Lands of unknown by Jaret Martens
http://www.axeuk.com/quest/games/landsofunknown.zip

"This is an adventure game in which you awake in a cave not knowing who or where you are. This game has many endings so you should play it more than once."

Please post any reviews, comments, requests for help etc. to this thread.

Lands Of Unknown by Jaret Martens

Blurb: “This is an adventure game in which you awake in a cave not knowing who or where you are. This game has many endings so you should play it more than once.”

Unfortunately, there were so many things wrong with the game that it’s difficult knowing just where to start. Aside from the usual errors that seem to plague almost every Quest game I've played – items mentioned in room descriptions can’t be examined or interacted with in any way, shape or form (and the few that can be examined often feature such poor descriptions you wonder why the author even bothered), obvious commands (like OPEN CRATE when faced with a locked crate or SWIM in the ocean) aren't covered, poor standard of writing – it lacked any kind of depth. The writing was basic in the extreme and the entire game seemed to have been put together in a spare half hour one day and probably not even tested afterwards. There was no storyline to speak of, with you simply waking up in a room with no memories of how you got there (the amnesia theme never seems to go out of fashion) and then moving from one place to another without any indication of why you're doing this and doing that, other than that there's nothing else to do.

There are many ways of dying in the game, and in typical newbie fashion they're the kind that are impossible to predict beforehand. While wandering around the location YOU ARE IN HILL SIDE (yes, that’s what it said), I saw a dessert (sic) over to one side. Wondering just why there was a dessert over there, I went over to take a look and got hit with this: YOU ARRIVE AT THE DESSERT. YOU WALK THROUGH IT. YOU WISH YOU WOULD HAVE BROUGHT SOME WATER ALONG. YOU ARE LOST. YOU DIE OF HEAT STROKE. And then I died. Ho hum.

Another bug (there were many) was with the strange wording of an item’s name. Some raw meat. With, for some reason, a full stop tacked onto the end of meat, so when I tried to GET RAW MEAT or EXAMINE RAW MEAT I was told I couldn’t.

That was about as much as I could take of Lands Of Unknown. Poorly written, buggy, no kind of direction other than a case of wandering from one place to another purely because there's nothing else you can do, being killed off entirely without warning, exits disappearing once you go through them… So many things were wrong with this game, it would need to be completely rewritten for anyone to get any kind of enjoyment from it.

My advice to the author? Get someone to test your next game before you release it. Try to include an interesting storyline. And if you're going to kill off the player, at least give them a warning.

1 out of 10

I've downloaded all of these games, and I was going to attempt to perform an Edit on all of them, though I don't think I'm masochistic enough to bear the intent to action. (I'll still finish the one I started). It's going to be very hard to play a game until a review comes out with something higher than a davidw 5.

By the way - could you post some of the basic criteria for your review system? You know, what it would take to get a 1, a 2, a 3 .... a 10. This could give everyone an idea of some of the standards they should employ.

I don't really have any basic criteria as such, I just tend to jot (or type actually) notes as I'm playing the game, then afterwards write a review based on those notes. I usually start every game with an average score of 5 and then add points for every positive aspect about the game and take them away for every negative aspect. Here there were negative aspects all the way and no positives, hence the final score of 1. Sometimes if I've scored the game and found I've given it a 7, but didn't actually like the game, I'll adjust the score downwards. Likewise if I gave it a 3, but found it was actually better than that, I'll adjust it upwards. For a game like this, with almost nothing going for it, it was easy to give it a score of 1 and not worry if I was being too harsh.

I generally judge games as:

10 - Best game ever. Absolute masterpiece. Couldn't be improved on no matter what. The sort of game that everyone should strive to write.

9 - Brilliant game but had a few flaws which prevented it getting a 10.

8 - Very good game but several flaws or just not the best storyline.

7 - Good game but probably let down by a few bugs, typos, weaknesses in plot, etc.

6 - Above average but nothing particularly remarkable.

5 - Average. Nothing good about the game, but nothing bad about it either.

4 - Below average, though only just. Worth playing if you've got some time to kill but not recommended.

