Re: "Serious" IF (was Re: Gareth's competition comments)


16 Oct 1995 13:27:49 GMT

Neil Demause <neild@echonyc.com> wrote:
> For some reason, this competition has loosed a lot of tongues in this
> newsgroup. Used to be, everyone bent over backwards to praise authors
> just for having produced a game. Lately, though, there's been a lot
> more sniping at games and less constructive criticism, and this latest
> trend of arguing over what constitutes "real" i-f similarly seems more
> likely to scare people off from writing games than to encourage them
> to do so.

I seem to have upset a few people with my comments. I apologise to
anyone whom I have offended. I think it's extremely impressive for
anyone to master the intricacies of complicated and idiosyncratic
programming languages like TADS and Inform and produce a game with
coherent plot, writing and puzzles.

But I also think that the best compliment that can be paid to a game is
to treat it as though it were a serious piece of work rather than a few
minutes diversion of roughly comparable value to Space Invaders. If
anyone praised my work just because they wanted to make me happy I would
feel patronised. I'd much prefer something along these lines:

"Christminster": a review
-------------------------

This game is clearly a first attempt. The author clearly has some
understanding of what makes a game interesting and playable, but doesn't
have the skill to put these ideas into practice.

Take the characters, for example. Edward, supposedly the major
character in the game, is a wimp with no intelligence, barely more
sophisticated than the turtle in "Enchanter". Unless ordered about the
game like a mannequin, he wanders randomly and has no initiative at all.
He shows no evidence of any feelings or moods; his behaviour does not
change one whit if the player is kind to him or cruel. He does not get
bored or agitated when the player spends hundreds of turns playing with
the wires; he does not, in fact, make a single comment or suggestion.

The other characters are no better. Jarboe and Bungay are just
stereotyped villains with no personality. What motivation can they
possibly have for the ridiculous actions they undertake in the course of
the game?

The plot is extremely weak. No motivation is supplied for the actions
of Jarboe and Bungay, except for an exceedingly cryptic reference to
Templars in the last scene. None of the important questions are
answered, such as how Jarboe and Bungay found out about Malcolm's
researches, or how they knew about the secret passage when no-one else
in the college seemed to. Other aspects are poor: the opening sequence
has no connection at all to the rest of the game, and could have been
omitted without affecting the (admittedly low) quality of the work.

The author was clearly unable to think up any interesting puzzles,
because "Christminster" has no fewer than sixteen (count them, sixteen!)
locked door puzzles. The other puzzles are little better, varying too
much in difficulty from the opening sequence (which is too hard for many
players, preventing them from even starting the rest of the game) and
the wires (everyone knows that telephone lines are a single cable, with
the circuit completed through earth, not the paired cables that the
author has somehow decided to use) to the boring and much overused
puzzle of hiding an object under a table.

The writing is extremely perfunctory; for example, some effort is made
to change the descriptions of the outdoor locations at night, but this
boils down to replacing "sun" by "moon" and "day" by "night". A writer
with more flair would have conveyed the different atmosphere of night
vividly. There's also an enormous amount of repetition, especially of
dull tag lines like "Wilderspin says".

Despite the game being up to Release 2, there are still lots of bugs:
for example, order Edward to the West Bank before he's seen the parrot.
You will get the message "** Error: Edward in location where he can't
move **". Try turning off the light when the cook is in the cellar.
Does he notice? Of course he doesn't. And try following Jarboe down
the stairs in the endgame...

In conclusion, the author is to be commended on having had the endurance
to write something as long as "Christminster", but this reviewer
suggests he stick to flower-arranging in future.

--
Gareth Rees