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Haven't yet completed this, but I played as far as discovering the twist and winding up back on the island a second time. Was at a bit of a loss as to what to do after that although I assume I should assemble the craft again and see if I'm given any different options with my new info.
The writing is very good and the pace of discovering info vs exploring the island worked well. Although I kept wishing more things in the surroundings could be examined, but for whatever reason a lack of scenery objects is common with Quest games. Mildly frustrated too that I would find interesting things like a chemistry kit full of objects I couldn't examine or interact with at all. Another minor annoyance I have with a lot of Quest games is present here as well; you're basically forced to click items and using the drop down list of available actions as the actual commands tied to them often aren't intuitive at all. 'harvest root plant' or 'assemble craft mobile launcher' and so on...
Incomplete, and commits the sin of all bad, annoying fanfic by jumping into a situation that only makes sense to those who have read the series, and throwing around lots of specialized terms and just assuming the reader will know what it's all about. This is not a Warrior Cats site. And not laying the basic groundwork any story needs for setting and characters is just bad writing, regardless.
Also, I'd recommend learning the difference between your and you're.
I can't finish this tonight but I'm VERY impressed by what I've seen so far. I wish we saw more games of this quality. Playing as a little girl's porcelain doll and researching flowers to save her is one of those ideas that sounds so strange on the surface you wonder how anyone ever came up with it, but then you sit down and play the game itself and it's an absolute delight.
Usually games for school projects go straight to the Sandpit, but there was an impressive amount of work done on this one, for a CYOA style story especially.
This was far too short IMO but the writing was good with no obviously punctuation or grammatical issues, and the setting and premise were interesting. With how young so many of the players here are though and how rarely anything about Rome is taught in schools anymore I felt like one area that could have been expanded on (which would have also increased the length) is the actual context for who the characters are, what's going on and why it's important. You've got that short overview in your description but so much of that could've been incorporated into the story itself, as well as some general details about life in Rome at the time.
If you didn't think it was good, why did you publish it?
There's really not much to recommend this one I'm afraid, it doesn't even try to keep the player's attention. 'You are in Entryway.' 'You are in Porch.' 'There's a Monster here. ' 'You destroy the Monster.' isn't exactly riveting stuff to set fire to the imagination.
Had some fun with this this morning. It's cute, light-hearted fun and I'd recommend it. Still haven't quite figured out the first riddle from Shay, but the second is easy enough so no trouble getting past her. Got a little stuck on the bear but I'll ask more about that and a couple of smaller issues I spotted over a forum PM.
I"m almost tempted to do the rhyming thing now, but trying to come up with this many even for a small game I'm guessing is something that would start out fun, and end with XanMag pulling his hair out and beating his head on the desk. :P
Er, I mean...
This game you should play,
Though I really must say,
All these rhymes, I fear
Had the author in tears,
Fuming at the Pixie's curse,
Course set, for better or worse.
Perhaps next time you,
should go with haiku?
This could have been a CYOA really, there was never any reason to use a parser in my playthrough, it was just a matter of clicking choices. But it was well written and made me laugh so I forgive you. :) Wilderness survival is a favorite subject of mine and there was a lot of useful info in here.
I died punching a shark, but that is a very acceptable way to go.
'Oh no. i want to play one of those god awful elder scrolls games but i barely get 30fps for im poor and cant get a copy for the life of me.'
Yeah, um...another issue is that you want to write a text-based Elder Scrolls game but don't seem to have a good grasp on the whole 'writing' thing. Sorry man but this was just painful to try and get through. Even the title is misspelled.
I see you did put some effort in with the pictures and such but I'd much, much rather have coherent descriptions. And this is another one of those games that basically can't be solved without clicking on objects in the pane and seeing what verbs are attached. There's nothing at all in the text that would suggest that it's possible to reach through the cell bars, take the guard's sword from his scabbard without any objection on his part, and that he would then just obligingly stand there completely unresponsive for however long it takes the player to get around to stabbing him.
An immersive story of a British soldier in the first World War. I don't usually care for the CYOAs on this site, but now I only wish more of them were like this. The choices you make feel real and have believable consequences, and there's a twist about halfway through that had me facepalming (in a good way!), that I don't even to spoil for others by even hinting at here.
