By Chandler Groover. Played to completion.
I can’t really put it more succinctly than the blurb:
A fool receives a challenge from a countess.
More specifically, you start at a scene at midnight where you are about to enter a rapier fight.
How did you ever get into this predicament? A rumor, a glove thrown down onto a dance floor? Now you’re standing in the moonlight and your knees are knocking together, although you hope that no one notices. You’re still dressed for a masquerade and nothing feels quite real. Perhaps it isn’t real.
You have a restricted verb set that you can- read off a “playscript”; this verb set can change as the game goes on. To start, you use inventory, attack, kiss, and examine.
The countess kills you, but the game loops back to the previous move so you can try again. And again. And again, and again, and again, and then a new verb is unlocked (“wake up”) and that’s when things get really interesting.
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“Wake up” seems to take you back about 15 minutes in past, to a ballroom in the frozen moment when the countess first challenges you. At this point (during the frozen moment) you can make your way about the ballroom (either physically or temporally), trying to work out what’s going on and manipulate the past to change your fate in the future.
The writing is really solid and clever and I especially liked the sequence that leads to getting a vorpal blade.
If there’s some sort of Theme or Message or even Anti-Theme, I am not 100% sure what it is. There’s one character (Dmitri) who you can talk to in the Aftermath, and maybe it all has to do with this line:
The problem is I don’t wake up. I go to sleep, and then I go to sleep, and then I go to sleep. Perhaps I’m going in a circle, returning to the same moment over and over. But life seems to flow onward just as usual. I say hello to people on the street, meet them for dinner, come to parties like this one. The years roll on. But then I go to sleep and don’t wake up.
Or maybe not. Midnight. Swordfight. keeps up a wry face.
ADDENDUM: What’s most interesting about this structurally is that while the surface is a one-move find-the-endings game like Aisle, the verb list is heavily restricted and the player is allowed to go behind the scenes and tweak the setting. It’s nearly in the direction of player authorship, letting them change the story to their liking.
By Robert DeFord. Not finished.
Onaar is a fantasy parser adventure. You leave an orphanage to go on a ship, which wrecks on the shore after being attacked.
The prose and plot are bog-standard, but what makes it fascinating is that it tilts heavy on the simulation end of the scale, far heavier than a typical IF game.
I’d almost say this plays more like a single-player MUD; there’s a large map with lots of consumable items (unfortunately, yes, hunger is persistent) and after taken an item can reappear later. There’s a “malady” system that different items can cure. There are stats like “Health” and “Mana.” There’s skills like “Speech” and “Thievery”. There’s an alchemy system with 18 different possible ingredients.
Roze Thorn: Wicked-looking thorns that are about two inches long, and needle-sharp.
Tanzy Pod: Small, red pods about the size of your little finger.
Tung Seed: Flat, oval, brown seeds that are about an inch in diameter. They have a shiny, hard outer shell.
It is very large. I was still trying to understand all the game’s systems when my 2 hours of judging time were up.
There are lots of characters to converse with, although they tend to be information dispensers more than nuanced portraits.
– (Available topics) –
APP (apprenticeship)
MAR (marauders)
SAR (Saarina)
> t mar
“After what I saw in the square when I arrived, I am a little worried about the marauders that they say are causing trouble here.”
“I am deeply concerned; I don’t mind telling you. Kasmarii, the founder of Soquim, is the greatest Alchemist that the world has ever seen. He retired shortly after I set up shop, but he still lives in town. After the first attack, he told me that he’d heard of this band of marauders in his travels, and that there is a rogue wizard who is their leader. He then told me that he knows a way to eliminate the rogue wizard. After that, he left to gather the rare ingredients that he said he needed, but that was days ago, and he has not returned. No other Alchemist, myself included, knows what to do in his absence, so it’s up to the Municipal Guard to keep us safe.”
New topic: RAR (rare ingredients)
A lot of my time playing was just trying to stop to gather all the information from the world setting hose.
