Wow, i didnt expected text game on ld. And what about "help" command? Its pretty hard to play without it.

Good point, I should have added that. I've now added a link to a card-sized quick introduction sheet for people who haven't encountered this sort of thing before. Thanks for looking at my game!

It's old styled but interesting.

First ever text game I have played!

Good dialogue tbf, I enjoyed it, had to use “Solution” text to finish it though :(

I couple of images to represent where you are or what you can do would be great.

Wow, people are actually playing this! Thanks!

@johnyf yes, it's definitely not new. I wasn't going for innovation here :)

@lukel I bet there are many other games that would be a far better introduction to the genre! I suspect I should have spent more time adding subtle clues throughout, and maybe some adaptive hints, and then of course having someone else playtest it would be ideal. And yes, graphics might be nice, as well as some music.


I'll have to practice a bit so I get the hang of writing this sort of text. Being slightly stuck for inspiration in every room isn't fun, but I'm sure I can learn!

It's so great to see an Inform game! I like how you bait with a false sense of this being a mere nod to the theme, but then deliver with the theme when we don't expect it. I think this game would be harder, and a bit more engaging if the space was scenery and described innocuously in the room descriptions, so it's not obvious that the space is a thing you can pick up right away. This game has some of the problems that most inform games have (find-the-verb, needing more scenery, etc.) but that's more a problem with the genre than anything else. I enjoyed this game, and I would love to see a bigger, more fully-realized version of it! One nitpick: Simulated Authentic Perspective Creation Engine does not spell S.P.A.C.E. it spells S.A.P.C.E.

Not very interested in text based game. Having help command and some bold text is necessary.

I was surprised how engaging this was, some work on the text would be needed, alas time is so short on these things. Not sure if music or something can play in the background, might add to the transitions, but that's been mentioned, some pictures for each place would be cool as well or some ascii art!

I'm really bad at these text adventure games. I got stuck at the astronomer (I know the beginning bit). From what I did see though it is pretty good. Having a list of possible commands and highlighting interactable objects with color or bold or italics would go a long way towards usability I think. I laughed cause I showed the astronomer my large screw, but he was not impressed.

@incobalt One thing I didn't know (and still don't) is how hard this kind of game in this kind of context should be. I know part of the answer is probably some sort of adaptive hint system, but as I mentioned I'm not very experienced with inform so right now I don't really know how to do that. More scenery could be easily done by not messing up my sleep schedule with too much caffeine early on so I'm not a zombie half of the time :). And yes, I'll also use that as my excuse for the acronym mistake! (Or maybe I'll say it was part of the plot, the entire world being a bit off). Thank you for your feedback, this sort of response is what I need to want to use inform again next time!

@trystan-sarrade yes, if I do this sort of thing again I'll definitely try to make it friendlier for people who aren't used to this sort of thing. Thanks for trying it out anyway!

@andre-van-zuydam music is technically possible I believe, but I haven't tried it. I'll have to play with the various tools people use to create music one of these weeks. I tend to feel music doesn't matter a lot and I prefer my own background sounds, but then when I play a game with good music I do enjoy it more so I know I'm wrong about that. Ascii art, hmmm... Yes, that's something I might try!

@phlip45 the astronomer is great because he doesn't care about anything other than looking at space, which means the default responses inform provides for a person work very well (he's unimpressed, he isn't interested, or he doesn't reply). I wasn't sure at all if I wanted an actual NPC in the game because one of the things I *do* remember from back when I played a bit with this is that conversation is hard. (hint: after taking the screw you could have taken something else in the screw warehouse)

Again, thanks for all the great feedback! I now know the game was too hard, too easy, too subtle, and not subtle enough, which I think means I fit into the genre properly :)

@frank-gevaerts The problem with interactive fiction is you have people who know how to work these games, and you have people who really don't, and it's a huge divide. The trend right now, though, is to be more accessible, and to break out of the shell of ultra hard puzzles and adamant verb choices (or even no verb choices at all with choice-based stuff). I'm not saying your game was too easy. It had puzzles, and they made sense. I just thought that it was too obvious that the space was an object you could pick up because of how Inform shows non-scenery objects in the room. I think it looks better and flows better as scenery instead, like with the button (that I pushed at least 20 times).

@incobalt yes, I actually wanted to make it obvious that space could be picked up, and yet some people didn't spot that (I think). Mostly I just need to practice a lot more, and play more current IF from experienced people. This was actually the first IF thing I ever wrote that has an ending...