Not quite a five unfortunately because there are lots of punctuation errors sprinkled throughout. And I feel like you did yourself a disservice with the blurb, it could have been a bit more descriptive to hook readers, and you shouldn't call it 'short' when it's the perfect length for the story and there are plenty of 'games' on this site that are over in two clicks.
Between this and one of the author's other games I looked at it's clear they have a knack for finding REALLY nice cover pics for their games that grab the attention and promise a lot of atmosphere...and then completely disappointing the player's expectation with awful spelling and grammar and lazy writing that goes nowhere. :(
The below reviewer has no sense of humor.
That said, this wasn't really long enough to qualify for a higher rating than 'OK'. (And if I didn't feel so bad about the previous person being all mean and stuff it honestly probably would have been a two...this is funny but way too short.)
Make in longer, and harder next time okay? (she says, purring all seductively like someone from the telly)
I had a look at this after MoA posted his glowing comment, and I have to say it was a slight let down after all that hype. Decent enough for what it was trying to do but definitely far and away from being what I'd call the 'BEST text adventure I've ever played', and I somehow missed out on the rich storyline and all the excitement he saw in it.
Here's the first room:
****
You are on the main road.
You see the faint glow in the distance. You can smell smoke in the air.
You can go east or north.
****
Oh, I can see a faint glow in the distance?
> x glow
I can't see that.
Hmm. Nope, apparently not. Some of the other rooms do get SLIGHTLY more descriptive, but they're still pretty sparse and do little to draw the player in. For all that you're supposed to be escaping from a fire it
*****
You are in the town square.
You remember how this was always a happy place, where people could buy and sell their goods. However, now people are frantically running around, trying to escape the fire.
You can go south, north, west, east, northwest or northeast.
**********
People running frantically around?? Sounds interesting!
> x people
I can't see that.
Nope, nevermind, must have imagined them. Later I walked into a building and instantly died and had to restart. The game seems to mostly consist of walking around these very sparsely implemented streets and occasionally picking up an object. For all that you're supposed to be escaping a fire and there are supposed to be other frantic people running around, there is zero sense of urgency. The fire only matters when you walk into the wrong room and get an immediate game over. Otherwise you can idle in that market place with all the panicking people forever if you want, with no change at all. Even something simple like some random events showing others trying to escape or giving the fire an actual presence would have livened things up.
I could see this being a really neat premise for a game, but as implemented it falls completely flat on the 'action' side and I wasn't able to find much else in the way of interesting characters or plot or even descriptions to really hold the interest.
Best game on the site!
I feel the author is really underselling himself though, he's got to be a ~600~ pound neckbeard AT LEAST. Come now, good sir sexygames, there's no need for false modesty.
First: did you really need to blow up the newsfeed with a 3,356px × 2,304 image? Second: are you and zzGODSKNIFEzz the same person? Third:
Your alarm clock reads 6:00 you better get up and go to work.
Start again
get up
You get up... to your left there is a bathroom and to your right there are the stairs.
go left
You go to the bathroom. There is a mirror.
look at mirror
Wow that is one ugly dude... oh wait that`s you... You fall over dead from your uglyness.
...yep, that sure was one EPIC adventure. Such grandeur and heroism, like LOTR and Star Wars and the Odyssee all combined into one.
Sigh.
I tried to get out of bed and was strangled by my sheets. My entire adventure was about three sentences long. Looking into further, the first choice had about a 75% chance of dying, while the next had similar odds. Most players have better things to do with their time than memorize a random series of clicks. Death after death and very little logic does not make for an entertaining game play experience, will authors never learn...
This is a very good game, I enjoyed the setting and the puzzles were just the right level of difficulty. It was one of the first I played on the site once I'd made an account and was one of the things that convinced me that there was something to this Quest thing, and the OTHER good Quest game I'd come across in the IF comp wasn't just a fluke. Anyway, I just now realized I'd never actually reviewed it and so am correcting that now. :)
Oh, and @JCB_diggerbrown: Wow, an excellent example of why children should never be allowed on the internet, ever. 1 star spite review after admitting to only playing for 15 minutes? Very classy.
