A Collection of Reviews of
ADRIFT Games Which People Have Written But They Might Not Necessarily be all
Adrift Games that People are Writing Reviews Of
ISSUE 7
EDITED BY
PUBLISHED ON 8 JANUARY 2006
EDITED BY
PUBLISHED ON 8 JANUARY 2006
Top Ten Games of the Year – by David Whyld
2005 - My First Year as a Drifter –
by Christy Henshaw
Pathway to Destruction – reviewed by David
Whyld
Take
One – reviewed by David Whyld
The Demon Hunter – reviewed by Robert Street
The
Hunter – reviewed by Robert Street
Shadow of the Past – reviewed by David Whyld
Jack of Shadows – reviewed by David Whyld
Escape to New York – reviewed by TDS
Vendetta
– reviewed by Robert Street & TDS
The Plague (Redux) –
reviewed by TDS
Provenance
– reviewed by David Whyld
Showtime at the Gallows – reviewed by Robert
Street
A Spot of Bother – reviewed by Robert Street
Can
I Do It? – reviewed by David Whyld
Chasing the Russian – reviewed by David Whyld
Wizard’s Playground – reviewed by Greg Boettcher
House of the Midnight Sun – reviewed by
David Whyld
List of games reviewed in this
issue and previous issues
Welcome to the seventh edition of the Reviews
Exchange. In the following sections are 18 reviews and 2 articles of
thoughts on the year 2005. Thank you to David Whyld, Greg Boettcher, Christy
Henshaw and TDS for their contributions.
2005 was my first full year as a member of the
ADRIFT community, as I joined the ADRIFT forums in late 2004. I may not be the
best judge of how this year compares to previous years, but I think that 2005
was a strong year for ADRIFT. There may not have been any game that stood out
for me as absolutely outstanding, but there were a lot of very good games
released over the year, highlighted by the strong performance by ADRIFT in
the IF competition. The forums on the ADRIFT main site were also steadily
active throughout the year (barring the occasional crash of the ADRIFT site,
which thankfully has greatly improved in reliability in the second half of the
year), with a lot of interesting threads.
2005 was also the first full year of the Reviews
Exchange with 5 issues and 95 reviews (not counting this edition, which
was in 2006, or the first issue, which was in 2004). That is a large
effort for a community as small as the ADRIFT community and I hope that people
have enjoyed reading it. As a comparison over the same time period SPAG for the
general IF community has released 4 issues and 48 reviews. Thank you to the
following contributors over the last year:
- David
Whyld (44 reviews);
- Robert
Street (20 reviews)
- Stefan Donati (11 reviews)
- Christy
Henshaw (6 reviews)
- Laurence
Moore (6 reviews);
- Lumin (3 reviews)
- THoiA (3 reviews)
- Cobra1 (1
review); and
- Red-Sith
(1 review).
Hopefully in 2006 we will see more reviews from
these reviewers, plus some from new reviewers.
My personal three favourite ADRIFT games of 2005 were:
The Plague (Redux)
– The first game by Laurence Moore for several years showed that he hasn’t
lost his ability to create a creepy atmosphere, with good writing and an
interesting story.
Second
Chance – Second Chance showed that David Whyld can write more serious
story-based games just as well and possibly better than his more usual comedy
games.
Pathway
to Destruction - Generally I would be much more disappointed at just missing
out on winning a competition. However, I felt that Pathway to Destruction by
Richard Otter was a very good game that created a strong story from the
constraints of the competition and it deserved to win.
Hopefully, 2006 will be an even better year, with
the Reviews Exchange continuing strongly and more new great games. Given
Campbell Wild’s recent comments on the ADRIFT forums, maybe even a much
improved ADRIFT 5.0 will be released. Whatever happens, I look forward to the
next year.
Robert
Street
By David Whyld
My favourite ten ADRIFT
games of 2005, and why I liked 'em:
Can It Be All So Simple?
By TDS
A strange horror game
where precious little makes sense (is it all in the player's mind?) but which
is well worth playing all the same.
Unusually for a game by a
newbie, this shows a high level of professionalism in that just about every
item mentioned in the room descriptions can be examined. The dreaded "you
see no such thing" is mercifully absent for most of the time.
I wasn't too keen on the
intro, which seemed to bear little relation to the rest of the game, and I
would have liked a better explanation for what went on, but those points aside
this was certainly an impressive debut.
Crazy Old Bag Lady
by Sprite
Sometimes games come very
close to being really good, but just miss out at the last moment. "Crazy
Old Bag Lady" was one such game.
It's the amusing,
tongue-in-cheek story of a bag lady on a quest to find a golden shopping
trolley, along the way contending with a mad cat lady (shamelessly stolen from
The Simpsons?) and a whole weird consortium of the
homeless. Very comical in places and well written, but…
But the bugs. Oh dear.
