Alright you guys, this was my first game, but I put a lot of love into it. It has been entered into the Spring Thing 2013 competition, which is still ongoing, so maybe keep any discussions you would want to have private.
I "finished" the game about three months ago, but it was very rough, and there were numerous bugs as well, so when I heard about Spring Thing I went through and took the time to polish some stuff up. Then I waited for about three months for my friends to very reluctantly play through it and give me some feedback.
All in all I loved making this game, and I'm already working on another for QuestComp, so stay tuned, kids.

Encyclopedia of Elementals

Nice work! I hope publishing it on the site doesn't violate the rules of the comp - but I guess you would have checked that first

It may be worth posting on int-fiction so that people know they can play it without having to download Quest.

Also if you're feeling brave maybe poke @emshort as she has reviewed the other two Spring Thing entrants on her blog.

Any hints as to how I make any progress in the game? I'm stuck right at the start with the glow powder and can't get any further than the first four locations.

Thanks Alex, I may do that! The comp rules said that the game should not have been previously released before the time of judging, and judging has finally started! What's more, it's downloadable from the SpringThing website, so I wouldn't worry.

@davidw: search the mysterious wing very carefully. Look for subtle cues in the description. Additionally: it's pretty cliche.

Is it playable online? I politely asked emshort why she didn't review EoE and this was her reply:

"Among other things, it requires me to set up a system I don’t normally use in order to play it; Quest runs only on Windows."

Alex, an interpreter for Mac and Linux should be one of your next priorities, eh?
I think Gargoyle works with Quest (Geas is the copy of Quest's interpreter).

Yeah, I saw that, but I didn't realize it was you! I figured that might be a problem; when I was trying to get my friends to beta-test this game I had a good bit of trouble finding people that were able to download it to play it (I have a timer in the game early on that will end the game if it isn't responded to, and the web-player seems to have trouble distinguishing seconds from nano-seconds). I do wish it worked online, but I really wanted to experiment with timers when I made this game and it would be pretty difficult to change it up to where it worked without them. That said, if anybody can get through a good portion of the game online and doesn't have any trouble, let me know! I pretty much exclusively use Chrome, but I think I tested it in Firefox and I didn't have any more luck with that. Maybe the new IE 10 can handle it? I've heard it's actually usable.
As a side note, I'm curious as to what the "other things" are that she mentioned, but it's probably irrelevant. While her qualifications and quality of writing will be missed, there is ample chance for me to get feedback on my work both here and once Spring Thing has concluded! Just the same, I think Alex was hoping for a good word or maybe just some publicity about Quest. "Only runs on Windows" isn't the best slogan I've heard for it, and I'm remiss that for now, it seems that that's all it'll get.

That's okay, QuestComp should do for Quest what the defibrillator does for Bob.

Watch out! Spoiler Post!

@Sarah: Okay, so the bug might be somehow related to one of the guards at the top of the tower where you gave the signal and saw the light elemental. If your last save was before this save (and reasonably recent) you may very well be able to finish your game without any help from me. You could try fighting those guards again, and there are alternative methods to fighting both of guards that can be done by certain commands or a certain spell (and I've tested the spell method enough to know you won't have a bug if you can use that one).
Now, if that's not the case, all I need is for you tell me the following things you've done and I can make a walkthrough very easily that will return you to your exact state:
[list]
[*]Character name[/*]
[*]Gender[/*]
[*]Did you help Tess or Sheila?[/*]
[*]Where you are, just before the fight with the guards at the "traffic gate," what spells do you still have prepared, and do you have the health potion with you?[/*]
[/list:u]

I hate that there was a bug this late in the game, so you can't just start over. Just let me know, it's no trouble at all to make a walkthrough. I have one handy from Spring Thing, anyway

I started playing and got instantly a error message saying:

Error running script: The 'insert' script command is not supported for games written for Quest 5.4 or later. You can output HTML directly using the 'msg' command instead.
Create Your Character

Spoiler: I noticed some small mistake at the point, where Sheila runs out to the well.
It says: "There is a crowd gathered loosely around the well, and many of the townsfolk are panicking.
You can see Sheila speaking to the cobbler, a well and a crowd." That sounds a little bit weird

Other than that I really like the game so far ^^ I haven't played many text adventures before, but this one seems very smoothly designed and I easily got the hang of it.

