Instant Death


6 Mar 95 00:18:06 GMT

Over the past few weeks I've downloaded three or four free or
shareware games from ftp.gmd.de. And have been very disappointed by
all of them. Why? Because all of them killed my character without any
real warning after a handful of turns.

Am I the only one old-fashioned enough to find this damned tiresome
and rather rude on the part of the author? I really wish that more
people would read Graham Nelson's excellent list of game suggestions
in his bill of rights... dropping dead of starvation after 2 minutes
or being frozen to death or mauled by a monster after stepping through
a doorway isn't my idea of fun.

The reason I've posted this to arts and not games is because I'm
interested in this from an author's perspective. I'm still plugging
away at my own opus in a rather desultory fashion, but one thing I've
been trying to avoid is the Instant Death Syndrome. You can die in my
game if you leap off cliffs or kick electrified rail lines, but you
don't die just by typing "e" one too many times. But given all these
other games with IDS I'm wondering if it's a problem. Do people care?

I know I type "quit" when I'm randomly killed for no reason, but
perhaps I lack the true stamina to be a diehard adventurer. Or does
everyone else just roll their eyes and type "undo"?

Puzzled,

- Neil K.

-- 
  49N 16' 123W 7'  /  Vancouver, BC, Canada  /  n_k_guy@sfu.ca