A well written game with lots of action, but in some ways I preferred the realism of the first part. I had assumed the plot would deal with an entirely different sort of struggle for survival...finding clean water and food, dealing with injuries from the crash and so on.
[SPOILER WARNING}
Instead there's a fight scene with a crazy man and then you build a seaworthy raft and launch yourself out to the ocean less than 24 hours after the plane crash with no idea where you are, no idea where you're going, and no supplies.
[SPOILERS END]
...so the writing remained good throughout but suspension of disbelief kind of had to take a back seat with this one. That said, taken on their own merits the action scenes were very well done.
Oh, and I believe I ran into a bug, after building a fire and then deciding to build the raft:
"I guess we could build a raft while we wait."
Keep building
Wait until daybreak (broken link)
Sorry for the one star, kid. I hesitated because the writing itself is passable, but in the end it's just an incomplete short story that abruptly cuts off without even giving the player the illusion of choice. There are PLENTY of places on the internet to post your stories and I'd advise you to check them out because you definitely are a talented writer for your age, it's just that this site here is for the interactive kind of fiction.
It's been mentioned that the game is short, but I didn't have a problem there. It's a story about surviving a plane crash and the length is just right for a situation that in reality would play itself out in just a few minutes. I appreciate that the choices and consequences were (mostly) logical and the writing was just descriptive enough to make it clear what was going on without distracting the player with unnecessary details in what's meant to be a fast-paced life or death situation.
Though I did run across a few typos, which is perhaps more damning in a short game than it would be in a longer one:
See? you think as you begin to doze off again, we're fine!. (the period at the end is not required)
The whole plane rattles uncontrolably, and you begin to panic. no plane is meant to withstand this kind of turbulence. ('uncontrollably' is misspelled, and you forgot to capitalize the next sentence)
"W-What happened? What's going on?". (the period doesn't belong there)
Grab some suplies ('supplies')
The other survivors are too weary to care and don't say anything back as you grab ahold of their floatation device. ('flotation')
And (SPOILER WARNING) I admit it did bug me a little that the best ending was achieved by what would otherwise be the highly...unrecommended action of taking time to paw through luggage while standing in a metal tube that's in the process of sinking in the ocean.
I played the ADRIFT version of this years ago. One of the first ADRIFT games I ever played, actually. It's funny in kind of a morbid way, and the plot is a simple one that involves you searching your neighbors' house for evidence of a crime...and there is a LOT of evidence, but you can't go to the police until you find it all. Attention to detail is a definite requirement to beat this.
Anyway, still fun even after all this time, but David Whyld was an extremely prolific author back then and many of his other games are better.
...and I'm not sure what the deal is with all the extremely confused people below, I'm just going to assume that Quest users in 2013 weren't very bright.
I played this a couple weeks ago and I'm waaay overdue on reviewing it. It's a VERY impressive game and I hope you're really friggin' proud and happy with it because you have every reason to be! The presentation alone blew me away; all your tricks with the title screen and text, even the tips and help section take what would have been a fantastic game in its own right and turn it into something amazingly slick and professional.
Now, as for the plot itself, I hesitate to even discuss it here because new players deserve to experience it for themselves without being spoiled. So I'll just say that during my first playthough there was a segment (you know the one...) that was absolutely horrifying, I mean you tapped into one of my worst phobias and I was literally short of breath and REALLY hoping you weren't going to put too much detail into what I thought was about to happen...and then the ending happened, which in hindsight was even more disturbing.
I was only able to ever find four out of five endings, but I'll give it another try soon and see if I can figure out the last one. If not expect me to PM you on the forum soon...don't want to ask here because obviously that'd require some pretty massive spoilers.
One thing I did want to ask though, is whether the paragraph of writing I found is a quote from anywhere in particular, or something you came up with just for the game? Google didn't know what to make of it.
Counteracting the undeserved one star just below this. I haven't completed the game yet, but the setting is VERY unusual and the writing is good, fascinating really. Even if it's not your cup of tea it's a pretty big stretch and rather unfair to call it a 'terrible' game.