Aaand another error. I tried reading the encyclopedia in the well. I had two options, I've chosen one and this happend:

~ read Encyclopedia of Elementals
What would you like to read about?
1 - 
2 - Close Encyclopedia

Error running script: Error evaluating expression 'StringListItem(Encyclopedia of Elementals, ToInt(result) - 1)': StringListItem function expected list parameter but was passed 'Object: Encyclopedia of Elementals'

Yeah, I accidentally converted to 5.4 last night, I'll fix that asap. It should work correctly other than that, though.

I edited my post with some additional discoveries ^^

And now it seems I'm stuck. Spoiler: I talked to Tess and she needed a dress for her visit with the smith. So I bought a lovely dress in the tailor's shop. In the inventory was the option to wear the dress, my character is female and put it on right away But now I'm stuck without a dress or a way into Sheilas Mansion. Is there a way to take the lovely dress off or to get another dress?

Yeah, I was trying to address an issue someone else had late in the game without having to uninstall Quest and reinstall the old version, but a short lapse in thought had me convert all of my copies of the code to 5.4 and there was nothing left to do after that was done. So there are probably a bunch of errors that I'll have to address. *sigh.*
You should be able to buy another dress. I noticed that possibility when I was making the game and I made sure that you should be able to buy another dress with the resources you have access to in the area. If you don't, that's another new bug for me to fix. Thanks for helping me out! I promise this used to be a very high quality game. By my standards at least.

Alright, I've fixed all those you found. Again, you've been a big help in me fixing my oopsie. Hopefully all this talk of bugs won't scare people off from the game.

Oh, but every game has a talk of bugs. Check out Game Discussion on intfiction. Some go for 15 pages!

I still think that it is a good game. If it wasn't, I might've given up playing, but I'm still trying to get a dress from the tailor Unfortunately she doesn't respond and when I speak to her, she only thanks me for the purchase. Do I have to restart the game or am I doing it wrong?

edit:
Uh, I just downloaded the updated version and now the (useless) compass is gone and the right bars (status, inventory, places) are looking really nice ^^ How did you do that? I didn't know you can change the appearance of this boxes, too

I just noticed a little difference now in my second playtrough. First time the slippers were not immediately in the places/objects box, only after I've looked under the bed. Now they are visible (not in description, but in places/objects box) before I even looked. Is this intentionally?

The part where I got rid of the compass and made things look prettier is intentional, the slipper thing isn't. Buggy buggy buggy. I can't fix one thing except to break all the others it seems

I'll look into the dress thing. If the slippers are showing themselves now it sounds like the whole game is coming apart at the seams. In the mean time, since you are lucky enough to be able to play games on 5.4, I'll make you the same deal I made poor Sarah: if you get too far and are unjustly stopped I'll PM you a version of the game with a walkthrough that should get you back to where you were. It's no trouble for me and I'm sure you'd like to be able to finish the game if you're excited enough to be able to start it over. let me know if you have any other problems, and rest assured that you guys are doing me worlds of good by telling me about these bugs!

And you were right, the dress thing was a buggity bug bug, and when I saw it I said, "Oh, bugger."
It's all fixed now, and I think if you have reason to download it again you'll be pleasantly surprised with its look again.

Oh, a pretty background ^^ I like it. How do you do this stuff? Next update I expect some pretty pictures or maybe a nice cover art

Alas, I hate to tell you this, but I can still see the slippers without looking under the bed and I think some other items are visible too early, too. I'm not sure, but the loose rock, bottom of the well and charcoal is earlier in the list then 2 versions before.
And I still can't seem to buy a second dress for Tess after I wear the lovely dress myself.

One question, does Hephaestus has any aliases? Like maybe Smith or something like that? It is a long and difficult name to always type if I want to ask or give him something (or maybe I'm not doing it right). The same goes for Encyclopedia.

