itch.io

Hello SacrificialHam - we have a certificate to send you, as a token of appreciation for participating in the competition. If you'd like to receive it, could you please get in touch with us at parsercomp@gmail.com? Thanks!

Hello StuckArcader - we have a certificate to send you, as token of appreciation for participating in the competition. If you'd like to receive it, could you please get in touch with us at parsercomp@gmail.com? Thanks!

Really good. Compact and gripping, as Andrew said. And brutal, as war is brutal. I though it was well written (especially as this is a translation from the original - Spanish, I think?) 

Choices are very constrained - the player is railroaded through the narrative and nudged heavily if they attempt to stray from the intended path - but I think that works  very well in this context. There's a certain nightmarish quality, of being unable to escape from a dreadful, preordained fate, that comes through strongly as the player is pulled through each chapter towards the though-provoking ending. I liked it a lot, and played through a couple of times. Good entry! 

You know, I really liked this - perhaps more than I should have, given the author's own opinion of it, and the fact that it was made in a day. But I think it caught me at a good moment: late evening, after a certain quantity of red wine, and in a not-hurrying kind of mood. There's not much interactivity and minimal parsing going on (in as much as you do need to type in the exact phrase prompted in order to progress), but some lovely visuals and a pleasing soundtrack make for a pleasant enough experience overall. The lengthy pauses and slow timed text will drive some people up the wall, but like I said, I wasn't in a hurry so it didn't bother me. The long flying through space sequence is like an 80s pop video, and I found it quite a soothing experience to let it just scroll by. I'm genuinely impressed that you manged to put it together in such a short space of time. As a parser game it perhaps falls a little short, as a conventional  arcade game also, but as a minimally interactive art-piece it's really not unsuccessful. Freestyle is exactly the right place for it!

I loved this! Really fun game with a good story and well-integrated puzzles that are mostly toward the easier end of the difficulty spectrum, so they don't clog up the narrative too much. I did get stuck a couple of times, but that's just because I'm quite rubbish at puzzles... and the comprehensive hints got me through. I had a good time exploring the world you've created, which felt detailed and convincing, and I really enjoyed the comic tone (pitched just right, I think) and the writing, which kept me engaged and smiling pretty much the whole way through (particularly liked the descriptions of those alien farm animals). The implementation is pretty solid too - it's feels polished and well-tested. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't overstay it's welcome - it's probably a 2 hour-ish game for an adept player (not me - I spent longer over it) and I found it satisfying to complete. Good job overall!

You're welcome - thanks for giving me the opportunity to read it...

Anyway, I played your game! Really enjoyed it. Intriguing backstory and detailed worldbuilding, alongside some colourful and sharply-drawn characters (particularly like Slater and Hale) and really good writing. It's a solidly put together thriller with some great set-pieces - the card-reading on the paddleboat was, I thought, excellently done, as was the acid-trip and everything else going on in the cinema - and enough pace to pull through from one scene to the next without too much effort or frustration on the player's part. Puzzles are pretty straightforward and won't present much of a challenge to seasoned players, but that feels appropriate since the game is much more focused on narrative than puzzle-solving and it does the narrative part very well. There are a couple of rough edges here and there - a few implementation oddities and a scattering of typos, but nothing major or particularly noticeable with the pace that the game rattles along at, and things that could easily be straightened out with another round of testing (look me up if you need help with testing sometime).

My main criticism is that I was enjoying it and feeling like I was making progress and then it ended! But at least with a "to be continued", so there's some assurance that the story will carry on and we'll get closure further down the line. I'll look forward to the next instalment.

I think AZ and Gent Stickman are having a rest this year. Pretty sure we haven't seen the last of them though!

Spaceflounder it seems that your game page is still unpublished so players can't access your game.

Could you please publish the game now the judging period is open?

Robert, it seems that your game page is still unpublished so players can't access your game.

Could you please publish the game now the judging period is open?

The main requirement is that is needs to be text-based to a large degree. Graphics are OK but play needs to be controlled primarily by text input, parsing, text output. If your game fits, i.e. it's not just an arcade game, then that's fine. It sounds like it'd need to go in the 'freestyle' category though, for anything not immediately recognisable as a classic parser game (see info on main page).

No - anything you like theme-wise. The only restriction here is that it needs to be a parser game.

Yes! Better get cracking, everyone!

Welcome to ParserComp, the annual competition for parser-based text games! 

