I've spent a good three weeks or so working intermittently on Avantus: The Island, Part I. This is tremendously exciting because (1) I am not a programmer, and (2) I have never before created a text-based game on such a large scale. Although Avantus isn't exactly sprawling, it is substantial compared to my previous attempts using other software.

But I digress. Check out the game at http://www.textadventures.co.uk/review/1206/ and judge for yourself. Be honest but not brutally critical, please. If there is enough interest, I will try to accelerate production of Part II. Enjoy your respective adventures!

Looks good. I tried it for a few minutes in the browser but it's super slow and I can't get to my computer right now.
I'll try it out later -- The first bit seems interesting though.

EDIT: So... I tried it out.
First, SPOILER ALERT (highlight it):

Spoiler wrote:I like how you wrote in Latin on the oak trees

Now, onto the rest of it.
You should make sure that EVERYTHING has a description when you 'look at' it. I think I only found one thing that you didn't add one (the tent) but still, that's enough to make some players stop playing. Once they see the 'Nothing out of the ordinary' -- BAM. Gone.
The only other thing I felt that made the game less fun than it should've been was:

Spoiler wrote:When Thomas got kidnapped, the second Gropp I fought wouldn't die. He just kept going into negative health and the 'Success' sound kept replaying... INVINCIBLE GROPPS ARE EVIL

This is a huge bug because it won't let you go anywhere before you kill it (and it won't die)
Besides that stuff though... The beginning was pretty good. You might have some potential.

OH. One other thing:

Spoiler wrote:Use more if/thens! For example, if you take the jewel, the chest shouldn't say it might have something valuable in it, when there's nothing left in it! And also, explain who you are! Don't just throw the player into a world of monsters and caves without a little bit of background knowledge.

Thanks for the review, and for catching some errors. The invincible Gropp bug is probably an easy fix; I'll get right on that. I think that the reason I didn't include so many if/thens in the beginning is because I was getting used to the program...and I somehow forgot to go back and add them. And yes, the tent should have a description. Version 1.1 will be out shortly.

The bug has been fixed, and the game is now fully playable. In addition to this, I've decreased the game's size a tad by removing an unused audio file. So that should hopefully improve download speed.

Interesting...
But alas, there's another bug...

Spoiler wrote:I can't light the logs? I have the flint and everything... And it won't let me 'light' or 'use' them

Hmm. I put in commands to USE FLINT WITH (ITEM) and to LIGHT LOGS, which do the same thing provided you are carrying the ITEM (I don't want to reveal exactly what that item is). But if you do have said item, then I'll try to fix it. This is why I wish I had more people who could catch these bugs before I release new versions. So much for "fully playable"

Just played through the game again without finding a bug. If you have all three items but still cannot light the logs, let me know what you've done so far via PM. But if not, here's a SPOILER: The third item can be found in Dense forest north.

I liked the game, and it was good for a first game, but what really annoyed me was the "Hunger and fatigue take their toll. - 2% health. I swear, I had to end the game because I was down to 30% by the time I opened the satchel. Is there an item that stops you from losing health constantly?

Okay never mind, I figured it out. If you type quickly, you don't lose health. But then this happened:

>look at satchel.

[description of satchel]

>look at rocks

[description of rocks]

>go northeast. I don't know what is there, but you know what they say...

[description of cave]

>YOLO!

(That didn't actually happen, but wouldn't that be funny?)

I added the health reduction timer to add some realism to the game (to fit the theme of survival), but I can understand your frustration. I'm reluctant to remove that feature altogether, so I'll probably end up adjusting the interval.

There are several ways you can regain health (SPOILER): typing REST, EATing food, and another command involving a bed. By the way, did you happen to read the help guide? I only ask because of the YOLO reference

Like it, thanks

Bug when going in the tent after having taken and eaten the bread, that it gives error message when trying to take the book or bed at the point it previously said "...but that bread looks nice" or whatever the exact text was. I'm guessing the IF looks to see if it's in inventory (which it isn't, because I've eaten it) rather than looking at whether it is not in tent.

Bug when having been through the winding trail, later on I can't go south down the long south part of the path towards "End of forest trail". (Typing "s" just draws a blank). Also doesn't work in reverse, ie going north from end of forest trail.

The map is lovely and the sound effects are atmospheric but not annoying, liked them both, especially the map - is that something built-in to quest in some way, or did you have to design that all yourself?
...although a way to "Sound off" would be useful if I want to leave the window open but do something else without a parrot background noise

Could perhaps do with a little more description and perhaps ability to examine more things (like "examine trees" when in Dense Forest Main). But then that sort of thing is pretty much a never-ending task as you can end up spending hours just adding in descriptions of pointless things, so it doesn't really detract much from the overall experience since you make it clear via quest's hyperlinks what the objects of interest are.

