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The Adventures of Space Boy! Volume II Reviews
Author: David Parish
Date: 2007
ADRIFT 4.0
Reviewed by David Whyld
Time to finish: about twenty minutes
Cheated to finish it? Password protected and no hints. Fortunately, aside from
some guess the verb issues, there's nothing likely to cause you any problems
here.
I played the first volume of The Adventures of Space Boy a while back and can’t
really say I cared much for it. Too many items you can’t examine, too little
depth and, as far as I remember, more than a few bugs. But, undaunted, I decided
to give the sequel a try.
It follows on directly from the first game with the player, a superhero by the
name of Space Boy, searching for his companion Wonder Dog who has been taken by
Evil Man. You’ve managed to track this nasty piece of work across the galaxy to
the planet of Aquas, which, it seems, has just been attacked by pirates and is
pretty much lying in ruins. Not a nice place to start looking for your erstwhile
companion.
There are a few puzzles [1] to solve, but these are generally so easy and
straightforward that it’s hard to imagine anyone having any real problems with
them. One part that gave me trouble – questioning an NPC [3] – in the end turned
out not to be necessary as I finished the game without getting a single useful
response from the NPC in question. Whether he was there for a purpose or simply
scenery I'm not sure. There's no score for the game (despite it (permanently set
to 0) being displayed on the tool bar at the bottom of the screen), so it’s hard
to know if you’re making any real progress. I found a couple of items that
didn’t have any apparent use so maybe there's more to the game than what I saw;
but, as I said, with no score and no indication of other endings it’s hard to
know if these things have a purpose or if they're simply red herrings.
I'm going to hazard a guess that the game has neither been proofread or
betatested (at least by anyone other than the author). There are more than a few
typos [4] and too many things have been missed out – item descriptions, commands
that reasonably should work [5] – that any half decent tester would have picked
up on. Although even allowing for the lack of testers, it’s still disappointing
how many problems there are with the game given its small size and lack of
complexity.
As stated above, this is a very short game and not a particularly interesting
one. Even allowing for the time I wasted trying to converse with Mr. McConkey, I
was through the entire thing from start to finish in little more than twenty
minutes. It ends somewhat suddenly – with Space Boy setting off in a raft
towards the small island where he believes Wonder Dog is being held captive –
and without anything significant happening along the way. The entire game seems
to consist of nothing more than Space Boy simply walking around a small town,
picking up a few items and then setting off in a raft. Aren't superheroes
supposed to save the world and defeat evil supervillains?
There are a number of oddities/flaws in the game which seem to have been
included more to slow down progress than anything else. Space Boy arrived on the
island by flying there yet is prevented from leaving in the same manner, thus
requiring him to search around for a means to cross the sea to the next island.
He finds a raft in an abandoned store, yet even though it’s abandoned and he’s
in desperate need of the raft, he can’t simply take it but has to pay for it.
Only, naturally, he has no money and so is required to hunt around for some.
Strangely enough, he has no compunction about taking some crackers from another
location. Apparently superheroes have strange ideas about what constitutes
theft.
All in all, disappointing. A lot more time and effort needs to be expended on
the game. Give it a purpose, give it a proper objective instead of simply
wandering around and performing dull tasks. Space Boy is supposed to be a
superhero – why doesn’t he get to do anything super or heroic? At the very
least, try to make a game about a superhero in search of a kidnapped companion
be a bit more interesting than what we have here.
___
[1] Most consist of locating an item (none of which are especially difficult to
find in a game with as few locations as this one) and then finding a use for
them [2].
[2] Also very easy. The locations don’t really have a lot of things to do in
them and so generally when you find an item, it’s not hard to figure out where
you need to go and what you need to do with it. The game even hints, strongly,
that something floatable is needed to cross the sea in case you hadn’t figured
that out for yourself already.
[3] It uses the ASK [NAME] ABOUT [SUBJECT] format and while I managed to get a
few responses (all lacking speech marks alas), none of them really seemed to
change anything. The biggest problem, though, stemmed from the NPC being
referred to as Mr. McConkey but, due to ADRIFT treating the full stop as being
the divider between one command and another, it’s impossible to refer to Mr.
McConkey as Mr. McConkey. ADRIFT sees “Mr. McConkey” and processes it as “Mr”
and “McConkey” and thus throws a wobbly when trying to process the command.
Annoyingly, attempts to engage Mr. McConkey in conversation still advise me to
USE THE FORMAT "ASK MR. MCCONKEY ABOUT [SUBJECT]” even though this won’t work.
Unfortunately, the game doesn’t understand “McConkey” either so you have to
refer to him as “man” even when you know what his name is. See what I mean about
the lack of testing?
[4] Bisquit (sic) ?
[5] I can’t take the broom but no reason is given for this.
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
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