CGDC #7 – Paul VanKoughnett’s Paint!

Hmm, what to play next?  I know, I’ll play the one with the shortest blurb.

Destroy a painting and save lives!

Hi there, Paint.  We’ll have you first, then Couch of Doom, which has a seven-word blurb.  Yes.  Yes, that is exactly how shit is going to go down.

RSS buffer courtesy of Translation Party:
To destroy the painting, save a life!
, To destroy this picture, save a life!
Is to destroy this image, save a life!
To destroy this image to save a life!
To save lives, to destroy this image!
Destroying the image, to save a life!
, Destroying the image to save his life!
The destruction of his life to save the image!
Destruction of his life to save the image!
His life to save an image of destruction!

[spoilers begin here]

CGDC #7 – Alexander “Mordred” Andonov’s Monday, 16:30!

How long is half an hour when you are bored and miserable? How about when it’s Monday, and it’s 16:30? How about when you’re in love?
This is one of those trick questions, isn’t it.  Like what weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of lead.  I’m not falling for that.  Roosters don’t lay eggs and you don’t bury survivors.  At least not the pretty ones you don’t.  I’m not entirely sure what that means either.

After playing some of this game:  Oh, man, you should play this one.  This is really good stuff.  I’ll let you know if it starts to suck.

After playing all of this game:  Well, it did do a thing that made me want to throw it across the room for a few seconds there, but it’s still a good game.  If it doesn’t wind up in the top three to five, I’ll be very surprised.

[spoilers begin here]

CGDC #7 – The Technomancer’s Golden Shadow!

You awaken from a strange nightmare in a gaudy golden room. Armed with nothing but your unusual top hat, can you escape?

I am playing this next because I want to know exactly what is so unusual about my top hat.  This is why it’s so important to put a good hook like this in your blurb.

As for the RSS buffer, Potato Boy proposed to my sister tonight.  Sadly, he did not present her with a ring-shaped potato, or even a potato-shaped ring, but I’m sure in time we will all recover from this massive disappointment.

Also, my cat has three boyfriends, there are actual dandelions in our front yard, and I think I just promised to attempt an Australian accent in public.  That was fucking stupid.  Good thing Muriel’s Wedding is an eminently rewatchable movie!

[spoilers begin here after this ABBA song]

CGDC #7 – Kevin Mintmier’s Containment!

Oh, man, where to start?  Gonna save the Jim Munroe game for near the end… why does Drama Queen 7 sport a vaguely Amish-looking man with an umbrella as its picture?  The blurb for Paint is amusing (“Destroy a painting and save lives!”)  I Expect You To Die makes me giggle just, y’know, as a phrase.  Party Foul looks promising.  Hmm, here’s one by that guy who did The Grand Quest.  No shit, Stephen Granade?  I thought he was a myth to frighten children with.  (“Eat your vegetables or Stephen Granade will explode your skull with his bare hands!  No, I don’t actually know anything about Stephen Granade with which to have made that a funny joke instead of a mere absurdist reference to his picture on IFwiki!  Shut up and eat your goddamned vegetables!”)

(He does look like a dude what could explode a skull if you put it in there, though. I would be all “am I right?’ but frankly I feel no need to pose a question you’re just going to answer yes to.  What the hell was I talking about?)

Oh, huh, here’s one about somebody who works the night shift and takes lots of naps.  I can relate to that.

[spoilers begin here]

CGDC #7, or Jay Can’t Get A Hard-On Unless He’s Trapped In A Room

Jay Is Games’ Casual Gameplay Design Contest #7 is at large, terrorizing the native population with its enormous fanged member!  By which I mean it’s out, and has games in it!  Games which I will be reviewing here shortly, as nicely as possible, per contest guidelines!  You are very excited!  Go play some games!

Not A Review Whatsoever – Adam Cadre’s Photopia!

