4/18/2023 0 Comments Hexteria soluBut Buster Hudson has a good track-record, and one that fits well with this theme. The Wizard Sniffer: Normally if a game pitched ‘goofy heroic-fantasy comedy!’ my heart would sink into my boots. The Traveller: The title and cover art are boring as hell, but the blurb gives me a lot to go on – in fact, it promises so much that I have suspicions that it may fall victim to overambition, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. Nice moody cover, blurb sets up character and setting and Narrative Problem well. Tuuli: Witches and Finnish pagan neofolk is an automatic Category A, honestly. This gets in mostly because ‘IF game that tries to adapt a mechanical genre from other games’ is review bait. TextCraft: Alpha Island: OK, so I don’t know that I expect this to be good, but I’m really curious about its approach. There’s some awkwardness in the blurb’s only other line – what on earth does ‘long, but quickly finished’ mean? Swigian: A title in Old English and mention of mead-halls is an automatic promotion, honestly. None of it is pyrotechnic, but there’s a lot of evidence here of competence and good design decisions. Salt: This is strongly-presented simple effective cover, evocative title, a concise blurb that gives you plenty of information. Art style suggests someone who doesn’t have amazing art skills but does have a sense of the importance of good aesthetics, which is always heartening. Hexteria Skaxis Qiameth: Games about books: good. Blurb that tersely establishes a thing you’re investigating, which also seems cool and unusual. May veer too much towards Wacky we’ll see. Hesper’s Asylum for the Criminally Mischievous. Mischief is a good mode of player action, and I have an established bias for the subject-matter. (Could end up being a Growbotics.) The cover would be a lot better if not for its text.Įat Me: Chandler Groover is very good at cover art and at grabby hooks. My main concern: the last Victor Ojuel game I played ( Onna Kabuki) concerned a lot of social-manipulation stuff but ended up leaning too hard on medium-size dry goods.ĭomestic Elementalism: Research witch? Domestic elementalism? This has potential object-transformation mechanics can be a lot of fun, although it’s also the kind of ambitious premise that generally takes a lot of work to make playable. (That is not a great title, though.) I am in favour of games with strongly-characterised protagonists, and games about intrigue at parties. Category A: High Hopesġ958: Dancing With Fear: Blurb and cover clearly articulate the setting and themes of the piece, although it could be punchier. (For that, here’s my schema.) Full disclosure: I’m on the Comp advisory committee, and my partner Jacqueline Ashwell is this year’s Comp vice-organiser. This should be obvious, but to be clear: this initial triage isn’t going to determine the actual scores I give games. Reviews will not necessarily follow this pattern they get done when they get done.) I’ll probably shuffle the lists about a bit as the acidulous smog of comp buzz slowly corrodes my pure, flawless objectivity. Once the Excited pile runs out, I’ll reassess. I shuffled a bunch of games from B into C, so that the distribution’s more like a pyramid. (A normal inner-quartile / outer-quartile spread.) Hmm. Having actually done the sorting, it turned out that Category B had about twice as many titles as Category C, which meant that looking worse would make you twice as likely to get played. So here’s the approach: in each cycle I’ll play two games from the A list and one each from B and C. And, of course, my effort to judge books by their covers will have pretty hazy accuracy. I feel like there’s plenty to learn from bad games. I’d rather front-load the most promising ones somewhat, but only somewhat: a lot of the fun of the comp consists of surprises and interestingly-bad games and good-ass kusoge. This time, though, I’m going to put a little less emphasis on ‘this is a technically strong presentation’ and a little more on ‘based on what I see here, I am excited or curious to play this.’ It’s going to be a quick and sloppy and probably unfair process. Naturally, I have an overcomplicated, procedure-based solution.Īs I’ve done in past years, I’m going split the games I can vote on into three categories, good to bad, based on my first impressions of blurbs / titles / cover art. Historically, anything over 50 is a big turnout. There’s no way I’ll be able to adequately play every game, let alone review them. There are 80 79 entries this year, setting a record for the second year running. It’s October, which means it’s time for the Interactive Fiction Competition, IF Comp.
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