Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → The Athanor Estate
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 15 | |||||
| Fun | 15 | |||||
| Innovation | 15 | |||||
| Theme | 15 | |||||
| Graphics | 1 | |||||
| Humor | 13 | |||||
| Mood | 15 | |||||
the parser just works, look and directions do exactly what i expect, which is not a given in jam text adventures. orange on black, the dithered skull on the title, nice spooky mood. only explored the first couple of rooms so far
I got stuck and had to look up the answer. Room descriptions don't update when rooms get new items in them, so I didn't realize that the "linens" I pushed through the chute were actually called "laundry" and thus couldn't find the handkerchief. The copper key also confused me since its description said it could be used to open bottles but it did nothing when used on the whiskey bottle. I think it's unlikely I would have figured out the final solution even if I'd made it past that point (I wasn't even aware that escaping the mansion was the goal).
I almost got stuck at the balcony, because I don't generally expect a "look" command to have side-effects, and instead tried several variations of "use hemp rope" to get off the balcony before eventually figuring it out.
Miscellany: - I'd like a way to check inventory - Dropping an item and forgetting where you dropped it means losing it since the room descriptions don't update - You can't drop the crowbar in the same room you picked it up (a bug, I think)
@henk Thanks for playing and for your feedback. Those are indeed all "bugs" in the sense that they are things I know about and would have fixed had I not run out of time. The goal was not supposed to be to escape the mansion until I had 10 minutes left to make a win condition :)
I also ran into some of the "bugs" mentioned, but overall I think this was a fun game and a good jam submission. I did not manage to finish it unfortunately, but what I did play I liked! I think the dark blue text for the available actions on the black background causes some readability issues, but overall I like the spooky atmosphere that the design contributes. Good job!
@hajpappan Yes unfortunately I had a much bigger puzzle in my head that I couldn't encode in the game engine in time, so there are some very rough edges. I had to mostly walk my wife through it because some things were so hard to understand. Thanks for checking it out and thanks for the feedback.
This is great! I love the idea of making an "old tech" game for the theme of old tech. The writing was excellent and the performance of the text processing was impressive. I didn't manage to finish the game... I think going into the boiler room was a bad idea. Who would have thought after being asked three times if I really wanted to do that?! Anyway, great game!
Thanks @human-writes-code I am very glad you liked it. I think when my current projects are wrapped up I will return to this and try to finish the story I had come up with.
I love text adventures, and yours is very stylish. Every response felt natural and never made me feel like I’d tried something I wasn’t supposed to do. Amazing! I got a bit stuck after the servant’s room, but it was fun. Thanks!
@gamescodedogs Thanks for playing. I'm glad you enjoyed it and I really tried to make the parser super flexible so you could speak to it pretty naturally. It seems to work well for people familiar with text adventure games at least. My wife was confused, having never played one before. Sorry to hear you got stuck, that was probably due to some shortcomings in the game.
That was fun! Really brought back memories of old text adventure games. Great writing. Very clear and on theme. The title screen really sets the tone perfectly. I felt like I was in that creepy old mansion! The text parser worked very well. I ended up getting a little stuck and not quite figuring out what to do, but I feel like that was more on me than the game. I also didn't figure out I could 'look' to get the description of the room again until I tried it after the fact. But I don't think the game being a little difficult to interact with is a bad thing in this case, because that's what the experience was like for those games back in the day. Great nostalgic entry!
@the3rdhunter Thank you, I'm glad you had a fun time with it even if you got stuck. I remember spending weeks playing these games as a kid and writing down pages of notes trying to figure them out and I was hoping to elicit that feeling again, on a smaller scale of course.
SUPER COOL usage of the theme to make a classic style text based adventure!! Really great idea and great job with it! I unfortunately didn't finish it because I got lost and the rooms don't reprint their descriptions so I forgot what things were in each room. But it was super fun!
@aidan-andrews I'm sorry you got stuck. If you decide to try it again you can say "look around" to get the room description again. Items that you drop or find and don't pick up will not show up in the text because I didn't have time to add that feature unfortunately. Thanks for playing and thanks for your feedback.
@bentglasstube OHHH! You can look around again! I didn't think about that. Thank you and great work!
Fun game if confusing at times. Which does remind be of old text adventures I played. The parser works well. The writing is good and I like style(old screen/text).
@harmadillo thanks for playing and for your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the writing.
It was cool to see such detailed descriptions of each room, and together with the crunchy retro style the game creates a really nice atmosphere. It was fun to adventure through the mansion but I couldn't figure out all of the puzzles. I spent some time trying to open locked doors with the key I found until I got to the right door. Impressive work!
Obviously it has issues, but I do appreciate hand-making a game like this. It's the type of game that's hard to polish without watching people test/play it, which is tricky in this situation.
I had trouble really accomplishing anything so I would up just sort of cheating with the source code. Even early on I had trouble getting the bottle from the cabinet because, well, I assumed it was impossible because "get bottle" did nothing, and the cabinet never says it's locked, "open cabinet" says nothing either. In a way, that does make it an authentic text-based adventure experience...
@reaktori @khananaphone2 Thank you both for p[laying and for the feedback. It definitely would have helped if I had gotten early feedback on the puzzles to iron out the wrinkles. Unfortunately with my busy weekend that just wasn't in the cards this time. I appreciate you both finding the positives despite the struggles.