Consider calling "Dense Forest Main" just "Dense Forest" since it seemed a really odd name when I first entered it, unaware at the time that it was to distinguish it from "Dense Forest North", etc, which up the then I hadn't visited.

"Light Logs" doesn't do anything (ie no error message) when you don't have all that you need to do so.

The "NPC" in the help guide is maybe a bit techie for people who aren't familiar with the meaning of NPC. It's also a bit... computery and not in-character with the plot of the game.

Would have been good to have had some sort of hint that digging in dense forest north was a profitable thing to do - I sort of did it by mistake but another time I may never have done so. Though even after having done that, I'm still at a loss to find the third item you indicate I needed to light the logs, since I can't open the chest. I appear to be missing something made of steel, although I did try both the spade and the dagger with no success.

I didn't find the help guide until I'd already got all the way to the silent cave... might be good to make it a little more obvious?

It's a bit too easy to kill thr gropps by just Ctrl-V, Enter, over and over again with "hit gropp"... but then without that it's a bit annoying as it relies on fast typing skills - but that's only because I happen not to be a fighting fan Though perhaps scope for a more intelligent rather than fast-fingered-or-cheat-with-paste combat system.

Losing 2% every so often is a pain if you're dipping in and out while doing other things. Especially if you've not noticed the help guide for ages. Even then, typing in Rest over and over is a pain. Perhaps at least make it so that you don't lose 2% health more than once if you don't type anything new. So that you don't go away from the computer to type some comments in the forum, and go back to find you've just lost 40% health while you've been away

"Sleep in bed" works in tent, but "Sleep" doesn't do the same thing and is a bit misleading.

"inv" tells me that I'm carrying Thomas the Hunter which is mildly amusing

Shame I can't ask thomas about his hunting equipment.

Not obvious you need a third item for lighting logs, and was quite a long time before I considered "Ask Thomas about fire" which gives a more useful message than "Ask Thomas about lighting logs" where he just suggests I get some logs.


Anyway, I'm stuck now because I can't find the last thing I need to light the logs and Thomas is being less than helpful

psy

Thanks, psymann. I can't remember if the game checks inventory for the bread loaf, but I'll look. As for the second bug, the main reason for it is that, after going south along the trail the first time, for exits of a length greater than 1 (as shown on the map, which can be enabled in the GUI), the player doesn't move the length of the exit. That causes the entire map to be off, and although moving between rooms is still possible, the dot on the map doesn't move to the center of the rooms as it should. I tried to add an error message like "You don't want to get lost amongst the trees" for both the south and north ends of the long exit, but for some reason the IF returns nothing. I'll see if I can do anything about that. Maybe I'll try a different approach.

The map is built-in, but I managed to give each area its own background color by setting the background opacity to 0. For reasons unknown, the background of the map remains opaque.

I'm not sure how to stop all sounds with one command, but I can add something that allows the player to stop the sound in individual rooms.

I think the light logs command's having no error message is related to the winding trail issue. It could be the result of conflicting conditions or something like that.

Regarding the combat system, I admit that it's not very good, owing to the fact that I didn't think of the possibility that players would use crtl-v (and since I haven't played text adventures in a long time, I also wasn't aware of the fact that you can cycle through previous commands with the up arrow).

I initially imagined that sleeping without the bed is a risky decision on a dangerous, mysterious island, but I might add a universal command for brave adventurers

If the help guide sounds robotic, it's only because I tried to be concise. (Speaking of computery, I'm working on another game that's very tech-based.)

SPOILER: To light the logs, you first need, of course, the logs. Then you need the key to the chest in Dense forest north, which holds the steel item (which actually has two uses). The Gropp in Dense forest west holds the key, and there is a 25% chance it will drop the key when it retreats. Once you have the steel item, you need to go back to the rocks on the Unknown shore while Thomas is with you. After all of that, you can light the logs.

Ah, this is what got me stuck then: "there is a 25% chance it will drop the key when it retreats" - I think I'd tried it three or four times and gave up after that, so must have been a bit unlucky Maybe some sort of message telling me I was feeling more confident about killing it next time might have spurred me on to more attempts

Good stuff

And got to the end now

Scope for fleshing out a few parts of it, perhaps, but all in all I quite liked that


"use key on chest" would have been a good alternative to "unlock chest" near the end.

Thanks; I'm glad you liked it. I've uploaded version 1.3, and (I hope) I've fixed the bugs you mentioned.

And FYI, you win the game when you make it out of the silent cave. Also (SPOILER), if you manage to light the logs before entering Dense forest east, the winding trail is much easier to get through.