If you're reading this then hopefully you're thinking of entering this year's competition, and/or planning to judge and vote on the games. It's great to have you on board - have a look at the main page for dates and deadlines, rules and FAQs and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

We look forward to playing your games!

Fos1 & Christopher

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed the writing!  Adventuron isn't brilliantly optimised for mobile I'm afraid - best played on desktop, but just about doable on a phone.

Hi

We have a ParserComp 2022 participation certificate that we'd like to send to you, for being part of the competition. 

If you'd like to claim it, could you please email the organisers at parsercomp@gmail.com?

Thanks!

Hi

We have a ParserComp 2022 participation certificate that we'd like to send to you, for being part of the competition. 

If you'd like to claim it, could you please email the organisers at parsercomp@gmail.com?

Thanks!

Hi

We have a ParserComp 2022 participation certificate that we'd like to send to you, for being part of the competition. 

If you'd like to claim it, could you please email the organisers at parsercomp@gmail.com?

Thanks!

Hi

We have a ParserComp 2022 participation certificate that we'd like to send to you, for being part of the competition. 

If you'd like to claim it, could you please email the organisers at parsercomp@gmail.com?

Thanks!

Hi

We have a ParserComp 2022 participation certificate that we'd like to send to you, for being part of the competition.

If you'd like to claim it, could you please email the organisers at parsercomp@gmail.com?

Thanks!

Yes, I think next year we won't be using itch.io and we'll be making a few changes overall. We've learnt a lot from this year's competition!

Hello Ken

Not being much of a mathematician, I'll take your word for it and defer to fos1 (who is much more of a mathematician). These being the results we've published, we'll stick with then even if the weights are slightly different. I don't think it makes a material difference anyway, but will ask my co-organiser to check. Thanks for your vigilance!

Christopher

I'm sorry to see that Lantern has been withdrawn from the competition. It's unfortunate that there's no way of DMing people on itch.io, otherwise I'd follow up with the author.

I hope Sylfir has a change of heart and puts the game back up. I know there were several people looking forward to playing it.

Many thanks for taking the time to review this year's games kenped!

Great! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this year's games.

Vote, vote, vote now!

Sounds like a technical fix, so fine - go ahead and fix it.

@AZ: "Garden of the forking paths" is actually a great name for an out of competition category.  Can we steal it?

@Dorian Passer: I've added your game back in, with a note explaining that we'll exclude from final rankings.

Yes, it's definitely broken! I have contacted itch admin but they're yet to reply.

Any solution anyone?

I'd need something more definite, like a plague of frogs, before I could draw that sort of conclusion.

Let me consult with my fellow organiser over the usual champagne and oyster lunch. Leave with me for the moment.

Thanks for sharing this Dorian.

I have to confess that most of this is far over my head, as I'm not remotely a software engineer or anything of the sort. What I do pick up is that this is doing some clever linguistic processing stuff under the hood, but the implementation of it in your game looks, on the face of it, not anything like everyman's idea of a parser game. It seems to us (organisers) that your game falls outside the boundaries of what we'd accept in this necessarily restrictive competition (for a particular type of text game) but would definitely fly in another text game competition with more inclusive criteria (the upcoming IF Comp would be an obvious place to put a game like this). So we hope to see more of your work - and, hopefully, all of this discussion will have made people sufficiently curious to go and have a look at Cost of Living!

Hi, we have a problem with the scoring not working in our jam: https://itch.io/jam/parsercomp-2022/entries

For some reason, even if all categories have been rated, trying to save the rating results in the error "no score for Writing" (Writing being one of the categories).  See below:

Can this be fixed? Otherwise, nobody can rate any of the games in the jam!

Many thanks.

I've contacted the admin and ask them to fix it! Will let you all know when this is fixed. 

If it isn't fixed then we might have to give everyone a lamp!

Ah yes, I think I've experienced that before. I think it's just itch's system being rubbish. I'll ask them to fix it.

It's basically got to be text commands controlling a world model, and Dorian's game, interesting though it is,  just wasn't that.

Hello Dorian

Sorry we had to disqualify your game! I did play it, and it is lovely, but it's not a parser game according to our criteria (it does have to be text commands controlling some sort of word model, and yours is something different).

I hope folks still go and play it - it's worth their time. I reckon it, or something like it, would do well in another text game competition that accepts other sorts of entries (like choice-based games, etc). There are a few about.