• (cs) in reply to rmz
    rmz:
    The "having to go back to a prior save because you forgot an item" is hardly unique to text adventures. Pretty much all of the classic Sierra graphic adventures (King's Quest, etc) did this, and that was a part of what made the games challenging. Too many adventure games in the modern age (well, what's left of them) are basically visual novels, with no way to die, no way to lose, and no way to ruin your game, forcing you to reload. I like The Longest Journey and all, but sometimes I wish that I could do something to actually mess up and force me to reload, rather than just have to go scouring the nearby areas for the item I need to click on.

    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    "If I were a level twenty raver..."

    lol and kudos to the author; man I miss those parties.

    I never made level 20 because I couldn't find the "+3 Glow Stick" or "Ecstasy of Obnoxiousness".

  • not-bob (unregistered) in reply to Xyzzy

    HAAAAA (damn I'm old)

    HEHEHEHEHE

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to the real wtf fool
    the real wtf fool:
    Anon:
    Ah, the joys of struggling with the parser it a text-based adventure game. The joy of not knowing if what you just tried didn't work because it's not the solution to the problem, or if you just didn't word it correctly.

    Oh yes. And the 'advance' that was graphical adventures, where the main challenge involved sweeping your mouse over the whole screen waiting for the cursor to change when it passes over some tiny indecipherable part of the picture.

    btw +24 to Xyzzy

    Indeed, this single "innovation" has pretty much killed adventure games for me (previously my favorite genre). Now when you get stuck you just click everything in your inventory on every other thing in your inventory and everything on the screen until something happens. No challenge, game over in about 2 hours.

  • (cs) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    Just a clarification for you youngsters. 56 K refers to the RAM requirements: 56 kilobytes of RAM (56 x 1024 bytes) to be shared between the game and the operating system, CP/M (which took between 6 and 8 KB).
    56K? BLOAT! (hugs 5K VIC-20)
  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Kermos
    Kermos:
    rmz:
    The "having to go back to a prior save because you forgot an item" is hardly unique to text adventures. Pretty much all of the classic Sierra graphic adventures (King's Quest, etc) did this, and that was a part of what made the games challenging. Too many adventure games in the modern age (well, what's left of them) are basically visual novels, with no way to die, no way to lose, and no way to ruin your game, forcing you to reload. I like The Longest Journey and all, but sometimes I wish that I could do something to actually mess up and force me to reload, rather than just have to go scouring the nearby areas for the item I need to click on.

    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.

    I remember a part in one of the Monkey Island games (maybe the first or second) where they made fun on Sierra game's habit of suddenly killing you off. If you got to close to the edge of a plateau, the ground would give way and you'd fall to your "death". A Sierra like dialog box would put up and tell you that you'd "really screwed up". Then it disappeared and Guybrush bounced back again. Apparently Guybrush landed on a rubber tree.

  • Zerbs (unregistered) in reply to rmz

    Text adventures in general were OK, some were more fun than others. I never did get all the fluffs in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I guess TRWTF is that I was so bored in high school in the late 80's that I actually wrote my own text adventure engine.

    CAPTCHA: ingenium: the material that Wiley Coyote made all his gadgets out of.

  • (cs) in reply to Lisa
    Lisa:
    All I have to say is: plugh.

    Also, xyzzx.

    You forgot to put "Spoiler Alert" in the Subject line, you InsensitiveClod (TM /.)!!!

    PS it's xyzzy. No wonder you got eaten by the snake.

  • (cs) in reply to Satanicpuppy
    Satanicpuppy:
    And that is why I hated Zork. It's not an exercise in reasoning or logic, its an exercise in thinking exactly like a guy who is so far deviated from the norm that he writes text adventure games.
    My brother and I defeated Zork II, and it was quite fun.

    The author is mixing up Zork II and Zork III, I think. Zork III was impossible to win on your first trip through. You can debate the gameplay of that, but there were certain things you had to discover about your world and you had to do some certain things before the earthquake hit around turn 300.

  • SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Zerbs
    Zerbs:
    Text adventures in general were OK, some were more fun than others. I never did get all the fluffs in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I guess TRWTF is that I was so bored in high school in the late 80's that I actually wrote my own text adventure engine.

    CAPTCHA: ingenium: the material that Wiley Coyote made all his gadgets out of.

    Some of the first programs I ever wrote after learning GW-Basic were text based RPGs. After that, I graduated to some crappy graphics RPGs. Then a brief stop in QBasic before going to C++. I recently wrote a little sprite based RPG in C++. Hard but fun :)

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Anon:
    "If I were a level twenty raver..."

    lol and kudos to the author; man I miss those parties.

    I never made level 20 because I couldn't find the "+3 Glow Stick" or "Ecstasy of Obnoxiousness".

    I made it to lvl 21 Raver and got the Raver girlfriend constantly on X. Her mind wasn't the only thing opened.

  • (cs) in reply to Kermos
    Kermos:
    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.
    One aspect of a powerful game is that it lets you hurt yourself.

    If there's a pit of quicksand and you throw your chalice into it, well, maybe you got what you deserved. Should the game prevent you from doing that?

    And most Infocom games were the kind where you would sit down and play for a few hours. You probably did several things wrong, but you could still keep on playing. Next time you play, do it right. It's a game, right?

    Ultima V is one of my favorite long-term games, but, if you really tried hard, you could make the game unwinnable. You had to basically be an asshole and kill off citizens that wanted to help you. The lesson? Don't be an asshole!

  • (cs) in reply to ThePants999
    ThePants999:
    These comments are great. But, honestly, why do we keep having these What The Ad articles? What are they for? What do they have to do with TDWTF? Basically, WTF?

    Don't like it? Go somewhere else.

  • fresch (unregistered) in reply to Xyzzy

    Totally awesome!!! Perfectly portrait what it was all about :-D

    But... how does it continue!?

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to Otto
    Otto:
    I remember that Compuserve used to cost a lost more than $12. Back in the early 80's, it was like $35 an hour or so. So two hours might have actually been the legit prize.
    Says right in the ad that access costs $5 an hour from 6PM to 5AM, and that special, obscene rates can be had for daytime access. The tourney runs from 6PM to 5AM though, soo ... assuming that the "prize" is ten bucks.

    Oh, plus the t-shirt. Cough.

  • (cs) in reply to Stan
    Stan:
    Andy Goth:
    > THROW BABY

    Kick the baby!!

    http://images.southparkstudios.com/media/sounds/101/101_baby.wav

  • (cs) in reply to Stan
    Stan:
    Andy Goth:
    > THROW BABY

    Kick the baby!!

    Where is Babby kikked?

  • (cs)

    I think I was among the generation of kids that was just past the text-based adventure craze. I remember in eighth grade, going to a computer store with my best friend, and together we picked out a game for his birthday. We were looking at the cool colorful graphics on the box, and expecting to see some kind of graphical action game. We were immensely disappointed to go back to his house and install the game on his computer and discover it was a text RPG.

    I do remember, shortly after that, being very impressed with games I downloaded from the local BBS, like Commander Keen, Jill of the Jungle, and soon after, Wolfenstein 3-D.

    My favourite game of all time has got to be LOOM, particularly the version that came on CD with all the audio.

    And shortly after all this, I discovered MUDs, which threw me right back into the world of (multiplayer) text gaming...

  • (cs) in reply to Zerbs
    Zerbs:
    Text adventures in general were OK, some were more fun than others. I never did get all the fluffs in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
    If you ever feel like giving it another go, there's a nicely illustrated Flash version at the BBC.
    Zerbs:
    I guess TRWTF is that I was so bored in high school in the late 80's that I actually wrote my own text adventure engine.
    Nahh, everyone did that! :)
  • paulains (unregistered) in reply to SomeCoder
    SomeCoder:
    Zerbs:
    Text adventures in general were OK, some were more fun than others. I never did get all the fluffs in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I guess TRWTF is that I was so bored in high school in the late 80's that I actually wrote my own text adventure engine.