That's odd, I couldn't recreate the slippers problem... I'll have to delve a bit deeper it seems. Where objects appear within the lists isn't a huge issue, although I do wonder why it is that they might change position...

I'll look into the dress thing again because that is a game-breaking issue, and I won't stand for those. Hephaestus should have the alt aliases "blacksmith" and "man," but I always just typed "Heph."
One of the best things about the Quest parser is that you can type just part of the name of any object or exit on the screen and (as long as it's unique) Quest will read it! You could probably get away with "smith" as well, too.

Alright, I really appreciate your eagerness to help me with all these bugs! You guys are great! This community is the best ever! If you ever need help on anything you're ever making, be sure to let me know!

Edit: two things; I still can't recreate the slippers problem. They're always hidden for me, even in the online player. So I have no idea how to help that, but it's not a big deal anyway.
And I fixed it for real this time. I was in a hurry and I applied the changes in the code to Tess, and not the tailor. Ugh.

Ah, now it works, I can buy a second dress! First I was a little confused because she had the same text, but then I went outside and back in the shop and I could buy it ^^

And I didn't know I could adress Hephaestus with 'Heph'. Thanks for the hint ^^
Although I couldn't adress him as Heph, Hephaestus or Smith at the training, only blacksmith worked, but that's just a minor detail ^^ Sorry for the nitpicking.

Okay, I encountered another error message whilest battling the third goblin and suddenly there were two goblins and two iron maidens.

> defend
Your opponent smashes through your defense. You take light damage.

Attack the enemy! You can:
slash an enemy, thrust at or thrust an enemy, or you can slam an enemy.
Error running script: Error evaluating expression 'GetAllChildObjects(room)': Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.

After that it continued normally. Ehm, is there a way to gain health back, because I don't know how to survive all these goblins. Guess, I have to try again to defeat these pesky creatures ^^

Man, these are some weird bugs. I'm going to have to be more careful in future when dealing with old versions of games!

Yeah, the blacksmith thing was something I had trouble coding around at the time. Now you've brought it to my attention again, I could probably fix it now, since I'm much, much better at this than I was then.

I'll be sure to look over that odd bug, but from eyeballing the error message I don't have high hopes I'll be able to spot what went wrong.

And finally, yes, there is a way to recover health, but you pretty much have to fight all the goblins to get to it. If you saved when Hephaestus dropped that hint, you should be alright. Even though the battles seem pretty standard, don't forget to try different things when you get a special opportunity in the battles. 'Guess the verb' is a text adventure player's favorite game, right?

I got past the goblins and a whole lot more I really like the fighting and sneaking around now, this is great

spoiler: So I am the point where a knight wants to fight me and I quickly take my stuff out of a safe, but the only thing I can't take is the amulet. When I try to take it, it says: You retrieve your missing amulet. But it is still in the safe and not in my inventory. What should I do? Do I need this?

Oh, and now I had a game breaking error and got Quest to crash

Error running script: Error evaluating expression 'GetAllChildObjects(newParent)':
Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.
Faendor!
A wall of acidic mist rushes towards you!
Error running script: Error evaluating expression
'ListCombine(ScopeReachableNotHeldForRoom(room),
ScopeVisibleNotReachableForRoom(room))': Value cannot be null.Parameter name:
collection
Error running script:Cannot foreach over" as it is not a list

I startet again, but after that I didn't encounter the error anymore.

Well, I finished, woohooo ^^ *jump up and down* I love the game, it was a lot of fun (despite the bugs). The puzzles, sneaking around and fighting were very balanced and light enough for me to discover the solutions ^^

Spoiler: And now my two cents to the ending and the story. First, I was not really invested into the home village of the hero. You never hear about it much and I had a lot stronger connection to Drensburg. It might help, if we would meet some of those old friends/family of the hero or if he/she would receive a family letter from there etc. But I think the far more bigger impact would've been to destroy Drensburg instead of the home village (or make Drensburg the home village).
Second, I liked the twist with the time elemental, but I thought it would just be used to save Hephaestus. The hero really shoots overboard, suddenly you're super powerful and can controll all elementals. I felt that was a little bit too much and over the top. In my opinion I would've ended with Hephaestus death and maybe a plan to discover the real power of the elements and searching for a time elemental. Something not so epic Also, the time with the druids was a little too short and rushed. Other than that I really liked the story, especially the part in the village and at the gate with all the guards.

