by bryanb » Sat Oct 10, 2020 3:26 pm
Game: Amazing Quest by Nick Montfort (C64 Basic)
In a word, disappointing. Amazing Quest is a barebones game which limits the user to yes or no inputs as you navigate your space ship back home. The text is minimalistic, boilerplate, and repetitive. You visit various destinations such as cities, moons, planets, and lands. They are assigned a characteristic such as brutal, pious, or diverse. At each location, you can choose to do or not do something such as speak, raid, or send gifts, but you can't choose between different actions at any one location. For instance, suppose you land on a luminous planet. The game might ask you if you want to seek out help. That's your only choice in that case...you can't choose to speak or raid if the game has asked the seek out help question. At different locations, you might pick up items such as jewels or cattle or lose ships depending on your choices. However, I'm not sure the game even tracks the results of your choices. Can you lose all your ships or run out of food or become the richest man in the galaxy? That's unclear, but I LISTed the source code and based on a cursory peak it appears there's not much more to this game than initially meets the eye. In aggregate, your choices feel meaningless, and your probable victory feels as hollow as the lack of fanfare given in the victory message would suggest.
Perhaps I was foolish to let myself get excited to see a C64 game entered into the competition. The thing is the Commodore 64 was a great platform for text adventures and adventure games in general back in the day. You could play anything from Infocom to Level 9 to Dorothy Millard games, or you could design your own adventures with The Quill. People who play this game without any familiarity with the C64 are likely to think it's a really primitive platform that just isn't suited to text adventures which is a real shame. This isn't a good vehicle for nostalgia at all because it's bad for a C64 game and bad for a BASIC text adventure which is really saying something because I've played some really terrible BASIC text adventures in my time.
This game is probably meant to be a parody of both certain older adventure games and modern CYOA games. The introduction and strategy guide (linked to on the game page) feel tongue in cheek. You'll probably need to have a much better sense of humor than me to actually get a laugh out of any of this, however. I will admit as a disclaimer that I'm probably not the best judge of "funny IF" -- this is especially true when neither Douglas Adams nor Robb were involved in the writing as I believe is the case here. Honestly, I didn't even particularly enjoy picking up the telephone booth and dying.
Online play link:
Amazing Quest by Nick Montfort
Game: Amazing Quest by Nick Montfort (C64 Basic)
In a word, disappointing. Amazing Quest is a barebones game which limits the user to yes or no inputs as you navigate your space ship back home. The text is minimalistic, boilerplate, and repetitive. You visit various destinations such as cities, moons, planets, and lands. They are assigned a characteristic such as brutal, pious, or diverse. At each location, you can choose to do or not do something such as speak, raid, or send gifts, but you can't choose between different actions at any one location. For instance, suppose you land on a luminous planet. The game might ask you if you want to seek out help. That's your only choice in that case...you can't choose to speak or raid if the game has asked the seek out help question. At different locations, you might pick up items such as jewels or cattle or lose ships depending on your choices. However, I'm not sure the game even tracks the results of your choices. Can you lose all your ships or run out of food or become the richest man in the galaxy? That's unclear, but I LISTed the source code and based on a cursory peak it appears there's not much more to this game than initially meets the eye. In aggregate, your choices feel meaningless, and your probable victory feels as hollow as the lack of fanfare given in the victory message would suggest.
Perhaps I was foolish to let myself get excited to see a C64 game entered into the competition. The thing is the Commodore 64 was a great platform for text adventures and adventure games in general back in the day. You could play anything from Infocom to Level 9 to Dorothy Millard games, or you could design your own adventures with The Quill. People who play this game without any familiarity with the C64 are likely to think it's a really primitive platform that just isn't suited to text adventures which is a real shame. This isn't a good vehicle for nostalgia at all because it's bad for a C64 game and bad for a BASIC text adventure which is really saying something because I've played some really terrible BASIC text adventures in my time.
This game is probably meant to be a parody of both certain older adventure games and modern CYOA games. The introduction and strategy guide (linked to on the game page) feel tongue in cheek. You'll probably need to have a much better sense of humor than me to actually get a laugh out of any of this, however. I will admit as a disclaimer that I'm probably not the best judge of "funny IF" -- this is especially true when neither Douglas Adams nor Robb were involved in the writing as I believe is the case here. Honestly, I didn't even particularly enjoy picking up the telephone booth and dying.
Online play link: [url=https://ifcomp.org/play/2234/play_online]Amazing Quest by Nick Montfort[/url]