This is probably most comparable to Gotomomi, but I found it more enjoyable. I think because a.) the game is extrodinarily clear about what objects you can take and which directions you can go, b.) there seems to be a lot of flexibility straight off the bat to accomplish your goals; for instance you need some money to buy an alchemical robe, and I had to pause to think if I wanted to just sell the clothes I had or gather resources outdoors to sell. Gotomomi had similar options but they felt harder to get to.
By Ade McT. Completed twice using Gargoyle.
Derek calls this your “little patch of wilderness”. That’s his half-joke that isn’t a joke at all, but instead, really it’s a cutting indictment wrapped up in humour – contempt masked with levity.
“You can’t even look after the bloody garden,” Derek snapped at you once, after an argument about something you can’t even remember. “It’s what you wanted. It’s why we moved here for goodness sake.”
When you were first married, gardening had been your passion. You inherited it from your mother, you suppose, whose own garden was, each year, a wondrous mass of colour and life.
Elaine’s children, Brady and Samantha, have left the house. Elaine and Derek are moving. Map is set in the week before they leave, in their large empty house.
Yet, day by day, the house gets larger. Strange new doors appear. A plant starts to grow and fill a room, and more.
There is a creative magic to Map that I hate to ruin with details, and I might suggest simply going and playing it. But if you’d like more (or have played already), keep reading past the map.
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Each day that passes, when the house grows, a door opens which represents possibility — a past event in Elaine’s life. After the scene plays out, Elaine gets to choose; either how she originally chose, or how she wants to change it. The scenes are intense in a way that defy simple analysis, but I can say the echoes of reality were palpable.
“So, Mrs. Paterson, what do you think?” asks Mr. James. “Can Brady keep on playing hockey? I’m sure I can keep him out of any serious harm’s way.”
Do you tell Mr. James “yes” or “no”?
yes
The relief in both Mr. James and Brady is palpable. Before, when you had said no, it was like the life had drained out of Brady. He still attended school, and he was still a good kid, but it seemed as though he didn’t really enjoy anything anymore. You could see it in him, and although it made you question your decision every day, and it broke your heart to see the change in him, you always justified it to yourself, knowing that at least he was safe – he wouldn’t get hurt anymore.
This is, in a way, time travel. Elaine’s choices can literally change reality.
If Map was a simple lesson in changing wrong choices, it would not be unique. However, the choices are not simple “right” or “wrong”. There is no judgement, only results. After the choice is made and a day passes, the house reflects the result. Characters who were previously gone might start to wander the house.
It’s possible to change reality drastically enough to change the original family configuration (Brady, Samantha, Derek, Elaine). Is it moral to make a choice “better” when it causes others to literally not be born?
I will say Map has some technical issues — it almost appears the author did not care how many lines displayed after a particular paragraph because there was 1 or 2 or 3 more or less at random. Some of the characters could use more conversation choices — while the scenes make them vivid, there is an opportunity to ask specific things, but only a small subset of topics get acknowledged.
Even given that, Map accomplished something novel, perhaps unique to me because of the resonant events, but still — the first ending I reached made me cry.
I have heard people denigrate and even mock extreme emotional experience as a criterion for art. Maybe that’s true; maybe it’s not related to art. But I cannot deny something significant happened.
The street is too open. There are too many eyes – all those blank windows reflecting and multiplying the world. Even thinking about passing the end of the driveway makes you feel uncomfortable. It’s as if, unbounded by anything solid, all that space is too big to endure. It might dissipate you entirely.
By Jason Ermer. Finished with one hint.
You’ll need to find the professor’s map to help you narrow down your search. Otherwise, you could dig a hundred holes without any success.
It would be like that time you dug for weeks in the Valley of the Benevolent Spirits, only to realize the professor had mistranslated the runes and you should have been digging in the Valley of the Bloodthirsty Spirits, just over the ridge, the whole time.
You seem to be the teenage assistant to some Indiana Jones-type treasure hunter … er, I mean “archaeologist” … and a lifeboat incident has left you alone on an island with a map.