The original version of the game had a bug that crashed it the moment you
entered a certain location; this version has that one fixed but several others
have crept in, thus spoiling what is otherwise a decent game.
Frustrated Interviewee by
I generally avoid puzzlefests like the plague (ignoring the fact that I've
just written one) as I'm hopeless at the puzzles and inevitably wind up
frustrated and wishing I'd never bothered in the first place. But I gave this
one a whirl anyway.
For a while I managed to
do pretty well with it, moving along from one scene to the next with only minor
problems. But then the puzzles started piling on thick 'n' fast and before long
I was being overwhelmed by them. Solve a difficult puzzle and you've got
another one just around the corner, with a few of its friends lurking in the
background.
A decent enough puzzlefest when all is said and done. Just… too many
puzzles.
Pathway To Destruction by
Richard Otter
Winner of the Finish The
Game Comp I organised and an interesting game in its own right. I usually start
off liking Richard Otter's games and then go off them when I come across the
lifeless NPCs and their stilted dialogue, but "Pathway To
Destruction" is an NPC-free game… and all the better for it.
Out of all the FTG
entries, I felt this one made the best use of the source material. Admittedly
the source material was intended more for a fantasy-style game, but I think the
sci-fi setting used here works equally well.
A few guess the verb and
guess what the writer's thinking (why would I want to do that to the
lamp post?) aside, this was a thoroughly enjoyable game.
The Plague – Redux by Cannibal
This fared surprisingly
poorly in the IFComp (where I thought it would be the
highest placed ADRIFT entry), yet I still liked it. You can't go far wrong with
vicious man-eating zombies and a girl in a mini-skirt with a metal pole
knocking 'em for six.
The bulk of the game is
a kind of silly 'hunt for change for a vending machine 'cos
you need a bottle of water out of it', thus ignoring the fact that there are
shops all over the place which would have water in them… and further ignoring
the fact that the damsel in distress is being chased by the undead
so hunting around a subway station for loose change doesn't make a whole lot of
sense. But forget the gaping holes in the slot and just sit back and enjoy the
best ADRIFT game of 2005.
Provenance by
Corey Arnett
Well, I certainly never
thought I'd be including a game with no hints and a maze in my top ten
ADRIFT games of the year, but "Provenance" thankfully has a lot else
going for it.
It's a horror, creepily
written and with a great deal of background information on hand to flesh things
out. Making progress is fairly easy to begin with… probably just as well
considering as the writer hasn't bothered including any hints. And the maze?
Well, I solved it the hard way, with a pen and graph paper, even though my
initial reaction upon discovering that over a hundred of the game's locations
had been wasted on a maze was to quit.
The maze aside (I'm still
having nightmares about it), I liked the game.
Take One by
The idea behind
"Take One" was certainly an inspired one: you're a film director
moving Indianette Jones (nice name by the way) around a film set and steering
her past all the usual dangers that lurk there.
If anything, this was a
better idea than the one used in "Pathway To Destruction", but the
non-obvious puzzles really got me cursing at times. Then, too, it's a very,
very short game. Figure out what you need to do and you can be through the
entire thing in a few minutes… too short to really enjoy what's going on. An
expanded version (hint hint) might be an idea for the
future.
Veteran Knowledge by
An enlarged version of a
mini-game, this was a lot better than I expected it to be. I think I had the
idea that it would just be a case of adding a few extra locations, slapping
some more items in and leaving it at that. So I was pleasantly surprised to
find it was a lot more than that. Gone are the minimal set of locations from
the original game and in their place is a far larger game, complete with a
whole different direction and a wide variety of characters.
It isn't all good news
though: the dialogue of the NPCs is so bad in places it's almost funny.
But if you fancy taking
a walk on the wild side and playing a character who is a thoroughly unpleasant
SOB, this might be the game for you.
A Walk At Dusk
by Eric Mayer
"A Walk At
Dusk" is a different kind of game from the usual ones I play. There's no
quest for buried treasure, or rescuing a damsel in distress or even any world
saving going on. Just a guy out for a walk one evening…
If you don't think that
sounds like a particularly enthralling idea, you've just hit on the main flaw
in the game. It's nicely written, interesting enough to keep your attention for
as long as it takes to finish (which won't be long as there are no real
puzzles), but just not that remarkable.
The White Singularity
by Irene
I umm'ed
and ahh'ed quite a bit before including "The
White Singularity" in my list of favourite ADRIFT games of 2005. On one
hand, it does deserve including: it's well written and it's got an
interesting storyline. On the other hand, it doesn't deserve including:
it's bugged to high heaven.