    CAPTCHA: ingenium: the material that Wiley Coyote made all his gadgets out of.

    Some of the first programs I ever wrote after learning GW-Basic were text based RPGs. After that, I graduated to some crappy graphics RPGs. Then a brief stop in QBasic before going to C++. I recently wrote a little sprite based RPG in C++. Hard but fun :)
    Same here, though it wasn't quite an RPG. Using GW-BASIC on our 8088 my friends and I wrote a very unsophisticated Choose-Your-Own-Adventure program to kickstart our way into programming. Unsurprisingly, that game was worse than failure.

  • (cs) in reply to TopCod3rsBottom
    TopCod3rsBottom:
    Stan:
    Andy Goth:
    > THROW BABY

    Kick the baby!!

    Where is Babby kikked?
    second facepalm of the day U R DOIN' IT WRONG.

    TopCod3rsBottom:
    Stan:
    Andy Goth:
    > THROW BABY

    Kick the baby!!

    HOW is Babby kikked?
    FTFY.

  • (cs)

    http://www.dynamicarcade.co.uk/game.wml ^Random very short text adventure I wrote in wml^ wml = mobile phone internet crazy language, so visit on a mobile phone. OK, so it's not strictly a text adventure, as it's multiple-choice instead of you typing commands in, which would be annoying on a phone. On the upside it is only ~3.4kB and completely self contained, so if you play it 3.4kB is all you download. wml is crazy, allowing you to include multiple pages in one file like that.

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to Kermos
    Kermos:
    rmz:
    The "having to go back to a prior save because you forgot an item" is hardly unique to text adventures. Pretty much all of the classic Sierra graphic adventures (King's Quest, etc) did this, and that was a part of what made the games challenging. Too many adventure games in the modern age (well, what's left of them) are basically visual novels, with no way to die, no way to lose, and no way to ruin your game, forcing you to reload. I like The Longest Journey and all, but sometimes I wish that I could do something to actually mess up and force me to reload, rather than just have to go scouring the nearby areas for the item I need to click on.

    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.

    In fact, I believe another publisher of text adventures actually designed them so that getting stuck was impossible. YOu could die, of course, but getting stuck because you forgot to grab the magic spork right at the beginning of the game wasn't possible. At worse, it made you travel back to where you get it, and all the way back, but no, you weren't stuck...

    It might've been Infocom... but I can't remember.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Lisa

    xyzzx? I assume you meant xyzzy.

    And yes, I want to kill the dragon with my bare hands.

  • paulains (unregistered) in reply to Worf
    Kermos:
    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.
    Agreed. Loops are annoying too, even if it's in a side-scrolling graphical game. You could only play World -1 for so long before losing hope that you'd ever get to bone the princess. Damn shortcuts.
  • (cs) in reply to Worf
    Worf:
    In fact, I believe another publisher of text adventures actually designed them so that getting stuck was impossible. YOu could die, of course, but getting stuck because you forgot to grab the magic spork right at the beginning of the game wasn't possible. At worse, it made you travel back to where you get it, and all the way back, but no, you weren't stuck...

    It might've been Infocom... but I can't remember.

    Infocom might've done this for their Beginner games like Wishbringer. But by far the most permeating factor of Infocom games was that you could interact with the world and its objects, which includes things like throwing them into rivers and bottomless holes, giving them to other people, and otherwise leaving you without the item you needed.

    Enchanter had a Dispell scroll that could undo exactly one magical trick. There were a dozen places you could use it, and if you were stuck by a few puzzles you could use this to see what lay behind each of them (in separate plays of the game). This let you narrow down where that specific scroll was to be used.

