story and puzzle. What it has is an overly long introduction followed by an easy puzzle. The main character is supposed to be chased by someone, but this looks like it was added so it's less obvious it's a mediocre escape-the-room.
An Interesting Experiment, March 17, 2016As a game, Degeneracy isn't much. The puzzle needed for a partial victory does't make much sense. It has a character with no apparent purpose. It requires some phrasing to manipulate its complex objects.
Its merit is in the quality of the gimmick's implementation. There isn't any point in playung the game, unless you're having trouble understanding the source.
An Exploration of Tokyo, March 17, 2016In Akabane Nights, you play as a vampire searching a small part of Tokyo for blood to drink. Depending on hunger and time, you will be able to attack different people as they move areund the city.
Akabane Nights has a small world to explore, and not many people to talk to or target, but these are well done. At dawn, you get a list of other things to try, and once those are done, the exploration is mostly complete.
Owerall, it's a fun game.
Page Turning Simulator, March 9, 2016While Mouth of Ashes doesn't contain major bugs (because there is little room for them) or spelling errors (because it's short), these are the only things it gets right. It is a example of everything that could go wrong in a game.
It focuses on creating a world, without making understanding it a puzzle. It inconviniences the reader by putting everything examinable behind a link, instead of letting him skim at his will. There is no interacivity, but there are choices without effect. It is static fiction, and it doesn't want to be played.
The initial version didn't include the pictures as part of the download, the lack of which was my least important complaint. The structural issues are still a fundabental flaw, which make any merit from the story moot.
This is the first time I've seen to run slowly in a modern interpreter. Given that it's in I7, and not I6 or TADS it's probably due to the game's programming. It would have been pointless to use I7 and remove almost the entire library, so I'm guessing he left the whole thing in.
The First Great Puzzleless Game, February 24, 2016The 1998 Comp saw the opposition of two game philosophies. Photopia used dialogue to reinforce its ideas of randomness and meaninglessness. Human Resources Stories bitterly mimicked a real conversation, with its real worries. One of them has been remembered and needs no introduction, the other forgotten.
As a game about job interviews, HRS has virtually never been imitated or improved upon. Most games do not approach real topics, and those that do, such as Necrotic Drift or A Colder Light put the fantastical before the real.
HRS has two parts: a programming interview in the game proper, and a long rant accessed by casting XYZZY. Photopia was a long train of thought, running long after being out of ideas. Both approaches have been used before the Comp and afterwards, sometimes even successfully, but it was during the Dragon Comp that someone found a way to combine them.
Dragon Resources Stories compromised and balanced, achieving the best of both worlds. It is no longer than it has to be, it contains no walls of text, and condenses both a fun story and an appeal to our worries about the world. DRS is puzzleless, and it's a joke, but it's approach make the game work depite itself.
A medium-difficulty puzzle game, February 12, 2016Planet of the Infinite Minds is a fun game consisting of well-done abstract puzzles and less-well-done wordplay ones. Its ridiculous story shouldn't detract from the the experience if you don't take it seriously. Overall, it's a great example of doing puzzles using non-conventional rooms and objects.
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