Awesome! I'm glad you liked it! So yeah, the errors you encountered once, but never again are going to be difficult fixes, and they may or may not be on my end. They arise from me (accidentally) converting a game completely written 5.3 for 5.3 to 5.4. Never do that. Always make copies of your code, and if you have to edit an old game, download the old version of Quest. it's a pain, but you won't haunt your players with scary error messages like the
"Error running script: Error evaluating expression 'GetAllChildObjects(newParent)':
Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute."
error (the ones you can't recreate consistently).

Thanks for the light amulet tip: it wasn't necessary, but it's bad form that you can't pick it up. The Fire and Force amulets got more testing, I think.

As for the ending, I agree with you about the home town. I thought about how I might make the player more connected to it, but nothing fit with the story when you started in the castle as a trophy of conquest. Going back to Dresnburg wouldn't make much sense unless the Necromancer knew where to find you, and even then it would sort of negate the point of leaving Drensburg in the first place. All in all, if I had to do it again (and you never know, maybe I'll return to this project a loooong time from now) I would probably include a prologue in which you start out in your home town and get used to it. Thanks again for all your help, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! The Sheila part of the Drensburg story is different, and that changes depending on your gender! So, if you ever feel like playing again, keep that in mind.

homeeman wrote:'Guess the verb' is a text adventure player's favorite game, right?

You're sarcastic, right?

Yes, sonic. Yes I am. I am, however, aware that sometimes you want to add something into your game that you can't really preface at all without giving it away.
Say you were fighting one of these goblins next to a ledge and I wanted you to have the option to simply push the goblin off the ledge. You've never had this option before, and there isn't ever going to be a really good time to address that you might have options like that, at least not without being too overt and giving it away, but if you denied that it was a possibility you would be losing something that could make your game... real. And so, in that situation I can't really think of any way that you might let the player know that they have options outside of slashing it to death without giving it away, which would also take away the pride that might come from figuring it out on your own.
And so it becomes not just "guess the verb" but "guess that you can guess a verb and then guess it right." How does one overcome a problem like this?

I'm trying my first fight, and when I "ask about training", it tells me about offense only... and then asks me to test it. I try a slash. It then tells me I must defend next - but it hasn't told me how to defend, and I can't guess anything that works... I am now stuck trying to guess a defending verb :-S Have I missed something or is this a bug?

Hey, psymann, thanks for playing! I wasn't able to recreate your problem, and I haven't heard anyone else say anything about it, so it sounds like another issue that has arisen because I accidentally converted it. Thanks for letting me know, and let me know if you need any help getting back to where you were. I hope you saved it!

Still happened again today, so I'll wait till you've had time to fix it

Alright, I did another update. This time I looked through the internal functions I redefined, and found that one of the two had been changed (quite a lot, actually). So, since that was probably the source of some issues, somewhere, that's fixed. I think this last update included some other things people had pointed out here and there, as well.
Thank you guys so much for being patient with me, it's a big game, it was my first game, but I promise, as long as it has my name on it, I'm gonna keep working at it until it at least runs like it's supposed to.

As always, I love your feedback, and let me know what I can do to help if you get caught/stuck.

Works now Thanks.

Few typos for you:


"There are some some metal shards" - in library

"Short, wooden rods that look like they were made to fitted into some tool" - when examining shafts. "fitted" is wrong (and also should be 'as if' instead of 'like' if you want top marks for grammar

"Inside there is a bed and a rats" - when examining middle cell after having examined rats

"...your exhaustion from the days efforts..." - should have apostrophe of "day's"

homeeman wrote:Yes, sonic. Yes I am. I am, however, aware that sometimes you want to add something into your game that you can't really preface at all without giving it away.
Say you were fighting one of these goblins next to a ledge and I wanted you to have the option to simply push the goblin off the ledge. You've never had this option before, and there isn't ever going to be a really good time to address that you might have options like that, at least not without being too overt and giving it away, but if you denied that it was a possibility you would be losing something that could make your game... real. And so, in that situation I can't really think of any way that you might let the player know that they have options outside of slashing it to death without giving it away, which would also take away the pride that might come from figuring it out on your own.
And so it becomes not just "guess the verb" but "guess that you can guess a verb and then guess it right." How does one overcome a problem like this?

