Lockdown, by Richard Otter

This is a game about someone who has just gone on a shooting spree. They're faced with the consequences, but there's still one more thing to do. The question: what?

Three Days of Night, by spaceflounder

This was another relatively quick game set in space--which seems to fit well with the sunrise theme. It feels relatively low-risk, and it's about gaining contact with intelligent aliens.

Down, the Serpent and Sun by Chandler Groover

This game was rather quick for me, but I suspect that's because I didn't poke around carefully enough. Some of it seemed sparsely implemented, but I did find two cool ways to die. This was satisfying enough, but I'd still like to see the "good" end if there was one. An IFDB review pointed to that the ClubFloyd folks found it.

Endless Sands, by Hamish McIntyre

Endless Sands by Hamish McIntyre is, thankfully, not so endless. You, a recently new vampire, need to escape the desert before sunlight. But actual buildings where you could take refuge are roofless, occupied or locked, due to various slapstick reasons.

I suspect whether you enjoy this game depends on how much patience you have at the moment, so if it frustrates you, sit down, draw up a map, and come back again.

Six Gray Rats Crawl Up the Pillow, by Boswell Cain

Six Gray Rats Crawl Up the Pillow is a brief work where you are sent to a nobleman's castle to sleep in his bed, on a dare. The plague has killed him.

ParserComp Intro and Links

I wasn't able to think of anything for ParserComp aside from one puzzle which I think will do nicely in a later game, but I was able to test four of the games. I'll reserve opinion on them until the judging deadline is over. If you're wondering what ParserComp is, look here. If you're wondering if you should judge, please do! It looks like ParserComp's haul of parser games is roughly equivalent to IFComp 2014's.

This post will serve as a link to the individual game reviews. I italicized the ones I did, because reasons. Also, I'm hiding scores, as I've found that I, as an author, get more from saying "Oh! I should've done that!" then from a score, which I can twist around in my mind to mean what I like.

An Adventurer’s Backyard, by lyricasylum
Down, the Serpent and the Sun, by Chandler Groover
Endless Sands, by Hamish McIntyre
Lockdown, by Richard Otter 
A Long Drink, by Owen Parks
Mean Streets, by BadDog
Six Gray Rats Crawl Up The Pillow, by Boswell Cain
Sunburn, by Caelyn Sandel
Terminator Chaser, by Bruno Dias
Three Days of Night, by spaceflounder

Post-comp reflections:
Chlorophyll, by Steph Cherrywell (Beta-tested)
Delphina’s House, by Alice Grove (Beta-tested)
Oppositely Opal, by Buster Hudson (Beta-tested)
Terminator, by Matt Weiner (Beta-tested)

Halfway through ParserComp

This is a post I hoped to make on March 1st, and I hoped to be making my wrap-up post today. Nevertheless, I encourage people to get to as many ParserComp games as they can, even if it is only 7. Or even if you get less than 7, if you can make a transcript (start a game and type TRANSCRIPT, usually,) it's a big help.

Unfortunately, my judging may be a bit impatient due to the time squeeze I put myself in, but that is sort of valuable--sometimes I'm less likely to let things skate and say "Oh, I can deal with that, I guess, I'm glad to see anything." Which is a good attitude to have in general, but it's tough to balance that with saying, well, let's help other authors fix what they can, because we don't know what might make a player flip a switch and start to love/hate a game. We can, however, stack the odds in favor of the first with observation and evaluation and such, even if we can't rigorously back ourselves up.

So, see what you can do! I imagine the authors have enough space from their original versions that they are ready to make whatever changes give the most value, and plus, it's always neat to get something just before a comp ends. Or even after it.

HERE is the full list of games. The games reviewed so far are below. I hope to have time to get through the remaining 5 4 3games I can judge.

An Adventurer’s Backyard, by lyricasylum
A Long Drink, by Owen Parks
Mean Streets, by BadDog
Sunburn, by Caelyn Sandel
Terminator Chaser, by Bruno Dias

Oh, and 2 bonuses--it happens that way, things getting done in clumps:

Endless Sands, by Hamish McIntyre
Six Gray Rats Crawl Up the Pillow, by Boswell Cain

Terminator Chaser, by Bruno Dias

Terminator Chaser threw me off as I expected it to be timed. It wasn't. You need to shut down a mining base on Mercury before the sun comes up, but of course it is not that simple.

An Adventurer's Backyard, by Lyricasylum

This is a short treasure hunt with a few small puzzles. It very much feels like a first effort, and while there's nothing to offend, there also isn't much to inspire. Still, I think we should all have the fun of writing a game like this.

It's also written in ADRIFT, and while I admire Campbell Wild's work on ADRIFT and ADRIFT programmers' focus on just having fun, I'm spoiled by Inform's robustness, and the simplicity of creation doesn't always match up with the simplicity of solving and navigating the parser (e.g. must say OPEN TOP DRAWER and not OPEN TOP.) That happened a bit here. It got in the way of a game that was intended to be just whimsical.

A Long Drink, by Owen Parks

The game was called A Long Drink. And I didn't expect to see the Kool-Aid Man. I expected plot twists, not twisty straws. And a murder, of course. And evidence pointing to the last guy you thought, even after considering the last guy you thought. I knew all about alcohol for its own sake, and what with the title, I hoped there was a little more to it than that. Secretly, I was hoping for gratuitous smoking. Especially indoors. Criminally under-represented these days.

So it began. A mysterious "accident." A woman named Val. A mysterious house. And the host dead upstairs. But I'd seen text adventures like this before. It would have to do something to get me interested.

It was the Trizbort map that did it. I'd never seen so many one-way doors in such a small area before. It looked like the house was a trap, then a bedroom. Perhaps that was where it ended. Not the basement.

Sunburn, by Caelyn Sandel

Sunburn is a brief work about a (likely trans, based on hints) woman who has been locked in an office to die painfully (mentally and physically) in retribution for turning a passive-aggressive "nice guy" down. It has alternate endings, which is a specialty of this author (and something I like to see,) and it fits into a tidy zblorb.

Mean Streets, by BadDog

It's neat to see not just Inform games in the comp. This is an effort from BadDog, who is new on the scene. It's set in Grittyville (Aw, man! Now I should've totally written my introcomp game last year. It was called Grubbyville. I may or may not have to change it now. You snooze, you loose) and advertises itself as a sort of noir adventure.