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kjorteoIFComp 2021 continues. We're officially doing extra credit games now, as this is our sixth completion out of the five minimum IFComp requires of its judges.
And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is... actually, okay, let's back up a bit.
Infinite Adventure by A. Scotts is an authentically old-timey text parser adventure. So authentically old-timey, in fact, that there's no online version and this link takes you directly to the download, which contains a file that needs to be fed into DOSBox (or whatever DOS emulator you prefer) to work. This is an actual DOS game. It's what appears to be a procedurally generated parser adventure. The player starts in a random-looking map, every room has a one or two sentence description, some also have "There is a (collectible item) on the floor" at the end, one room in particular has a gatekeeper that very blatantly and directly requests a certain item (an NPC who's hungry for food item or greedy for a treasure item, an idol that wants some kind of offering, etc.) Feed them the correct item and *** YOU WIN! *** "And then you come to a house not unlike the previous one," at which point it repeats with a newly generated level.
It's... pretty bad, actually. The rooms aren't interactive in any way except for the ones that happen to have items in them. The item collector at the end of each level blatantly tells you what it's looking for before you even have a chance to guess. Every level is a simple matter of walking around until you find the correct item and the thing that's asking for it, and it takes about two iterations of this to become mindless and repetitive.
Infinite Adventure is actually a defictionalized companion game, it turns out, and all of this is by design.
The best way to describe And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is "What if The Neverending Story were Infinite Adventure instead of some book?" You are a kid, you are visiting your friend's house, and you are playing Infinite Adventure (along with several other games she owns) on her computer. You and your friend get bored with Infinite Adventure in universe about as quickly as we did playing the standalone file, but then things get... meta. Game characters start to show glimpses of intelligence behind the basic roles they were written. The inventory carries over between all the different games and even real life, and items from one game may be just what you need to get past a puzzle in another. Everyone seems to know more about you and your friend than random characters in computer games should.
While Infinite Adventure is intentionally bland, And Then You Come... is incredibly clever. Any story about "and then things in the computer got weird" instantly has my interest. Learning more about the relationship between you and your friend is somehow as captivating as the transdimensional weirdness, and the pacing as far as how both threads unfold while going back and forth between her game library is perfect. The challenge level was nice, as well; I briefly became stuck at one or two points, but never severely enough to need the walkthrough. (If you do need the walkthrough, though, there is one.)
Excellently presented and executed, all around. Fun to play with brilliant and intriguing framework, this (with apologies to the other parser game we reviewed this year) is how one takes the standard "go back and forth between locations, using/giving inventory items to trade for other inventory items" IF game formula and presents it as and makes it feel like something fresh and creative.
And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is... actually, okay, let's back up a bit.
Infinite Adventure by A. Scotts is an authentically old-timey text parser adventure. So authentically old-timey, in fact, that there's no online version and this link takes you directly to the download, which contains a file that needs to be fed into DOSBox (or whatever DOS emulator you prefer) to work. This is an actual DOS game. It's what appears to be a procedurally generated parser adventure. The player starts in a random-looking map, every room has a one or two sentence description, some also have "There is a (collectible item) on the floor" at the end, one room in particular has a gatekeeper that very blatantly and directly requests a certain item (an NPC who's hungry for food item or greedy for a treasure item, an idol that wants some kind of offering, etc.) Feed them the correct item and *** YOU WIN! *** "And then you come to a house not unlike the previous one," at which point it repeats with a newly generated level.
It's... pretty bad, actually. The rooms aren't interactive in any way except for the ones that happen to have items in them. The item collector at the end of each level blatantly tells you what it's looking for before you even have a chance to guess. Every level is a simple matter of walking around until you find the correct item and the thing that's asking for it, and it takes about two iterations of this to become mindless and repetitive.
Infinite Adventure is actually a defictionalized companion game, it turns out, and all of this is by design.
The best way to describe And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is "What if The Neverending Story were Infinite Adventure instead of some book?" You are a kid, you are visiting your friend's house, and you are playing Infinite Adventure (along with several other games she owns) on her computer. You and your friend get bored with Infinite Adventure in universe about as quickly as we did playing the standalone file, but then things get... meta. Game characters start to show glimpses of intelligence behind the basic roles they were written. The inventory carries over between all the different games and even real life, and items from one game may be just what you need to get past a puzzle in another. Everyone seems to know more about you and your friend than random characters in computer games should.
While Infinite Adventure is intentionally bland, And Then You Come... is incredibly clever. Any story about "and then things in the computer got weird" instantly has my interest. Learning more about the relationship between you and your friend is somehow as captivating as the transdimensional weirdness, and the pacing as far as how both threads unfold while going back and forth between her game library is perfect. The challenge level was nice, as well; I briefly became stuck at one or two points, but never severely enough to need the walkthrough. (If you do need the walkthrough, though, there is one.)
Excellently presented and executed, all around. Fun to play with brilliant and intriguing framework, this (with apologies to the other parser game we reviewed this year) is how one takes the standard "go back and forth between locations, using/giving inventory items to trade for other inventory items" IF game formula and presents it as and makes it feel like something fresh and creative.