  • GDarius (unregistered)
  • MDMA? (unregistered) in reply to OldCoder
    OldCoder:
    I remember Nemesis, wasted far too many hours playing it back in (mumble). Ravers are nasty creatures from the Thomas Covenant books by Stephen Donaldson, not hippies from the seventies.

    Ravers are extacy, MDMA, addicts from the 1980's & '90's who went to parties. See the bands Crystal Method & Skinny Puppy.

    Interestingly, MDMA was legal up until circa 1985, since the DEA never got arund to banning yet.

  • (cs)

    And I thought Pokemon games were stupid...

  • 01001001011101000010011101110011001000000110110101100101 (unregistered)

    I used to love those games. I played one called Trinity for hours and hours. Never did complete the dang thing.... I also played one called Orb, not sure if it's the same as OrbQuest. The Orb I played was for DOS around in the mid eighties....

  • Gaspar (unregistered) in reply to Xyzzy

    Best comment ever...!

    CAPTCHA "uxor"

  • (cs)

    CompuServe Adventure Tournament...

    Hentai waiting to happen

  • (cs) in reply to LightStyx
  • Fast Eddie (unregistered) in reply to Worf
    Worf:
    Kermos:
    rmz:
    The "having to go back to a prior save because you forgot an item" is hardly unique to text adventures. Pretty much all of the classic Sierra graphic adventures (King's Quest, etc) did this, and that was a part of what made the games challenging. Too many adventure games in the modern age (well, what's left of them) are basically visual novels, with no way to die, no way to lose, and no way to ruin your game, forcing you to reload. I like The Longest Journey and all, but sometimes I wish that I could do something to actually mess up and force me to reload, rather than just have to go scouring the nearby areas for the item I need to click on.

    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.

    In fact, I believe another publisher of text adventures actually designed them so that getting stuck was impossible. YOu could die, of course, but getting stuck because you forgot to grab the magic spork right at the beginning of the game wasn't possible. At worse, it made you travel back to where you get it, and all the way back, but no, you weren't stuck...

    It might've been Infocom... but I can't remember.

    My favorite was a text adventure for the Atari 400/800. It was the only game I ever played that had an item that was never used for any purpose. I am unable to remember the name after all these years but the object was "a stick".

  • (cs) in reply to Zerbs
    I guess TRWTF is that I was so bored in high school in the late 80's that I actually wrote my own text adventure engine.
    What an amazing hobby of the late 80's-early 90's, that was. I did the same myself, writing a text based prequel to Space Quest 1 in BASIC, and then going and tacking on some simple CGA graphics for the ending sequence and a full blown turn-based combat engine (Imagine: Zork-wannabe, now with HP!). The most entertaining part was trying to capture as much of Sierra's original sarcastic humor in room descriptions and death notices as possible.

    I re-wrote it in C++ during a boring high school class, and still carry the minuscule executable (it runs fine in the Windows XP console!) on my thumb drive.

  • (cs) in reply to North Bus
    North Bus:
    I guess TRWTF is that I was so bored in high school in the late 80's that I actually wrote my own text adventure engine.
    What an amazing hobby of the late 80's-early 90's, that was. I did the same myself, writing a text based prequel to Space Quest 1 in BASIC, and then going and tacking on some simple CGA graphics for the ending sequence and a full blown turn-based combat engine (Imagine: Zork-wannabe, now with HP!). The most entertaining part was trying to capture as much of Sierra's original sarcastic humor in room descriptions and death notices as possible.

    I re-wrote it in C++ during a boring high school class, and still carry the minuscule executable (it runs fine in the Windows XP console!) on my thumb drive.

    I wasn't going to post here, but why don't you share the executable? I'd like to at least play it, I'm certain others would as well.

  • Some Random Guy... (unregistered) in reply to Xyzzy

    BRILLIANT.

  • (cs)

    http://code.google.com/p/orbquest/downloads/list found orbquest remake

  • (cs) in reply to Steeldragon
    Steeldragon:
    I wasn't going to post here, but why don't you share the executable? I'd like to at least play it, I'm certain others would as well.

