itch.io

Ah merci !

Les notes de bas de page, c’était surtout pour procrastiner sur le vrai contenu. (Oui, même en 4 heures d’écriture on trouve le temps de procrastiner ! ^^) J’avais un peu peur qu’elle détonnent avec le reste, mais bon… (Il faudrait que je lise House of Leaves, depuis le temps que j’en entends parler.)

(Et quelle rapidité ! Déjà en train de jouer aux participations !)

Merci, ça fait plaisir !

Je suis au courant de tous les petits défauts, mais vu comment je m’y suis pris au dernier moment, c’était prévisible ! Par exemple, j’avais prévu quelque chose de plus compliqué et intéressant à la place de l’énigme du vitrail, mais il ne restait que 3 heures avant la limite à ce moment-là alors j’ai dû faire un truc vite fait à la place.

Je suis en train de retravailler dessus en tout cas !

Sinon, je suis tout à fait au courant de ta traduction de Dialog. Mais concernant ce que j’ai fait, il s’agirait davantage d’un fork qu’une traduction directe de la bibli standard. (Il se trouve que c’est en français parce que j’écris des fictions interactives en français, mais même si je n’avais écrit qu’en anglais, j’aurais fait un fork.)

J’ai ajouté des choses et modifié d’autres (ou je vais le faire) pour que ça corresponde aux besoins de la Princesse et de mes prochains projets. Notamment, la possibilité de modifier la personne et le temps de l’histoire et des actions réalisables par les PNJ. Et je n’essaie pas de maintenir la compatibilité avec les anciennes machine comme le C64.

Donc je pense que ta traduction a toujours lieu d’être, si jamais tu continues de travailler dessus ! En tout cas, tu peux reprendre des trucs que j’ai fait pour l’intégrer à ta traduction (quand mon dépôt sera public).

Mais du coup je retire ce que j’ai écrit dans le jeu : la Princesse spéculaire n’est pas tout à fait de la 1re fiction interactive en français écrite avec Dialog !

Concept incroyable et vraiment bien exploité. Je n’ai absolument aucune idée de comment je vais noter tellement le jeu est atypique, mais je me souviendrai longtemps de ma partie.

J’ai écrit une critique plus complète ici.

Concept incroyable et vraiment bien exploité. Je n’ai absolument aucune idée de comment je vais noter tellement le jeu est atypique, mais je me souviendrai longtemps de ma partie.

J’ai écrit une critique plus complète ici.

Belle présentation, très bien écrit, et récit marquant. Ça manque peut-être d’interactivité, mais ça n’est vraiment grave.

J’ai écrit une critique plus complète ici.

Belle présentation, très bien écrit, et récit marquant. Ça manque peut-être d’interactivité, mais ça n’est vraiment grave.

J’ai écrit une critique plus complète ici.

Vraiment intéressant et original ! Et techniquement, ça en jette.

J’ai tenté d’écrire une critique. Je pense que la lire est plus long que de jouer une partie. :p

Je me demandais si tu avais écrit tout le texte, ou si tu avais directement repris certains passages de l’opéra (ou du moins une traduction).

Vraiment intéressant et original ! Et techniquement, ça en jette.

J’ai tenté d’écrire une critique. Je pense que la lire est plus long que de jouer une partie. :p

Et enfin, et ça m’attriste de devoir t’annoncer cela, mais je crains que l’accent sur « cosí » est dans le mauvais sens. Il faut un accent grave et non aigu.

Merci !

Oui, Dialog est vraiment bien (mieux qu’Inform 7 sur pas mal de points, je trouve). Je vais sûrement écrire un article à ce propos après le concours.

Merci ! Et rassure-toi, si tu as été bloqué, ça n’est pas entièrement ta faute si tu as eu besoin de la solution : le jeu manque un peu de finition. (Et puis, la solution est là pour ça.)

I think both are largely comparable, especially if you don’t use “advanced” features such as team work, code reviews or CI/CD, and you only want to host your source and use simple features such as issues.

