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My problem with most modern games is the extreme boredom that overcomes me when I watch someone playing. The age of increasingly realistic rendering has brought with it the real-life tedium of getting from place to place, combined with the chores that need to be performed (missions, etc)... Having made it my life's goal to _not_ have to do what some jackass tells me to do, why would I let a game boss me around?
Interactive fiction games, especially adventure-like games are not immune from that, but without photo-realism and bound by textual descriptions only, the tasks seem more interesting, anyway. And I can visualize them any way I feel like.
But it's often a slog, with a complicated sequence of actions to unlock puzzles, complete with restarting all the time and painstaking mapping, with the result of a complicated list of actions that must be followed, exactly, or spending another half-hour repeating the recipe.
I've been looking at the more loosey-goosey titles that are less puzzle-based. I mean I love puzzles, but there is something about the adventure puzzles that is just tedious - you better get a key here, a pipe there, a bottle of rum in the third place, or later you can't open the door or hit the troll on the head with a pipe, or whatnot.
So far I've been frotzing around 'Mercy' -- not long enough to say anything about it (just a quick ruxtn around the hospital). 50 Years of Text Games suggested 'The Space Under The Window' by Plotkin - I haven't tried it yet.
So I am excited about the idea, although in practice the games I've tried are frustrating. I am also looking forward to trying my hand at the craft, as all the tools and docs are out there.
Posted in: s/Interactive-Fiction
2023-08-25 · 2 weeks ago · 👍 Ruby_Witch
You know what's funny? I actually find modern/recent games to be a lot more simplified and streamlined than older games, with a lot less of the "slog" factor. For example, Everquest and Ultima Online really emphasized the whole "run across the whole world in real time to get where you're going" whereas more current offerings are a whole lot more likely to provide you with options for instanced/instant action.
As for text-based games that truly minimize the unnecessarily complex puzzle aspects, I would recommend trying out a game like Roadwarden, which is gripping and replayable without feeling unweildy. Also, maybe check out some of the Choice of Games titles, mentioned by @Morgan in another thread.
2023-08-26 · 13 days ago
You might want to check out the games from the IF Art show, which were explicitly puzzleless. Galatea and Exhibition are two I can certainly recommend, and I think The Fire Tower was also nice.
2023-08-27 · 13 days ago
I quit playing Sims back in the day when I realized I was washing my virtual dishes but not my real dishes.
IF puzzles can be a real pain. To be honest I don't find them fun at all. The problem is that IF is stuck conceptually in the 1970s, with a few exceptions. There is little sense of the reality of the spaces being proposed, so action is limited.
This will change as AI develops, but so too will games themselves, transforming from a passtime into a danger as they are tailored on the fly by AI to individually addict and distract us. The goal of the game of the future will be to reduce the human body to a mechanical device capable of producing labor, or to annihilate the will to live.
2023-08-30 · 9 days ago