I think the best way would be to have subtle references in the script that deals with the normal attacks that the player might try. So if the player knows they can slash, parry, stab etc. one of the responses to those verbs can be "you slash at the goblin with your sword. He avoids your attack but teeters dangerously close to the ledge before recovering his footing."

You could even have one hint in a randomised set of responses so the player might have to keep fighting for a bit before it comes up. I'm sure there are many wordings you could use to hint that either the verb "push" can be used, or the object "ledge" might be the key without explicitly stating it in the same sentence. I've thought about this because I have a similar fight sequence in the game I'm writing, although I haven't actually gotten around to scripting it yet, so I'dbe interested to hear your opinion.

You're right, I think, in suggesting that that's probably the most subtle way to hint that the player could do something like that, but I'm not sure that "teeters dangerously close to the ledge" isn't nearly giving it away. I'm not at all opposed to the idea of providing the player with some method of deducing that they can carry out this kind of action outside of pure guesswork and inference. But I feel like a hint that isn't in some sweet spot of not too subtle, not too cryptic will either take the accomplishment the player might get from figuring out that they can "push goblin" (or "push goblin over ledge" if you wanted to be sure they knew what they were trying) or it won't provide any real clues at all.

There's a very good chance that I'm not in a position to judge, as well, considering that I'm the person who is coming up with the hints. Maybe someone in that position thinks everything is too easy. In the end, it comes down to how likely you think a player is to feel like your game would have those kinds of possibilities in it. EoE has a few instances of that, for instance, but I'm not sure how often the player tries something new, or how often they consign themselves to what they know they'll be able to do.

homeeman wrote:I'm not sure that "teeters dangerously close to the ledge" isn't nearly giving it away.

It is a little bit obvious, it was more an example of the kind of thing rather than an actual suggestion. If the player knows the ledge is there already from the room description before you start fighting, I wouldn't mention it again. They should be examining what's in the room before picking fights. The wording of the clue you choose depends on other factors specific to your game like the style of writing, how previous fights have gone down, etc.

Another possibility (although it does involve mentioning the ledge) could be by changing the mechanics of the fight so there are two configurations, one where the goblin is between you and the ledge, and one where you are between the goblin and the ledge. By using an if script for "push" to be successful (when the goblin is closer to the ledge) and randomising results for normal fighting verbs so that half the time the description of the action results in you and the goblin switching places, you're indicating that the position of the ledge in this fight is important but hopefully in a more subtle way. Because if the ledge is important and normal fighting verbs don't do the trick, then pushing the goblin off it is a logical deduction.

I know what you mean about it being hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't already know the answer, but then I suppose that's what beta testers are for.

I actually really like the idea of changing the situation around on the player to help them realize that they can do these things without spelling it out. It drives the idea of the ledge home without giving away that it can be used in battle. Good thinking!

Hey guys, this one isn't a bug update--Spring Thing 2013 is over!
Encyclopedia of Elementals placed third... out of three. But really, I'm just very glad I decided to compete (hey, I still got a prize ) If you want to check out the other entries you can go to the Spring Thing website, and you can now feel free to discuss this game or any of the Spring Thing entries with me in depth!

Congratulations. As they say - 'You have to be in it to win it.'
It will certainly help to wave the Quest flag more prominently as others will more than likely want to try, it if not actually play it through too. I'm still slooowly working my way through.

Thanks, R2!

So I've gone over a few of the reviews for my game, and both of the reviewers seemed to have stopped just short of the point where I think the game really starts to define itself. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that it's the judges fault. Rather that their points, while stated differently, were both that they weren't engaged and drawn in at all by the game before they stopped.

