10 Second Defence by Christina Nordlander
My first interactive fiction game, made in Inform 7. A one-room, vaguely cyberpunkish game: you have ten seconds to prepare before a hitman reaches your flat. What happens next depends on what precautions you have taken.
I apologise for any cheap coding tricks or roughness around the edges: I learnt Inform pretty much from scratch during these three days. I choked on the compo; I'm glad I made it in time for the jam, though.
Also, despite my best efforts, some of the planned elements had to be dummied out due to lack of time: most glaringly, the implant went from having an effect on the plot to being basically just a meta-device explaining how the player can undo and restart. However, the finished product is perfectly winnable and has no known bugs.
Difficult, possibly unfairly so, but short enough that the whole point is to experiment and see what you can do differently the next time around.
Source text available. A walkthrough can be found at: http://doopnet.com/defence/10%20second%20defence%20walkthru.txt
EDIT: Fixed a very silly bug (caught by Zwergesel) that allowed you to bypass the entire game. Thanks, mate!
I apologise for any cheap coding tricks or roughness around the edges: I learnt Inform pretty much from scratch during these three days. I choked on the compo; I'm glad I made it in time for the jam, though.
Also, despite my best efforts, some of the planned elements had to be dummied out due to lack of time: most glaringly, the implant went from having an effect on the plot to being basically just a meta-device explaining how the player can undo and restart. However, the finished product is perfectly winnable and has no known bugs.
Difficult, possibly unfairly so, but short enough that the whole point is to experiment and see what you can do differently the next time around.
Source text available. A walkthrough can be found at: http://doopnet.com/defence/10%20second%20defence%20walkthru.txt
EDIT: Fixed a very silly bug (caught by Zwergesel) that allowed you to bypass the entire game. Thanks, mate!
Ratings
| Coolness | 82% | 2 |
| Overall(Jam) | 2.83 | 414 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.96 | 282 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 2.29 | 545 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.00 | 387 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 2.78 | 366 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.18 | 191 |
| Theme(Jam) | 2.91 | 373 |
Anyone know if you're allowed to reupload debugged versions of your game after the deadline is up?
At any rate, congrats on finding an exploitable bug!
@IndigoWolf: Thank you very much!
I would have liked to see more about the world, because there are hints in the writing that there are interesting things going on outside the apartment building. That said, I completely understand the overall brevity with the timecrunch.
Overall, well done.
Nice story! Could have benefited from just a tad more world building, the implants and the Sleep (with the capital S) drug hinted at the setting, and the Kieran bits drove it home as a cyberpunk story (not sure if I ought to count the built-in strip lights as futuristic any more ;P), but I'm not sure if the less genre savvy would pick up on that.
I liked it though! Spending all your time setting up a trap and seeing the iterated results was fun
The only verbs you need to use in this game are fairly straight-forward ones: TAKE, WEAR, TURN ON, TURN OFF, OPEN, PUT [object] IN/ON [object], plus compass directions (and up/down).
I'm watching your video now and seeing some interesting games. Thanks for the service you (and other video makers, of course) provide for us.
A couple of examples:
I had the idea of using the sleeping capsule in the burner but couldn't find out the words to do that.
After finding out how to do it by reading the first bit of the walkthrough the hitman was hit by my trap with the sleeping capsule and fluid on the floor and I tried to kill him with the knife (Violence isn't the answer was the response).
After having another go, I tried to use glue on the knife, and then the knife on the wall, but had to put glue on the wall first.
I also tried to enter the word 'use' a lot where I thought it could apply but wasn't able to do so.
Still, really cool to see this kind of game done to this quality given the time, and a nice very use of the theme. Good job :)
@The Evil Cult: If I polish it up to make a post-compo version, I'll definitely put in more synonyms and sort out all the problems you mentioned (you definitely ought to be able to put glue on the knife). Thank you very much for your critique.
Please make a post-compo version of this, though, as it is AWESOME. Very creepy feeling to everything, and I can picture it all in my mind, even though it's just text. You're an awesome storyteller.
I saved the web page so I can play it over and over again later.
Thank you very much for your positive critique. I will definitely have to make a post-compo version now, and I promise it will be a lot better.
I believe it be more helpful if the items were listed and the actions (along with some useless ones) were listed next to them as well.
It could be just me, as I don't really play or make games that have no graphics, but I'd personally have a background image strip on top, description text in the middle and item icons/button at the bottom with their actions, perhaps some music playing in the background which intensifies with each choice.
Not bad for first time. :)
anyway, good work, and very creative solutions.
Do play that one instead: it has better implementation and hopefully more intuitive hints.