    I share the sentiment... let us play it! :)

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to Kermos
    Kermos:
    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.

    The worst I've seen for that was "Dark Seed". You basically had 3 game days to figure out what's up with this migraine headache you have, and on each day you had to do EVERYTHING possible for that day, in order to save yourself from a gruesome fate.

  • (cs) in reply to Kermos
    Kermos:
    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.

    I seem to recall Nethack goes out of its way to prevent you using your saves for anything other than a game break. If you die, it nukes the save. It even has code to spot if you've attempted to copy it somewhere else and back again.

    Weird thing is, Nethack's open source, yet this behaviour remains. I believe Nethack players would consider loading your save after dying "cheating".

    Personally, I'd say being able to get stuck unexpectedly is a mistake. If you go doing something blatantly stupid, you get what you deserve. But if you go into dungeon_a without having got random item_b that you need to defeat monster_c, and you're then trapped in the dungeon, that's bad game design.

  • (cs) in reply to rmz
    rmz:
    The "having to go back to a prior save because you forgot an item" is hardly unique to text adventures. Pretty much all of the classic Sierra graphic adventures (King's Quest, etc) did this, and that was a part of what made the games challenging. Too many adventure games in the modern age (well, what's left of them) are basically visual novels, with no way to die, no way to lose, and no way to ruin your game, forcing you to reload. I like The Longest Journey and all, but sometimes I wish that I could do something to actually mess up and force me to reload, rather than just have to go scouring the nearby areas for the item I need to click on.
    Hm... I can easily think about 2 recent games that fit the "load last savegame" requirement:
    • Resident Evil series (ok, I haven't played 4 but it was true with the older ones)
    • ObsCure 1 & 2.

    Both games require you to save in specific points, which might lead you to save few times... and then lose 4 hours of gameplay. Oh, and ObsCure has the "feature" of making savepoints one-use-only; save in the wrong moment and you're royally screwed.

    However, having your char discovering you needed the "X key of freedom" 4 hours after not taking it, and not giving you the chance to go back for it is just annoying. Maybe this is the reason I am used to having a zillion savegame files on most games (ok, that and also my previous experience with the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books)

    Then again, I like the Wing Commander series, even though Wing Commander 4 has some actions that can truly muck up your gameplay. Example: Mistreat the beggar you find at the beginning of the game, and halfway through the game, one of the hardest missions gets even harder!

  • Mr Smith (unregistered) in reply to Xyzzy
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) > take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! > kick comment You sprain your toe! > invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA > look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? > north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. > south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. > say saluto You gain: comment > post comment
    Your comment is glowing blue! There is a Grammar Nazi here. > attack grammar nazi (with the dictionary) You take a swipe at the Grammar Nazi. You seem to have annoyed him.
  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to Mr Smith
    Mr Smith:
    Xyzzy:
    > look You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. Exits are: back, google > post comment You have no comment! > look comment It's a comment lying on the floor. It's probably more clever than anything you can come up with. (But a touch pedantic. You'd never do that.) > take comment You can't take that, it's not yours! > kick comment You sprain your toe! > invent You have: unlit lamp coins empty cage bad attitude CAPTCHA > look CAPTCHA It says: "saluto". Maybe it speaks Esperanto? > north It's dark. You may be eaten by a grue. > south You are in The Daily WTF Comment Forum. There are many comments lying here in disarray. > say saluto You gain: comment > post comment
    Your comment is glowing blue! There is a Grammar Nazi here. > attack grammar nazi (with the dictionary) You take a swipe at the Grammar Nazi. You seem to have annoyed him.

    Ice-T shouts "Cop Killa!" at you for 5000 points!

    Sorry... As long as we're going into wacky land, might as well reference an old wacky BBS game.

  • (cs) in reply to Technical Thug
    Technical Thug:
    Kermos:
    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.
    One aspect of a powerful game is that it lets you hurt yourself.

