Plan 6 from Inner Earth

IntroComp entries can be divided roughly into two groups, solid and loose. Solid games have strong characterizations and story. When you finish one you have a bunch of unanswered questions and plot threads undoubtedly leading somewhere. The intro could have been taken from an already finished game. The author has a great story in mind and this is the introduction to it.

A loose entry is the opposite: it’s usually (but not always) a bit buggy and shoddily implemented. It’s self-contained: everything you encounter has a purpose within the intro and you’re not left with loose threads that would be concluded in the full game, apart from the cliffhanger at the end. In fact there are very little hints of a story at all, conceivably because the author hasn’t thought of one yet. Often a loose entry starts before the actual story: you’re figuratively packing your bags for a great adventure and the intro ends just as you open the front door. The author has a great setting in mind but is not yet quite sure what to do with it.

To this date all IntroComp entries that have ever been finished have been solid.

The bad news is that Plan 6 is a poster child for a loose entry. It’s a shame, because I would be moderately interested in playing the full game, but there’s little hope of it ever materializing. I wish that the author proves my theory wrong.

Memento Moratori

Lea’s Bysantine Perspective was built on a gimmick and so is Memento Moratori. The good news is that the gimmick is quite clever and it works. Although surely it’s just lack of imagination on my part, I doubt that the gimmick is strong enough to support a longer game. The intro itself is a fully capable mini-game in itself (it even offers a satisfactory closure at the end, or at least the one ending I saw) so it would’ve been just as good to call it finished and release it outside the competition.

My advice to anyone who hasn’t played this yet: Go play it and pretend that it’s a complete game. You won’t be disappointed.

Waker

Is this like Alan Wake, but even Waker? No, it turns out it’s actually Galateaer with the talking statues and all.

The author participated in the last year’s IFcomp with a rather unconventional take on IF which wasn’t quite well received, but I’m glad Kevin didn’t let this discourage himself because Waker is an excellent intro. Not much of the backstory is revealed but the game conveys a strong sense that there is an actual story there. I’m just hoping the final game won’t be as strictly linear as the intro.

• Plot and puzzles revealed

IFComp is still going on, but I’ve had these IntroComp reviews sitting on my hard disk long enough. So here they are.

Gossip

Gossip has a really nice setting (playing a “journalist” of a trash magazine) that had me hooked right away. Playing further lead to a small disappointment compared to the expectations, but I would very much like to play either a reworked intro or preferrably a solid full game.

I didn’t finish this one. I got as far as a cocktail party with a large amount of guests where I had to gather gossip about them. I didn’t count but there were more than ten NPC’s present. Talking with the waiter got me some tips on what to talk about with whom, but then that source ran out and it started to look like I would have had to write down the names of everyone and methodically go through everyone asking them about everyone else there. There were just too many of them and not enough personal interest in the characters for this to be anything else than a chore, so I gave up there.

There were some technical problems. I had a camera but i couldn’t PHOTOGRAPH or TAKE A PHOTO. Some guesswork finally lead to TAKE PHOTO. Also the game suggested that there would have been a puzzle involved in catching the person I was supposed to photograph, but somehow I skipped that part by just walking into the location of the target.

There’s no plotline or conflict or any motivation for the player character other than her profession. The game is not as much a game or a story but a gossip journalism simulation, but to work as such it should have the gameplay and puzzles significantly smoothed out.

Obituary

Obituary tells the story of a woman who dies. The story doesn’t end there; she ends up in some afterworldly place (Hell? The limbo? Back to Earth as a ghost?).

The game advances through cutscenes and the story is clearly the main point. The parser is there just so that the player could give the right command that triggers the next cutscene.

I got stuck once so bad that I had to look at the walkthrough. Turned out that you had to examine a thing twice to notice an important item, but the game never hinted at this and there was no reason or motivation for the player to do it. Contrived puzzles are often the result when the author wants to tell a story but thinks that “IF has to have puzzles”. If the game is about the story, don’t force puzzles in if they don’t come naturally.

The player character has a nice amount of roughness and distinct personality. It’s a good start for building the full game, and this is the intro I voted with the highest score.

Selves

Selves: Interactive Emo Poetry (ok that’s not the real tagline but it should be) is thematically similar to Obituary but has the angst turned up five notches. And yes, you can cut your own wrists.

The unnamed player character seems to have caused a death of this woman whose body is conveniently lying next to a shovel. So far the goal can be easily guessed. Since you can’t DIG with the shovel, some verb guessing leads to BURY BODY. Then the player is transported to an empty room (empty… like your soul) where you can CUT YOURSELF, but other than easing your existential pain with cliches I couldn’t find anything more to do. Surprisingly CRY or DYE HAIR BLACK didn’t work. Too bad this was the only game this year that didn’t come with a walkthrough.

For some reason games and other fiction like this often create the mood by being vague throughout and purposefully avoiding giving any useful information to the reader. This is not the only way to create the mood the author is probably after, and Obituary demonstrates this with being much more powerful in building the mood using different techniques. It was bad luck for Selves that it was released together with Obituary. The comparison is inevitable and Obituary is the obvious winner.