The story is pure pulp
sci-fi: scientist embarks on a journey to the centre of the Earth in a vessel
and discovers strange things on the way. I've always had a soft spot for this
sort of thing and warmed to the game straight off.
But the bugs. Oh dear.
Most of them can be attributed to sheer newbieness,
but they're still a pain. With them all fixed, and some extra content added,
this could be an excellent game; as it is, it's still good but if you play it
be prepared for a lot of annoyances.
And in order of which
games I liked the best:
1.
The Plague – Redux
2.
Pathway To Destruction
3.
Take One
4.
Can It Be All So Simple?
5.
Crazy Old Bag Lady
6.
Provenance
7.
Veteran Knowledge
8.
The White Singularity
9.
A Walk At Dusk
10.
Frustrated Interviewee
By Christy Henshaw
When I sat down to see what my personal experiences
with ADRIFT have been over the past year, I was surprised to see that I hadn’t
even registered ADRIFT until February 2005. So why do I feel like it’s been so
much longer?
Over the past year, I feel I have come to know a bit
about other ADRIFT fans through the forum, and I seem to have found a place for
myself within the community. This is primarily through the efforts of the dozen
or so ‘regulars’ who keep conversations going, start new discussions, and
moderate the occasional personality clashes (one thing I’ve learned - people
stick with their individual personalities even in a format as anonymous as this
is). In my view 2005 has been full of lively discussion, with questions
answered on a wide variety of issues with game writing, Cast Adrift revived,
continual posting of beta-testing requests and game reviews, and general
feedback on all the IF and ADRIFT events throughout the year.
As far as game writing is concerned (and that is the
whole point of this, although it’s easy to lose sight of that what with all the
forum chit-chat), I have felt positive about the quality and quantity of
game-writing over the year, both in ADRIFT and IF comps, as well as for general
release games. My own personal contribution, as a newbie, hasn’t been exactly
earth-shattering, but the fact that I managed to release a couple of full
games, and participate in a couple of comps is a lot of activity for a first
year (which is why it feels like I’ve been involved twice as long as I actually
have).
All of the comps this year had a good turnout of ADRIFT:
after a slow start at the beginning of the year for specific ADRIFT comps, with
not much voting activity, people pulled up their bootstraps and mucked in with
all the rest of the events throughout the year. In the IF comp recently, ADRIFT
placed very well and ADRIFT games have, over the year, received some insightful
and often positive reviews on other review websites and forums. This bodes well
for ADRIFT as a platform, and is heartening for those writers, like me, who
don’t want to learn a programming language.
Looking into 2006, I wonder if I will be able to
maintain my interest in gaming, posting on the forum, and staying involved in
events – I can’t predict for myself what will happen, having such a short track
record. But as of this moment, I have a nearly finished game I’ve been meaning
to release for a couple months, a half-finished game I haven’t yet lost
interest in, and high hopes for one or two of the comps next spring and summer
(if, that is, there’s any room between all the increased gym-going,
healthy-eating, music-playing and Classics-reading I’ve also resolved to start
doing…).
I’m sure I’m not the only member asking myself these
questions as 2006 rolls in, but several recent developments are certainly promising
for the future. By the end of 2005 a few developments indicated that 2006 could
to be an even better year for ADRIFT: the establishment of a live chatroom, the presence of many new members, the release of
several debut games, and, of course, most of all, the announcement that a major
new version of ADRIFT is under construction. Will 2006 see the release of
ADRIFT v. 5? That is the big question for the next year, and the hinge on which
ADRIFT’s future success rests.
The
concept behind the Finish the Game Competition was that a few identical room
and inventory descriptions were provided to each author, and these had to be expanded
into a full game.
Voting
for the Finish the Game Competition in 2005 took place during October, with the
final positions and average scores being:
1)
Pathway to Destruction by Richard Otter -
7.3
2)
Take One
by
3)
The Demon Hunter by David Parish -
6.4
4)
The Hunter
by Red Assassin - 4.9
5)
Shadow of the Path by Catherine Post -
4.3
6)
Jack of Shadows by
Below
are reviews of all the entries to the competition.
AUTHOR: RICHARD OTTER
PLATFORM: ADRIFT 4.00
REVIEWER: DAVID WHYLD
Pathway To
Destruction:
winner of the Finish The Game Comp I organised, and my personal favourite out
of the comp entries.
What's it about?
You're a worker at the
I felt Pathway
To Destruction made very good use of the source material, although in a
completely different way than I envisioned when I wrote the source. I had had
in mind something along the lines of a medieval fantasy adventure with a swords
& sorcery element thrown into the mix, but Pathway To Destruction's sci-fi setting seems to fit in remarkably
well with the mini-game that was already written, and at no point did I feel
that it was out of place. Full marks for that.
