October 31st is a puzzle adventure set in a house full of monsters. Overall, I enjoyed the game, but found its mechanical flaws frustrating.
Writing
Many of the descriptions are rather unclear: for example, I couldn’t tell whether the description of a door at the top of stairs had the door between me and the stairs, or the stairs in one direction and the door in another.
The game often attempts horror, but misses the mark: the writing gets overwrought, or tells me that something is scary rather than convey the actual feeling. That didn’t detract much from my enjoyment since it’s so heavily puzzle-oriented, except at the very last action, which IMO should be spread over a longer multi-command scene rather than delivered in one chunk.
Story and characters
Clearly not the focus: the game is meant to be an old-style puzzle romp. I’m very fond of those, so I don’t mind. The story is a thin pretext: the character came to the house for a bet and finds themselves trapped. The NPCs, whether friends or foes, are rather transparently mechanical and there to serve a puzzle.
In such a game, I’d expect the PC would be a blank cipher, and they mostly are, but a bit of personality comes through in their description: they think of themselves as handsome and kissable, with “piercing eyes” and a “chiseled jaw”. I expected a follow-up to that, and was looking forward to seeing the vain little jerk get taken down a peg, but apparently not. Also, they have no appreciation for good aged cheese.
Implementation
Serious guess-the-verb problems. For example, “dig” and “dig ground” and “hit ground” won’t do, only “break ground”. Likewise, “press fixed thing with portable thing” doesn’t work, only “press portable thing against fixed thing”.
The lack of implicit actions was infuriating. Why do I need to explicitly open every door every time? Why do I need to say “take leather book” and can’t refer to it any other way including by its title?
I’m told these are considered acceptable in the Adrift community, but I still don’t like them.
I did however appreciate that many small details are implemented, especially in the garden, where everything is gorgeously described.
Puzzles
The individual puzzles are fairly classic. My favourite was the kitchen one — still a classic, but a very different kind, followed by the one involving meat, which has an interesting twist in the mechanics (not sure if random or if I just couldn’t figure out the pattern).
They can be solved in any order except at the very beginning and end. However, my enjoyment was spoilt by guess-the-verb problems. Also, many puzzles don’t make sense for the character, who logically ought to leave well alone instead of inviting danger.
Help and hints
Very complete adaptive hints, and a helpful walkthrough. Having those definitely let me enjoy the game much more than I would have otherwise.
Hello Hawkbyte. First of all, thank y ou for your review. I can assure you that all your comments are taken into consideration and will be "remembered" in my future games. (Learning all the time :-) )
Just a quick remark regarding the guess the verb problem dig/break ground. I ran through the game and although you're right that >dig ground doesn't work. >dig ground with axe will work nicely.
"Also, many puzzles don’t make sense for the character, who logically ought to leave well alone instead of inviting danger." Quite sensible. "leave sleeping dogs lie" or "Don't stick your nose where is don't belong." But if you had tried to leave the garden at any time during playing, you would have found that you couldn't open the garden gate. So no matter how much you wanted to get the H*** out of there, you'd have to kill the monsters first.
Like I said earlier, this is not an attempt to redeem myself but merely an explanation as to why the game works as it does. Once again, thanks for your review which is very much appreciated and thanks for playing my game.
I did try leaving and I agree that locking the gate after the PC is a good design choice. But it doesn’t follow that the PC has a good reason to kill all the monsters. Sure, for their safety, they have to kill those that are free to roam, but some are safely stored and require quite a bit of work to summon.
I could have made it clearer I guess. But in the end, when the player walks out into the sunlight. I mention that the old man and the gardener is waving goodbye before they fade away. Thus indicating that the PC has released the curse and made them rest in peace.
I'm not the author but I am also an ADRIFT user and would like to comment but first I would like to say it is a nice review and all your points are valid. My comment is about your statement about the ADRIFT community. As you wrote, I'm sure someone told you that the implementation problems you found are acceptable in the ADRIFT community. However, I don't think that is the case. All the mentioned implementation issues can be dealt with in ADRIFT. We are not a lot of ADRIFT users but we are also diverse and most agree that guess-the-verb issues should be avoided and also we want to avoid explicitly do things over and over that are obvious, such as having to explicitly open every door each time you go through them etc. Of course, when we dive into details, there will be different opinions on e.g. standard verbs etc. often depending on which community the player was part of years ago, e.g. if they played the homegrown UK games around 1990 or if they played all the Infocom games in the 80s.
Just to kick in a footnote here. I'm not too happy about having to open the doors every time, and I do try to avoid it when I can. Having said this. There are mechanisms in the game where a monster will be "summoned" or where a location will alter when the door is opened. So rather than having some doors staying open and other doors closing, I chose to make them all closing after the player had walked through them.
For the purpose of future games (or a postcomp version?) I still think a lot could be done to improve the "door-problem". I won't bother you with details here, but you can always ask if you are interested.