This was a fairly short parser game and took me about 15 minutes to play to completion. It’s good if you’re looking for a snack-sized game and is appropriate for kids.
I enjoyed how the writing interspersed details of past adventures of the professor, giving ordinary actions some vivacity and color.
> get tub
The professor once dangled you by your feet over the La Brea tar pits so that you could pull out a crate filled with twenty-eight pounds of stolen diamonds. You got it just moments before it sank forever into the sea of sticky, black gloop. The grease in the tub looks just like that tar, which you were cleaning out from under your fingernails for weeks.
Anyhow, you pick up the tub of grease.
The puzzles are all straightforward and reasonable, although I did need to use the hints once for what turned out to be a parser issue.
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> x map
The sheet of yellowing parchment shows the outline of an island, hand-drawn in black ink. Most of the terrain is just sketched in, but the northwest region is mapped out in great detail and shows some unusual red symbols.
I had a shovel to dig for treasure, but the game says I need to study the map to find where to dig. I tried various failed attempts like >STUDY MAP, but it turns out the proper thing to do is >X SYMBOLS.
This is a “second-order object” — an object that can be examined in another object. While this sort of thing is technically fair it is not a default ability in IF and needs to be hinted at a little more pointedly than Untold Riches did that it’s possible to do. (Alternately, it could just accept STUDY and assorted variants as doing the same thing as examining the symbols.)
By Arno von Borries. Not finished.
Gatan-gatan made the subway train every time it passed over a rail joint as it raced through the tunnel towards freedom. Squashed between commuters in the suffocating heat of the mid-summer night, I was already totally drenched in sweat – theirs and mine. I had opportunely lost my mobile phone half an hour ago in a trash can at Shinjuku station, so my father’s men wouldn’t have quite such an easy time tracking me. Gotomomi was the next stop and all I needed now to make my get-away was a change of trains and clothing.
You’re running away from home and need to scrounge enough money to buy a train ticket.
While in theory I loved the concept and the Japanese setting, in practice the prose felt too purely-functional to convey any of the vastness of the situation.
The square in front of Gotomomi central station doubled as the city’s primary waterfront. In the south a railway bridge spanned the width of a canal that discharged its revolting contents into the bay at this point and in the north the Odakyû line extended towards a wall of sky-high buildings, the street beside it bustling with activity. The main entrance to the station was to the east, and the sheer amount of traffic going in and out of it every second was staggering. To the west stretched the black waters of the sea, intermittently coloured by the position lights of ships far out in the bay.
The strikes me more like a checklist than a room description. (Note how the possible directions are given in boldface, which is generally helpful, except for a problem spot I’ll mention shortly.)
The very first move of the game involves your wallet getting stolen. (There’s no particular description of this; I first thought maybe the status line was broken when the money dropped to 0.) It’s possible to save your ID by just taking it out of the wallet first thing (a maneuver that seems to only be possible with prior knowledge) but it won’t let you take out any money you are forced to start the game at 0 yen.
So with no money the goal seems to be to find a job. The first job I tried to do just ended up with a lot of getting yelled at for no apparent reason.
I could also see a black and a red bucket there.
A fish from the red bucket was squeezed into a tin can.
“Why are you so slow in hauling these buckets? The gutters have nowhere to put the fish! Get a move on, you sloppy snail!” The foreman was fuming.
> drop green bucket
Dropped.
A Rattail from the green bucket found its way into a tin can.
“It can’t be so difficult to get the buckets in and out in time! The gutters have nowhere to put the fish! Move it before I spank your lazy bum!” The foreman was fuming.
> get black bucket
I picked up the black bucket from the ground.
A fish from the green bucket was packed into a tin can.
“Why are you so slow in hauling these buckets? The gutters have nowhere to put the fish! Get a move on, you sloppy snail!” The foreman was fuming.
After about 15 minutes of fruitlessness I restarted the game and checked the walkthrough.
The walkthrough doesn’t even mention the fish-bucket job, it goes straight for a courier job. Fine, let’s try that.