A frequent failing of the author's games in the
past has been the shallow NPCs and their wildly implausible dialogue, something
that Pathway To Destruction is
mercifully free of. There aren't any NPCs here, just the main character, and
the game is much better for it. (Although saying that, there are bits when the
player, despite being alone, speaks out loud which are pretty implausible
themselves. Would he really tell himself what to do next after throwing a
certain item at another item?)
My only real complaint with the game was the
difficulty factor of some of the puzzles; or, if not difficulty factor, then
the fact that some of them are so unobvious that it's hard to imagine people
ever figuring them out without resorting to the hints. Why would I want to push
a lamp post over? Why would I throw a certain item at another item? Why would
putting one item on top of another make the second item work? (The second item,
incidentally, has a slot in the side which I spent a while trying to put the
first item into. It never occurred to me to try putting it on top.) Getting
inside the author's mind, or being psychic, is a good requirement for finishing
this game. It also didn't help that sometimes seemingly obvious solutions to
puzzles didn't work and there wasn't any real explanation for why. I needed to
use one item to get the jewel but another item I had, a bar, didn't work. Why?
But overall I thoroughly enjoyed Pathway To Destruction. It wasn't a
perfect game, and there were bits that could have done with improving upon, and
some of the puzzles could certainly have been better clued, but those issues
notwithstanding it was the best game in the comp and definitely the best game
the author has written to date.
7 out of 10
AUTHOR:
PLATFORM: ADRIFT 4.00
REVIEWER: DAVID WHYLD
This came second in the Finish The Game Comp,
beaten very narrowly by Pathway To
Destruction.
What's it about?
You're a director having to guide Indianette Jones
around the set of his latest film, freeing an orb from a crystal and dealing
with a demon in the process. Indianette needs telling what to do, you see,
because she's the typical generic bimbo without a thought in her own head (kind
of like a blonde version of Lara Croft).
I felt this was the best idea in the Comp, and it's
probably just sheer bad luck it didn't win. The only problems with it are that
it's too short – using only the locations already in the source game and adding
no others – and takes little more than five or ten minutes to reach its
conclusion. Of course, due to the difficulty factor of some of the puzzles
you'll most likely end up spending quite a bit longer than five or ten minutes
playing it. Some of the puzzles are nice and straightforward (like trapping the
demon and swinging on the beam) – not easy, but logical enough when you think
about them. Others – actually setting the trap for the demon – are the sort of
things I only figured out how to do by looking in the Generator.
A neat trick is that if the demon isn't stopped in
time and he kills Indianette, the game just resets itself. This is pretty much
the same as simply killing you off outright, but misses out the annoying built
in end game feature that plagues most ADRIFT games and is probably worth an
extra point in itself.
For the ten minutes or so that I played Take One, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But
I wish it had been a bit longer…
7 out of 10
AUTHOR: DAVID PARISH
PLATFORM: ADRIFT 4.00
REVIEWER:
The Demon
Hunter is
a good game, which is appropriately about a demon hunter. I felt that this game
was well-deserving of the third place it received in the Finish The Game
competition. The game provides atmosphere, and you do feel that there could be
danger at any time.
There is an interesting story in The Demon Hunter, with the game
focusing more on the story than most of the other competition entries. Creating
an interesting story is difficult when you already have an initial set of
locations, so the author has done well to include it. There is a very extensive
back story, with quite a few pages of text available by reading the journal.
This is a little concentrated, and ideally this story would be a bit more
spread out in the game to break it up, as it is slightly intimidating in size.
The game is not too long and the puzzles are mainly
reasonable. A few more synonyms around the puzzle with the pile of books might
have made it a little easier though. Overall this is a good short game that
successfully managed to build on the premise of the original locations.
SCORE - 6/10
AUTHOR: RED ASSASSIN
PLATFORM: ADRIFT 4.00
REVIEWER:
The Hunter is the second game in the
competition with the word 'hunter' in the title, but it is completely different
in style to The Demon Hunter. This
is a fairly traditional kind of fun puzzle-solving adventure.
Unlike the other entries, The Hunter did not really use the original locations. The players
only briefly pass through these locations on their way to the rest of the game,
which is a pity as one of the interests I had in the competition was to see
different people's ideas on how to create puzzles in the same locations.
However, the game makes up for this by having a large amount of other
locations. None of the other games come close to having as many additional
locations. Expanding the world was an interesting idea, but too many locations
were empty in this game. It possibly would have been better to cut down on the
number of locations and simplify the map.
Make sure to pick up the hidden manual near the
start to explain the magic system. This is the only useful object in the
initial locations of the game. The magic system is interesting, but it really
isn't that important after using it to solve the puzzles in the first couple of
locations. It is very difficult to fully integrate a magic system into a game
though.