IFComp12: Irvine Quik & the Search for the Fish of Traglea
The title is accurate. You play Irvine Quik, and your job is to find a fish.
This is an ADRIFT game, which has for many years won the award for "Engine Most Likely Chosen For Worst IFComp Entries" though it may possibly be unseated in the next few years by ChoiceScript.
The game starts with a menu implemented as a list of verbs. Of note is >SPECIAL COMMANDS which reveals a custom set of awkward-to-remember verbs, as ADRIFT is generally not smart enough to use the same verb (e.g. push) in two contexts (push a button vs push a boulder).
Also a bad sign:
> COUNT
Displays Irvine's current carry weight and inventory limits numerically.
Unless there's a good reason, inventory puzzles are 80s-era player abuse. It turns out that this doesn't come into play, at least during the two hours of frustration I spent with the game, but it didn't need mentioning in the first place.
Anyway, as Irvine, incompetent space cadet (I envisioned an even ganglier Wesley Crusher), destroyer of planets, you are followed around by a floating inventory-puzzle-turned-parser-annoyance named HiRBy, short for Hovering Robot or something. Dunno what the 'i' stands for. This is awkwardly implemented; when HiRBy's pincer arms extended (via >DEPLOY) the >TAKE command is executed by the robot. But the >DROP command is always executed by the player; if you want HiRBy to drop something, you use the custom verb >PLOP. I'm sure that this is due to a limitation in ADRIFT, but man that's awkward. I'd much rather have given HiRBy orders, e.g. >HIRBY, TAKE MONKEY.
Overall, the game seems to suffer not only from the ADRIFT engine but also a lack of thorough beta testing. The walkthrough basically works, but deviate from it and you'll experience deep parser confusion. Several examples follow:
At one point, the captain passes out. My first reaction was >WAKE CAPTAIN which was flat-out refused by the parser (doesn't know >WAKE). I followed with:
>poke captain
Irvine pokes Captain Gatts Grupen. he says, "Quit that."
Awkward.
Then your next challenge is to land the ship. This puzzle consists of reading 6-digit numbers and typing them back in. I gather from the walkthrough that this was meant to be a memorization puzzle, so maybe on some platforms (other than scare on linux) it might not show the number on the same screen as the prompt? Still, a pretty stupid puzzle and inadequately tested. There also is no narration explaining why you are doing this; you wake up the captain and a number appears.
Throughout the ship, descriptions are all given as starboard/port/fore/aft, but the engine responds to >EXITS or failed moves with everything as n/s/e/w. Again, probably an ADRIFT limitation, but it would have been better to stick with n/s/e/w if you couldn't make it behave consistantly.
Finally, there's the seriously broken "monkey vs robot vs gravity" puzzle. Perhaps it's not broken on other platforms? I had to dive into the walkthrough to verify that I was doing the right thing, as the >HINT system was also broken on scare.
>take fruit
The monkey refuses to give Irvine the red fruit!
>deploy
Irvine presses HiRBy's deploy button. A pair of needle-thick arms with
pincers unfold from inside HiRBy.
>take fruit
HiRBy takes the red fruit in its pincers.
So we've established that monkeys have a natural affinity for robots. Later, after escaping from an annoying semi-random combat scene, you have to cheat (ignore the giant cat mask which is the second red herring [the first being a literal and quite tired red herring]), which requires a giant, unassisted leap of logic (known as a walkthrough). Several iterations later, you're back at monkey vs robot vs gravity:
>take coat
The monkey refuses to give Irvine the tiger coat!
>deploy
Irvine presses HiRBy's deploy button. HiRBy's arms fold back in.
>take coat
Irvine jumps and reaches as far as he can, but he can't reach anywhere near
the top of the tree or that fuzzy, little monkey.
"Dang it," says Irvine. "Just... j-just come down from there! I'll give you
a banana or something."
>climb crate
Irvine clambers atop the crate.
>deploy
Irvine presses HiRBy's deploy button. A pair of needle-thick arms with
pincers unfold from inside HiRBy.
>take coat
HiRBy hovers up to the monkey, who turns slack-jawed and marvels at the bot
in a stunned monkey sort of way. In its gawking, the monkey's grip loosens
on the exciting fur coat, so that it is hanging by just a few digits. HiRBy
gingerly relieves the monkey of it and cheerfully floats back down to
Irvine's shoulder level.
Previously, the robot was able to snatch the red fruit from the monkey, but now the interpreter ignores that the robot is deployed and fails to suggest that not only are you too low to grab the coat, the robot is also unable to fly high enough to take it. It's not that the monkey won't give it to the robot (after pushing a crate over and standing on it, the robot will fly higher) it's that the clues given for this rather complicated physics puzzle are highly misleading. This strikes me as something that adequate beta testing would have discovered.
Then, once the coat is in HiRBy's posession:
>plop coat
HiRBy is confused by your command.
Can you try again in two-word syntax without using a pronoun?
Wha?
I was unable to get past this point, as I couldn't convince HiRBy to drop the plot-advancing item.
4/10. Astonishingly high for an ADRIFT game. The author really tried to get the engine to behave, but in the end the engine's cross-platform inconsistencies and the author's lack of deep beta testing conspired to produce game-ending bugs. And some of the puzzles made no sense.
