Intro Comp 2010: Tourist Trap

Spoilers for Tourist Trap follow.

>ask man about luggage
[In this game, you don't need to specify a person or topic when talking. Just type TALK, or T for short, and I'll show a menu of things you might want to say.]

And then the game goes ahead and pretends I typed TALK anyway.
I can practically feel the game standing solicitiously behind me and rubbing my temples. That's nice. Keep going.

Oh. That was short. But yeah, I totally want to play more of this. I like the idea of travelling with someone else - maybe more than one someone else - and the game is warm and forthcoming. Besides, the afterword promises debauchery.

Interest in playing more: 95%. (Hey, I can't be too easy.)
Interest in playing more if it were polished to within an inch of its life: Uh, it played well for me, although I didn't beat about the corners.

Transcript saved for posterity.

Intro Comp 2010: Plan 6 from Inner Earth

Since I'm not on a feed, and no one but me reads the hot hot development journaling, I'm not going to bother giving a long and complex spoiler tag. Why bother? Still, it's sort of interesting in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way. Still, it's not like I'm James Joyce, so maybe we should begin.

Spoilers follow.

Random Thoughts:

Hey, shout out to Lubbock, Land of Baptists!

Second sentence in, and I have a niggle. After ellipses, the next word is usually not capitalized.

Also, show titles should be capitalized like titles. Also also, that should be "one of the biggest boondoggles". (I will try to stop now.)

I don't spend countless hours shaking damp hands. Was this character a politician before she went to work in the bunker lab?

Buttons aren't implemented, even though there's "a plethora" of them. Nor is my favorite chair. Nor can I switch off the lights. Nor are posters portable.

>x laser beams
They are red. Doesn't look like a "Don't touch me" warning?

>touch laser beams
You feel nothing unexpected.

Right-o, then.

Wait, was I able to win? I had 0 points. Also, security person in Lubbock uses a mixture of British and American spellings.

Summary

This needed beta-testing. And then more beta-testing. I think the idea has potential. Even if you set aside the rampant grammar and underimplementation issues, the game feels half-assed. The room layout doesn't make any sense. The lack of guards doesn't make any sense. The description of the terminal doesn't make any sense (what YEAR is this?).

Some of those things are okay if you've got good suspension of belief, but the whole thing just feels really shallow.

Interest I'd have in playing more if the rest of the game was like this: 0.
Interest I'd have in playing more if the game was polished to within an inch of its life: 50%. The premise isn't that interesting, and I wanted a Laser Pistol, dammit.

Note: Transcript of play is archived here.

Intro Comp 2010

Random.org tells me that my sequence of playing should be:

1 Plan 6
3 Tourist Trap
4 Waker
5 Memento Moratori
2 For the Love of Ornery Blue Yaks
9 Cryptozookeeper
7 Peanut Orchestra
6 Closed Circles
8 Fang vs. Claw

---

Since this comp is about how much you want to play them after you're finished, I suppose I'm going to start by ranking them in order of how much I want to play them, based on their titles.

None of these are screaming to me, to be honest.

1: Cryptozookeeper. Because cryptozoology is nearly as funny as evolutionary psychology, and I can only hope this game is like Zoo Keeper 2, except you have to create a good habitat for your chupacabra and make sure your Bigfeet are adequately amused.
2: Plan 6. Because I'm a sucker for those old sci fi serials, and this one sounds like Commander Zorba from Mars should be showing up shortly with his Laser Pistol.
3: Tourist Trap. Hopefully one of those grisly murder-mystery-horror stories set in Disneyworld.
4: Fang vs. Claw. No doubt Jacob and Edward finally get it on. Er. With a plausible deniability level of slash.
5: Peanut Orchestra. I have no idea what this might be about, but it's more intriguing than the others.
6: For the Love of Ornery Blue Yaks. Can I just say that this sounds like one of the Intentionally Whacky games? Tread carefully, FTLOOBY. (No extra points for having an acronym that make a spitting noise.)
7: Closed Circles. No doubt a melancholy look at the risks of time travel.
8: Waker. Please, please let it be the story of that guy in Puritan churches whose job it was to hit people on the head when they fell asleep.
9: Memento Moratori. As horribly pretentious as I am, I have something against it in game titles.