COMPLETE: Finding Light
Oct. 16th, 2021 03:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoOH HECK IT'S OCTOBER, and you know what that means: spooky season IFComp is once again upon us. I always somehow forget until it's here and then respond with a last minute scramble, but hey! At least we're doing them this year.
So, it's been a while because we skipped 2020 because 2020 was a little too... 2020. If you forgot (or are new to our Dreamwidth since 2019), IFComp is an annual interactive fiction contest (you know--Infocom-like text parser adventures, multiple choice Twine games, etc.) where all of this year's entries are made available to the general public around October and early November, and anyone who's interested is invited to play them and submit scores on a 1-10 scale based on their scoring guidelines. The general rule is that if one is playing and judging games then they should do at least five, though it can be any number one wishes so long as it's at least five or above. Again, we didn't participate in 2020 because mluh, but you can see our 2018 scores here and our 2019 scores here.
All that said, we begin 2021's IFComp reviews with Finding Light by Abigail Jazwiec.
You are a human's assigned guardian familiar, but you and your human have been separated after some evil raiders attacked the two of you and made off with your human. It is now up to you to find and rescue him. This is a fairly standard text parser text adventure game, structurally. You look at your surroundings, take everything the game allows you to, use items to solve puzzles, etc. It is possible to die, but not possible to softlock the game (to our knowledge.) With the medieval fantasy setting, this feels something like "what if one of the earlier and shorter King's Quest games were IntFic (but without the Sierra-ing.)"
The gimmick this game has that makes it clever is that you can shift at will between human and fox forms, each of whom have certain things they can and cannot do. You'll need to be a fox to spot scent trails, but you'll need to be a human to open anything that requires opposable thumbs, and so on. The puzzles are mostly fine. The way certain characters express their problems in the form of "Oh, if only I had SPECIFIC ITEM, then I surely would be able to part with my OTHER ITEM YOU PROBABLY NEED LATER" can be somewhat blatant and gratuitous, but... let's face it; this is IntFic. If that were a problem, then we would be in the wrong genre, given how universal that approach is.
Still, I guess that leads us to our main thesis, here, which is that this game doesn't do much to stand out. It's good. It's very good, in fact! If you're here to romp around a text parser adventure for a while, this is capable, well-made, well-written, well-designed, and absolutely will scratch that itch. It just... you know. The IFComp guidelines reserve the higher scores (especially 10) for games that are groundbreaking, which this absolutely is not. In fact, I would even go as far as to call this game standard in its execution; the closest thing it has to a unique stand-out gimmick is the human/fox shapeshifting, and even that feels in execution like the equivalent of a "wear the spare uniform to be able to talk to the guards" puzzle with some extra flavor text. (Oh, there's a "wear the spare uniform to be able to talk to the guards" puzzle, too, by the way.)
Which, again, none of this is a knock! It knows exactly the kind of game it is and it delivers a satisfactory IF experience. It's. You know. It's fine. It's an IF game. It's a good IF game.
So, it's been a while because we skipped 2020 because 2020 was a little too... 2020. If you forgot (or are new to our Dreamwidth since 2019), IFComp is an annual interactive fiction contest (you know--Infocom-like text parser adventures, multiple choice Twine games, etc.) where all of this year's entries are made available to the general public around October and early November, and anyone who's interested is invited to play them and submit scores on a 1-10 scale based on their scoring guidelines. The general rule is that if one is playing and judging games then they should do at least five, though it can be any number one wishes so long as it's at least five or above. Again, we didn't participate in 2020 because mluh, but you can see our 2018 scores here and our 2019 scores here.
All that said, we begin 2021's IFComp reviews with Finding Light by Abigail Jazwiec.
You are a human's assigned guardian familiar, but you and your human have been separated after some evil raiders attacked the two of you and made off with your human. It is now up to you to find and rescue him. This is a fairly standard text parser text adventure game, structurally. You look at your surroundings, take everything the game allows you to, use items to solve puzzles, etc. It is possible to die, but not possible to softlock the game (to our knowledge.) With the medieval fantasy setting, this feels something like "what if one of the earlier and shorter King's Quest games were IntFic (but without the Sierra-ing.)"
The gimmick this game has that makes it clever is that you can shift at will between human and fox forms, each of whom have certain things they can and cannot do. You'll need to be a fox to spot scent trails, but you'll need to be a human to open anything that requires opposable thumbs, and so on. The puzzles are mostly fine. The way certain characters express their problems in the form of "Oh, if only I had SPECIFIC ITEM, then I surely would be able to part with my OTHER ITEM YOU PROBABLY NEED LATER" can be somewhat blatant and gratuitous, but... let's face it; this is IntFic. If that were a problem, then we would be in the wrong genre, given how universal that approach is.
Still, I guess that leads us to our main thesis, here, which is that this game doesn't do much to stand out. It's good. It's very good, in fact! If you're here to romp around a text parser adventure for a while, this is capable, well-made, well-written, well-designed, and absolutely will scratch that itch. It just... you know. The IFComp guidelines reserve the higher scores (especially 10) for games that are groundbreaking, which this absolutely is not. In fact, I would even go as far as to call this game standard in its execution; the closest thing it has to a unique stand-out gimmick is the human/fox shapeshifting, and even that feels in execution like the equivalent of a "wear the spare uniform to be able to talk to the guards" puzzle with some extra flavor text. (Oh, there's a "wear the spare uniform to be able to talk to the guards" puzzle, too, by the way.)
Which, again, none of this is a knock! It knows exactly the kind of game it is and it delivers a satisfactory IF experience. It's. You know. It's fine. It's an IF game. It's a good IF game.