{"id":565,"date":"2008-10-06T23:40:44","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T06:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=565"},"modified":"2008-10-06T23:51:36","modified_gmt":"2008-10-07T06:51:36","slug":"ifcomp-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=565","title":{"rendered":"IFComp so far&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SPOILERS AHEAD<\/p>\n<p>(But for games that are pretty bad, so you might not be bothered&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Somewhat perversely, I like to try play the worst games first, and get them out of the way. I score not according to a strict system, but vaguely according to puzzle fun, plot, and implementation competence, with a good helping of bias for what I want to encourage and discourage in future competitions. So far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>The Absolute Worst Game in IF History<\/i> &#8211; if there is some reason for this, or a hidden joke, I didn&#8217;t get it. I decided not to play it for any longer than the author spent writing it. 1 point.\n<li><i>Buried in Shoes<\/i> &#8211; well at least there&#8217;s some kind of story here, if it is beyond me. Implementation seems to be on the verge of competence. 4 points.\n<li><i>Freedom<\/i> &#8211; straightforward linear puzzler. Spartan but completable. 4 points.\n<li><i>Lighthouse<\/i> &#8211; uh oh, the blurb says &#8220;my very first game!&#8221;. Unfortunately, it lives up to this claim. And there&#8217;s just not enough here. 1 point.\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thus far, they were all zcode games. But the real seam of submediocrity normally lies in the standalone games&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>The Hall of the Fount of Artois<\/i> &#8211; ah, the hackneyed &#8220;solve puzzles in a spooky old house&#8221; genre. It suffers from that basic failure of not handling any remotely interesting (or in many cases, mundane) things I wanted to do. Puzzles are get-X-use-X type, and room descriptions are almost irrelevant since there is no scenery and no searching, just items to be collected and used. 3 points.\n<li><i>Nerd Quest<\/i> &#8211; oh dear: again, roll-your-own systems invariably suffer from a) paucity of handled actions, b) spartan descriptions and lack of scenery. I couldn&#8217;t even &#8220;examine&#8221; anything. 1 point.\n<li><i>Project Delta<\/i> &#8211; the menu interface robbed the game of thought; then I briefly thought the inventory system was interesting; then the &#8220;game&#8221; ended. There is not enough here to enter into a competition. 1 point.\n<p>Here&#8217;s hoping for some better luck soon. Fairly bad this year so far, and that&#8217;s even without any efforts from Dunric as far as I can see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SPOILERS AHEAD (But for games that are pretty bad, so you might not be bothered&#8230;) Somewhat perversely, I like to try play the worst games first, and get them out of the way. I score not according to a strict system, but vaguely according to puzzle fun, plot, and implementation&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}