How minimalist is too minimalist?
I had this question while playing Arthur DiBianca’s Excelsior, an abstract puzzle game with a parser reduced to direction commands, examining, and the USE verb.
IFComp 2014: Excelsior 2 comments
IFComp 2014: Missive 1 comment
“Oh, Netflix,” you say out loud, while pouring bourbon into a hopefully-clean glass. “My one true love.”
The whiskey, your evening, and three episodes of No Reservations disappear.
Missive by Joey Fu is in a way another “dual game” like Raik, but instead of simultaneous surrealism two tales are intertwined. It’s the main character’s birthday and they receive a typewriter as a present which includes a stash of mysterious letters. The PC’s relationship with their ex-girlfriend (and liquor) mixes with a tale as told by reading the letters.
The letters also contain hidden messages, and for each one the player gets to pick from three resolutions to prove they’ve decoded the hidden message properly.
IFComp 2014: Arqon Leave a comment
You attack the cave spectre, swinging the ancient broad sword, making an attack roll (1d20) of 10, +3 for your level, +2 for being affected by bless – hit (11 to 19), doing 3d4+2 of damage: 3d4+2: 4,3,3+2=12 points – a fatal blow!
As the excerpt illustrates, Arqon by H. J. Hoke is a RPG text adventure, with stats and spells and items and monsters.
IFComp 2014: Fifteen Minutes 1 comment
At 2:25 pm:
With practiced brilliance, Sixth You fiddles with the controls of the time machine and vanishes unexpectedly with a crack of inward rushing atoms. You just notice that the array of dip-switches was set to 0100 before the machine, with a hum and a cough, resets itself.With easy nonchalance, Fourth You grabs the handle of the machine, fiddles with the controls and, with a faint zephyr of emptiness disappearing, disappears. You notice that the silver toggle was set to backwards before, with a splutter, the machine resets itself.
Fifteen Minutes is a parser game which easily represents the most insane time-travel puzzle I’ve ever attempted.
Premise: You are about to be expelled from a school. You are left in a room with a time machine, and almost immediately a blizzard of duplicates called “Second You”, “Third You”, “Fourth You”, etc. start popping in the room. You have to keep self-consistent with the time travel, which requires careful notes.
IFComp 2014: Ugly Oafs 3 comments
A talk slab rests here. It looks written on, yet at the same time, it isn’t silent.
Ugly Oafs by Percy Greel is a parser-based wordplay game. The setting is essentially surreal fantasy, but it doesn’t matter: this is all about the puzzles.
Unfortunately, the first large puzzle has a combination of bad cluing and extreme tedium that made me bust the 2 hour limit early. I arrived at “part 2” but got completely stuck. (I did go back and reach an ending with help from the walkthrough, but I used the “easy ending” missed many of the puzzles.)
I’m going to go for complete spoilers here on out.
IFComp 2014: The Urge Leave a comment
You have a kind of agreement with “It”. And even though “It” doesn’t really speak your or any type of language you feel that you’re on terms where the boundaries are drawn.
The Urge is a serial-killer story written in Twine by Paperblurt. It’s in the visual novel essentially-no-choices format until close to the very end.
IFComp 2014: Raik Leave a comment
Vince Twelve’s What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed is the first time I’ve seen a “dual mechanic” where two different games are played simultaneously.
Essentially, the same thing happens across the games, it is just conveyed in two entirely different genres and art styles at the same time.
Harry Giles’s Raik does the same trick (for part of the game, at least), but is much sneaker about it.
IFComp 2014: Jesse Stavro’s Doorway Leave a comment
“Okay.” Is all you decide to say. The man grins and you can tell at that moment that he is insane. Then, like a ton of bricks hitting you, you realize the man before you is also a time-traveler. He’s a Tourist and, by his menacing grin and crazy eyes, is more-than-likely an Absurdist; here only to cause chaos and confusion.
Jesse Stavro’s Doorway by Marshal Tenner Winter is a parser-based journey through time where the protagonist is trying to find his friend Jesse.
IFComp 2014: Building the Right Stuff Leave a comment
We at IAF would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your efforts, and to assure you that should your ship crash, combust or otherwise result in your untimely demise, the insurance payout delivered to your next of kin will cover most of the costs
Laura Mitchell’s Building the Right Stuff is a click-interface game as a Windows executable. It involves travelling through space with with a computer, GENE.
IFComp 2014: Tower Leave a comment
A head-high mirror is hanging on the west wall. As you look at yourself, you get the feeling of looking into the eyes of a stranger. For a moment you wonder what is closer to reality – the reflection in the mirror or the place of your physical existence. You almost expect the stranger to talk to you and wonder if he would answer to a question.
Tower is an parser-based puzzle game with mostly abstract puzzles.
If you’ll allow me a brief tangent–