If that matters to you, GitHub is owned by Microsoft whereas GitLab is open-source. With GitLab, you can download a full copy of your repo along with its metadata (issues, comments, merge requests and so on) for archival or to put it on your own hosted instance (if that becomes necessary to you, which I doubt).

GitHub is way more popular though, so you may have better visibility there, but I’m not sure that really matters for a small Adventuron project.

Disclaimer: I prefer GitLab, mainly because I favour open-source projects. Also, I used Bitbucket before, but it stopped supporting Mercurial and I had to convert all my repos to Git myself, and import them somewhere on GitLab, and it was difficult/impossible to keep metadata such as comments and issues. (Luckily I didn’t have a lot of metadata.) This wouldn’t have happened with an open-source platform such as GitLab.

Also, I’m far from being an expert and mainly use GitLab for small personnal projects.

it’s always good as there are just so many interactions and it is hard to think of them all!

I can’t agree more!

SNEEZE isn’t a command you can type in.

In the way it’s suggested (if I recall correctly),you’d think you could type it, so it’s a bit misleading. But actually that make sense. People don’t sneeze on command after all! (But since you don’t spend a lot of time in the chimney, it not obvious it’s a random chance.)

Well, I guess I’m overthinking it for a fun easter egg! ^^

Sorry, but I find you didn’t really explains anything. I understood how the list works. I understood that having a limited inventory is for “realism”. But if it was really realistic, then the inventory limit would be 2, because an elf has only 2 hands; so realism is not an excuse since 10 is already unrealistic anyway. And going down this hole, there shouldn’t be any elves: that’s so unrealistic!

Yes, I’m exaggating a bit, but the point still stands: I prefer having an “unrealistic” game than a tedious one. If the inventory limit doesn’t enhance the gameplay, the message, the feeling, or the game in general, it’s not necessary, especially when it renders the game tedious.

You repeat that once you know what to do, it’s OK, once you know what item you need, ignore the ones you don’t. But you still have to gather that knowledge, and it’s tedious. How was I supposed to know at the beginning that I don’t need to take the items I encounter?

You can ask about the materials, but you don’t need to if you don’t want to.

You can read all the topics, but you don’t need to unless you want to.

But the games suggests that you can ask or consult, so it’s natural to suppose you should do it or that’s important. I can’t magically guess that it’s not important.

It sounds like you made the mistake of asking for everything, whether you needed it or not.

We could argue that it’s not a mistake, but that bad game design led me to believe it was important to ask, but no, I didn’t ask for everything. Just that having to memorise where I should get the items, and the prospect that I’ll have to ask all these ingredients eventually makes me not wanting to play.

You also don’t need to memorise the locations, as you don’t know where those locations are until you’ve found them and once you’ve found them, you’ve found the elves. Simple.

OK, but I still need to memorise where they are so that I know which direction to take when I want to go there. And even if you don’t need to memorise the names strictly speaking, it still adds a cognitive load; that, plus the list of tasks and ingredients and childs, and so on. Everything may be logical, there’s still a lot of information to pick up in a short time.

Draw a map!

I could, and usually it doesn’t bother me, but you still have too look at it each time you want to move.

If you play it in a window and resize the window to a comfortable size, the font gets smaller and you don’t have to do as much scrolling.

I tried, but since everything scales with the window (font size and image size), it didn’t change anything.

Well, my answer is getting a bit long. To summarise, your arguments boil down to “the game is easy/OK once you know how to play it”. That’s the problem. I didn’t know and I can’t know it if everything in the game just looks like a tedious chore. At this point it’s just poor game design. (No offence, but that’s my opinion.) And that’s a shame because I can see a lot of work has gone into the game.

I guess there’s an audience for this kind of game, but visibly I’m not part of it! And judging by your “Fun” placement, I might not be the only one. (All of this is still relative of course, you still got over 3/5.)

If you know that you have an audience that thinks like you and likes this kind of games, then great, continue and don’t care about all I just said!

