I guess most people do this sooner, but right after finishing the game I get to a point where I didn’t even want to think about it for a while! Now that a few months have passed, I’ve had some time to consider what I’d like to improve in the future. This was the first project I did in Inform and I was still learning a lot on-the-go. I’ve since learned about the extension ‘Hybrid Choices’ which allows you to switch into a menu-based choice mode at designated points, which is great for implementing NPC interactions and sequences with a lot of forward momentum. I’d like to go back and improve the game in a few areas by using it.
Something else I wasn’t too happy about in the final game was the ‘creation’ ending (as opposed to the ‘destructive’ one where you retrieve the solar gun from the trouble tank, which most people did) – that’s the one where you build the xylosphere. As I was making the game, I thought that since the station’s goal was to adjust the planet’s ecosystem, it would be fun to let the player actually create the environment in the lab, so I starting putting in the pieces with the intent of coming up with why it would be necessary later. (This is my typical process with puzzles–I kind of make a lot of stuff first and then look for ways it could be a puzzle). I had a general idea that the final stages of the game would require entering the xylosphere, but when I got to that point, I realized I didn’t have a way to make that make sense. In order to make that chain of puzzles not be pointless, I created a rather hastily, disconnected alternate solution where making the xylosphere gets you a different gun to use on the nockbeast, but I’d like to put in a way to make the xylosphere lead to a completely different way of dealing with the invader (maybe a nonviolent solution, based on some plants or life forms you can find in the sphere?)
Overall, I really enjoyed Parsercomp and it was fun working with a theme! I hope the contest is held again this fall.