tommakesgames 2013-12-16 00:02
Inklewriter?
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD28 → The Day the Laughter Stopped
By crabman
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mood | 8 | 4.20 | ||
| Coolness | 1 | 100 | ||
| Overall | 68 | 3.75 | ||
| Audio | 108 | 3.39 | ||
| Theme | 110 | 3.64 | ||
| Innovation | 299 | 3.21 | ||
| Humor | 725 | 1.72 | ||
| Graphics | 789 | 2.30 | ||
| Fun | 845 | 2.32 |
Inklewriter?
Nah, it's all written from scratch. Can't deny being inspired by it though. ;)
The engine is really nice! I'm also incredibly impressed with how much text you cooked up in such a short period.
Thumbs up for interactive fiction (I've always wanted to make some IF entry, but never got to it).
BTW is there a way to restart the story?
Woah that was dark...
Nice to see people doing good text adventures, keep it up!
Loved the false mechanic at the ending. When I tried to visit the page again, I got another surprise as it silently saved my "progress". Great game.
@Shigor: No, you only get to play once. Unless you figure out how it saves and how to delete it at least. :) But it's part of the point that you don't get another chance. It happened and now you gotta live with it, so to say.
Pretty cool :)
This is a really nice story.
Horrifyingly well-told story. I love how you subvert the interactive fiction elements toward the end.
Excellent entry. Good writing and good handling of a nasty topic. Good twist near the end.
Really dark, but really good.
Well written, and pretty depressing, good job!
I don't know what to say. Not really a fan of IF, but this might have changed me. Very well done.
Powerful use of the interactive fiction medium. Excellent. I think this is a great way to talk about a subject like this.
What an amazing talent you have. Thank you for the game.
Extremely well executed, and I like the subversion of the "choice" mechanic. The flip side of that is that it lacks the hallmark of my favorite works of IF, which is the feeling that you're in control of the narrative. Still, a powerful work and awesome to see a more experimental work succeed in LD.
This was really dark but very well written.
Very well done, you really hit home the loss of control someone would feel. The "no choice" mechanic at the end really worked well, as did the subtle audio. This might also work well as a visual novel, and uploaded to a portal like Kongregate where is may get some attention and spark a conversation. I'd be willing to help even!
I love text adventures, when i try to choose a "safe" path, and nothing happened i was a little concerned thinking that the game maybe wasn't completed or something, but when i realized that i didn't have that choice, i was really tense! Love the way you lead the story even if it was "dark" as it was!
Very powerful, not expecting something that dark for a 48 hour contest. Trying not give away any spoilers here so if its cryptic, sorry: The way you gave the users options was very powerful. Probably one of the most powerful depictions I have seen.
Good job.
http://www.reddit.com/r/GirlGamers/comments/1t26z7/trigger_warning_sexual_assault_the_day_the/
This was a hard read, but good. I enjoyed the subtle use of music.
I appreciate the way that mechanically choice seems to be taken from the player. Very well done piece of IF.
Lessons of empathy through a game, very effective. great job
Wow. Very nicely done and very moving.
Oof, that was tough to play, and I mean that in a good way (if that makes any sense). The part where the choices stop working was simple, but it definitely puts you in the shoes of the person, and was really powerful. Gameplay and story working together perfectly.
Very descriptive, detailed and well done. You really made me feel like I was there. Although I cannot imagine the exact feeling of that it was somehow uncomfortable and wanted to punch that guy in the face or something xD.
Well told story. I like that you didn't over dramatized it, that you stayed subtle. I often find interactive fiction boring or anectodal. For once the "gameplay" is coherent with the plot and the writing.
Best game I've played so far.
I don't like the story. I never had a choice. I knew where this would end from the first block. Why give us a fake choice if you gonna tell us the same story anyways?
@Kayelgee: The point of that is that you have no control over a situation like this. You don't end up there because of what you did, it happens because you have been targeted by a predator and he makes it happen, no matter what. There are no right choices and no wrong choices, because it's not your fault. That's the point, it's not your fault.
The later choices that literally don't work are about wanting to do something and not being able to. If you want to know more about why I did this and why I chose to present it this way, you can read about it here:
http://hypnoticowl.com/the-day-the-laughter-stopped/
@Rest of y'all: Thank you so much. I can't put into words how much your feedback means to me. It's been a very weird, overwhelming coupla days, so yeah, "thanks" is all the eloquence I can muster. :D
not normally my type of game as lots of words usually make me instantly tired hah.. i persisted and enjoyed it tho.. good job :)
Nice writing. I enjoyed it.
The link to the theme completely hit me out of the blue. It made for very uncomfortable reading (in a good way) and it's great to see people doing this kind of thing. Very well written. Good job!
The twist at the end. :) Nice use of theme.
Saw it coming but couldn't prevent it :(. Thanks for making this.
Nicely done. Good approach on a serious topic. I've often thought of taking on serious topics before but haven't had the courage!
Not exactly my kind of game, but it opens up discussion so that's a good thing.
Altering expected use of the buttons gives this greater impact. Well done.
This game is so sad and disturbing... I'm speechless...