But don’t dismiss your players’ feedback by just saying that they are wrong and the game is easy once you know it; the game nevers shows you that’s it’s easy. (If that’s wasn’t the intention of you answer, sorry but that’s how it sounded to me.)

Anyway, I don’t mean to sound harsh, so I’ll just stop. I sure hope to revisit the game once I get some time.

Yes, I think the scoring is still relatively fair in this jam. I’m just new to how itch.io computes the score.

(I still find the difference in the number of votes quite big, though.)

The results are here! Congrats to Errol, and to everyone else!

https://itch.io/jam/an-adventuron-christmas-jam/results

I admit I’m a bit baffled with the disparities in the number of votes (the first having twice as many as ~half of the other entries). And itch.io’s algorithm lowered the score of the ones with less entries, which I understand, but which may not be totally fair when there not too many votes (they range between 12-28 per game).

Actually I didn’t dislike the game, I still enjoyed my play, but I don’t think it really fits the jam.

I didn’t want to telegraph the plot twist

I understand, but there’s a difference between “not to telegraph” and “straight up lying”! :p (I guess I’m exagerating a bit.)

And the shift and tone would be very brutal, just as it was for Terry

I don’t think it’s a bad thing for the shift to be brutal, in fact it works OK in the game, but again, maybe not for this Christmas jam.

For the rating of ‘overall enjoyment’, I’m pretty sure I’d be scoring low across many players.

You placed first! So I guess people mainly rated the overall enjoyment according on the technical/graphical/writing achievement than on the Christmas spirit. (I have to tell I’m a bit disapointed with my own placement.)

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this code.

Unfortunately, I was a bit away from Adventuron and the jam (I had other priorities), so I didn’t have time to add it to the game. I’ll keep it under my belt for next time, whenever there is one!

I’ve got some experience with Inform, and since a “lean” action doesn’t exist by default in Inform, I find it more intuitive to just drop the ladder (just use the verbs/tools you are already used to instead of trying new ones.)

But I get your point, which is very valid. I’ll think about it next time.

I don’t know any of the references you are giving (except Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but I didn’t even play them and that was not the point :p). I’ll have to check them out.

Mind giving some Scandinavian film names, if you have some? It seems I’m not as much a person of culture as yourself! ^^

Others seemed to like it very much, but it didn’t click with me.

I think the main problem is the dissonnance I felt between each part of the game.

• The name Present Quest implies a game where the goal is to collect presents, but it’s not the case at all, so I think it’s not well chosen.
• The various stats implies that there will be some management in the game (which tells me that I should make sure I’m never hungry and that I should think to save regularly), but I had the feeling it was very difficult, if not impossible, to starve or run out of energy (the game always forces you to eat when you are hungry). Moreover, I didn’t find it enhanced the rest of the game (all this UI makes me more detached from the story and the emotional impact.)
• The shift in tone and mood was pretty brutal. I know, the game warned me, but since the game is not advertised as such (for me, “Present Quest, a visual novel Christmas adventure” with cute graphics is not a game that will have such a mood swing), it’s a bit jarring. Maybe it’s the point of the game, to show that anything can happen suddenly, but then I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a Christmas jam.
• The puzzles were too arbitrary, unlikely and disconnected from the plot to my taste.

I also found the puzzles too difficult, and Pel was not always really helping, because while I knew what to do, the answer I was finding did not match. (For example, for the bus puzzle, she tells me I should follow the line to make numbers, but I already understood that part; it’s just that the numbers I was finding by doing exactly what she was saying didn’t give the right answer, so I guessed semi-randomly in the end. The game states that Pel eventually gives you the answer, but that’s not true, she only tells you how to find it.) And for the puzzle requiring some 80s culture, I wasn’t even born at that time, so it was not too evident/easy to find the answer (fortunately, Wikipedia exists :p).

On the good sides, it was well written and the characters were compelling. And technically-speaking, the game was really impressive, with all that UI and animations.

So for me, while a good game, I don’t think it worked as a whole, neither as a Christmas game. Or maybe I’m just not the target audience, since it looks I’m the only one thinking that.

