> scythe@u.washington.edu (Dan Shiovitz) writes:
> > I agree with your reasoning here. I still don't like timed games, but I
> > don't have a way to write this sort of game without a timer either.
>
> Don't have time. If the status line didn't say "10:32", no one would
> know there was a time. Of course, the NPC's have to move around at
> certain points in the game...
I just would like to get into the topic here...I personally enjoyed
undertow, since I found it really well written and well presented. You are
feeling *in* the game just from the beginning. The time (for me) was
neither a limit of the game nor a noisance for the player, it was just a
way to force you to solve it within a certain number of moves (c'm on, we
already have seen a lot of timed puzzles in if, isn't it? Let's think
about Weather...wasn't it REALLY a noisance to have such a limited amount
of time to solve the last puzzle? It got me more than two days to solve,
not two hours).
I agree that the NPCs' interaction with the player was limited. I think
that in a bigger game it could be easily solved. Anyway, if you play the
game several times in different ways you will see sometimes the NPCs DOING
things and sometimes HAVING DONE that things (for example...the guy who
changhes the t-shirt: depending on the time you meet him, you can find him
WHILE changing it or HAVING already changed it), this is not new of course
and follows from the fact that the moves of the NPCs are timed and did not
depend on the moves of the player (with the exception of the very
endgame), but for me gives you an impression of more reality (like in a
movie). If you restart the game several times and follow each time a
different fellow, you'll see that their actions are not so limited.
If I had to complain about a game in which the interaction between the
player and the NPCs was almost nothing, I would have to speak about
Mystery. I enjoyed the "Choir" as a matter of fun, but you really did not
need to do anything (even you did not need to think) in order to finish
the game...just go around and let things happening.
May personal ranking score of the contest games I liked more (uncited
games are of course lower). In the order I liked them: TADS section:
Toonesia, Zebulon, The One, Tow, Museum; Inform section: Weather,
MindElectric, Library, Mystery. Tube was also nice, but a bit too thiny
for my taste and the descriptions were sometimes weak...I mean, a nice
idea that deserves further development. I sincerely hope that the author
will write a full-version game. It could be as well the beginning of a
nice saga (why not...the great undeground system...mmmh sounds not really
new...well).
A final note: I have to say that I did not vote, since I was out of time
in playing the games...and I couldn't feel right to vote without having
tasted them all. Maybe next year it would be better to give more time to
play the games (at least for the lazy men like me).
Cheers, Giovanni.