#parser game

We made another game! Free to play, parser, text-only, so. Y'know. Not everyone's thing...

I'm officially seeking beta testers for my Spring Thing 2023 entry, 'The Familiar' - the making of which I've highlighted a bit on this Tumblr.

ABOUT

You are a witch's crow familiar, headstrong as anything but still young and untested.

What starts as a normal day soon takes a harrowing turn when your pacific caretaker, Valmai, is struck down by a terrible hex of mysterious origin. Now it's up to you, little bird, to cure your caretaker and discover the hex's source.

Are you up for the task?

FEATURES

Beginner-friendly parser commands peppered with choice-based elements

Free to play; formatted for browser, tablet, and mobile

Optional tutorial and in-game task list to keep track of events and goals

More than 30 unique, hand-crafted pixel art scenes

Roughly 1 hour of play time

Cute woodland animals

If you're interested, you can find info below on the IntFiction forums!

Hello all!

Here’s something to fill the screaming void of Tumblr content on this blog of late.

Many, many years ago I tried to write parser games with Inform. I never got as far as publishing any, but I did get as far as finishing one! I’ve been going through old files today, and I decided that I’d make it available (for free) for people who might be interested.

It’s a parser game, which means that it’s different from the Choicescript stuff I do nowadays. You have to type in what you want to do. Some people find parser games frustrating, but this one shouldn’t be too bad because it includes instructions on how to play and an adaptive hint system, so hopefully nobody should get too stuck! If you haven’t played parser games before, you should expect something quite different from choice-based IF - there’s no character customization, no ROs, and it’s less about making choices than (in this case) solving clues, unraveling mysteries and progressing the story. 

The game itself is called Dweller in Darkness. It’s a novel-length Lovecraftian horror-mystery set (mostly) in Victorian London, so expect a growing sense of dread, madness and horror, Sherlock Holmes-style shenanigans and dark secrets at every turn! There’s an archaeology element (there always is with me, it seems!), but it’s closer to Lovecraft than Indiana Jones this time! A couple of parts are lightly broken, but it’s definitely completable (I know, because I just completed it!) and I think it’s pretty fun (if dark), with lots of cool optional secrets to uncover as you go. Enjoy!

Link to the install file:

I just want to thank you all so much for the love and support that The Familiar has received over the last couple of weeks. It means the world to me (and to Fran, too, of course).

We have already passed the browser plays of my entry from last year, SMTA! - which is quite exciting to see.

If you're interested, now is a great time to play The Familiar for free in your browser!

And don't forget that Spring Thing 2023 Ribbon Nominations are already open. I would be honored to receive any little nuggets of praise.

(Continued from Part 3, my micro-reviews of games I've played in IF Comp 2022. This one, I suppose, will not be so micro.)

According to Cain by Jim Nelson

Wow! What a game. This is by far the longest game I've reviewed so far, but I was more than happy to give it the time it deserved.

According to Cain opens as a researcher (Indigator) is sent back in time to discover the nature of the Mark of Cain.

Room descriptions are spare, and the aesthetic is minimal. Neither of these is necessarily a bad thing, as long as the descriptions themselves paint the necessary picture. In that, I think the game is perfectly adequate. I like a bit more flash and pizzazz in my games, but that's not for everyone!

Now, the writing. Writing intelligently can be a difficult thing to do, especially when you're making fundamental allusions like this game does. Nominally, most people should know the basic story of Adam and Even, and presumably Cain and Abel as well. So when the Provost, at the beginning of the game, is describing it to the MC, the writing feels a bit childish and unnecessary. It's trying too hard to sound smart. It's tough, too, because that was immediately preceded by a correct usage of the word "pulverulent" which I had never heard before, and immediately followed by the use of the Latin-based "Indigator" to describe the MC's role. Similarly, when looking up Adam, Even and the Humours, I wish the author had presented this as, perhaps, a missing page - I don't believe that in this universe any scholar worth their weight would be "uncertain" as to which Humour represented Eve (or, even, outright wrong). Overall there's a lot of intelligence written into the game, and so the parts where it whiffs a bit stand out - even if they are relatively few and far between. Does it make the game bad? Of course not. But when a game reaches this high, the small things matter to me.

Mechanically speaking, the game worked very well. You can look at the things you're supposed to look at, and they're described in enough detail to be useful but not overly florid. Not just that, but the author took the time to include "answers" to off-beat things I might decide to type in. The first one that tickled me was, after receiving the Pharmakon, typing "look up hester" and being met with a poetic response about the tome's author. It was a great touch, and immediately makes me more sympathetic to the game as a whole. A bit later, I tried "take crow" and was given an equally appropriate response. I quite enjoyed the thoroughness of it.

I also appreciated the complexity of the parser. I'm quite used to the fairly simple nature of Adventuron, so being able to type an eight- or nine-word compound phrase and it have it be understood was certainly nice.

In terms of difficulty, this is definitely a brain-tickler of a game - but it's never unfair or unnecessarily difficult. There were a handful of clues that I found unwieldy (look under basket in the Hovel was one; I always dislike clues that make you look under/over/in instead of just "look" at) but for the most part there was an obvious enough flow to the game's structure that it was not hard to figure out where to go and what to do. And, of course, if you do get stuck you have a walkthrough (which I'll return to momentarily).

At the end of the day, though, I think it's that care that you feel in the bones of this game that makes it really great. Hell, it's even apparent in how well-written and well-formatted the walkthrough is. Look at it! For instance, in II. Fragile Earth, as you investigate the ingredients you need for an ostendo, you're given an environmental clue on where to find them: "The breeze carries up from the chasm below the stench of rotten eggs." The hints are wonderfully calibrated to hit you in the right spot, if a bit obvious. This game was made with care and it is so obvious and appreciated. It is careful without being juvenile in its complexity.

'Text Adventure Literacy Jam - 2022' is All About Parser-based Games for Beginners

Creating a text adventure or a piece of interactive fiction might seem like an easy task. On paper, it certainly is, and I'm sure for some, also in practice. But how about making one "suitable for players with no prior experience"? Such is the challenge for participants of Text Adventure Literacy Jam - 2022, and something tells me this second iteration of the game jam will bring about plenty of goodness.