Some 2006 IF Comp reviews

Here are some of the games I managed to play from the 2006 annual IF competition.

The Endless Spiral

Title: Dead City
Author: Nihilis Games (English translation by Jan Nedoma)
Release Date: 2005
License: Freeware; click here to download
Author’s Site: Nihilis Games

[SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers.]

Dark, creepy, short. That’s how I would describe Dead City, another Wintermute game, in three words.

In Dead City, one plays a writer whose mind is plagued by his girlfriend’s grisly death. Having done his time in what he calls “the madhouse,” he begins to seek further clues into the murder, hoping to bring justice to its perpetrator. Along the way, he also discovers a bigger plot running behind the city’s decadence.

I found the game’s visuals - the introductory scenes, the locations, the interface itself - very appealing, as they were very polished and cleanly made. The game’s introductory scenes uses a comic-like approach in providing the details of the backstory. The images of people and animals were obviously taken from actual photographs, but they blended well with the hand-made environments displayed in the game. There was only one point in the game, in Alex Kain’s lab, where the photo effect used came off too banal in my taste (is that what “space and time collapsing” would look like?), but everything else was okay.

It does take a while to get used to the game controls, as the Wintermute engine associates the mouse buttons with a different set of options (examining, obtaining the item from the inventory) compared to the ones used in older point-and-click games (where right-clicking allows the player to rotate through examining/walking/talking/using a specific item, etc. and left-clicking executes the chosen action). However, this is a minor difference; once you get used to it, you should be able to progress more smoothly.

Dead City uses a heavy mix of gothic and cyberpunk elements in presenting the narrative, and the author unabashedly uses as much vernacular as he can to heighten the effect. The game is well-written, and the puzzles were not too difficult, but if you missed certain steps, you might not be able to progress. I wish it took the protagonist longer to find out who the culprit was, since it felt like the author had rushed the plot along just to meet the deadline.

Nevertheless, Dead City deserves its place in the Wintermute website’s list of games. Dead City’s quality, despite a few flaws, is certainly a testament to the game engine’s capabilities. If you’re looking for darkly-themed games, here is one game you shouldn’t miss.

Squared in the end

Title: Sofia’s Debt
Author: Santiago de Matos Lima (English translation by Clarisa Caijiau)
Release Date: 2004
License: Freeware; click here to download
Author’s Site: None found

[SPOILER ALERT: This article contains several spoilers.]

You’ve probably noticed that most of the games I’ve been writing about here have been created using Adventure Game Studio (AGS). No doubt, it is very popular among amateur adventure game authors, and it’s become especially so because of the games that have been crafted using it. Though other authoring systems exist that are as freely available and powerful as AGS, having very few games made out of them which showcase its capabilities can sometimes spell the difference.

Take for example the Spanish mini-adventure Sofia’s Debt, which was written using the Wintermute game engine.

In this game, one plays as Ana, a soon-to-be single mother who worries what would happen to her pregnancy given her tragic family history: both her mother and grandmother, having been mentally ill due to a rare form of schizophrenia, committed suicide shortly after giving birth. Ana has just come home from university, seeking to get some rest and relieve some of her boredom. This is where the game takes off.

As the game progresses, the player is provided a glimpse into Ana’s life through her belongings and her phone conversations with her friends. The player also learns the tragedy behind her grandmother’s life and death through an almost realistic written diary, filled with her thoughts as she went through the stages of her supposed mental illness. The game ends in a crescendo when Ana determines what she needs to do after learning all that has happened in her family.

Sofia’s Debt is a first-person game similar to Myst and most of Jonas Kyratzes’s games. The inventory is shown by right-clicking, and the objects may either be examined or used by moving the cursor over them and right-clicking to rotate between a magnifying glass and a gear wheel.

The game’s graphics, except for the Dali paintings and the “Rafaelesque” head painting, seem to have been rendered using Terragen, given its 3D-like quality. Though examining the lamps reveal that they provide dim lighting, I did not get that impression - Ana’s room looked sufficiently bright (there is, of course, another lamp on the ceiling) that all the corners of her apartment were fully lit.

The background music was haunting, enhancing the undercurrent of fear running throughout the game. It even featured soundbites of songs from famous plays such as Miss Saigon and Les Miserables as soundtrack CDs that can be played over the radio. There are times when the music can be a bit jarring (such as when reading the grandmother’s diary); nevertheless, it did help in reinforcing the game’s mood and tempo. The various sound effects (the phone ring, the weird sound from the door) also helped in building up the suspense.