Everyone says you have to play Photopia.  I have been thinking about what an interesting word “everyone” is.  It sounds like it should mean everyone on the planet, doesn’t it?  Definitely all the humans, and maybe some of the more personable robots.  The only time it ever does mean this, though, is when people are talking about, like, what happens if the sun explodes.  Generally “everyone” just means “a considerable majority of the situationally-relevant people we care about,” as in “We were gonna go to Casa en Fuego but then everyone decided they’d rather have gyros,” totally disregarding your friend Bob’s gyro allergy and the fact that you yourself would pretty much always rather have Thai food.  (“You” in this hypothetical is code for “me.”)

Where were we?  Oh, right, everyone says you have to play Photopia, and I am apparently not allowed to play IF games without blogging them, so here we are on the wordpress at two in the morning.  Wait, hang on, lemme get some cookies.

[spoilers begin here]

Now Playing, the Goddamn Woman Driver edition – Saints Row 2, Planescape: Torment

I believe it is customary on these gaming blog things to talk about what you’re playing.  I believe that may even be the entire point of having one, assuming anything humans do beyond “have sex a lot and try not to die” actually has some sort of point, which is debatable.  Actually, it’s debatable whether the continuation of the species in itself has some sort of point, but if we get too deep here I’m gonna feel weird talking about Saints Row 2.

Jump cut for the sake of front-page tidiness goes here.

Three links presented briefly and without commentary. Actually this header is longer than the entire post. Disappointing, yeah, I know. I’m tired.

Errol’s Zork walkthrough song.
Jason Scott wants your money.
Let’s all go to PAX East!

 

IF Comp ‘09 Super Sexy Black Tie Awards Wrap Up!

Instead of writing this up, I’ve been watching Riff play Uncharted 2, which is a lot like watching an action movie, if the main character in an action movie were psychologically incapable of doing anything until he’d completely searched the surrounding area for treasure.  “Drake!  Get out of there!  It’s gonna blow!”  “I’ll get out of here in a minute, goddammit, I’m looking for shinies.”  And then, because there’s a small part of Uncharted 2 that wants to be an exploration game instead of a narrative-driven on-rails climby-shooter (which it is, and is very good at being), he will in fact find a statue of Ganesh or something in a corner of the imminently-exploding train car and his neurosis will be rewarded, even as the climby-shooter part of the game yells at him and asks if he wants a hint.  Here’s a hint, designers:  it’s weird to both yell at people and reward them for the same behavior.  If you did that to a kid, you’d have a fucked-up kid.  If you did that to a hamburger, you’d have a fucked up hamburger.  In terms of potatoes, that’s bad parenting.

This post isn’t about Uncharted 2, though, it’s about the 2009 Interactive Fiction Competition.  I haven’t forgotten.

[spoilers for every game in the comp and also last year's Riverside and incidentally 2006's Another Goddamn Escape the Locked Room Game given free rein after the jump]

IF Comp ‘09 – Sarah Morayati’s Broken Legs!

Mr. Magnifico: Math problem, courtesy of Little Mag: “I have 2 branches. One has one more than the other. How many different ways can there be?”
Mr Magnifico: (Answer: “It’s obvious that there are 30.”)

I saved Broken Legs for last, because the au jus seemed to like it.  So, with no further fucking around, let’s play it.

Mostly Spoiler-Free Upshot: This game is steeped in personality and funny writing, and in that sense, I loved it.  Its puzzles, though… okay, maybe I’m denser than an Eric Eve protagonist, but I tried to solve its puzzles by myself, failed miserably, exhausted the hint system, continued to fail, consulted the pre-walkthrough, somehow managed to read it wrong, kept right on failing, resorted to the actual walkthrough, typed something in wrong, failed once again, then finally finally finally got it.  I feel like maybe a very small percentage of this is not entirely my fault.

So, yeah.  You should play it, though.  You’ll enjoy the writing, and can’t possibly do any worse at the puzzles than I did.

[spoilers begin here]