itch.io

For the record--since the deleted comment here suggests that maybe I was confusing this with some other game--my browsing history tells me that what I was playing was https://play.adrift.co/?game=http://www.adrift.co/files/games/TEE.blorb, as opposed to the "v3" you now get from clicking the green arrow.  Clearly this was an old version of the game, but it's not like I deliberately sought out the older version (and I had no way of knowing it wasn't the most recent).

Just a little more on the basic (IMHO) unfriendliness of the game.

> You call Lieutenant Zen on your comm unit.
> "Zen here, captain," he answers promptly. "Any instructions, sir?"
> 1: "What is your position?"
> 2: "Did you find anything on your search?"
> 3: "Jones and Foley are missing, I need you to return here immediately."
> ➢ 1
> You ask Zen what his position is.
> "We're in the base's gymnasium, sir," he tells you. "Kelly here is itching to have a go on some of the exercise machines!" he chuckles.
> "Well tell her she can exercise all the time she wants to once we've solved this problem," you tell him and you hear Lance-Corporal Davey laugh.
> ➢ talk to zen
> You can't see Lieutenant Zen!
> ➢ call zen
> There is no reason for you to call Lieutenant Zen at this particular time.
> ➢ e
> Maybe you should stay here until you have spoken with Lieutenant Zen?

It turns out I was still talking to Zen, and typing "2" in fact triggered conversation 2.  But the game didn't tell me that that was still an option--it looked like the conversation had ended--and when I tried to continue the conversation, it gave me error messages.

I'll grant that it may be a convention of Inform games that, if you're still in conversation, it repeats your conversational options before the next prompt.  As Mike Russo talked about in his review, linked above, the conventions of ADRIFT may be very different than the conventions of Inform.  (Perhaps Inform likes to inform you of things while ADRIFT prefers to keep you adrift.)  And generally I hate when people who are not the target audience leave negative reviews and low ratings--ok, thanks, 30-year-old man ranting on the IMDb about Twilight, I don't care that you hated it, it wasn't for you--so if it's the case that I'm not the target audience for this, I do feel a little bad about the negative review.  But...

Leaving a negative review when you're not the target audience is like not liking spicy food, going to an Indian restaurant, and giving it a 1-star rating because it has all this spicy food.  But in this case it was part of ParserComp, which is more like going to a buffet and rating the dishes and then biting into something incredibly spicy: I had no idea this was going to be food I hate, I was asked to rate the food I ate, I ate this, I hated this, and so.