Comments
October 31st is a puzzle adventure set in a house full of monsters. Overall, I enjoyed the game, but found its mechanical flaws frustrating.
Writing
Many of the descriptions are rather unclear: for example, I couldn’t tell whether the description of a door at the top of stairs had the door between me and the stairs, or the stairs in one direction and the door in another.
The game often attempts horror, but misses the mark: the writing gets overwrought, or tells me that something is scary rather than convey the actual feeling. That didn’t detract much from my enjoyment since it’s so heavily puzzle-oriented, except at the very last action, which IMO should be spread over a longer multi-command scene rather than delivered in one chunk.
Story and characters
Clearly not the focus: the game is meant to be an old-style puzzle romp. I’m very fond of those, so I don’t mind. The story is a thin pretext: the character came to the house for a bet and finds themselves trapped. The NPCs, whether friends or foes, are rather transparently mechanical and there to serve a puzzle.
In such a game, I’d expect the PC would be a blank cipher, and they mostly are, but a bit of personality comes through in their description: they think of themselves as handsome and kissable, with “piercing eyes” and a “chiseled jaw”. I expected a follow-up to that, and was looking forward to seeing the vain little jerk get taken down a peg, but apparently not. Also, they have no appreciation for good aged cheese.
Implementation
Serious guess-the-verb problems. For example, “dig” and “dig ground” and “hit ground” won’t do, only “break ground”. Likewise, “press fixed thing with portable thing” doesn’t work, only “press portable thing against fixed thing”.
The lack of implicit actions was infuriating. Why do I need to explicitly open every door every time? Why do I need to say “take leather book” and can’t refer to it any other way including by its title?
I’m told these are considered acceptable in the Adrift community, but I still don’t like them.
I did however appreciate that many small details are implemented, especially in the garden, where everything is gorgeously described.
Puzzles
The individual puzzles are fairly classic. My favourite was the kitchen one — still a classic, but a very different kind, followed by the one involving meat, which has an interesting twist in the mechanics (not sure if random or if I just couldn’t figure out the pattern).
They can be solved in any order except at the very beginning and end. However, my enjoyment was spoilt by guess-the-verb problems. Also, many puzzles don’t make sense for the character, who logically ought to leave well alone instead of inviting danger.
Help and hints
Very complete adaptive hints, and a helpful walkthrough. Having those definitely let me enjoy the game much more than I would have otherwise.
Hello Hawkbyte.
First of all, thank y ou for your review. I can assure you that all your comments are taken into consideration and will be "remembered" in my future games. (Learning all the time :-) )
Just a quick remark regarding the guess the verb problem dig/break ground. I ran through the game and although you're right that >dig ground doesn't work. >dig ground with axe will work nicely.
"Also, many puzzles don’t make sense for the character, who logically ought to leave well alone instead of inviting danger."
Quite sensible. "leave sleeping dogs lie" or "Don't stick your nose where is don't belong." But if you had tried to leave the garden at any time during playing, you would have found that you couldn't open the garden gate. So no matter how much you wanted to get the H*** out of there, you'd have to kill the monsters first.
Like I said earlier, this is not an attempt to redeem myself but merely an explanation as to why the game works as it does.
Once again, thanks for your review which is very much appreciated and thanks for playing my game.
Best regards
P/o Prune
I did try leaving and I agree that locking the gate after the PC is a good design choice. But it doesn’t follow that the PC has a good reason to kill all the monsters. Sure, for their safety, they have to kill those that are free to roam, but some are safely stored and require quite a bit of work to summon.
I could have made it clearer I guess. But in the end, when the player walks out into the sunlight. I mention that the old man and the gardener is waving goodbye before they fade away. Thus indicating that the PC has released the curse and made them rest in peace.
I'm not the author but I am also an ADRIFT user and would like to comment but first I would like to say it is a nice review and all your points are valid. My comment is about your statement about the ADRIFT community. As you wrote, I'm sure someone told you that the implementation problems you found are acceptable in the ADRIFT community. However, I don't think that is the case. All the mentioned implementation issues can be dealt with in ADRIFT. We are not a lot of ADRIFT users but we are also diverse and most agree that guess-the-verb issues should be avoided and also we want to avoid explicitly do things over and over that are obvious, such as having to explicitly open every door each time you go through them etc. Of course, when we dive into details, there will be different opinions on e.g. standard verbs etc. often depending on which community the player was part of years ago, e.g. if they played the homegrown UK games around 1990 or if they played all the Infocom games in the 80s.
Just to kick in a footnote here.
I'm not too happy about having to open the doors every time, and I do try to avoid it when I can.
Having said this. There are mechanisms in the game where a monster will be "summoned" or where a location will alter when the door is opened. So rather than having some doors staying open and other doors closing, I chose to make them all closing after the player had walked through them.
For the purpose of future games (or a postcomp version?) I still think a lot could be done to improve the "door-problem". I won't bother you with details here, but you can always ask if you are interested.