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DELRON
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Happy Valley Reviews
Author: Lumin
Date: 2008
ADRIFT 4.0
Reviewed by
OtisTDog
I found myself with a few free minutes this evening and thought I'd try the
latest on IFDB. I ended up spending at least an hour with this game, which was
surprisingly engaging.
The genre claimed for this work is "fantasy", but it's more comedy than anything
else. It has a chattery, bantering tone that did a lot to endear this game to
me, and did so quickly -- which is important because I very nearly quit after
the first move. (Let's just say the command "read sign" did not produce a very
promising result.) The text is frequently silly, but it only crosses the line
into *too* silly once or twice. It made me chuckle on a few occasions.
The game proclaims itself as geared for a novice, and it mostly lives up to the
promise. Puzzles are not difficult in terms of a thinking challenge; they are
immediately recognizable as the "insert tab A into slot B" type of artificial
roadblocks that litter both IF and other role-playing games. This is frequently
reinforced by the fact that, in many cases, uses for objects are strongly
suggested in their descriptions, often with comic effect.
Some puzzles were difficult, however, in terms of implementation choices. Object
implementation is fairly rich -- perhaps too rich in some places.(Spoiler -
click to show)At least one critical object is only discoverable after examining
a seemingly-already-adequately-described scenery object in the first room... and
then examining something mentioned in that object's description. This seemed
like an artifact of the programmer having some fun, and it was not in keeping
with the description style of the rest of the game. On the other hand,
conversations were implemented so sparsely that they barely existed. If you
don't hit on certain keywords, the NPCs issue only unmodified default
responses.(Spoiler - click to show)This was particularly frustrating in dealing
with the first NPCs I encountered, outside the mines. They did not react to
keywords based on the nouns in the area, and for several minutes talking to the
foreman gnome got nothing but "no response" results. I eventually went back and
read what he first says and found that keywords there get real replies. After
that, conversations went more smoothly.
Fortunately, the author includes a walkthrough, but, unfortunately, it is in the
form of a series of commands to win the game a certain way. A better hint system
would have been nice, since I did find myself consulting the walkthrough at one
point (see first spoiler above), and in doing so, I inadvertently saw the
solution for another.
All in all, I liked this game, but I think it needs significantly more polish
before it can be considered complete as an introductory piece of IF. A real
novice would probably have been confused and frustrated by the numerous small
bugs and issues I encountered, and anyone turning to the walkthrough for help
would have a lot of potential fun ruined.
Keep an eye out for future work from this author. There's definitely potential
here.
Reviewed by Dannymac247
I enjoyed the concept of this game VERY much, it was laugh
out loud funny at parts and the once it was clear what I was trying to
accomplish the path to the win was very interesting.
The game could still use some polish, however. An entire room is invisible
unless one choses, on a lark, to try walking in an unlabeled direction. Another
puzzle involves a box that never appears in the room even after it is supposedly
triggered, though it doesn't need to in order to solve its puzzle.
Despite these bugs, the game is fun, the concept is great, and there is a feel
good ending. Fun stuff.
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
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