“I’m Kei, yoroshiku. Would you be willing to work for me just for tonight, by any chance?”
[1] “I’m not really interested in working for you.”
[2] “I could do the deliveries for you.”
> 2
“You would? That’s awesome. The night shift gets 32000 yen by the way, they’d be yours as well. To tell you right away though: you’re useless in that get-up. Find something more practical to wear first.”
Clothes seemed like a reasonable quest, but I wandered all over the map multiple times and the only ones I could find in a mall that required money. (Note that the only reason I could enter the mall was the opening-move rescue of the ID; I very much hope it’s still possible to win without doing that.)
Finally I consulted the walkthrough again and found out about a location I missed.
Beside the railway viaduct.
Here, the Odakyû railway viaduct was seemingly swallowed by a huge gaping mouth in one of the skyscrapers. Far below it, a steady stream of battered poor-folk ensured good business for the shabby shops under the railway line. To the west was the entrance to “Martyrium”. To the south was the station. A small passage vanished between the buildings to the north.
You would be forgiven for thinking the only directions you can go are north, south, and west.
> x shops
Dozens of small cardboard shacks that housed the homeless were cramped in with the shops between the pillars of the viaduct. Among them was a particularly decrepit one – advertising for itself with a flickering neon sign that said “Tanaka used goods”.
Yes, it turns out you can go IN to a place that can only be found by checking a small part of a description that in other contexts indicates there’s nothing important.
Okay, let’s keep going. I went in the shop, sold my stuff (horray money!) and found out that the clothes store I saw earlier apparently has nothing worth buying. I guess I need a different clothing store.
Wander wander wander. No luck, guess it’s time for the walkthrough again. Apparently to get to clothes I need to … rent a boat? Okay. Attempted rental:
> 1
“The boat is 950 yen per day. But you’ll have to leave a deposit for the keys as well.”
[1] “What will you accept as a deposit?”
[2] “I’m not interested in renting the boat after all.”
> 1
The sea-bear puffed some smoke from his pipe.
“I don’t think you have anything on you I would accept, I’m sorry”
Wait, I’m doing what the walkthrough says! Going back to check, it looks like I sold too much at the used goods store, I needed to sell only one item.
Yes, I made the game unwinnable. Time for a restart!
After a bit of turn-repeating, I managed to get a boat on the water and find a floating market. A-ha! Get off the boat, check the walkthrough because I’m nervous now, and it says I need to negotiate to buy stuff. Here’s how negotiation goes:
“I want 2730 yen for it.”
[1] “I’m not interested in the working boots.”
[2] “1990 yen seems like a fairer price.”
[3] “OK, here you go: 2730 yen for the working boots.”
> 2
The Woman inspected an article of clothing.
“I want 2350 yen for it.”
[1] “I’m not interested in the working boots.”
[2] “2240 yen seems like a fairer price.”
[3] “OK, here you go: 2350 yen for the working boots.”
> 2
The Woman inspected an article of clothing.
“This way we won’t get anywhere. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
After buying one article of clothing (a boiler suit), I eventually get into an endless loop with the working boots — I tried haggling roughly 10 times — and can’t get them. Probably I spent too much money on the boiler suit.
Time to restore? … no, unfortunately, I lost my patience at this point.
This is a concept I really wanted to work — I love the idea of an open world situation where you’re just trying to scrounge up cash. Having a dynamic cash variable separates puzzles from a lock-key dynamic in a pretty big way. Unfortunately, I ran too quickly into loops or unwinnable situations and the characters and story just weren’t compelling enough for me to try to push through it.
By Astrid Dalmady. Finished with all three endings using iPhone.
Arcane Intern (Unpaid) is a Twine work with an introduction and three chapters. It took me about 20 minutes to get to the first ending.
You play as an intern at a book company that also happens to use magic. You are set the usual intern tasks of fetching coffee and making copies but with a twist (runes that keep slipping off the page when you try to make copies, for example).
I’ve had days like this at work.