5/5
Glad to see the subject on the table.
And with such a nice way to do it. Merci !
Jesus. That was really well written, and perfectly implemented.
Great mood setting with the music too.
5/5 in overall, theme and mood. Blech
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***SPOILER ALERT***
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Well, a mild spoiler at least. I thought something was wrong at the final choice, but after finishing, I guess it was designed that way. I think.
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***SPOILER ALERT***
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Whoa. This was such a powerful experience.
the most important game i've played this ludum dare, and thanks for that well written post-mortem.
don't really know what else to say.
Thank you not only for making this, but for making it so well. As you mentioned, this had the potential to backfire, but it didn't. You convey the message you wanted to communicate not only through a well written story, but also through the mechanics of the game.
Wow. The moment you started taking choices away was extremely powerful.
A lot of games try to make a statement for the sake of making a statement, but this made a statement because the statement needed to be made. Thanks for approaching this with maturity and tact without shying away from the distressing truths. I've seen this story, I know this story, and I hate this story. But thank you so much for telling it.
Holy crap, I just saw your tweet about the stats for this game and it just reinforces how effectively you communicated this. The shift from desperation to resignation is extremely clear, even in how people chose their responses. Simply incredible.
This is interactive art at it's best.
Like the idea that you only get to do the story once.
Good story :-)
Nice work you made it here, @Crabman. I played two times just to see if I really can made a different choise, but even on the mechanics you put the fell of incapability. Awesome work.
wow. just wow. this is amazing on so many levels... first, the writing: i think its easy in these game jams to focus on the mechanic and the fun, throw-away nature of it all. you have written an amazing story. and game. its simple and heavy and last with you. so incredibly well-written, you convey that sense of no-turing back, that sense that you have crossed the rubicon.
the mood is perfect. the music really supports the piece and takes you to the place you want us to be.
this is proof that good stories are the real place to start when creating games that last. that stick with you. and it is also proof that games can be a place to teach and learn and tell stories that arent easy. that are about hurt and love and all those things that most games are not.
thanks and congratulations.
I still don't know what to say... Thank you all! :)
I didn't expect to see something that serious, but it was handled very well. Good job.
I don't know if I'd can call this a game, and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it, but you did an excellent job. You made me feel helpless... very effective.
Impressive. Well written and presented. I sometimes felt like I wasn't in control of the story at all, that it was all supposed to happen. But the impression this has created on my mind will last a long time nonetheless.
A powerful experience, for sure. While there isn't much in it to call it a game, it has a way of conveying a message through the mechanics that is very strong, and I like it. I personally wouldn't have gone with such a dark interpretation of the theme for a Ludum Dare but I am happy to have played it.
Honestly, although I'm a big reader these things are never usually to my tastes. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this, quite well written and I loved the use of the theme.
Very well put (I also read your blog posts) and how you use the mechanics at the end is clever.
Technically speaking, I don't know if the slow auto-scroll is intentional (to give a little break between steps ?) but sometimes it lost me a little when I started reread previous chapter during the scroll.
Utmost disturbing. I feel shaken after having played through, trying consistently to avoid. Good serious entry.
@mmickyman: If you're still around, can you tell me more about the slow scrolling? It's not supposed to take more than half a second or so, just a smooth slide down. Did it take longer than that? What device/browser were you using? And did you play the web version?
I liked the way some of the options do nothing near the end, and how you cannot restart.
The scrolling was also slower the more text I had on the screen (playing the web version on Chrome 31). Near the end, sometimes I would lose a moment waiting for the scroll and then finding out the exact spot where the new text had appeared. Otherwise, very good technically.
Ok, thank you, I'll look into it. Probably messed something up determining the speed. ;)
Huh, weird, Chrome and Firefox handle the scrolling differently. My attempt to fix the weird jumps it sometimes does only worked for FF and kinda broke Chrome. That certainly wasn't supposed to look like that. ;)
Ok, it's fixed. I detected the scroll position by using $("html, body"), which returns the right value in FF but returned 0 in Chrome (and yet, it worked for animating the scroll position.) That set you back to the top of the page and had you scroll through the entire document in an adapting pixel/sec speed. Sorry about that, didn't even think to test everywhere since it's so basic. But $(document) did the trick, and except for some weird but manageable glitches in Opera, it works fine in all major browsers now.
Thanks for letting me know!
What I immediately noticed about this game that set it apart form almost all of the other IF I've played: sound. Very nice touch, even just the click when you select an option is extremely nice to have. That's something I want to look into adding to my IF if I continue making them.
Based on the fact that a trigger warning existed and the first few passages, I realized pretty early on how things were going to end (although, at that time I thought--hm...how to say this without spoiling anything--I thought the character would be given more power) and was dreading it for the remainder of the story. But nothing could compare to "The Moment The Choices Stopped" (to borrow the subsection title from one of your follow up posts). I thought--no, I desperately hoped I had encountered a glitch at that point. Extremely effective mechanic.
I like this.
A good game.
And a difficult topic, worth mentioning.
Maybe a bit too much text, I think the game
might benefit from more passages with less text in each.
Rather than a lot of text in few passages.