The Xylophoniad by robinjohnson
The King of Anachronopolis has ordered you to end the Trojan War, slay the dreaded Bicyclops, and rescue a couple of inmates from Hades. A comic adventure set in ancient Greece, with an assortment of locations and characters from Greek mythology.
Winner of the Alumni's Choice award at the 2016 Spring Thing interactive fiction festival.
Play all my games: https://versificator.itch.io
Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/rdouglasjohnson
Give me money: https://paypal.me/versificator (one off tips) or https://patreon.com/robinjohnson (pledge a payment per game)
Winner of the Alumni's Choice award at the 2016 Spring Thing interactive fiction festival.
Play all my games: https://versificator.itch.io
Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/rdouglasjohnson
Give me money: https://paypal.me/versificator (one off tips) or https://patreon.com/robinjohnson (pledge a payment per game)
Comment
hannatude
30 Jun 2018
Comment
robinjohnson
04 Oct 2017
Review
GameofChocolate
10 Sep 2017
Review
snazzy ray
25 Apr 2017
Comment
robinjohnson
19 Mar 2017
Comment
AwesomeAuthor
18 Mar 2017
Review
DavyB
27 Jan 2017
This is another high quality, award-winning game from Robin Johnston. It is of similar length and difficulty to Detectiveland and Draculaland. Unlike those games, however, Xylophoniad has a traditional text adventure format, with command line input. It is again built with Robin’s own game engine, Versificator, and he has also provided the very impressive artwork for the game cover and the game characters.
Being more familiar with Quest, I was initially confused by Versificator’s requirement that object names be given in full, with anything not recognised receiving a default response. That means, for example, when playing the game as Xylophone, and typing “x Xylo,” the response is “Nothing special,” rather than giving the player description or indicating that the name has not been recognised.
Once tuned in, however, I was able to thoroughly enjoy the game and particularly appreciated its humour and general creativity. For example, the concept of a two-eyed cyclops named Bicyclops is comic genius! I was also grateful that ‘death’ didn’t mean ‘death’ in the game, as the player can simply type “undo” afterwards!!
Overall, there is much to like, especially if you have an interest in Greek history and/or legends so I suggest you jump and explore.
Being more familiar with Quest, I was initially confused by Versificator’s requirement that object names be given in full, with anything not recognised receiving a default response. That means, for example, when playing the game as Xylophone, and typing “x Xylo,” the response is “Nothing special,” rather than giving the player description or indicating that the name has not been recognised.
Once tuned in, however, I was able to thoroughly enjoy the game and particularly appreciated its humour and general creativity. For example, the concept of a two-eyed cyclops named Bicyclops is comic genius! I was also grateful that ‘death’ didn’t mean ‘death’ in the game, as the player can simply type “undo” afterwards!!
Overall, there is much to like, especially if you have an interest in Greek history and/or legends so I suggest you jump and explore.
Review
greatbo12
15 May 2016
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Written by
robinjohnson
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3164
HTML
English
Published 09 May 2016
Updated 04 Jul 2021
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