IF Comp '08 Review - Karl Beecher's Escape from the Underworld!
Perhaps it’s the Teutonic K, but I can’t imagine Karl Beecher not having a voice like Peter Lorre. Riff does a pretty good Peter Lorre, and you know who does a pretty good Nixon? My mom. She waggles her jowls and thrusts her hands out for victory and declares that she is not a crook. I will have jowls like hers someday. Such are the joys of English ancestry.
Which brings us to the last of the z-code games, Escape from the Underworld, which I assume is about escaping from the underworld. We shall play at it!
[spoilers start here; also this would be a good time to think about whether you’ve forgotten to do anything, like turn off the oven or buy beer]
I’m not happy in hell? What is wrong with me?
I like the idea of the motivational posters, it’s just that none of them are very funny.
Dude, Trevor, I’m totally saying hi to you. You could at least, I dunno, scowl.
> x sink
A sink and one cold tap.
There’s no hot water in hell?
You are standing upon a ledge far above the Neverending Gorge of Eternal Pain.
Where you wanna retire to, Mabel, Florida or the Neverending Gorge of Eternal Pain? Yeah, me too.
The Mechanic’s old leather toolbag is sat beside him.
This is so wrong, grammatically, that I am having a hard time figuring out what it ought to be. “Is set” is sort of janky… “sits?” How about “sits?”
Okay, I got the mechanic a drink, but I’m not sure where that gets me.
No reply from the mechanic either. If you’re not going to have responsive NPCs, the very least you could do is code one default response along the lines of “I am very busy and you should not attempt to talk to me.” That is not much, but it is better.
I opened the stove, put a piece of cheese inside it, and closed the stove, just to get the sense I was accomplishing something. I am not sure if this is the game’s fault or my own.
Oh, I see, these NPCs can be ASKed about very specific things, you just can’t TALK to them or expect them to respond to anything you SAY. It would be nice (and by “nice” I mean “much less shit”) if this were hinted at when you tried TALK and SAY and things, because otherwise certain of your players will assume that these NPCs are completely pointless instead of almost completely pointless.
Oh dear, just tried to enter the torture chamber that the receptionist told me was open:
[** Programming error: tried to “give” an attribute to Class **]
[** Programming error: I “gave” an attribute to your mom last night, while I was “fucking” her. **]
[** Programming error: Torture chamber reception (object number 48) has no property <number 0> to read **]
[** Programming error: tried to “move” yourself to Class **]
[** Programming error: tried to find the “child” of Class **]
This is very bad! Do you see? This is terrible!
> w
You’ll have to get out of the Torture chamber reception first.
> exit reception
But you aren’t in the Receptionist.
Not yet, but I think she likes me.
…this seems like a good enough time to run screaming from this game. It’s possible the puzzles were fun, but even if the NPCs had been fully implemented characters, and the writing hilarious, the bugginess is a killer. A four for you, Karl Beecher, and more testing next time!
1 year ago