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All Hallows Eve Reviews
Author: Alvin Echeverria
Date: 2010
ADRIFT 4.0


Reviewed by David Whyld

After an introduction that looked like it may never end – did I really count eight separate screen clearings or do I just think I did? – the game finally begins. You're out trick and treating, dressed up as a zombie ninja cat (as you do) and an old witch turns you into an actual zombie ninja cat. But she's clearly not all bad because if you find her some candy before midnight, she’ll turn you back to your human form. 

From annoying pauses in location descriptions (seriously, they grow tiresome *very* quickly) to huge gaps between lines of text (most location descriptions were nothing more than half a dozen lines long but due to the weird line spacing would often take up a full screen) to typos, grammatical errors and capitals not being used where they should, this was a pain to play. It bore all the hallmarks of a game written by a first timer and is the kind of thing I keep hoping ADRIFT left behind years ago. While I can appreciate it was written under strict time constraints (three hours), it’s still a hard game to find anything positive to say about, and most of what's wrong with it – the pauses and weird line spacing being at the top of the list – would be irritating in any game.

 

Reviewed by roboman

This is my first adventure game that ever managed to play through, so I don't have (m)any experiences, but:
It's a good point that the author have a great sense of humour. It's just one example the zombie-ninja-cat thing.
I like how the creator plays with the text: I like the many <BR>'s and waitings and other marks, these make the text more vivid.

First I tried to play it with Adrift 5.0, but some commands just don't work, and when I played with Adrift 4.0, the final command: THROW LOVE POTION TO WITCH, doesn't work.

I recommend this game for first Adrift game.
 

Reviewed by J. J. Guest

SCORE: 6
Comments: The introduction alone must have taken three hours to write! Unfortunately I couldn't solve this without looking at the generator. Loved the old woman whose speeches featured punctuation straight out of Tristram Shandy...

I can't give this game a really high score because the problems with it were too numerous to mention here. But I absolutely loved playing it! Compulsively, engagingly odd.
 


Reviewed by Wade Clarke

SCORE: Couldn't score this one because I couldn't play it. I have a Mac, and this was the only ADRIFT game that would not run on any of the Macintosh interpreters - Spatterlight, Zoom or Scare.
 


Reviewed by BlueMaxima

SCORE: 5.5
Comments: Idea seems kind of old. Long character names are particularly boring to type when asking random questions. Presentation is horrible for some parts (a whole screen just for a room description? Really?)
 


Reviewed by Eric Anderson

SCORE: 3.97
Comments: My main frustration is poor descriptions and being highly dependant on conversations to even look for items. Had to go to the generator to find info. Example: toadstools weren't defined anywhere and would never have guessed that "The smell is atrocious." might have been the clue. Also the NPC's should have used aliases instead of typing the entire name.
 


Reviewed by Duncan Bowsman

This year, I've decided to associate a song by Rush with each game along with its score.

SCORE: 6 zombie ninja cats out of 10.
Song: "Finding My Way"
Comments: -Lots of pauses, long intro
-Room descriptions make implementation easy to sort
-The writing is funny
-Pausing in every room description really interrupts the flow of gameplay
-Lots of empty space in descriptions... why?
-Characters don't have synonyms?
-No hints/help.
-"ask old lady coot about witch"-- interesting.
-"splash water into cauldron"-- SPLASH is an uncommon verb and there is no cauldron at Old Lady Coot's, where I did that.
-Wouldn't have put the cauldron on the tall grass, as that made it invisible until the grass was looked at.
-I had no idea I had to pick up the small cauldron-- that would have gone well in the potion book's instructions.
-Task construction really could have used wildcards
-TO THROW LOVE POTION: (must be executable in room), must be held by player and in small cauldron--so, must be in cauldron, player must hold cauldron--a bit odd.
-Finishing with just the game after just doing the bare minimum (making the potion, getting candy from the witch) gives the player a 42% completion. The alternate solution provides 65% completion by itself. Well, who cares about score, anyway?
 

Reviewed by DCBSupafly

SCORE: 5
Comments: Great setting and characters. I like the potion book as a recipe for success, but the tasks for completing it seemed a little obscure.
 

Reviewed by Mel Stefaniuk

SCORE: 6
Comments: This was an incredibly strange game but it did have a weird charm to it. It did some slightly annoying things like the waiting you'd have to do whenever you looked around certain rooms but on the whole it was funny and written and presented in a very unique way.
 

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