Thinking back on the first part of the game that seems somewhat obvious, now. I made the first part of the game strictly standard text adventure stuff for two reasons: because I was attempting to establish a bond to the main character and the setting, and because this was my first game I made with Quest and I was still learning. I never intended to submit EoE to a competition, but the timing seemed right and I was really happy with what I created (and I still very much am).
So I ask you guys: what did you think of the first half of the game? Did any of you get worn down before you got very far? Do you have any ideas on what might be done to improve upon this game, specifically?

In the future, I'll be sure to get to the main course before everyone is full up on appetizers, and now that I've really thought about it, none of the ideas I've had for a game since this one have a slow start like this one, so hopefully that will be covered in the future.

I'll be interested to know what you guys think, as I really do enjoy making these and I don't believe in doing anything unless you're going to do it right.

I just started playing it (only just rescued Dave) and I do agree that the game isn't really defined from the beginning. The fact that it's standard text adventure fodder is fine really, especially if it's part of a gradual ease in to the more complicated or specific features of the game. I believe that any game should begin based on assumption that the player knows nothing, and have something to demonstrate the concept to someone who's had little or no IF experience. In that respect, the starting room where you have to find your slippers is quite appropriate.

The problem as I see it is before that. You are asked to select an aspect and colour having no idea what these are. There's no prologue about the world, who you are, and what your immediate objective is. It's not just this game, a lot of IF games seem to just throw you into a world with no explanation or objective. I know part of the fun is exploring the world to gain more information about the backstory and such but I still think there should be something to begin with. There are many ways to do it, prologues, more objects in the starting room that elucidate on what you're doing, look at self, etc. along with 2 objectives. An immediate one (like make your way to the library where you left something, meet a friend on the other side of the village, etc. whatever is appropriate) and the game winning objective, whatever that may be, I don't know, I haven't finished yet.

Another thing I'd suggest with the game is more implementation of synonyms and objects. To use the first room as an example, there's moonlight, but "x moon" does nothing. "x window" describes the moon coming through it, so you could just have "moon" and "moonlight" as synonyms for the window to cut down on extraneous scenery objects yet still have them implemented.

My final request would be an abbreviated option of the command "look around." At least for me, it's used frequently enough to become annoying.

I hope this comes across as constructive criticism because I'm not trying to be overly negative even though reading over it it sounds like it. I'll keep playing through and get back to you with a more informed opinion once I'm further in.
_____

I tried out the other 2 spring thing entries. The one that won I didn't play past a couple of pages, but that's just my personal preference. I don't really like gamebooks and would even go as far to suggest that they should be judged separately from text adventure style games as they really are quite different. Especially since there seems to be a heavy bias towards these types of games in judging because it's harder for such a game to do something wrong. When you limit the player's choices you can't screw up by not anticipating something they might try.

The other game, the sequel to shuffling around, seemed like it mostly won over your game because of bias against Quest (check out the difference in number of votes cast) and it's inventive gimmick. Everything being equal though, I thought it suffered from the same lack of purpose that EoE got slated for but doubly so. One review I read stated something along the lines of it's no different to having a list of anagrams to solve in a newspaper puzzles page, with which I totally agree. It seems to be an exercise in the author showing off increasingly convoluted and nonsensical anagrams in the description rather than building a coherent game out of what should be an exceptionally good conceit. After solving a few areas and getting more of the same, I just didn't know why I should bother any more. You could argue that this just isn't my thing, but the truth is I love word puzzles and in a more robust context I think it could be really enjoyable.

So as soon as I post my last post about not knowing what the hell's going on, I go back to the game and literally the first thing that happens is I get some backstory. I felt like the game starts to pick up once you get to know Hep (as my lovable nickname was for him), like some other people have said, you develop an attachment to the town quite quickly. I feel like I need to backtrack on what I said before because the standard of the writing and coding noticeably improves as you go on (which makes sense reading your explanations of the timeline of development).

Things I'm really liking:
I like the way combat system is done with the attack defense moves weighted by chance.
I thought earning money by getting away from Steve in time was an ingenious little side quest that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I liked the love triangle story in the town but Hep seems like such a good bloke that I can't imagine anyone wanting to betray him to help Sheila rather than help him discover that Tess is the girl for him.
The puzzle difficulty gradient is really well done so far, at least in terms of what I've been stuck on and for how long***. Although the talk of the "ledge" helped me at one point.