The prose is well crafted and smooth and while there are moments of comedy, it’s not obtrusive or hackneyed.
There isn’t enough time to get to know any of the characters (even now, with my last replay 10 minutes ago, the only one I remember is the Janitor) but none of them had any grating features, either.
However….
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I had some major issues with the choice structure.
The introduction is linear with a starting room that you can read descriptions out of order. That’s fine.
The first chapter is mostly linear except for one bit which I think is a “do you want to show empathy for this person even though you have no allies in your company right now? y/n” decision; I doubt the choice for most players was anything other than yes.
Still I wasn’t too upset, but then I reached chapter 2. It’s a maze.
This isn’t even a maze that has any kind of visualizable geography to it. At one point I was supposed to go “left” from a particular location but the links were all abstractions like the above, so I just had to go through every one. In the end I rammed through the entirety via ye olde random clicking (not even bothering to read the text descriptions any more) until I had everything I wanted.
Interestingly enough (although I only discovered this second time through) you can get a “map” such that you can just “go to” the objects you need in the maze (although one of the optional story bits is not possible this way). However, if this is a necessary feature of the game, why have the maze at all?
The third chapter involves making copies. Making… copies … and more copies … and then the player has to decide nothing is going to happen and quit of their own volition. After a short break, more copies! And then the main character gets fired.
There’s one item, if examined at exactly the right time, will let the player leave the company while still being able to wield magic. Hence there are three alternate endings. I didn’t feel clever or satisfied reaching this, however.
There was no active work on foiling the plot of the nominal “villain”, which often might not be a problem, but in this case it makes the overall arc be “come and see some magical effects that are only nominally explained, then leave”. While Arcane Intern is a pleasant enough ride, it needed something more substantial in the mix to be memorable.
By Gabby Wu and the Grimm Brothers. Played to completion ten times.
In Grimm’s Godfather, a man chooses between God, the Devil, and Death as a godfather for his son.
The godson becomes a physician and is confronted by a series of deaths. Their godfather has opinions on who should live or die, and then godson can either follow their wishes or go against them.
I felt like this was too slight a piece to get across anything useful, but I’m putting the rest of my thoughts after spoiler space.
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The only path I wasn’t completely disappointed by is Death’s.
Both God and the Devil have very straightforward stories which never hit rising action — there’s the setup, the climax, and the conclusion, with none of the buildup in between.
Death’s story has a bit of ledge to hang on. If you choose to defy Death and try to save someone who he has already claimed, he gets angry and takes you to his realm, but there’s still further conversation from there.
It’s a very short conversation with one choice that does not help stem Death’s wrath, but you at least get the *hint* of a story-mountain being built. This was the only path I felt like I was dealing with characters rather than abstractions.
Also, this is a good line!
The force of fables is that the things in the story are universal representations that comment on larger social lessons. The simplicity and raw choices might seem to make them optimal for interactive treatment, but in reality interaction makes it more likely for the player to care if they are dealing with empty vessels. When elevating possible branches to a choice, they fall flat if they don’t have either the revelation of character or the sting of true consequence.
By Hugo Labrande. Started on Android tablet using Son of Hunky Punk, finished on computer using Gargoyle.
It’s warm in here, almost too warm. The Martian soil is cold, harsh, and the plants that are trying to grow here need to always be humid enough, which is accomplished with the drip irrigation system, constantly monitored by the central computer. The handful of plants and the few vegetables you’re supposed to eat try their best to survive under those conditions, far away from their natural ecosystem. They look weak and tired, almost depressed; you wonder if, despite all the computer’s efforts, they will last for much longer. You can exit the greenhouse by going west.
Life on Mars? is a short parser game about Charlotte, a survivor of an expedition to Mars where an accident kills all the rest of the crew.
Charlotte blames herself for the accident, and one of the significant open questions is she is imagining this responsibility or not.
