A.L.O.N.E: Always Lonely on Newyear's Eve by qrunchmonkey
I'm just going to be straight with you: This is a text based game.
This year I wanted to give myself a bigger challenge than just throwing together a simple flash game like I've done in previous years, so I decided to learn Inform7 this weekend, and now you get to play the result.
This game has multiple endings, so you might want to play though it a few times.
If you've never played a text based adventure game before, here are some basic guidelines:
Commands are generally phrased as "verb noun", in the simplest way possible (so, "take phone" or "go north" instead of "pick up the cell phone on the end table" or "walk to the north")
Pay close attention to the descriptions of the rooms (the few paragraphs after the bold name of a room when you first enter) Sometimes the description of a room will change based on what you do there. You can see the description of the room you're currently in at any type by typing "look"
You can "look at" and "look under" anything named in the room description. Usually you don't have to type out the full name of the thing, so "look at drawers" is the same as "look at chest of drawers" You can also "take", "drop", "throw", "wear", "take off", "turn on", "turn off", "open" or "eat" some things you find.
If you're stuck, please post a comment here and I'll give out some hints. If you're REALLY stuck, there is solution link that contains the solutions for two of the many endings.
This year I wanted to give myself a bigger challenge than just throwing together a simple flash game like I've done in previous years, so I decided to learn Inform7 this weekend, and now you get to play the result.
This game has multiple endings, so you might want to play though it a few times.
If you've never played a text based adventure game before, here are some basic guidelines:
Commands are generally phrased as "verb noun", in the simplest way possible (so, "take phone" or "go north" instead of "pick up the cell phone on the end table" or "walk to the north")
Pay close attention to the descriptions of the rooms (the few paragraphs after the bold name of a room when you first enter) Sometimes the description of a room will change based on what you do there. You can see the description of the room you're currently in at any type by typing "look"
You can "look at" and "look under" anything named in the room description. Usually you don't have to type out the full name of the thing, so "look at drawers" is the same as "look at chest of drawers" You can also "take", "drop", "throw", "wear", "take off", "turn on", "turn off", "open" or "eat" some things you find.
If you're stuck, please post a comment here and I'll give out some hints. If you're REALLY stuck, there is solution link that contains the solutions for two of the many endings.
| Play in browser | http://media.improbablesciences.com/ld48/alone/play.html |
| .gblorb (Play using Gluxe or Zoom) | http://media.improbablesciences.com/ld48/alone/A-L-O-N-E-.gblorb |
| Source | http://media.improbablesciences.com/ld48/alone/source.html |
| solutions (contains spoilers!) | http://media.improbablesciences.com/ld48/alone/solution.txt |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3947 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 22% | 533 |
| Overall | 2.93 | 230 |
| Audio | 1.00 | 594 |
| Community | 2.33 | 404 |
| Fun | 2.60 | 245 |
| Graphics | 1.43 | 680 |
| Humor | 2.50 | 142 |
| Innovation | 2.36 | 370 |
| Mood | 2.77 | 204 |
| Theme | 3.00 | 225 |
Scored 79 out of a possible 200.
Sweet writing, very fleshed out world. Both passage of time and space is played on really well. I appreciated unlocking achievements, and keeping the scoring system intact definitely added incentive to keep playing the game.
Take said, the game still limits control visibility, inherent to IFs, for unfamiliar players--and I'm still one of those. For a large part of the game, I didn't know what I could do or how to do the things I could do. I understand that stating controls for everything could spoil the experience of figuring them out, but interactions like looking under a bed (I live in a life without space under beds) might be impossible to just know for some players. The phone took me a large portion of the game to figure out to work (type mail is a weird command, and I still don't know how to respond). Maybe a command list of used commands would have helped, given your audience.
Really cool IF though, and very impressive for one of your firsts. :)