One of my favourite.

The theme interpretation is very clever, and the game had a “real game” feeling as opposed to an interactive fiction (which is not a good or bad thing, but it helped distinguish it against the other entries), with the different gameplays and the character moving within the rooms.

Christmas-wise, I think it worked well? While I’m not sure I fully understood the ending, I found it kind of sad, but if fitted well with the overall mood.

A great entry.

A nice classic and retro adventure game.

Unfortunately it lacked some polish. Some examples:

• You can OPEN OVEN but not X OVEN.
• X PLUG works, but not X HOLE.
• X LABEL doesn’t work, you have to READ LABEL
• Often you have to USE an item, but it’s not obvious, and it doesn’t work with everything. (I mean, if USE SADDLE works, USE CATAPULT ought to be, right?)
• The milk wasn’t obvious to make.
• You have to FIRE CATAPULT, you can’t KNOCK SHELF.

Apart of that, it was a nice and entertaining game, and not too difficult, everything was logical. And I liked the presence of red herrings, their quantity was well dosed and did not interfere with the rest of the game in my opinion.

The suggestions at the end are a good idea, too, altough I didn’t manage to do them (for example, I tried to SNEEZE in the chimney but it did nothing.)

I had a great time overall!

Short and sweet game, with a different setting that most of the other entries.

The only thing I didn’t really like is that you have to look under or behind things, which is not that common nowadays in interactive fictions.

Aside of that, I really liked it, and the achievements were a nice surprise (even though I didn’t try to get them all; I’m too lazy :p)

That was a very strange but cute game. Who would have thought pigeons would be so great in a Christmas setting?

I haven’t tried the HARD mode, but the puzzles in EASY mode were a bit too on the easy side (which is perfect for children, though).

The graphics are great, and so is the music (Was I the only one to listen to the final music up to the end?)

Overall, even if it was a bit short and simple, the game was one of my favourite!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish the game: I’m missing one gift and that’s too bad since there seems to be a second extensive part to the game.

I had a bit of trouble navigating the locations, because there were several locations that were too similar (the snowy plains), and the diagonal directions (which I think could’ve been replace by cardinal ones easily) make it more difficult to have a mental map.

The graphics were amongst the best, and the setting was great (at last somewhere other that the “true” North Pole!)

It’s a bit difficult to find the exact subject to discuss with the NPCs.

Last, the help would’ve been more useful if it didn’t show the full list of common commands when no hint is available in the location. It would have been better to have a HELP command that showed how to play, and a HINT command that showed a relevant hint (or told “No hints available in this location”).

Overall, the game was charming and the NPCs colourful, so I’ll try to finish it one day.

Being French, I have absolutely no familiarity with Wodehouse, and the style made the text a bit difficult to read, but I have to say I enjoyed the story and the mood!

I also appreciated the efforts you’ve gone to increase the accessibility: highlighting the directions is really nice when there is some much text, the complete hints are helpful, and disabling the slang is a nice idea (although I played with the slang and it did not trouble me that much).

The puzzles, even if logical, were a bit difficult, though.

Often, you have to type an action with an object that doesn’t exit; for example, you have to UNSCREW HOOK, but X HOOK does nothing, so I just thought the hook wasn’t implemented therefore I didn’t try to unscrew it.

The hints were sometimes misleading. For example, one of them says that you “have a closer look at the tip of the cane”, but X TIP doesn’t work. But that didn’t happen often and overall the progressive hints were very helpful.

Having a single illustration for each region made it a bit difficult to navigate, but I found that each of them summarised very well the entirety of each region.

Still, despite those flaws, I loved having a game that was more linear and narrative than the others, and without elves nor reindeers. ;) (That’s too bad I couldn’t appreciate the Wodehousian style since I have no familiarity with him.)

I have to admit I didn’t finish the game (if fact I just dropped it at the beginning).

