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A jam submission

Adventures Extraordinaire TALPView game page

A small Text Adventure
Submitted by ilbarbogio — 10 days, 13 hours before the deadline
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Adventures Extraordinaire TALP's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Cheatsheet (optional)#43.1303.500
Tutorial#73.1303.500
Graphics (optional)#73.2423.625
Characters#72.9073.250
Overall#72.9713.321
Enjoyment#82.7953.125
Story#82.9073.250
Puzzles#82.6833.000

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Host

Hi ilBarbogio,

Your attention is required in this thread.

https://itch.io/jam/talp/topic/1386277/prize-draw-scheduled-for-14th-may

Can you confirm whether you wish to receive your prize, or trade your prize, if you wish to receive it, please contact the email in the thread with your details.

Thanks,

Chris

Submitted

The art was unique, and I wonder how it was done - by tracing photos? I was grateful for the player's guide - always useful to avoid frustration if the player gets stuck! The characters looked a bit creepy to me, and there were some situations that may be scary to young players, but that's how fairy tales are sometimes! It was an interesting idea to combine a detective story with a fairy tale one.

Spoilers: My main critique is there should be more acceptable synonyms so the player doesn't need to struggle to find the one correct verb. E.g. when in the sack, it took me a while to figure out I needed to type "say huntsman" instead of just "huntsman" (I think both should work). For the rags I had to check the guide to get the verb "burn" - I was trying: light, ignite, fire. For the kitchen windows the singular "window" should work too. At the end I did "talk queen" and then was trying "answer" before I realized I needed "answer queen". I was curious about the other endings, but didn't think to save before the finale. It would have been nice to just have a "BACK" option, or to tell the player in the tutorial near the end they should SAVE before continuing, if they want to try different endings. Anyway, I was able to work my way through all this with some fiddling and thanks to the guide.

Developer

Thanks for the comment, all the observation on synonyms etc are spot on! I patched some of them before the (second) deadline but there are many surviving that first clean up. I'm planning on adding a better system to catch and transform synonyms, the current one is really cluncky.

Glad you liked the fairy tale/detective story combination! For graphics I started with the idea of tracing photos only for general outilnes, and you can see that in some locations (the office and the queen room). Then the process was too slow, and the outlines started to came from collages (the stairs just outside the office are the only traced element), the this was boring too, so I recall I can somehow draw by hand, and get to work on creating from scratch al the others and the characters.

I probably had more fun creating the game than other could have had playing it :D

Submitted (1 edit)

I enjoyed this one!  Love the fairytale theme, it's all very well incorporated.

Spoilers in comments below:

A few typos:

'bullettin board' should be 'bulletin board'

'quiclky' should be 'quickly' when you SHOW NOTE instead of GO ADDRESS to return to the woods

'awaits for you input' when talking to the taxi driver - should be 'awaits your input'

'messagge' should be 'message' when looking at the message on the bulletin board on day 2

'ligth food' when talking to the orc - should be 'light food'

'pur milk' in the recipe - should be 'put milk'

'oathmeal' - should be 'oatmeal'

Some possible bugs:

I played day 1 with all puzzles working properly, and then played day 1 again so that I could see the different endings (I hadn't saved at any point).  In the second day 1 playthrough, the bucket didn't appear in the woods, but I didn't need it because the game remembered all the correct directions even though I hadn't got them from the hag, and allowed me to go south to the castle.  The hag was still asking for water though!

Another couple of slight issues on the second playthrough of day 1 - when I was trapped in the sack and talking to the unseen woman, the text only featured WAIT rather than WAIT and TIME as it had on the first playthrough.  WAIT didn't work, but luckily I remembered WAIT TIME from the first playthrough.

Shortly after that, after I typed GET OUT to escape the sack, I got the 'wait till I'm outside...' message, even though the unseen woman had already gone into the castle.

There's also a bug in the day 2 chapter - before you open the door between the bakery and the alley, it won't let you through in either direction, but when you examine the door from either side, it says it's open (from the alley side, it tells you about the mechanism the first time you examine the door, and then says it's open on subsequent examine commands even when it's not).  This was very confusing!

General comments:

I liked the LOOK AROUND technique to uncover more information, but perhaps that information could stay in the description so the player doesn't have to keep typing LOOK AROUND?

I really loved the graphics - they fit so well with the fairytale theme!

I also loved the humour in this game, and going back to find all the different endings.

I also liked the setup of different chapters starting from the same place - maybe there'll be more in future?

Great little game overall!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm still surprised by the accuracy of some of it, from multiple people... text adventures may not be mainstream, but the community behind them sure is a nice and helpful one.

I'm planning to add more "days", after some additions to the engine, aimed at preventing some issues (with savegames too, as I now know it's needed), and making easier to add content with a modular approach.

Loved your game too! For a while I'll be busy with the others in the jam, but I'll sure get a look at your other games.

Nice game so far. I can't find bucket in the woods (I use LOOK AROUND command). I play on mobile (android) with chrome. Do I look in wrong places or is there some other issues?

Developer(+1)

Hello, thank you for the comment: there was actually a game breaking bug! Sometimes during the removal of debugging lines of code the bucket got deleted... now it's there. Savegames should work, but as the engine is something I wipped up during the jam, I wouldn't be so confident.

Bucket was there now. Another problem... I can see Queen but can't interact with here in any way (TALK QUEEN, ASK QUEEN, SAY QUEEN doesn't work). Also, when I X QUEEN it says she's not there. Help! :)

Developer(+1)

And now the queen should be where she's supposed to be. Last time I squashed some bugs, I broke some other things :(

Let's cross finger it's the last thing! Thank you again for pointing these out!

Found Queen, found answer to question, but now I have no idea how to tell her that answer. I tried all possible combinations of TALK, ASK, SAY, TELL, or just ANSWER but nothing work. Help! So, close to Day 1. A bit scared what's waiting me in Day 2 :)

Found the right combo of words and completed Day 1 :)

Developer(+1)

Well done! I'm happy to know that you are playing wiht such dedication :D

It's far from a perfect, and I'm not experienced in the genre (as a player and as a developer too), so I guess there'll be other bugs... but I'm thinking about perfecting it after the jam, and maybe adding other days.

Speaking of days, the second isn't much harder, maybe it's even easier. Only thing there is no tutorial helping out.

this was amazing and very fun it was very enjoyable. WELL DONE.

Developer

Thanks, I'm happy you enjoyed it!

(1 edit)

It does not seem to work properly embebed at itch.io...¿Could you add a downloadable version, please? 

Developer (1 edit)

Hello,

I'm going back and forth on it to catch the last bugs right now, but a downloadable version won't be available soon. Not out of secrecy, but because it is a pure javascript/html game, and to play you'll need something of a framework anyway. I'm planning to publish it on github, as soon as the last critical bugs are found.

What kind of problems did you encounter? If you are trying to play on mobile, I'm sorry but mobile input didn't make the cut of my self imposed deadline, but I'm not discarding the possibility of inserting it.

I basically can't type ... I type LOOK AROUND and then I can't write anymore ... I'm playing it with Firefox ...
Developer

Thanks for your pinting out this, I tested only on chrome (I know, bad practice...). Testing on firefox it sseems the spacebar take away focus, for me it works if i click again in the game before completing and sending the command look around. But not reliably (and this can't be the deemed normal, anyway), so I'm on it, have to catch some default for spacebar. I'll upload as soon as possible!

Developer

I think I fixed it, now it should stay focussed from the click on "run game". Sometimes may loose focus at the very first spacebar touch, but wiht a click it stays then in focus. I probably skipped some info on itch about this... I'll take a look around. Have a nice game!