IFComp 2008 notes
These are just some random, entirely unedited notes I made while playing the games, along with my scores. Probably not interesting to anyone other than the authors. My scores seem to have been pretty low this year; perhaps I was just in a bad mood, so don’t be overly discouraged by that...
In the order played:
1. Snack Time! by Renee Choba - 5
Very short. Cute. Fairly solid implementation (didn’t notice any bugs). Timing at the end may be a little finicky. Nice amount of detail. Well done, but not too much to see.
2. Grief by Simon Christiansen - 3
Why is it, that when asked “Are you male or female?”, I want to answer “yes”? Hopefully I sleep in my clothes. Some inappropriate responses when take thomas to work after school. Never felt much attachment to the kid. Not sure why driving home from work is safer than driving home from school. Didn’t like this (don’t necessarily mind lack of agency, but felt like the game was punishing me). Also, the first bad ending I got involved him dying with me, so having to find the “real” ending where he was with me the whole time seemed forced.
3. Piracy 2.0 by Sean Huxter - 7
Old-school done right: save early and often. Enjoyable; had to replay several times (still only got 80 points). Seemed slightly implausible to not run into pirates more frequently. A few non-original bits (sub-etha waveband...), but fun and very well-implemented. Want to replay to try other possible solutions, try to get full points.
4. Trein by Leena Kowser Ganguli - 3
Intro draws me in. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really follow up on it (intro suggests some magical stuff, and there’s a little hint of that later, but doesn’t have anything to do with the main plot). Oops: typo in player description: “the your face is mostly concealed”; not a good start. Other lack of polish in some descriptions (extraneous articles and quotes). Got stuck and needed walkthrough because “put torch in bracket” didn’t work (needed “on”). Needs more polish. not a lot of action or interactivity (except a bit in one branch).
5. April in Paris by Jim Aikin - 7
Very enjoyable. I generally knew what i should be doing and things were well-clued (there were two places where I needed hints: finding the coin and buying tje corkscrew).
6. Magic by Geoff Fortytwo - 6
Note sure exactly what I should be doing at the beginning. Well, I guess I need medical care now. Needed to use hints extensively (never could have come up with most of the solutions on my own). WORST PUN EVER! (Ok, it amused me...) Enjoyable in a sick and twisted way. Could have used more direction at the beginning of what I was trying to accomplish (I thought I should be trying to recover my stuff or take revenge on the children’s house). I’m not sure why, but I had fun with this even though it’s flawed.
7. Violet by Jeremy Freese - 10
Bonus points for amusing “about” text. And for mentioning me in the credits. This is my life (without the Aussie girlfriend); I played this while avoiding writing a grant proposal. Loved this game. Made me want to resign my position and, um, not sure what I’d do after that...
8. Berrost's Challenge by Mark Hatfield - 5
Old-school fantasy; some amusing puzzles. Got a bug with teamster (“numerical value required”). Lot of guess-the-verb, could be better implemented. Fun if you like puzzles (a bit long for comp, maybe; turned to hints because I was getting near two hours).
9. Opening Night by David Batterham - 5
Ok: is it 1917, or is that a cellphone I hear? Ah, one of those... Contrived puzzles seem to be there just for pacing. Bit of a good story, but didn’t really draw me in. Reasonably well implemented.
[Interlude to play some games that look short...]
10. Freedom by Anonymous - 3
Debug is set. We’ll save that fun for later... How was I supposed to know that I should hug the girl (without, of course, the walkthrough)? At the college I went to, they discouraged this sort of thing... Ok, I’ve read the about text. I didn’t feel socially anxious during this game, just annoyed. Sparse implementation. Ok, time to go purloin girl...
11. The Absolute Worst IF Game in History by Dean Menezes - 1
Why does anyone bother to do this?
12. Nerd Quest by RagtimeNerd - 1
Parser seems not very robust (doesn’t seem to recognize “x” or even “examine”? Need to “look at” things?). Crashed in first play in response to “look at shelves” with:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException (etc.)
Try again. Strange line-breaking in the middle of sentences. Walkthrough. How did a BMW get into the conference room? Oh, right, “beamer” means projector, somewhere. Why, again, do people do these things?
13. The Lighthouse by Eric Hickman and Nathan Chung - 1
Gee, the light is something I can’t switch on. That seems... odd. Hey, I can win as many times as I want, since the game doesn’t end. It took *two people* to write this? WHY?
[Okay, must play a real game now...]
14. Nightfall by Eric Eve - 9
Lots of story here. Good sense of drama. Long (only had time to get one ending in time limit). Want to replay; lots more to see. Liked the story. Good directing at beginning, but very open (too much perhaps) later on. A few points where I wasn’t allowed to go off in a direction I thought I should be (message about not wanting to wander too far). Want to replay.
15. Riverside by Drew, Jeremy, and Vic - 1
Intro is somewhat interesting. Except I am as good-looking as ever, and lots of unimplemented scenery. “Read album” wasn’t the most obvious choice. Oh, bite me. I was going to say this was a possibly intriguing idea which could be quite good with better implementation.
16. Cry Wolf by Clare E. Parker - 7
“Take consopopifil” fails. Unimplemented scenery. Won’t let me call someone because I’m the most qualified, but won’t let me outside. Disambiguation problem with wolf/animal. Operation needs better prompting; the PC is a vet and knows what to do; I am not and do not. Bug: “talk to julia” after surgery begins with paragraph about IV. Am I supposed to be dense? Conversation goes on for too long.
17. Buried In Shoes by Kazuki Mishima - 3
Nothing terribly original, though not too bad. But didn’t seem to tie ending to beginning.
[And here is where I didn’t finish the rest of the games because lots of deadlines came up and I was still feeling guilty, from playing “Violet”, about playing IF instead of doing work...]