#if comp

(Continued from Part 4, my micro-reviews of games I’ve played in IF Comp 2022.)

With voting now closed, I did want to quickly give shouts to two games which I did not feel comfortable critiquing in full (because I like the creators and am bad at that kind of thing) but did want to highlight because I very much liked the games and want people to play them.

The Archivist and the Revolution by Autumn Chen

I just sort of unabashedly love Autumn's (@cyberpunklesbian and @twinegardening) stuff. A Paradox Between Worlds was one of the first choice-based games I ever played, and it made such an impact on how I think about interactive fiction.

Specifically, I love that there's always weight and realism to Autumn's games that I find few other people are able to capture with such vividness.

In this game, you play as a woman in the future making money and battling medical-grade fatigue. There are points where it may not feel fun to play, exactly (and I don't know if it's a fair comparison here but I thought of my experience playing Citizen Sleeper), but it feels important to keep playing. And when I push through that difficult emotion, I always find Autumn's games worth it. And while I haven't gotten the chance to finish it yet, I know that I will.

Please go play it, and give Autumn a follow.

The Thick Table Tavern by Manonamora

To begin: @manonamora-if does so much for the IF community, and deserves just all the praise - especially for her work with Interact-IF which was my entry point into making IF games.

I think one of my favorite things about Manon's games - and I've played and beta'd many - is that I never fully know what to expect, I just know I'm going to get a full-hearted and ambitious attempt at whatever is in front of me.

The Thick Table Tavern is just a beast of a game, with so much to chew on. At its core it's a bartender sim, and the mere fact that there are separate story and arcade modes blows my mind. There's so much work and love put into this game, and if you enjoyed things like VA-11 Hall-A or Coffee Talk you'll be right at home here as well.

The characters are a lot of fun, the bartending mechanic is super neat, and you can play this game forever if you want to. As such, I have also not finished this game in full. But I've enjoyed my time with it immensely. It is absolutely one of the most ambitious, eye-popping games I played in IF Comp this year.

Current Progress: - English final word count: 31.115 (story) 1.055 (codex/intro) - French: 7186 - Recode: 20%?

Translation is going, a bit slower than I wished it to be but better something than nothing :P I brushed a bit on it in this ask how complex it can be to translate something and keep the original tone/meaning of the story. There have already been quite a few moments when it is not possible to translate word for word, and those have been frustrating...

Still it's not stopping me. I have to finish it. And NaNoWriMo is helping me chip away that bulk left one day at a time.

Also the English word count is wrong now (by just a bit), since I changed some words to fit everything better.

And I've been coding as I go through the translation. To take a bit of a break between each passage.

I've also spent a whole afternoon trying to make a fake phone for the message part. Here's a lil preview:

It's not the final version since the colours are super wrong (or even the current version, cause I added some stuff), but you get the idea.

There's not much else to talk about otherwise... La Petite Mort was streamed this week by the French IF community (so cool!), I received some nice reviews for both LPM and TTATEH on the Forum/IFDB (and in my indox <3). I fixed some lil bugs here and there too (thank you for letting me know!).

The next chapter of TTAEH has been going on well so far. MelS will have some busy weeks coming so progress will come and go. Chapter 3 will span your walk back to the manor and share what you found with Edward (and maybe some more ~spooky things~).

Finally, just a little reminder to vote in the current jams/competitions (and play some lovely games!):

The IF Comp deadline to cast your votes is 15th of November, and you need to cast at least 5 votes.

The EctoComp is the 12th of November for the French and the Spanish versions, 20th of November for the English one.

Every year, The Interactive Fiction Competition showcases new text-driven stories and games. It's an amazing online event that lasts from October 1st to November 15th.

If you have any interest in interactive fiction, choose-your-own-adventure books, or text games (like Zork!), then definitely check out this year's entries, including one from me!!! :DDD

NIGHT GUARD / MORNING STAR

Circus Reviews - Salt

Hi all! I'm going to take some time over the coming months to review IF Comp games in (mostly) micro sized format. I'm mostly going to be sticking with games that are an hour or less.

Esther's by Brad and Alleson Buchanan

I think IF Comp - worthily - takes itself quite seriously. And so I'm pleased that one of the first games I actually played through for the competition was a very sweet little micro-game made in Twine that doesn't.

This children's book-style choice game has some beautiful illustrations and is very silly. Is it going to win many awards? Probably not. But I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's very charming.

The Hidden King's Tomb by Joshua Fratis

The Hidden King's Tomb is a serviceable, short parser game. The puzzles make intuitive sense and at no point did I feel stuck - although that's not to say I felt like it was explicitly handed to me, either.

However, I think this game falls short in a couple of specific areas. First, I have a pet peeve for when an object or thing is described but I can't examine it. See:

Further, I gathered quite a few things along the way in this game, and none of them felt consequential in anyway. Distractions. If they lead to a secret, I'd love a bit more of a hint about what to do with them. If not, I'd love to see something added into justify their presence - maybe environmental storytelling, or a secret puzzle.

But the game works as intended and makes complete sense, and that's a fantastic start!

Under the Bridge by Samantha Khan

Title cards are an underrated thing. And before I say anything else, I have to say that I was absolutely drawn in by this really beautifully animated title card. Well done.

The illustrations really were the highlight of this piece for me. A clear aesthetic that served to build the creepy, morose atmosphere. However, I feel like they were let down a bit by the UI. Seeing the big sidebar there (would much rather have it gone permanently) and the constant reminder of Resume/Pause Audio took away from that same atmosphere. It's nitpicky, but I always pay a lot of attention to things like that.

Similarly, the text effects alternated between effective and kind of silly. I'd like to have seen them used more sparingly. I wish the audio was more of a consistent track, or that it faded in and out - the jarring cuts distracted me from the text.