A lot of the gameplay is dominated by an email interface I have mixed feelings about. Rather than straight up displaying all the text, it gets displayed on a time delay of the player’s choice, and the main character’s thoughts sometimes respond in italics off to the side. I unfortunately need to report that the email system completely fails on an Android tablet. Rather than a timed advance the interpreter only moves on when hitting a key. I needed to tap my screen repeatedly like I was playing Track & Field one character at a time. Eventually (after doing an inventory of food) returning to the email just led to an interpreter crash.
When I eventually replayed on a computer I cranked the speed up to maximum but it led for reading the email-response to be a disconcerting experience, since the layout is confusing if everything gets displayed at once. Still, I preferred the max-speed option much to waiting for text, which has been one of my big nemeses of the competition.
I liked the interplay of text and Charlotte’s internal thoughts, and I liked the feeling of dread near the latter part of the story, but things cut off too early to explain any of the open mysteries. I can understand leaving one thing open, but nothing at all is resolved and the impression I got was more of a narrative with a cleaver applied than a careful use of ambiguity.
It isn’t even clear that Charlotte is suffering delusions. Based on the subtext of the emails it is equally likely the military are lying to Charlotte — that she actually was responsible for what happened — and they’re trying their best to salvage the situation without their only person on the scene totally getting unwound.
The final scene (implied by the “Life” in the title) again could just as easily have been a delusion as not. It’s like the last page of a book which reveals all the events just witnessed were a dream in the head of an autistic boy … or were they? (Question mark decorations follow.)
By Glass Rat Media. Played to completion on iPhone.
There’s a habit I picked up with an old car of mine that I still carry to this day when I park at work. I circle the car and check all the doors to make sure they are locked; I check the inside to make sure there isn’t a light still on; I check the headlights to make sure I haven’t left them on. This is true even though my new car has both auto-locks and a very loud beep if I leave the lights on. But it’s habit and I persist. Sometimes I get so nervous about it that even after checking the doors I will walk around and check them again; or, I’ll be walking away, be slightly uncertain if I checked them (even though I probably did) and do the whole circle the car ritual again.
What I’m saying is I have some emphathy for the main character in Seeking Ataraxia.
In the opening, the unnamed protagonist (played by “you”) is at a therapy session where he is diagnosed with OCD. (“unwanted ideas, images, or impulses that seem silly, nasty, or horrible?”; “constantly worried that something bad will happen because you forgot something important?”)
You then, in a series of small choices, lead the main character through their weekend where they have to brave a pharmacy for medication and really ought to study for a test except his roommate Chris left a mess from a party.
It’s pretty short and I feel like the intent is to just give the perspective of being inside the OCD mind. Given that, Seeking Ataraxia nailed its target: the part where the main character panics trying to find Chris’s hiding cat and imagines it dead or the part where a study session is foiled by the looming mess outside strike me as some of the most realistic scenes of this competition.
However, I’ve got some issue with the choice structure. The game is short but the small moments are crafted into an epilogue which represents big effects. If you don’t call the otherwise-unmentioned Alice at the right time (even if you left a voice message earlier) she will stop being your friend. If you postpone going to the therapist you just will never go. If you don’t confront your mother she’ll remain domineering. But remember this is based on choices of a single weekend, and it seems like the game is sending the message that if the choices aren’t done right the first time they will never be done now and forever.
It’s almost as if, Quantum Leap style, you as a player have the chance to inhabit someone’s body for a short time and steer them in good ways; if things aren’t righted by the end of the story, the character’s life falls apart once they regain agency. Assuming Seeking Ataraxia is partly a public service announcement, it’s good to encourage action right now, but bad to suggest once the opportunity is past you might as well give up.
By Víctor Ojuel. Finished with heavy use of the walkthrough.
Sometime about halfway through the competition I loaded up each of the games for about 5 minutes to see what I was getting into and if I needed anything special (make sure game X I do when I have a lot of time, make sure I have paper for game Y).
At this time, the first part of Pilgrimage held pretty well. You play a woman travelling across Medieval Europe in search of a manuscript, and there’s a set piece with a plague doctor and promising writing.