@Juddyann Sorry but I'm rolling my eyes here. The first command is obvious if you actually read the text you're given. 'If you want, you can go into my bloodstream.
What do you want to do?'
HMM I WONDER, yes indeed quite the mystery there. :D
All Roads has been around for over a decade and is pretty well known, I think it was controversial at the time it came out because there's a LOT going on and it doesn't exactly spoonfeed what it's all about to the player. You may have to play it a few times and really pay attention to get at what's really going on in this world. You start with your neck in a noose and then...well it's hard for me to even review without getting into spoiler territory.
The author's other work is well worth checking out as well and can be found here: http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=author%3AJon+Ingold
fake edit: okay apparently not not TOO 'controversial' after all, did a little googling and it swept away the XYZZY awards that year with Best Game, Best Setting, and Best Story, so obviously there were players who liked it a whole whole lot.
Like others have said, there's not much here. And what IS here is all pretty incoherent. There's no real plot, you just wander around and talk to people, one line of description for each 'page' and one line of dialogue for each character, directly lifted from the movies or books.
The pictures are decent but anyone can grab images off of Google.
In the end I just find myself wishing there was any original content at all here. The title would be a good place to start. I probably should have taken it as a bad sign that the author couldn't come up with one on her own.
I haven't completed this yet, but I've played enough to say with confidence that this is a game people really ought to try. The writing is great, but...strange in a lot of ways. Good ways, mostly. It's an odd combination of 'serious' descriptions dense with imagery and out of place references and humor. Here's an example of a room I came across early on:
--------------------------------------------------------
You are in the high branches of a sycamore.
There is a blue egg here.
You can go down.
Beneath a squally sky, you sway amid the leaves, through which the wind whispers melancholy tidings. West, treetops stretch for many a league, or thereabouts. Beyond, a pale grey temple, spired and curvaceous, stands like a monument to good mental health. North, dense treetops resemble broccoli. East is the town, awash with drizzle, windows gleaming. Yes, quite a view from the top of this sycamore.
--------------------------------------------------------
I suspect this approach may turn out to be one of those love it or hate it kind of things, but I've really enjoyed myself so far. It's hard to judge exactly without having finished it yet, but so far the writing quality has remained consistent, and it's a sizable game with lots of places to explore.
My only complaint is that there are a lot of ways to die, and (like many Quest games, for whatever reason) once you die the 'undo' command no longer works so you're forced to reload an old save. Usually this is a big pet peeve of mind, though in this case its tempered somewhat by the fact that the deaths are pretty creative and fun to read.
'Spose I should get around to reviewing this one. As others have stated, it's ridiculously charming, and even when I got stuck on one particular puzzle, playing was just a fun and relaxing experience all around.
The only real flaw I came across was that in some of the rooms with objects lying around, they were still described as being there after I picked them up. The game has been out for awhile, so I suppose chances of a bug fixed version are slim, but just pointing it out.
Also, while most of the puzzles were good ones, I felt they relied too much on the 'use object on object' style solutions. That's something that seems weirdly endemic to Quest games so I can hardly fault the author for it, but it would be nice if the game also recognized more natural commands--cutting something with a knife instead of 'using' the knife, for instance.
In the end though this is still one of the better traditional IF games I've come across on this site and the good feelings it gave me won out over any minor technical issues. I kind of wanted to just run around and let the character making hobbit-y observations about things forever. :)
I can see that you're trying here, but playing this game just doesn't appeal to me. There are lots of run on sentences and punctuation problems everywhere (suggestion: commas and periods are your friend), and frankly I kind of resented the way you're railroading the player.
'You are in a Prison Cell.
You can go south.
You can see a guard with a key lecturing you maybe if you attack him you can get the key and get out of here'
'You are in a Jail Exit.
You can see a Dagger.
You can go north or east.
There's a table made of oak plank with the cobblestone around it there's also a candle melting on the table you put the candle out with your finger it will give away your position luckily you're great in seeing in the dark
> x dagger
Until you pick this up you think you shouldn't leave'
...and so on. Why not let us think for ourselves to solve the puzzles? Isn't that the whole point of this kind of game?
Boy that sure was a nice description and title picture for a game, too bad I have to rate the actual game itself. (Which doesn't exist.)
