It’s fine.
Danny Dipstick is a short game with no higher ambition than to entertain for an hour or so. It certainly meets that goal, but it could have set its sights much higher.
Tone
The game faithfully — even doggedly — adheres to the tradition of old parser games, from the file format to the simple mechanics to the choice of verbs to the sparse rooms. This makes my withered curmudgeonly heart sing.
While playing, I would have liked some more flavour, more described items (e.g. the koalas), and important items folded into room descriptions instead of “you see here”. On reflection, though, I think they add to the nostalgia.
There are a few moments of sheer comedic genius: the whole sequence in the bar was my favourite.
Plot
The game follows Danny Dipstick, a dork trying to get a girlfriend at a nightclub, but beset by a series of problems.
The plot is linear and predictable: He solves these problems in sequence, with no acknowledgement that needing a change of clothes and needing a change of personality are quite different problems.
A thin plot isn’t necessarily a flaw, but I expected twists, new hooks, and character development. I would have liked either more plot, or clarity from the outset that the story would be very light.
Puzzles
The puzzles are, frankly, a bit naff. They’re mostly a series of fetch quests, often with little connection to the problem they solve. The solutions are often unrealistic — sometimes humorously so, sometimes embarrassingly.
I mostly found them very easy and would have liked the difficulty to ramp up near the end, but it’s a good level of difficulty for new players.
Politically-correct pearl clutching
I was a little put off by the treatment of class and race in the game. The characters fall into two categories: Those of the same class as the PC, whose race is unspecified, and whom the PC tries to do favours for; and service workers, whose race is usually specified (Indian, Maori), and whose good opinion the PC doesn’t care about. It’s not, like, Birth of a Nation, it just made me a bit uncomfortable.
I also kind of got the impression that the narrative was treating the clerk’s Indian-ness like some sort of personality flaw, which was quite perplexing.
Specific feedback for the author (contains mild spoilers)
- “show [something] to clerk” should either be treated as a synonym of “give”, or produce a custom response
- “read mints” should be a synonym of “read label”
- “search rack” produces “Searching the magazine rack just reveals lots and lots of magazines. You wonder whether there’s anything underneath it. You wonder whether there’s anything else underneath it.” (note repetition)
- The High Roller club is too sparse and needs to be fleshed out, with a puzzle or at least pretty scenery
- The bartender is too prominent to be just scenery; either fold him into the scenery or have a puzzle involve him
- The “Hmmm, let’s stop and consider this.” paragraph is redundant since the bouncer already said the same thing twice immediately before. Maybe only show it when the player talks to the bouncer more than once?
- There’s no way Robbie could accomplish what he does in only a few hours. This breaks suspension of disbelief
- It’d be polite to include help, hints, or at least a walkthrough
- Any way you can release a web version with an interpreter? Inform tools tend to do that pretty well.