The Eternal City
You wake up on the third night, on the dawn of departure. The children have been put to sleep, the tears to dry. The parting-moon is risen. The wandering days are come. The road awaits, feet-hungry. One restless night you leave behind the glimmering domes of Rome and their stupid majesty, and head north, never looking back.
A plague doctor drives slowly ahead, his black carriage brimful with a macabre harvest.
On the old Roman road towards the west, you come across a small group of pilgrims, wearing wide hats decorated with scallop shells.
“Stupid majesty” seems an odd choice of phrasing, but I can work with it, especially given a followup of “carriage brimful with a macabre harvest”.
At the time I looked around at the environment and myself, solved the first puzzle (getting by the doctor) and shut my program down, content it would be smooth sailing when I came back to play Pilgrimage for real.
After returning a week later, I came across the second room, which included knights fighting:
The silence of the wild lands is broken by the smashing of steel agains steel. Dead ahead, blocking the path to the north, two gallant knights hold a ferocious duel. One’s coat of arms boasts black stars on a red field, the other’s has a field of gules with sable stars. They seem able to fight it out forever.
You can see a gallant knight here.
They blocked my way, and I could speak neither of their languages, so I fruitlessly ran through all the verbs I could think of, until I tried:
> kiss knight
It’s not hard work seducing the gallant knight, and his lips are nice enough. Getting rid of the armour (for greater comfort) is another, trickier business. It also takes him a long time to re-arm. But worth it. Oh yes.
…what?
(Going to be free with early game spoilers from here out.)
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At this point I realized two things:
1.) This game was going to be highly glitchy. The knights go back to fighting after the … scene … above like nothing ever happened.
2.) The NPCs were going to be more like automatons than characters. In this case of the puzzle above, it turns out you just need to give over your glove and the knight will loyally follow you around, like you are the pied piper of men.
Both of these attributes appear in the next scene as well:
From the distance, you can see a small craft appear over the grey, merciless waters. It is a small sailing boat, plying its trade in the fjords.
> x boat
A small sailing boat, manned by a lonely sailor.
In boat is sailor.
The text seems to imply nothing other than the boat is far out in the water, which implied to me you needed to signal and wait for him to come over:
> wave to sailor
You can’t see any such thing.
Hm. Perhaps….
> talk to sailor
Chances are this person does not speak your native Tuscan (or Latin, Greek or Chaldean, in which you are quite fluent). Should you want to try anyway, ASK sailor ABOUT something or TELL sailor ABOUT something.
> ask sailor about boat
He doesn’t speak your language.
Not helpful!
Checking the walkthrough…
> kiss sailor
Much to the scandal of the gallant knight, you consent to the lustful wishes of the sailor. Once satisfied, the seaman motions you onboard. “Come, come, faif lafdy, off to Engflan we muft!”, and his dry cackle resonates in the lonely fjord like the call of a diseased seagull. The ship is ready to depart, due south-west.
How did the boat teleport near us? How did we know the intents of the sailor? Why did we give in to the intents of the sailor? If we don’t speak his language, how did any of this happen? If we don’t speak his language, how did we understand “off to Engflan we muft!”
I played for a little longer, but after I was supposed to order the knight to attack a dragon (even though we don’t speak his language, I guess it was expressive gesture?) I rammed my way to the end solely with a walkthrough. There are nice set pieces here and there…
Was he perhaps a pilgrim once, like you were? Was it hunger, plague or torture at the hands of strangers that twisted his mind? Or perhaps just the solitude and the terrible truth that comes with pilgrimage?
“Ultreia! Et suseia!” he cries over and over, with the anguished tone of someone with a crucial message to deliver. Perhaps you can give him something to refresh his memory.
He is most in need of the blessings of Babylon.
…but I found the implementation too shaky to stray far outside the walkthrough path.
To end on a positive note with a feature I liked: often moving in a direction means travelling for months. So GO EAST attains a much different feel than traditional IF. This gives an epic sense to Pilgrimage’s geography.