The only cons I can think of are pretty generic things, a few small bugs and spelling errors here and there, the lack of momentum at the beginning, and some verbs and objects that could have been implemented more thoroughly. A lot of things I think would have been finished if you weren't so pushed for time on the competition deadline.

All in all, even thought I'm not that far, it's still the game I enjoyed the most out of the spring thing entries as well as out of all the games developed with Quest that I've played so far (now up to 5).

***I'm stuck properly for the first time at the moment. I can't get to my room because of the metal bars in my way, I've got a sword, metal shards, wooden shafts, and a hinge. I'm male, called myself Liam, chose fire, and helped Tess. I'm guessing I have to do something to open the locked cell in the dungeon but I'm getting nowhere.
EDIT: Never mind, got it now I feel like I'd already tried what succeeded but I guess not.

EDIT 2: Just a further critique on the guard tower, the patrolling guard thing is a good puzzle to begin with, but done once too many times it quickly becomes annoying. Especially if you get caught by a couple of them and have to fight, new ones replace them on the way back down so you've basically achieved nothing. I'm more annoyed at myself for saving halfway up the stairs after killing one, with the potions and spells I've used, I've made things too difficult for myself.

Wow, thanks, Liam! Yeah, see you've sort of demonstrated what I was talking about. Personally, I feel like the game really gets a unique voice around the time you actually meet Tess. At that point you start to see how many options I tried to put in here and how they affect the world around you. In neither of the two reviews that I read did they ever get far enough to meet Tess... so it was just a very, very standard text adventure to them.

Now, I wasn't looking for validation, I wasn't trying to whine, and that's why I'm at least as glad that you mentioned what you did about the problems in the beginning. I'll be sure to check twice for my scenery objects, and I've started typing most of my text in a word editor with a spell checker, so hopefully that will cut down on the small issues.

And as for the sneaking thing, yeah, I definitely got annoyed testing that (then again, I also knew how to avoid getting caught) but I was trying to make sure the game was difficult. My hope was that, since the competition was for entries of arbitrary length, there would be a serious attempt to play through the end, and that if and when they got there they would really feel like they earned it. In general, I think anyone who plays this all the way through will really feel like they've accomplished something because the going gets rough in that guard tower.

Having played it long enough to get out the other side of the guard tower, but not much further, I can offer the following broad notes on it - bear in mind that (a) I haven't played many of these games yet for comparison, and (b) I haven't finished my own first game so it's a bit rich me critisising anything when I haven't managed anything yet!

Anyway, that said, here are some comments in case they help!

[list]
[*] Compared to a few of the 'highest rated' games on textadventures.co.uk I've tried, yours is better. Easily.[/*:m]
[*] Most of the things I wanted to examine had been implemented with some examine text.[/*:m]
[*] Most of the commands I tried to use were also implemented.[/*:m]
[*] I liked the way you changed the colours for light and dark.[/*:m]
[*] I too liked the way you'd implemented fighting to be both exciting but also not requiring quick reactions or fast typing.[/*:m]
[*] To start with, I felt a bit confused and without purpose - I sort of felt I was wandering around a castle without knowing why, and sort of feeling that to be honest I'd be happier just going back to bed. It was only after I'd left the castle that I started to feel I had more of a purpose, or at least more of a purpose to explore rather than sleeping although the state of confusion never fully left me.[/*:m]
[*] It felt a bit as if you'd made four different mini-adventures and tried to sort of glue them together like a kind of medley. There was Escape from the Castle, followed by Hep's Love Life, followed by Goblins in the Castle, followed by Chat Briefly to a Shaman, followed by Up and Down the Tower, followed by Get Killed by a Knight (ok, I guess that one probably has a different ending but that's as far as I've got so far!). The problem with the plot is that it struggles a bit to link these together - the castle is all dramatic and I flee a fire only to end up having a nice chat with some villages and sorting out their love lives, then to go fighting, and then chatting, and then more fighting. It was the Shaman that told me the most about what was going on, but that was a lot to read all at once and referred back to me having been swapped for something which by then I'd forgotten about :-/ I suppose I don't have a good feel for what this place is that has a castle and a fortress and a distant village/town and a set of druids and a prison sort of tied together with a giant forest.[/*:m]
[*] A few loose ends haven't yet been tied up - perhaps they would be if I got further through the game? Things like what happened to the man in the fire, what was Sheila angry about when I'd helped Tess, where did that fire elemental go, how are Hep and Tess getting along.[/*:m]
[*] And I agree with the note above that "look" as an quick alternative for "look around" would be helpful.[/*:m]
[*] But as a medley of mini-adventures, it's quite fun and seems to be pretty well made and easy to interact with. [/*:m][/list:u]