3 - Poor. Bad storyline, lots of mistakes, atrocious spelling.

2 - Terrible. Like 'poor' but even worse. Has almost nothing to recommend about it, but a few things that prevent it getting a 1.

1 - Dire. The sort of game that needs to be avoided at all costs. Probably so littered with spelling mistakes as to be unreadable. So full of errors as to be unplayable. Most likely even the author wouldn't think this game was any good, although the authors of games this bad seldom take the time to explain why they wrote the game in the first place and didn't bother having it tested.

So far, I haven't given a single Quest game a rating of better than 4 and considering that the latest batch has so far yielded a 1 and 2, I'm not very hopeful of that changing any time soon.

Perhaps the rating should be split into different sections, such as descriptive level (coving spelling and grammer, etc), plot, interaction (with objects), stability (lack of bugs, I think typos should come here rather than in descriptions, as everyone makes mistakes when typing), originality (the amnesia idea, etc. should count against this unless an original spin is put on it). This would give the author a better idea of what exactly they're doing wrong, though these scores can be added together into one for an 'overall' score.

I suppose that might be an idea, but you do that and risk turning a shortish review into an epic. I think most of the things you listed I covered in my review, but I might consider it for the next game I have a go at.

elexxorine wrote:Perhaps the rating should be split into different sections, such as descriptive level (coving spelling and grammer, etc), plot, interaction (with objects), stability (lack of bugs, I think typos should come here rather than in descriptions, as everyone makes mistakes when typing), originality (the amnesia idea, etc. should count against this unless an original spin is put on it). This would give the author a better idea of what exactly they're doing wrong, though these scores can be added together into one for an 'overall' score.

That would make better sense. Some people would tend to judge more harshly in one area over another.

Lands of the Unknown

Right off, the game is slightly difficult to begin because the background is black and the words are blue. Despite that, I carried on.

Pros
-Two paths to choose from in the beginning.
-The blue pendant and volcano puzzle.


Cons
-Black background with blue font.
-The room descriptions are awkward (You are in Right door of murder) (You are in Ocean part 1.)
-The first puzzle of the game (if you walk east from the start), the object is called “Raw meat.” It has a capital “R” which is not so bad but it also has a period after meat. You have to type the period or the game won’t recognize the object.
-When you want to go places, you have to type out the entire location name (go to ocean ship wreck)
-There are mostly no descriptions for the look/examine command. Most times the response is “nothing out of the ordinary”.
-Uncertain plot.
-Very short.
-It is possible to lose necessary objects and cannot reach the end.

It could be viewed as a completely pitiful game in some players’ eyes but I think there was enough effort to at least warrant a:
2 out of 5

ok i agree with everyone on the bug thing...
Although i liked the idea of the game aswell
When it doesnt tell you if your gonna die, i think that adds to the challenge like you dont know what will happen next..

The bugs let it down a lot so i would give it 4 but the bugs take it down to a 2 out of 5

Ok. I won't play it. Lol. Thanks for saving my time.

DavidW: I would assume that if you score the game 1 out of 10 that you probably shouldn't waste your time on a review. Wouldn't it be just expected that the person writing the game would've realized their game's lack of sensibility once they were finished? Plus the fact that they weren't able to read their own spellings should've been a major hint to themself.

P.s. Do you decrease pointage based on your level of hate for the game-maker? :}

I'm sure he'll make an exception for you WW.

.. Even a game with 1/10 score is worth scoring - even if it's to protect the rest of us from the loss of IQ points.

witch wyzwurd wrote:Ok. I won't play it. Lol. Thanks for saving my time.

DavidW: I would assume that if you score the game 1 out of 10 that you probably shouldn't waste your time on a review. Wouldn't it be just expected that the person writing the game would've realized their game's lack of sensibility once they were finished? Plus the fact that they weren't able to read their own spellings should've been a major hint to themself.

P.s. Do you decrease pointage based on your level of hate for the game-maker? :}

Remind me again why you're here. Nothing else to do with your sad existence? Plain insanity? Or is this simply the only forum where the mods haven't yet got round to banning you?

I don't know whether to pity you or despise you but you're certainly a pathetic figure.