Sofia’s Debt is, in the words of the author himself, a mini-adventure. The game is short, and what makes the experience fleeting is the fact that there’s not really much to do in a one-room apartment. Ana’s room is very spartan, consisting only of objects that are necessary for a working university student. Talking on the phone involves reading an entire bulleted conversation - no choices are provided to try steering it towards another direction, which leaves the player little choice but to plod on.

What I liked in Sofia’s Debt is Sofia’s story itself - it was surprisingly fleshed out and believable. Sofia’s characterization was even more fleshed out that Ana’s, though there had been only hints on this from her phone conversations. Another thing I liked is the suspense - the “Twilight Zone” feeling I went through was close to the one I felt after playing Andrew Plotkin’s IF piece Shade.

If you’re ever in the mood for a short somber adventure game, try Sofia’s Debt. If you’re looking for something scarier or more terrifying, try renting a horror movie instead.

No field trips here

Title: The Museum of Broken Memories
Author: Jonas Kyratzes
Release Date: August 2006
License: Freeware; click here to download
Author’s Site: http://www.jonas-kyratzes.net

[SPOILER ALERT: This article may contain several spoilers.]

Having finished a couple of Kyratzes’ games before (Last Rose in a Desert Garden and The Infinite Ocean, reviewed here previously), I was expecting more-or-less the same treatment: Myst-like gameplay on a Terragen-drawn environment, coupled with puzzles that required some careful thought, still with the general theme of escaping that environment.

After playing the game twice, I was a bit surprised. Kyratzes’ strong sentiments about the destructive effects of war were still there. I still had to escape the Museum - I was trapped, though how I got trapped in it was never made clear. But for the first time, I felt fear.

Museum of Broken Memories is a collection of story fragments - a war experience scattered throughout seven rooms and presented through different means. Unlike his previous efforts, the effect of war on society and on people is presented in a less linear way - a museum tour - which allows the player to reflect more about his own experience.

MoBM opening screen

The museum has seven rooms, two of which the player occupies at the start of the game. In the first room, one may see the author’s forewarning about possibly not getting out, as well as the customary Save/Load/Quit functions. (For whatever reason, I kept thinking the ladder image on the Save/Load/Quit side would hold items representing my saved “experiences” - or something that would mark where I’ve already gone to, at least - but I learned the lesson fast during gameplay.)

The rest of the rooms bore various well-drawn artifacts in glass displays: a teddy bear, a wine bottle (?), a light bulb, snatches of yellowed notes, which one may inspect at their own choice. Each room also bore plaques with various verses (which, according to Kyratzes himself, were quoted from William Blake and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”). Several artworks superimposed on modern photographs were also exhibited as if in a gallery, some even bearing text that (presumably) were written by Kyratzes himself.

However, the centerpiece of each room, as it were, were the “fragments” themselves. Each room had one particular “artwork” that plunges the player into the memory fragment’s world, portrayed through various symbols and images. Most of the artifacts seen from outside participated in ways inside the fragments’ world, though this is not obvious at the start.

Therein lies, I think, one of the game’s particular flaws, which somehow proved to be its strength as well. In a point-and-click game like this, I’d usually expect that anything I interact with would present itself differently once I have made any changes onto it. For example, if I open a container or window, or took a particular object off, I would expect some visible change happen on the object so I’d know I’ve dealt with it already.

A dream sequence?

In MoBM this was not always immediately obvious. In parts such as the Fever Room, the only clue I had that I’ve already interacted the object was the cursor itself: if it did not transform into a pointing hand or an arrow, or if it did not show some text, then, well, try to look somewhere else. A better touch would have been to show an image of the cupboard with its doors open, or the box’s lid casting a shadow on the bottles, for example.

If you’ve played more than a couple of point-and-click games, this might be considered standard behavior for a Myst-like adventure scenario. However, this might prove to be frustrating for those new to adventure games.

Nevertheless, it did prove effective in conveying the sense of loss and helplessness in one of the last rooms I went into, where everything was dark and all you had to rely on was your sense of touch. It reminded me of the darkness portrayed in Magnus Olsson’s interactive fiction piece Aayela (1996), when I felt restless looking for the way out of the dark. The difference between Aayela and MoBM, though, was the extra dimensionality. In Aayela, you could touch the floor, the wall, even rub the soil off if needed. In MoBM, I felt as if I were hitting a blank wall everytime. It might have been helpful if the game described further what the player felt through his other senses, especially the surrounding itself.

Despite this, I found MoBM to be quite engaging and insightful as a game. The music set the tone very well for the game, and the different game elements served as a good reminder against the horrors of war and its effects on those who have gone through it.

I would recommend The Museum of Broken Memories for the more experienced adventure player with an open mind, and perhaps more maturity. Newcomers to the adventure game might want to try Kyratzes’ previous efforts first to have a better feel of his game designs.