At this point, I'm counting instances of actual red herrings as player abuse.
This is an ADRIFT game, which has for many years won the award for "Engine Most Likely Chosen For Worst IFComp Entries" though it may possibly be unseated in the next few years by ChoiceScript.
The game starts with a menu implemented as a list of verbs. Of note is >SPECIAL COMMANDS which reveals a custom set of awkward-to-remember verbs, as ADRIFT is generally not smart enough to use the same verb (e.g. push) in two contexts (push a button vs push a boulder).
Also a bad sign:
> COUNT
Displays Irvine's current carry weight and inventory limits numerically.
Unless there's a good reason, inventory puzzles are 80s-era player abuse. It turns out that this doesn't come into play, at least during the two hours of frustration I spent with the game, but it didn't need mentioning in the first place.
Anyway, as Irvine, incompetent space cadet (I envisioned an even ganglier Wesley Crusher), destroyer of planets, you are followed around by a floating inventory-puzzle-turned-parser-annoyance named HiRBy, short for Hovering Robot or something. Dunno what the 'i' stands for. This is awkwardly implemented; when HiRBy's pincer arms extended (via >DEPLOY) the >TAKE command is executed by the robot. But the >DROP command is always executed by the player; if you want HiRBy to drop something, you use the custom verb >PLOP. I'm sure that this is due to a limitation in ADRIFT, but man that's awkward. I'd much rather have given HiRBy orders, e.g. >HIRBY, TAKE MONKEY.
Overall, the game seems to suffer not only from the ADRIFT engine but also a lack of thorough beta testing. The walkthrough basically works, but deviate from it and you'll experience deep parser confusion. Several examples follow:
At one point, the captain passes out. My first reaction was >WAKE CAPTAIN which was flat-out refused by the parser (doesn't know >WAKE). I followed with:
>poke captain
Irvine pokes Captain Gatts Grupen. he says, "Quit that."
Awkward.
Then your next challenge is to land the ship. This puzzle consists of reading 6-digit numbers and typing them back in. I gather from the walkthrough that this was meant to be a memorization puzzle, so maybe on some platforms (other than scare on linux) it might not show the number on the same screen as the prompt? Still, a pretty stupid puzzle and inadequately tested. There also is no narration explaining why you are doing this; you wake up the captain and a number appears.
Throughout the ship, descriptions are all given as starboard/port/fore/aft, but the engine responds to >EXITS or failed moves with everything as n/s/e/w. Again, probably an ADRIFT limitation, but it would have been better to stick with n/s/e/w if you couldn't make it behave consistantly.
Finally, there's the seriously broken "monkey vs robot vs gravity" puzzle. Perhaps it's not broken on other platforms? I had to dive into the walkthrough to verify that I was doing the right thing, as the >HINT system was also broken on scare.
>take fruit
The monkey refuses to give Irvine the red fruit!
>deploy
Irvine presses HiRBy's deploy button. A pair of needle-thick arms with
pincers unfold from inside HiRBy.
>take fruit
HiRBy takes the red fruit in its pincers.
So we've established that monkeys have a natural affinity for robots. Later, after escaping from an annoying semi-random combat scene, you have to cheat (ignore the giant cat mask which is the second red herring [the first being a literal and quite tired red herring]), which requires a giant, unassisted leap of logic (known as a walkthrough). Several iterations later, you're back at monkey vs robot vs gravity:
>take coat
The monkey refuses to give Irvine the tiger coat!
>deploy
Irvine presses HiRBy's deploy button. HiRBy's arms fold back in.
>take coat
Irvine jumps and reaches as far as he can, but he can't reach anywhere near
the top of the tree or that fuzzy, little monkey.
"Dang it," says Irvine. "Just... j-just come down from there! I'll give you
a banana or something."
>climb crate
Irvine clambers atop the crate.
>deploy
Irvine presses HiRBy's deploy button. A pair of needle-thick arms with
pincers unfold from inside HiRBy.
>take coat
HiRBy hovers up to the monkey, who turns slack-jawed and marvels at the bot
in a stunned monkey sort of way. In its gawking, the monkey's grip loosens
on the exciting fur coat, so that it is hanging by just a few digits. HiRBy
gingerly relieves the monkey of it and cheerfully floats back down to
Irvine's shoulder level.
Previously, the robot was able to snatch the red fruit from the monkey, but now the interpreter ignores that the robot is deployed and fails to suggest that not only are you too low to grab the coat, the robot is also unable to fly high enough to take it. It's not that the monkey won't give it to the robot (after pushing a crate over and standing on it, the robot will fly higher) it's that the clues given for this rather complicated physics puzzle are highly misleading. This strikes me as something that adequate beta testing would have discovered.
Then, once the coat is in HiRBy's posession:
>plop coat
HiRBy is confused by your command.
Can you try again in two-word syntax without using a pronoun?
Wha?
I was unable to get past this point, as I couldn't convince HiRBy to drop the plot-advancing item.
4/10. Astonishingly high for an ADRIFT game. The author really tried to get the engine to behave, but in the end the engine's cross-platform inconsistencies and the author's lack of deep beta testing conspired to produce game-ending bugs. And some of the puzzles made no sense.
At this point, I'm counting instances of actual red herrings as player abuse.