First I looked at the list and found it very long. Then I found out that I should ask Neldor about each child and gather multiple ingredients for each of their gifts. Then I found out that I should ask about each ingredient, then ask for them. Then I found the book in the classroom. When I saw all these chores I had to do, I just wanted to stop, but I told myself that I would at least try to make a gift. But then I hit the inventory limit (that seems to serve no purpose other than bother the player), and at this point I just gave up. (I mean, an inventory limit when you have to pick up so many things in the game?)

And I don’t even mention that you have to memorise the elves’ name and location, and find your way in a sprawling map with similar locations (the corridors).

I think the game would have been better without the inventory limit, with indications in the descriptions saying where the directions lead, and with a smaller font size (there are so many lists, and they never fit on the screen so you have to scroll all the time).

Also, instead of overwhelming the player with so many tasks right at the beginning, maybe the player should just be given only one, that would act as a tutorial: making a single gift to familiarise himself with the different shops and people. After that, he could be given the rest of the objectives.

That’s a shame, because a lot of work seems to have been put into the game, the graphics are nice and you are pushing what Adventuron can do.

Or maybe I just wasn’t the target audience (and being tight on time didn’t help me, of course.)

The game was a bit simplistic and it was difficult to find what to do (there’s no feedback when you set up the trap).

I wonder if there are several solutions to the game (but I haven’t replayed it to check). Because a lot of locations seemed useless (e.g. under the stairs or the entrance), and I could think of a lot of ways to trap Santa, even given the small number of objects. You could drop the ball in the chimney; tie the wire a several places to make Santa trip; put the tree under the stairs to lure Santa and lock him up there; and so on.

So the game could become interesting if there were achievements, and the goal was to find all the different ways to trap Santa.

There are small typos and bugs, too (for example, X FLOSS produces “Nothing catches your eye”).

On the good points, the minimalistic writing and illustrations worked quite well. I also found that the dark wire-frame drawings were perfect for the mood: I really had the feeling I was in a dark house in the middle of the night, and the colors helped find what was important. Overall I still had a nice playthrough.

A strange use of the Christmas theme, but that worked well.

A bit more polish is needed though. For example:

• I couldn’t take the camp flyer (the game kept asking me “Which flyer?”) so I had to use TAKE ALL and go to another location to examine it.
• X AD doesn’t work, but READ AD, yes.
• You can’t examine the leaves in your inventory.
• There were some guess the verb, as mentioned by others.

But while the game is rough at the edges, the interlocked progressions at the multiple regions were interesting and natural, and the puzzles were creative. And the teleporting graphic was a nice touch.

So a interesting entry, that deserves a bit more work on it!

That was a very original entry, that worked surprisingly well given the constraints.

I think the graphics didn’t render very well, and sometimes, to show your intent of using an object, you have to take it and drop it right away, which is not very intuitive.

But other than that, the descriptions were charming and the puzzles, nice, as well as the surreal atmosphere. A good if a bit simple game overall!

Sure, but for me that’s not a beginners tutorial, that’s just good writing/game design.

The jam rules seem to specifically say that this rating is supposed to be for beginners tutorials, that teach people unfamiliar with text adventure how to play (e.g. the TALP initiative).

I’ll try to revise my ratings, but ultimately that’s not too important, since it’s the “Overall” rating that matters most.

I’ve finally rated the games (even though I didn’t or couldn’t finish all of them). I’ll write comments tomorrow!

I’ve got a question: since the tutorial is optional, but you still have to rate it, what do you do if the game doesn’t have a tutorial? I put 1 star in that case, but I’m not sure it’s the best thing to do.

While I likely won’t participate in another Adventuron jam (I just wanted to try Adventuron this time, and Inform 7 still suits my needs better), here are some thoughts.

myths and legends of a foreign land

I’m note sure that’s a very good idea, because it’s possible for the games to be disrespectul in some way for the foreign culture. It’s difficult to make enough research to stay true to the original material, especially during a jam. (All this depends of the chosen culture of course, there’s more risk with marginalised ones.)

