I’ve started making a new hard puzzle game that takes place in a 9x9-room building.
It’s only in pre-alpha, but I have already made 25 rooms and some puzzles and challenges!
Please tell me if you find a bug or unwinnable situation.
You can try the game here:
http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/oustembdxuq-i_2whpsnlw/doors-pre-alpha-v0-4
It took me quite a bit of effort to find the proper syntax for
use yellow key on yellow door
Attempts included
[spoiler]unlock yellow door with yellow key
unlock yellow door
both of which yielded the message “You can’t unlock it” which is very bad, because you can.
Also “use yellow key” and “open yellow door” – these are both things that naturally result from the menu interface.[/spoiler]
I suggest that you implement the synonyms here; I’m not sure whether the Quest menu interface makes it easy to implement commands with two nouns through the menu, but you really need that, because as it is the menu strongly suggests that you’ll be using those commands with only one noun.
Edit: Oh, and once the yellow door is unlocked “Open yellow door” yields “You can’t open it.” Of course this is just a default Quest message, and the thing to do is go through it, but this is really misleading!
Another point, which seems like a full-fledged bug:
At the end I switched on the torch before entering the dark room and it did nothing. Apparently you have to switch on the torch while in the dark room.
The game is a pure puzzle box with no dramatic pretext. As such I enjoyed it enough to play through! I like little math puzzles and the like. The interface where you have to keep using the machine to get the next puzzle is clunky; I’d prefer to automatically be given the next puzzle by default and be given the option to quit using the machine if I want (or ideally, if I enter a direction when using the machine, I could just go to another room). I also did not enjoy the knowledge quiz; it hardly even tested my search engine skills.
Thank you for your review and advice! Hopefully I’ll be able to fix the commands for the next version.
Now I updated the game to version 0.4.
I added 2 new rooms, fixed the door and torch bugs and added alternative commands.
(The link is the same)
Bug: Take the exercise book, then examine the table.
Bug: >use token machine
You don’t have enough tokens, the machine needs 9 and you only have 9.
Oddity: The sofa’s popup has “turn on” and “turn off” options.
Bug: > watch tv
Error running script: Error compiling expression ‘TV.channel=1’: CompareElement: Operation ‘Equal’ is not defined for types ‘Object’ and ‘Int32’
Thank you for the bugs, I fixed all of them! Now the version is 0.41.
The 0.5 release is coming, where 5 rooms and more hints will be added and there will be a temporary ending that makes sense!