The Ascot: For a CYOA-type piece in the random weirdness sub-genre of fantasy that only reacts to "yes" or "no" commands, this is somewhat neat. It might be slight, but that is very much what it is supposed to be - a fun little diversion with a hint of charm. I could again complain about a lack of ambition, but that's not something I found myself caring about much while playing.
Condemned: Very much on the other side of the IF spectrum is this. It is not a successful piece of IF at all - the implementation seems spotty, the flow between the metaphorical level and the game's reality does not work as well as it should, the writing is spirited but too often wallows in rather overblown metaphors - but it truly has the ambition too many of the games I have played until now lack.
The problem here seems to me that the author is straining his writing and design abilities to the breaking point and just isn't experienced enough to reach his goals yet.
But do I need to stress that I prefer someone's flawed attempt at an ambitious goal to the games which aren't even trying to do something interesting?
Spelunker's Quest: The title threatens a certain amount of old-schoolness and the game keeps its promise. So you find yourself traipsing through a cave full of things the game doesn't see anything special about, collecting treasures and fighting monsters for no particular reason. I suppose it is quite alright for what it is - at least it seems clearly and semi-fairly designed and without major bugs.
The trouble is I don't think it is time well spent to design or play a cave-traipsing game that doesn't do anything different from all the other cave-traipsers (yes, I wish that to become the official genre name) that have come before. But that could just be me, in this case.
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1 comment:
"do I need to stress that I prefer someone's flawed attempt at an ambitious goal to the games which aren't even trying to do something interesting?"
Amen.
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