For this Christmas jam, I think it should have begun sooner, and the voting period too. I haven’t played the games yet, and I’m not in a Christmas mood anymore since it’s mid-January.

It would have been better for the jam to start at the beginning of November, and the voting period to start at the beginning of December, so that you have the whole of December to rate the games.

If there is a themed based jam in the future it’ll probably be super vague. Something like “mythology”, or “sci-fi”.

It’s a good idea, but more than vagueness, I think that the theme should be an evocative concept, open to multiple interpretations.

In the French interactive fiction comp, the theme are things like “the sky”, “ruin” or “screens”. They are words that have multiple meanings, both litteral and figurative, that are easy to include, and it’s always interesting to see how authors used them.

For me, “sci-fi” or “mythology” are a bit too generic, they don’t help getting your imagination going.

Well, that was my 2 cents anyway.

I haven’t played anything yet (I had other priorities), so I’ll try to rate the games today. I hope I’ll have enough time to play them all !

Since you edited your message instead of writing a new one, I didn’t get notified, so I’m just noticing now that you have a transcript.

By the time I’ll have your answer, the voting period will likely have begun, but I’m still interested.

Thanks!

And thank you for playing!

Thanks for the detailed feedback and the kind words!

My aim was to make a not too difficult, child-friendly game with a Christmassy feeling even if it’s not strictly-speaking Christmas-themed. So I guess I succeeded? :)

Regarding putting things on the altar, containers/supporters are not well supported (pun non intended!) in Adventuron (and not well documented), as are complex commands, so I think I’ll have to do with the issue. I added a note in the help to say that you just have to drop the thing if you want to put it on something else. And the game specifies at the beginning that you have to use 2-word commands anyway. I hope it’ll be enough.

I also added a message when you go to the island for the first time, as you suggested.

Regarding the miscapitalisation and the missing words, since you haven’t told where they are, I didn’t correct them.

Anyway, thanks again!

The second sentence is what I mean. I’ll see how it goes in context. Thanks!

Chris’ point was that you should be able to close the trunk and update the graphic.

Yes, but as I said, I create a object when the trunk is opened, and if the player don’t take it and close the trunk, I’ll have to destroy the object I created when the trunk was opened (and recreate it when it’s opened again). And since players are players, one of them will assume that if you can freely close and open the trunk, you can also have other logical interactions, such as putting things inside, and so on.

However, if I say “You don’t need to close the trunk”, then I signal that the player is done with the trunk and can move to something else. It saves me some trouble. (Really, I don’t think now is the time to mess with containers.)

I agree it would be better if you could close the trunk and the graphic was updated (and that’s what I would’ve done with Inform), but I’ll just let it be.

Thanks!

For your first point: I guess it’s the “they” that’s confusing? The Sovereigns aren’t gendered (hence “sovereign” and not “king” or “queen”), so it’s a singular “they”, referring to the Summer Solstice Sovereign (that don’t want to awake the Winter one). But I understand how it can be confusing, especially since the sentence is quite vague (“do what they won’t”). I’ll try to reformulate.

For your second point: I thought about it, but Adventuron doesn’t seem to have containers, or at least they are not documented, so I would have to track everything myself (and a topic on intfiction.org implies it’s a pain) and I’m lazy.

What if the player closes the trunk without taking what’s inside? I’d have to destroy the contents a recreate it when the trunk is reopened.

What if the player takes the contents, drops it right away, then closes the trunk? I’d have to track if the contents were taken to know if I should destroy it.

And then if the player can open and close the trunk, then it’s possible they’ll try to put things inside it, and so on.

So I just decided to say “hey, no need to close it anymore, move along”, so that the player knows they’re done with the trunk and can now leave it alone.

I just published my entry!

I think it could have been better (it can always be better, right?), but I’m happy I could finish it in time, and the illustrations turned out quite well for a non-artist like me!

If you find issues before the opening of the votes, I’ll try to correct them. (I don’t know if we’re allowed to update the game after that, though.)

Hope you’ll enjoy it!