Power, MT by PhilStrahl
Power, MT is a text adventure set in the town of Power, Montana, where strange things are happening. Armed only with your cell phone and its draining battery, you have to survive until the end.
The less said about it, the better, only this: Play with the sound on, because there's music for your ears.
Controls
You play it in your browser and navigate it by clicking links with your mouse.
Notes & Hints
The progression of time in the game is turn-based, not real-time, meaning that you can take as long as you want reading the descriptions, only clicking on a link advances the story and drains your battery.
“Your stupid game killed me. Where's my save?!”
You can save manually throughout the story. Yet, there's even something better: When you open the story rollout (the little > on the top left) you can step back in time and undo all your turns right until the beginning. Doing so might mess up the music, but better than starting all over, right? ;)
“Your source is just your game as .html. What's the deal with that?”
Since the game was written in Twine using the SugarCube story format, you can drag the .html file and drop it into the Twine editor and it should open. :)
"Oh god, so many typos!"
I'm sorry. I didn't have the time to proof-read, but after the submission I might update the game with the mistakes removed. Any changes will be mentioned in the Change Log.
Change Log
- 1.03 *cleaned up source code *tidied up CSS **redrew cover image
- 1.02 *fixed typos * fixed plot-stopper towards the end * added .ogg music format for compability * switched emoji for pixel images to maximize compability.
- 1.01 * fixed typos * fixed minor music glitches
- 1.00 ** initial release
| HTML5 (web) | http://www.pixelprophecy.com/games/power-mt/game.php?game=power-mt&s=ld&v=1.03 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/power-mt |
Ratings
| Overall | 57th | 3.906⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 250th | 3.313⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 153th | 3.5⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 69th | 4⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 25th | 4.031⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1th | 4.645⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 32🗨️ |
"With a jolt you throw yourself at the valve. In the state that it's in, it comes off after one turn and a torrent of water bursts the riser pipe.
The torrent of water splashes down onto the field and floods the power generator that goes out with a gurgle and anlong with it the floodlights expire.
From down below a few bolts and flashes twitch from that embodiment of darkness but the few gallons that did hit it, instantly turn to steam with a hiss."
P.S. I cant wait to watch the documentary. They got me into jamming and I submitted my first game for this event because of them!
I'll bookmark it to finish it later, I want to try other people games too :)
Good job Phil!
@jakub-panek Oh dear! That's a plot-stopper introduced by the wrong placement of a switch-statement. It's fixed now. Sorry for the inconvenience!
@pixelformedstudios Wow, thank you so much for calling this rickety little thing a "masterpiece"! Glad you enjoyed it!
@xonic Thanks for playing and watching! I shot a lot of footage, but I hope it's not going to be too boring since all I do is frustratedly stare at text most of the time ;)
@smbe19 Thank you! :)
@uzyfeo Thank you, glad it got you on the hook, then. When you come back, there are fewer typos!
The story is very engaging and the sounds you added make it beautifully emerging.
You did a good job. I'll wait for your Post-Mortem on your youtube channel :wink:
Keep Coding!
I've never actually played a text adventure before and it was surprisingly engaging and very atmospheric. Great job!
Double points for the theme also! You're actually running out of power, while also running out of Power Mt.
@gurbx Hey that's great that you played the game like it was developed: With Google Streetview open for reference ;) Also, I am ecstatic that you put into words what my underlying concept of it all was: “Running out of power while running out of Power” Thank you so much!
Haven't finished yet but at least I experienced the excruciating pain of my skin being torn off :P
It's more of a puzzle styled game where there's a pattern that you build as you go along. The audio elements supported the darkness of the story. When I reset the game, I just clicked on the last choice that I assumed it was the correct like before, but sometimes it fails. So patterns sometimes don't work at this game (or is it just me). As I noticed that the battery at the start doesn't start the same as everyone else, it seemed like the start of the story will change the possible outcome of the game in the end. Totally this text game has a lot of potential, especially for the players who are used to read a lot of novels and books (unlike me...). You really did a great job in this game.
Is there a frame for winning though? As I'm trying to get to a victory point :D
@toadietechnika Wow, thank you so much, Toadie! And the game is very deterministic, the only random instances are the amount of power you start out with (within reason, of course), how much you can recharge your phone with the power bank and how long it takes you in the marshes and examining around the post office. About the marsh: Having switched on both your light and your compass decreases the number of turns you have to take.
And yes, you definitely can win:
**SPOILERS**
> After you switch on the generator, the thing advanced and will get you after eight turns, which is enough to look at the photo and unlock the valve. If you've unlocked it before, you have to wait until the dark entity is close enough, otherwise, you miss it. The text should be clear as when it's the right moment :)
**END OF SPOILERS**
Jumping right into the horror with Mr. Davidson in the beginning immediately made clear what kind of story this was going to be. Perfect amount of detail in the various settings and the story itself always was logical, meaning what I thought would be the right thing to do turned out to actually be the right decision :grin:
Only criticism I can think of is making the location options a little clearer. Sometimes I felt confused what heading "back north" meant in that situation, but that's probably just me haha
Overall very nice job (on the save system too, I can imagine that took some time...)
I'm still waiting the ld38 post mortem hahahaha .
Really nice job with the ambience. Audio adds a lot to these Twine games and really bring them to the next level.
This is one of my favorites so far, the mood and the use of the theme is superb!
Did anyone get more points? :grin:
@brorawr Thank you for playing and the nice words! I just played it and the highest score possible is 12, the fasted path is 45 turns so you did very well!
I also agree in regards to the photo "puzzle", which is very arbitrary. The problem was that I didn't want to throw away the implementation of it because I needed something to put a little drama towards the end. By design I put the player in about three "hubs" from where they couldn't (or shouldn't) return to previous locations after a certain trigger. For one thing, this ensured that I pretty much always knew where the player was and what they had accomplished already, but also for pacing reasons, from the dramatic escape to a little exploration and a showdown — making it pretty linear indeed.
@teammonumental Thank you very much for your kind words! Correct, I am no native English speaker but I tried my best to hide that fact as best as I can. ;)
And the only thing that's times is the monster approaching after you switched on the generator. Anything else is story-driven, meaning that a certain event only occurs when you have done everything necessary to progress. Very linear, I know, but it helped me keeping the whole thing manageable ;)
Regarding the starting power: When first playtesting, it wasn't possible to beat the game at all, no matter how well you played because I was very frugal with the power I provided my players with. So gradually I upped the initial power while reducing the drain-rate for flashlight & compass until it was almost impossible to run out of power unless players just run in circles. My reasoning behind this was to avoid frustration when you had to start over even if you did everything right, but not on the first try.
One piece of the story that did puzzle me a bit was when I was in the middle of 3rd street and saw light coming from a trailer to the south, but I didn't seem to have an option to go south and explore it.
I finished in 58 turns and got 15 points.
About the trailer with the faint light inside: Due to time constraints I had to cut that part where you'd meet Jackie, the only other soul alive in Power, to tell you a bit of back story and would offer you her power bank in exchange for something. But also pacing was wrong, and a fetch-quest didn't seem that appropriate either, so snip-snip! :)