    If there's a pit of quicksand and you throw your chalice into it, well, maybe you got what you deserved. Should the game prevent you from doing that?

    The way I see it, a game should be in one of two states at any given time: either (1) winnable, or (2) clearly lost. It shouldn't be in an unwinnable state where you've made a mistake, but the mistake won't become obvious for several hours yet. Throwing your chalice into the quicksand is an obvious mistake, but failing to get your mail from the mailbox isn't.

  • Matt A (unregistered) in reply to DaveK

    Actually, toasted crickets and cicadas are really good. Especially in a stir fry. Kind of nutty, actually. And no, I'm not trolling.

    DaveK:
    OP:
    Basically, you could get to one point in the game, unable to proceed because you don't have a certain item...
    You went and ate the fricken' candy, didn't you? [image]
    OP:
    ...and you can't go back unless you have an old game save.
    Yeh, but you also have to be dumb enough to think that eating a packet of chocolate-coated insects is a good idea.

    I mean, come on! Does it SOUND like human food? Well DOES IT?

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous

    look You see a bunch of old ads. tl;dr You skip to the comments. quote Anonymous Anonymous says: A geniune thanks for not putting the images in an AdBlocked folder. Just for that, I'm clicking on a bunch of your sponsors. Cheers. say Seconded. (Walrus toothpaste, though, WTF?) You are eaten by a grue.

  • paulains (unregistered) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:
    Technical Thug:
    Kermos:
    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.
    One aspect of a powerful game is that it lets you hurt yourself.

    If there's a pit of quicksand and you throw your chalice into it, well, maybe you got what you deserved. Should the game prevent you from doing that?

    The way I see it, a game should be in one of two states at any given time: either (1) winnable, or (2) clearly lost. It shouldn't be in an unwinnable state where you've made a mistake, but the mistake won't become obvious for several hours yet. Throwing your chalice into the quicksand is an obvious mistake, but failing to get your mail from the mailbox isn't.

    Clearly the creators of these games understood that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.

  • (cs) in reply to Technical Thug
    Technical Thug:
    Kermos:
    Honestly I have to say I don't care for the whole ruin your game approach. Having to constantly create save points so that you can go back in my opinion completely breaks immersion. As far as I see it, anything that breaks the game to where it's impossible to continue is a bug. There are better ways than that to make a game challenging and interesting.
    One aspect of a powerful game is that it lets you hurt yourself.

    If there's a pit of quicksand and you throw your chalice into it, well, maybe you got what you deserved. Should the game prevent you from doing that?

    And most Infocom games were the kind where you would sit down and play for a few hours. You probably did several things wrong, but you could still keep on playing. Next time you play, do it right. It's a game, right?

    Ultima V is one of my favorite long-term games, but, if you really tried hard, you could make the game unwinnable. You had to basically be an asshole and kill off citizens that wanted to help you. The lesson? Don't be an asshole!

    I'm perfectly fine with a game that lets you hurt yourself. Please, I want that! I'm even OK with what you say where if you really go out of your way to screw yourself over then go for it. Fair game as far as I am concerned.

    What I was referring to are games where you get to a point where you cannot ever continue because you forgot to do something 50 steps back that you didn't know you had to do in the first place. The problem I have with that is that it just ends up in pure frustrating. You one don't know why you can't continue and even if you suspect you forgot to do something, you don't know what. If now you have no way to fix this other than loading an earlier save-game then honestly the game is broken. Even if you have save games, how far back do you have to go?

    To me, that's just random trial and error and has little to do with challenge.

    Other than that, I'm all for punishing severe stupidity where the player actively chooses to do something stupid.

  • moz (unregistered) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    Lisa:
    All I have to say is: plugh.

    Also, xyzzx.

    You forgot to put "Spoiler Alert" in the Subject line, you InsensitiveClod (TM /.)!!!

    PS it's xyzzy. No wonder you got eaten by the snake.

    No, silly, it's plover. As in "Why would anyone consider dropping a magazine in Witt's End in the first place?"

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