This game is well polished. Immediately, it showcases the superiority of Quest 6. Excellent feel, smoothe gameplay, and lots of fun.
Cool use of font and link styles.
Neat use of minimalist interactivity.
Multiple plot directions.
Funny start. Neat mechanics.
Interesting journey of self-acceptance. Gameplay is very repetitive, which may have a slightly hypnotic effect, but risks becoming dull.
Does a good job capturing the selfish social anxiety of the two most recent generations. I found myself definitely feeling judgmental rather than sympathetic toward the protagonist.
This is one of the shorter games in Incanus' vampire series, but I really had a lot of fun with it.
A really clever escape game with a remarkably fascinating setting.
One of the finest Spanish-speaking IF/text adventure authors has returned after a long absence. And even giving some face to Squiffy!
CYOA in Simplified Mandarin. Not a bad game at all, especially if you're learning Chinese. The need to make a choice ever couple of sentences forces you to comprehend.
If you can read Spanish, this game is a masterpiece. The documentation* alone is well worth reading. Textadventures.co.uk doesn't have a 'Mythology' category, but that's the real genre of this game. You play one of the last members of the Chiloe tribe (of the South American west coast) who is still living in the traditional way. Your goal is to become a Machi (shaman) and gain the right to interact with the Pincoya (spirit/goddess) to save your way of life. The frequent use of local dialect and Mapuche language builds the atmosphere beautifully. (And the documentation is helpful for understanding it.)
The one possibly unpleasant thing about the game is the boat you travel in. It's over-implemented and difficult to use. It's good for reminding you that your boat is your livelihood, but it can get irritating. It includes hints (type PISTAS) so at least you won't get stuck.
*http://www.caad.es/incanus/Chiloe_-_mar_y_mitologia.pdf
*http://spac.caad.es/IMG/jpg/mapa_pincoya.jpg
Teachers,
Have you ever tried the famous language lesson where the students try to explain to you how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Hilarious, isn't it? Now turn that into a text adventure. Then exchange PBJ for garlic bread...
... and vampires.
I don't usually like Inkle stories because they tend to be un-interactive and badly written. This Spanish game is a good story and the interactivity is pretty effective.
This Castilian Spanish story gave me the creeps, both because of the 'villain' and because of the way the various NPC's respond to the danger. The central puzzle/challenge was fun and not too difficult. Definitely try it if you read Castilian Spanish!
You get to be a hacker in this Castilian Spanish language game/short story. I had fun with it overall. There appear to be a lot of ways to toy with your hacker abilities, but there only seem to be two possible endings, unfortunately. Definitely worth playing if you read Castilian Spanish.
This is a quiz masked as a game, with only the shallowest attempt to provide a narrative context. It also contains a fatal glitch, wherein wrong answers can be changed immediately. The reader is asked to imagine that they aspire to become an urban farmer. Somehow this requires them to face an interview for an urban farming job. They are asked questions about urban farming in Singapore and China. Despite these eye-rollers, I found the non-fiction content somewhat interesting. The Simplified Chinese (簡體中文) vocabulary is appropriate for children or intermediate second language learners.
Unfortunately, there isn't much of an interactive fiction community among the East Asian languages. There exist exactly zero parser works in Mandarin, and roughly one or two in Japanese. Those hyperlink works that do exist only rarely include meaningful choices. This story is not one of those happy few. It is merely an excuse for the author to draw online attention to their Chinese-Japanese poem and melodramatic Chinese dialog.
Fun and relatively well implemented.
No está bien implementado. No reconoce muchos verbos y sustantivos.
Interesting story. Not very interactive.
Like many choice-based games, the only game element to this one is the irritating cliché, "Oops, you made the wrong choice. It was only wrong because the Almighty Author has willed it so from the foundation of the world. But you're still dead. So there!"
This story includes a light puzzle and a bit of creepiness. What I really love about it its the spot-on cultural setting. Right at the start, you can choose between two very realistic and quintessential types of Asian daughters for the PC. As you enter the scene, every detail, from conversations to "rooms" genuinely feels like modern rural China or Taiwan. (Please forgive the comparison! It's not politically motivated!) The author could have kept this as a very well-written slice-of-life. But the puzzle and the creepy plot do a good job of gamifying it all.
Wow! I hadn't gotten around to reading his on IFDB, but I'm sure glad I noticed it here! You used the perfect tool, too, to emphasise the ritual of packing. The same prose would not have worked so well were it non-interactive.
Not bad for a first attempt. I'd recommend more thorough implementation. For example, NPC's are quite kind, and it would be nice to be able to thank them. Certain puzzles require very specific three-word commands, leading to a lot of guessing the correct word, which ruins the feeling of immersion.
1. Squiffy has a Spanish version, but you didn't use it.
2. The only thing interactive about this is whether to choose a full telling or a summary.
3. The writing feels plagiarized.
There are a few dead links. Also, it would have been easy to implement gamebook features in both Squiffy and Quest, rather than instruct the player to choose two abilities and then only click links related to those.
According to my South African colleague who can read Dutch, this is a chemistry/biology scenario quiz (not really a game) and includes pictures and videos. It applies these disciplines to a very specific current events topic in the Netherlands.
This is a Russian CYOA comedy. The narrative is fully fleshed out, and is well-implemented visually and technically. The comic elements are sometimes silly, grotesque and political.
Good enough to use in school!
A fun old-style text adventure with a nostalgic feel. Impressively, benergize created everything from absolute scratch, so expect the parser not respond in completely standardised ways.
Although this is not Incanus' most polished game, it's my personal favorite. It's also the one I'd recommend for Spanish language learners--The parser never misunderstood me and didn't expect me to go through extremely detailed procedures.
Aunque este juego no es el más finamente construido de las obras de Incanus, todavía es mi favorito. También este es el que recomendaria para los que están aprendiendo el Español.
It's nice to see Incanus back in action. I enjoy theme of frontier life in space. When we actually do begin colonising space, menial tasks will be surprisingly common. Starvation, disease, pests, and lack of supplies will probably be a more real danger than alien civilisations.
This China geography game is well thought out and well implemented. I fully intend to assign it as homework for my 5th grade international students in Shenzhen.
This fan-fiction would make a nice start to a fully developed COYA game. 這段粉絲故事挺適合當長一點小說的開頭。
Professional feel. Fascinating use of non-fiction elements (e.g. photos, word choice). Well thought-out choices and options.
The best Harry Potter fan fiction I've ever seen. What fun!
Alex, you need to write more pieces. I love that the setting is a real location. So few people my area actually seem to explore their local transportation. They just know the way to work and back; that's it. So many people seem to run on autopilot. Perhaps there should be an option to 'ruin' the game by SPOILER.
?krow ot gniog ylpmis...
One of the very best non-parser games I've ever seen.
好玩！你有寫其他的文字冒險嗎？我很期待用文字遊戲學中文。
As much fun, challenge, and professionalism as an IFcomp piece.
Just had to go back and see all the endings.