I'm not usually a fan of the gamebooks here, and I haven't even had the time to finish this one yet...but holy crap, I wish I could give this one ten stars. (...which could then be arranged into an unholy formation and with certain rituals be used to summon forth an eldritch abomination, each of its myriad of gaping maws capable of singing the world out of being)
Seriously, I've gone through entire games here with less effort and skill put into them than in your first few pages. I'm going to come back to this later tonight after everyone's gone to bed and take my time really getting into this while I see if I can figure out those runes...
Ugh.
Basically the definition of low effort trash.
I mean, I guessed that from the title but I just had to satisfy my curiosity...
The page that ends with 'You don't say a word. It's been so long that you've forgotten how. Instead, you lay down there, waiting for the voice to come again.' doesn't seem meant to be a bad end, but it just sort of ends abruptly with no links. Is this an unfinished section or was it a mistake?
Otherwise, you've got some great writing here, I love how you drop little hints about the character and setting but in the end leave the reader to draw their own conclusions. I do feel like it could have been longer with more choices, this reads more like a short story adapted to a CYOA.
This had a plot and some descriptive writing so that alone makes it better than a good percentage of the gamebooks on this site. But the pictures could have lined up with the text better, and you've got some misspelled words sprinkled around though (repeated uses of 'riffle' being the most glaring). And look, I'm sorry, but I think I'm just going to have a policy from now on of just automatically trimming a star of hyperlink games that kill you over and over and don't at least provide a 'go back' link.
That said, I don't want to discourage you, so I let me emphasize again that the writing was pretty decent, I felt bad for that poor puppy having so many horrible things happen to him!
I see you have a lot of games, I'll try and check out another later.
This was okay but it's definitely in the wrong category. There are links, you click them, if you don't click the right ones you die and have to start over. Or you don't die, you just picked a choice the author didn't like so the narrator makes a snarky comment and forces you to start over anyway, because they feel like it. That's not a 'simulation' at all. This should probably be in fantasy.
Also the author is seriously in love with the word 'suddenly'.
This game is fantastic, I can see why it placed so high in the IF Comp. The writing is hilarious all the way through, the powers were fun to use and the puzzles were great. I was impressed at the multiple endings too...I got Media Darling and Ace Reporter, did I miss any?
A couple tiny things I ran into: if you try to read the french book a second time you get a 'no verb response defined' error, and there's a typo in Jacqueline at the end of the Ace Reporter ending. Also even after you clear the way to the trapdoor, you can still enter the building and it still lists the trapdoor and everything else, nothing's changed.
But the worst thing is that there wasn't any ending where I could get to that pirate treasure in the portrait. :P
Anyway, I can't understand why this doesn't have more reviews. Great job and looking forward to your next game!
I don't understand these people one-starring it, the game is perfectly playable. I died a few times but I was eventually able to get the key and escape. I wish that when you mentioned objects (the security guards desk, the posters...) you'd take the time to describe them, and seeing the same death ending over and over again gets tedious, maybe mix it up a little? At one point I got spammed with it four times on the same game over.
I almost gave this a 2, but the writing and descriptions were pretty good so I went with a higher score...it just bothered me to read the description and see you were clearly aware the game had issues and decided to post it anyway without fixing them.
I see a lot of unfinished games getting posted to this site, I'm not really sure why. I'm struggling with my own game right now so I know it can be hard to make them if you're new to Quest, but if you're having trouble figuring something out why not ask on the forums for help?
There were also a lot of issues with things like objects still being talked about in the room description after they'd been picked up, or still in my inventory after I used them. Fixing little issues like this would make the game seem a lot more polished and professional.
Otherwise I thought the storyline was pretty interesting, I'd never heard this particular version of the 'donkey skin' fairytale.
Short but fun with pretty good writing. (Especially loved the intro...'They're humans, what did you expect?' got a lol out of me.) Dinged you one star because as I said, it was pretty short, and I felt like I got randomly killed a lot during combat. Just a suggestion, I would have preferred more options like 'take cover or fire' or 'take an aimed shot or just start blasting' instead of just 'fire, maybe you'll get killed maybe you won't?'
