Monday, 4 July 2011

IntroComp 2011: Seasons

This is a review for an entry in the Interactive Fiction IntroComp 2011.

SEASONS is the exact opposite of PARTHENON: where the previous game showed a shaky grasp of English, SEASONS has a nice, confident writing style with well-measured sentences. It's easy to read, flows nicely and has a pleasingly poetic touch. Unfortunately, PARTHENON showed some basic technical competence and again, SEASONS is the mirror-opposite: its a mass of "Programming Error"s showing everywhere: even changing locations with a basic compass direction can lead to a series of six "Programming Error"s.

This is something I could fight through, if there was any reason for me to do so:why am I wandering around an overly-dense countryside map, experiencing random nightmares/visions/hallucinations? Why should I pick up these random objects? What does the game want me to do? I did eventually stumble through seemingly a hundred locations onto an NPC that could actually talk. She sent me on a fetch-quest to retrieve her hair-brace. What clues did she give me about which of the hundred locations I needed to revisit to find this needle-in-a-haystack? None at all. Try to talk to her again: "Programming Error". And again. And again. Author: even intros need playtesting before release.

No comments:

Post a Comment