Forum Overview :: Zork I: The Great Underground Empire
 
IF I have liked by skip 03/31/2013, 5:30pm PDT
Since ICJ never plans to finish telling us his top 10, here are some that I have opinions on.

Games I like:
Photopia - Second text adventure game that I played and the reason I still play them intermittently. Runs on rails essentially, but I still like it.
Aisle - Another early one for me but it's one where it's so short that playing through multiple times doesn't feel like a slog. Clever idea behind it too
Galatea - Playing around with the idea of NPC individuality.
Violet - Same, but with actual puzzles
Moonlit Tower - Directionless, but the imagery and writing are great.
9:05 - Clever idea
Shade - Same author as above and another clever idea.

Games that were okay:
The Play - The game is short and fine for what it is, but suffers from the typical Twine problem of just being a CYOA game with much more limited choices. These games tend to be so short and insubstantial and have a story that's subservient to the author's politics or agenda. Still, this one pulls it off better than most if only for having a far better presentation.
Electro primitive girl - That being said, the ones that work tend to have interesting view points or strong enough writing to carry it without veering completely into pretentiousness.
Alabaster - I like Emily Short's stuff, but her "fractured fairytales" theme got kind of quick and Alabaster is easily the least interesting of them.
Lost Pig and Fail-Safe - Good in retrospect but some parser problems prevented me from liking these as much as everyone else while I was playing them.

Games I didn't like:
Pick up the Phone Booth and Die - An overrated injoke.
I-0 - Maybe it was more interesting when it first came out? I found it overrated.
anything by Porpentine - I don't know why cyberqueen and howling dogs get so much attention from the indie crowd. The prose is too purple and the plots are too thin.
Zork - I tried playing it many, many years ago after reading some rant about how this was a game from the era when "games made you think". I had no idea what was going on and ended up wandering around confused before closing it. Maybe I'll retry it if I ever catch up in my gaming backlog.
Sabbat - Snake dongs. It might actually work for its imagery if I had a better sense of why I hated myself or the world so much.
Rat Chaos - Another Twine darling.

They're all findable on IFDB has a list of top 50 IF games that I'll one day get around to finishing. I also like the XYZZY awards for finding new games. The IF Comp awards are more hit or miss since they're only supposed to be judged by 2 hours of gameplay.
NEXT REPLY QUOTE
 
IF I have liked by skip 03/31/2013, 5:30pm PDT NEW
    9:05 and Shade were not by the same guy. (Same amount of smug self- NT by satisfaction though) 03/31/2013, 8:11pm PDT NEW
        My mistake. They're both clever and short enough that the gimmick works. NT by skip 03/31/2013, 9:51pm PDT NEW
    I only never finished Zork because of the hunger code. by pinback 03/31/2013, 8:14pm PDT NEW
        No hunger code in Zork by Ice Cream Jonsey 03/31/2013, 8:50pm PDT NEW
            Oh. I thought there was some horseshit like that. by pinback 03/31/2013, 9:04pm PDT NEW
                Re: Oh. I thought there was some horseshit like that. by Ice Cream Jonsey 03/31/2013, 10:28pm PDT NEW
    And then there's Howling Dogs by that guy who made Souffle suck dick 03/31/2013, 8:29pm PDT NEW
        Howling dogs was in my roundup. by skip 03/31/2013, 10:07pm PDT NEW
            Re: Howling dogs was in my roundup. by that guy who made Souffle suck dick 03/31/2013, 10:12pm PDT NEW
                Re: Howling dogs was in my roundup. by Cannibal Dave 03/31/2013, 10:27pm PDT NEW
                    Quicking outing of a regular's anonymous slink back attempt ever NT by fabio 03/31/2013, 11:30pm PDT NEW
                        quickest NT by fabio 03/31/2013, 11:30pm PDT NEW
                    Second person to call it as Zseni. I have my doubts though. :( NT by WITTGENSTEIN 04/01/2013, 4:49pm PDT NEW
                Re: Howling dogs was in my roundup. by Mysterious Stranger 05/30/2013, 11:26pm PDT NEW
    Re: IF I have liked by Mysterio Prime 07/27/2019, 12:05pm PDT NEW
        Teh RPS lists are meant to help their buddies, that's it NT by Ichabod 07/27/2019, 1:40pm PDT NEW
 
powered by pointy