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Shadowpeak Reviews
Author: Kevin Bailey
Date: 2008
ADRIFT 4.0
Reviewed by Lumin (Version 1 of the game)
This game was just uploaded so I guess not many have had a
chance to play it. It's from an author I don't recognize from the forums (kevin
bailey?) and apparently he originally began writing it on the c64.
I only had time to mess around with it for about ten minutes so I'm a long way
from winning, but I just wanted to post my initial impressions and see what
everybody else's are.
1.) This appears to be one of those hugely ambitious newbie projects that have
become kind of a joke here, except this one was actually finished, weighing in
at a whopping 90k. (though I guess 'finished' and 'beatable' aren't necessarily
the same thing...the Generator's locked and there's no walkthrough so whether
it's horribly broken or not is anybody's guess.) But either way, the kind of
perseverance it must have taken to get something this size to even a
semi-playable state is laudable.
2.) oh God the spelling and punctuation is atrocious and the intro reads like
something written by an excitable yet talented 12 year old. Also for some reason
the text is HUGE.
3.) This game is the definition of old school. I've already died a handful of
times, had an item stolen by some jerk monster, and got trapped in a tomb
(presumably because I either didn't have an item I needed, an important object
was not described, the verb needed was simply too obscure, or all of the above).
I don't know if the author has played a text game since the early 90s. I
strongly suspect he's never heard of the Player's Bill of Rights. I haven't run
into a maze yet but I'd be willing to bet money there's one in it somewhere.
4.) I love it already...I've never pegged myself as a masochist but there you
go.
Or I guess to be more accurate, I love what it wants to be. No one writes
sprawling completely un-ironic fantasy adventures about knights defeating evil
wizards anymore and that is a crying shame. Right now Shadowpeak might be very
very very rough around the edges but I'm positive that if it were polished up it
would be a diamond.
Am I insane?
I think I'm going to wait till I get to play a bit more and then send the author
an email with a few suggestions. Hopefully he's open to constructive criticism
because after all the work he's put into this game I'd like to see it in a state
where more people would be willing to give it a fair chance...flaws aside if
this really is a first effort it's jaw-droppingly good, and as far as I'm
concerned anyone who can write a game this ambitious without giving up in tears
before they get halfway through is a keeper.
If nothing else I might be able to convince him to let me help with the spelling
and punctuation problems. I actually love editing people's work.
Huh, maybe I am a masochist....
Anyway, if this had just been another one of those games I wouldn't have
bothered bringing it up in the first place. This one is different and that's
what interests me. After I played for about two minutes in it was clear that
this wasn't just another case of a clueless newbie bashing on a keyboard for
five minutes, uploading the results and calling it a game; in this situation the
author clearly put a lot of work into the game as a whole, but for some reason
simply didn't realize/didn't care about horrible spelling, punctuation, etc. and
probably has no idea it's such a deal-breaker for most of the community.
I know this may come as shock to you guys, and I don't like it either, but there
are plenty of other people* (some who post on this very forum) that don't care
about that stuff either, so I highly doubt Shadowpeak is some kind of elaborate
prank or deliberate attack on the integrity of interactive fiction or whatever.
I used to read a lot of bad fanfic so I guess it's possible that my brain might
have developed more more advanced filters for this sort of thing than most of
you have in order to defend itself, but I still say that there's an interesting
and unique game in there somewhere. It's the style of it that attracts me more
than anything else; as I said, no one writes like this anymore. It's like the
author is oblivious to anything written in the last 15 years or so, and after
wading through certain IFComp entries and a thread on RAIF I have to say it's
refreshing to see something that's not trying to be anything other than a text
adventure in the purest sense...to me, whether or not the sloppy presentation
proves to be insurmountable hindrance to enjoyment is almost besides the point.
Reviewed by Duncan Bowman (Version 1 of the game) - Duncan
has since removed this review from the main ADRIFT website.
Perhaps I'm just being too
serious, but the words "flabbergastingly abyssmal" come to mind. This game is
practically unplayable. I was excited at the prospect of playing a new game
(especially after the success of the OddComp), but I hadn't even finished
reading the intro and I was convinced the Adventures Page had been prank'd.
This is a game in *serious* need of some proofreading. An audience can only go
so far into any sloppy text-- regardless of format-- before putting it down.
Why should I wait to see if something really pops off page 200 when I've
already gouged by eyes out at page 1 (presumably, someone would have to read the
rest to me...)? I'm still waiting for this "Kevin Bailey" (if that is his real
name) to show his face and let us know how this thing came about.
In all seriousness, submitting work *this* bogged down in errors is just
disrespectful of a writer to their work, audience, format, community, etc. I'd
be all for a polished version of the game, but this is just ridiculous... not to
mention, with the default filter being "by date (most recent)", *this* is now
the game a newcomer will see first when they come onto the Adventures Page...
and may be the first they download...
*shudder*
Reviewed by Denk
In this game you play the role as Loralang, a famed
knight, which has to travel back in time and retrieve the golden sceptre and
kill the undead lord, Morac.
So much for the story. The
game is oldschool and is a combination of puzzles, a bit of random combat and
unfortunately also random deaths. I haven't completed the game, but from what I
have seen so far, there are some decent puzzles. The random combat I have seen
was far too easy, so it was quite pointless.
Even though I like oldschool
games, random combat and don't care too much about the Player's Bill of Rights,
I feel this game could have been a lot better if it weren't for the very common
random deaths caused by the dragon. It is practically impossible to avoid it for
long and according to the built-in hints, the only thing you can do is to avoid
the dragon. So even though I came across some decent puzzles, I find it hard to
recommend this game.
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
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