One Way Out - Steffen Görzig

I’ve never seen anything quite like this, a game delivered as Inform source, where part of the story is told in comments in the source code.

This is a brilliant idea! But… I’m not sure that this game actually did anything with that idea. In particular, I got nothing out of playing the game that I didn’t get from reading the source code.

People often argue whether given products are or are not “truly interactive fiction,” and I typically have no time or interest in such arguments, but I just read the source code, and that was the whole thing.

I felt like perhaps I was missing something, so I went back and played the game, solving the puzzles using the information I already had from the source, but actually playing the game added nothing. In fact, the game itself is rather underimplemented.

>x lapse
You see nothing special about the memory lapse.

The playable game is also rather full of dream logic, treating random concepts as “doors” and “unlocking” them with objects that don’t seem to be keys. When I

unlocked the sound curtain with the clef I thought to myself, “this puzzle would have been an unfair non-sequitur without the source, but with the source, it’s trivial, perhaps barely even a puzzle at all.”

So the playable game is strictly less than the source, especially missing the comments in the source. What’s the point of even running the game at all?

And, uh, that ending.

Dream logic games where you win the game by committing suicide are not my thing. This game includes a very vague content warning, “The story may contain material inappropriate for young children,” but I think it would be wise to add more specific notes, perhaps “mental illness; self harm.”

If the compiled game were submitted in isolation, I’d probably give it a 1 or a 2.

I hope someone (perhaps Steffen Görzig) builds a game as Inform source again in the future, but the Inform source should be obfuscated; it should appear to do one thing, but in fact it does something completely different. Playing the game should help to de-obfuscate the source. Thus, the game can help decode the source, which helps solve the game, and so on, back and forth.

(If this game has a deeper layer of meaning, I’d be glad to know of it. I really do feel like I must have overlooked something cool about this game.)

I agree with this review. And hmmm…

[spoiler][code]“A Short Walk That May”

include a sermon by the Reverend Jason Quarles.

The morning ritual is a rulebook.

After waking, follow the morning ritual rules.

Morning ritual: say the Lord’s Prayer.

To say the Lord’s Prayer:
say “Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.”
[and so on][/code][/spoiler]

The real obfuscation would be in the extension, of course.

I have to mention The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode.

Hello, I am the author of “One way out”. I put quite some effort into this project, now it’s nice to see that someone is actually playing/reading it! More voices are welcome!

In particular, I got nothing out of playing the game that I didn’t get from reading the source code.
The idea is to play the game first. Then the short story adds to the game - context information is given and connections are revealed (e.g. the voice of the man was heard in the game). I should have mentioned this in the readme file.

but the Inform source should be obfuscated;
Nice but different approach, my idea was to keep everything within one file. So using extensions would have felt like cheating to me :slight_smile:

In fact, the game itself is rather underimplemented.
The project is a trade-off: the code of a well-implemented game is not readable any more as a short story. A (too) strong focus on the short story would violate the balance between the two sides. And to shift things into extensions was not part of my basic idea.

but actually playing the game added nothing.
The intention: by completing the game you get (somehow) personally involved into the story: From the perspective of the woman you helped her escaping. From the perspective of the man you have done something very, very, very bad.

If players are expected to play the game at first, I would recommend shipping the game along with a compiled binary.

But, in that case, I can hardly see how normal humans would figure it out.

[spoiler]The bed says that it’s fixed in place when you push it, but you can “push bed west”. How would anyone guess that without looking at the source?

[code]>open safe
The safe opens only when turned to the correct combination.

turn safe to 1337
I only understood you as far as wanting to turn the safe.
[/code]

You have to SPIN the safe; I have no idea how anyone would guess that.

How is the player supposed to know that they can go up from kinesiophobia? (None of the room exits are made visible in the descriptions or in the status bar.)

And from acrophobia, I guess the “hint” that you can JUMP was supposed to come from the lecture’s suggestion that injuring the spine would “lead to death”? But we’ve been carrying around another deadly object since the first room, the torch.

>burn myself This dangerous act would achieve little.

How is that different from JUMPing from acrophobia?[/spoiler]

None of these inexplicable puzzles really got in my way when I read it “source first,” but they would have been fatal if I tried to play the game first.

My Inform knowledge is quite weak, but I think it should be possible to obfuscate the code right there in a single file, just by implementing a huge maze of definitions. The maze would be solvable by staring at the source alone, of course, but if the playable game makes it easier to solve the maze, that may allow for enough back-and-forth between the game and the source to make it an interesting game.

If players are expected to play the game at first, I would recommend shipping the game along with a compiled binary.
I explicitly wanted to have a left side/right side (man/women) scenario. This is achieved by using Inform7 in source/game mode. This scenario is also picked up in the blurb and in the cover.

But, in that case, I can hardly see how normal humans would figure it out.
Maybe the puzzles can be solved by very, very experienced IF players - which I am not. The game includes hints for every puzzle, but they are hard to identify. To make the puzzles less difficult would require more source code resulting in decreasing readability of the short story. So I decided against it, since the rest of us can also use the source code as a hint document. The main reason of the game part is to get personally involved into the story (which is hopefully fulfilled), overall I wanted to have a balance between the short story and the game part.

just by implementing a huge maze of definitions.
My approach is the mentioned trade-off. Too much definitions would make the short story less readable. But maybe someone takes this game as an inspiration for other, related approaches…

Chiming in with Dan here–I’m an experienced player (not that good at puzzles, though), and I would never have solved a single puzzle without the source code. There’s a very old-school style of play where you have to try everything on everything and sometimes move in undescribed directions, and that might have led me to the idea of unlocking the lapse with the device at the beginning… but that is not at all a natural action, and it’s not something I’m going to spend time thinking about when I can just read the source code.

In general, if you’re not sure whether an experienced player will be able to solve the puzzles… have an experienced player play the game before release. You should always have people test your game anyway, but this is especially important if you’ve got puzzles and you’re not sure how fair they are. Or if you are sure how fair they are, because they might not be as fair as you think. (You know the answers, it’s hard to put yourself in a mindset where you have to figure them out.)

It’s a very interesting experiment and I’m glad to have seen it though! I thought of another way to obfuscate things without resorting to extensions: Intersperse the comments with the code. Like this:

[I wake] up from [uneasy sleep.] [The s]hades are [still drawn, giving the room an un]earth[ly light]. 

(You might have to be pretty expert at using obscure Inform 7 syntaxes.)

There’s a very old-school style of play where you have to try everything on everything and sometimes move in undescribed directions
If I understand you correctly your focus here is on good gameplay. My focus was to use the gameplay for personal involvement and to combine gameplay and short story to some kind of balanced “Gesamtkunstwerk” without getting to trivial.

[I wake] up from [uneasy sleep.] [The s]hades are [still drawn, giving the room an un]earth[ly light].
Nice (new?) idea! Would be great to see concepts like this or the mentioned extension approach in the future…

I see what you mean here but the thing is that I find it difficult to get involved in the gameplay when I can’t get started getting the gameworld to do anything (at least not without trying everything on everything). So I got kicked out of the gameplay to the source right away. I mean, I did play through the game, but I was pretty much constantly checking the source too.

Thanks! This seems like it would be tricky but maybe fun to try to implement. More fun for the author than anyone else, but that’s what I like…

Yeah, that’s what all noobs say! … Just kidding, could not resist, sorry… :slight_smile:

Gogogo! Sounds like fun! I guess it will get difficult in detail and to keep the writing flow and creativity.

I have posted a review and transcript here: blog.templaro.com/review-one-way/

  • Jack