And the game told you not to press the button again! If you did and nothing useful happened, it's your own fault :) (Arthur Dent didn't press it again!)

nice man

Nice old school text adventure. Pretty funny one at that too. Perhaps a bit unintentionally funny with the very old school ability to try to do any action on any object (things like screw astronomer are nice). The part with the shoehorn was quite good.

@paulo-augusto thanks!

@drevilbrain the astronomer's opinion about that was definitely uninintentional. I hadn't spotted it :) The default responses in inform7 really seem to have been written with this astronomer in mind!
At one point early on I wanted to make a game purely about running in hyperspace, but I couldn't think of anything useful for that. The shoehorn is a remnant of that.

Tricky and funny! I felt pretty smart putting the space in the telescope, but then I got stuck outside the hyperspace gym, because I didn't realise what happened when I got on the treadmill. Made me feel nostalgic for Zork and all those old text adventures. :thumbsup:

"Simulated Authentic Perspective Creation Engine"… SAPCE? I like this, it's got the same kind of absurd "verb humor" that some of the old SCUMM adventure games had.

I had a great time with this Frank - I spent about 30min trying out various things before solving everything. Nice work putting this together!

@andy-d I'll put the treadmill thing down to "not enough polish". I bet more prose would have made it clearer! Thanks for your review!

@tobiasvl yes, I will maintain that that wrong acronym was on purpose :) I like word-based humour, coming up with it can be a lot of fun (and be frustrating if you can't think of anything), but getting it more or less accidentally when people combine unexpected things really is the best!

@redhermit Thanks! I'm glad it was entertaining enough to want to spend that long on it without throwing things at the screen!

A nifty text adventure :)

And of course I got stuck right at the telescope part (or, really, on the pick-up-space part). I then looked at the solution (boo, hiss) but somehow managed to botch things up.
There was no space on the debris field, so I couldn't fix the airship. Also, the basket somehow followed me to the gym.
I loved the bit, where the car used the spot I took the space from ;)

@endurion I don't know where the space from the debris field went, but I think I know what the basket bug is: I believe the basket only appeared after adding the last space early on, which I changed near the end, and the basket is implemented as a "vehicle" in inform7 (which gives some of the responses for free), which means you can go places in it...
Thanks for trying it out, and thanks for the bug report!

An interesting text adventure game, quite difficult, but entertaining as hell once you figure out what you need to do. I'll admit, I did have to check the solution to find out I actually had to pick up the space, that was clever. The text was well written, and eventually finding the correct solution was very satisfying. I especially enjoyed "screw astronomer" --> "they might not like that", top marks on humour for that one! It definitely could've used a help command, that would've made the game a bit easier to play, but overall, I found it to be a very entertaining and well put together text adventure game!

@mikethewayne Thanks! I hope you also found other bits humorous, that particular bit is purely accidental, I didn't think of it :)

With all the positive responses, I'm starting to get enough motivation to figure out how to do decent help and hint systems in time for the next LD. Previously I was wondering if another genre would be better, but I like text, and if I can make it more obvious which things are sensible to try I think it's worth at least another go!

I was watching @philstrahl play your game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-osF36Qsiuo) and he was stuck early on, and it was frustrating because he wasn't trying the things I would have tried. Then I realized I was silly: I can play the game myself and try those things myself! I'm glad I did, because the puzzles were fun and it would have been a shame to have them spoiled by a video of someone else playing your game. I finished the whole thing without any further hints, it was hard but fair!

@gelisam Thanks! Yes, Phil did get a bit stuck, maybe he wasn't very spatially aware that day :) Watching him play was still excellent though, it was the first time I actually saw where people actually have issues and what verbs I definitely need to add next time.

so i didn't understand the game because mainly i didn't read the instructions well but that's the thing the presantaion is a little bit dull even though u meant to do it that way it's still nt a good option

@diaxcor a text game will of course always be a text game (which might or might not be a genre you like). That said, I could probably have done more to present it, either by adding graphics inside the game (which I'm not sure I want to do) or by custom cover art, and of course not assuming that everyone will have played some interactive fiction before.

Okay, I finally finished it now that I knew that I could pick up space! Very nice! Makes me want to play some more text adventures again... :)

It is comical how bad I am at these games. Still, this was nice :) Good Job!

Oh, I haven't played a text adventure since the late 80s - was a flash back :) Go west. And I instantly tied to smash that red button only to find out the panel needed "fixing" but "fix panel" came as a surprise to the parser. Fair enough, I'm now searching for the screw driver. I like the humor, "Reality Control Centre" haha. Thanks for making this one :) Good work!

@ratherjolly Thanks!
@imphenzia Thanks! Next time I'll try to read through the entire text properly to see if I can find any obvious missing verbs like that.