psy

Still on the tower puzzle, but I'd like to retract what I said previously (this seems to be happening a lot ) about the difficulty. It's fine as it is, it was late when I got up to it and I didn't consider my strategy properly and got frustrated. I do have some concerns about locking yourself into an unwinnable state though through not being able to foresee the consequences of your actions, similar to what Sarah brought up earlier. I don't know whether this is true or whether I just haven't found the available answer to a puzzle. I've also encountered a serious bug.

I've gone up the tower, waved the pole and made my way back down again. I've run out of all spells and potions and have only 3% health left. I feel like I've misused the spells that I had ever since escaping the castle, when I used the full heal, not realising the villagers would heal me completely anyway.

Bug: At this point, if I try to attack the two guards blocking the way home it loads the fight screen (choose an attack, guard on the left and right) but there are no action descriptions. I go through the motions of attacking and defending but nothing happens except the change in whether I need to attack or defend. I don't die (which is unlikely with only 3% health left) and nor do the guards. I cannot quit the fight and have to restore the game.

In terms of the unwinnable state and the likelihood of the player making bad decisions about scribing spells, I would suggest an option to retreat to the forest, where you get healed and can scribe spells before heading back out. The flipside to this would be that the tower puzzle is completely reset so that you can't wave the pole etc. then heal yourself, get spells, and go back and deal with the other two guards. This suggestion is to be taken with a grain salt though if there's something that I've missed.
/end.

Okay, that's a huge bug, and I've obviously missed the cause of it. I won't be able to look into it this weekend, but I'll definitely make sure that gets sorted out, whatever it is.
As for your other concerns, I fear that you're right. It's a very draining process if you don't pull it off perfectly, and if you save past the start of the puzzle, you very well may regret it. When I get time to really work on the game and give it a feature update, instead of a bug update, I'll be sure that that comes first. Thanks for your input, guys, this really, really helps.

Ah, this takes me back Once I knocked a few cobwebs out of my hair and grabbed my battered verb lists from long ago, I started to play this adventure. The early timer trap ending the game for me as I tried to free the trapped guy was a bit of a shock, and were it not for my pure stubborn streak I might have thought hmm, that's enough for me. However once I figured how to free him I felt a lot better and continued.

The early puzzles have pure, original, text adventure credentials and I really liked the Well sequence in the town. I've assisted a young flower girl a bit with her looks and her prose, and she is of course grateful for this. However after racing through all of that I'm now gloriously stuck

This is not a bad thing for me, back in the day I would often flash through a lot of content and then hit a brick wall, only to discover several hours/days later the answer was staring me right in the face all the time. So until I find a cooking pot I'll be scratching the stubble for a while

From what I've looked at so far it's on par with a lot of what I used to play in the late 70's early 80's, It's missing a bit of polish, like scene 1 in the bed, Trying to look at the bed or examine it brings up "You can't see that" if the bed is a room then typing look around wakes you up again.

When I used to create these games in GW basic, the hardest and longest job was to try and anticipate what the user would type and rather than just print a standard reply, have a unique set of replies to each situation. That for me makes good sense, it shows the player you have put yourself in their shoes and really do care about the experience they are having. I used to get a real kick when they typed something daft and a sensible reply popped out. You can almost see them mouthing "How did they know"

To finish, Looking forward to completing this and then pulling it apart and seeing how you made it tick. Thanks for all you've done so far.

Kind Regards

DD