Twitch Streaming IF Comp Games

This week has been hectic, but I still want to Twitch Stream the IFComp games this year. I had a blast, and the authors seemed to mostly like it.

twitch.tv/lglasser
(I will start Monday at 2pm Central Standard Time, then continue on Mon-Fri, playing at least 2 hrs / day.)

I still want the order to be somewhat randomized, but I want to be a little bit better about that distribution this year. I’d like to:
-have a pattern of 2 small games + 1 large game per stream
-move around the schedule if the game authors can’t watch immediately

Please, if you’re an author, PM me whether you consider your game shorter (~30mins) or longer (definitely more than 30 mins). I’ll randomize the list by Sunday night.

Okay, here’s my intended play order (1 short + 1 medium + 1 long /OR/ 1 short + 1 extra long). If you’re an author who can’t make a day but you want to, PM me and I’ll see if I can swap yours out.

I’ll add short reviews and divided up clips after I finish the day.

Again, I’ll be starting at 2pm CST on Monday!

Completed playthroughs…
10pm
1958: Dancing With Fear
8 Shoes on the Shelves
A Beauty Cold and Austere (part 2)
A Castle of Thread
A common enemy
a partial list of things for which i am grateful
A Walk In The Park
Absence of Law
The Adventure of Esmeralda and Ruby on the Magical Island

Alice Aforethought
AND WHEN I SQUINT IT LOOKS LIKE CHRISTMAS
Antiquest
Behind the Door
Black Marker
Bookmoss
Charlie The Robot
The Castle of Vourtram
The Cube in the Cavern
Day of the Djinn

Deshaun Steven’s Ship Log
Domestic Elementalism (gets badly echo-y towards the end, sorry!)
The Dragon Will Tell Your Future Now
The Dream Self
Eat Me
Escape from Terra (bad echo throughout)
Etude Circular
Fake News (part 2)
The Fifth Sunday
Future Threads

Goodbye Cruel Squirrel
Grue.
Guttersnipe: St. Hesper’s Asylum for the Criminally Mischievous
Harbinger
Harmonia
Haunted P
Hexteria Skaxis Qiameth
Inevitable
Insignificant Little Vermin
Into The Dark

Just Get the Treasure v0.9.1
Land of the Mountain King
The Living Puppet
Measureless to Man
Mikayla’s Phone
My night
Moon Base
The Murder in the Fog
NIGHTBOUND
Nyna Lives

Off the Rails
One way out
The Owl Consults
Queer in Public: A Brief Essay
Rage Quest: Disciple of Peace
Rainbow Bridge
Redstone
The Richard Mines
Run of the place
Salt

The Silver Gauntlets
The skinny one.
Something
Swigian
Temperamentum
TextCraft: Alpha Island
The Unofficial Sea-Monkey® Simulation
Transient Skies
The Traveller
Tuuli

Ultimate Escape Room: IF City
Unit 322 (Disambiguation)
VR Gambler
The Very Old Witch and the Turnip Girl
What Once Was
Will Not Let Me Go
The Wizard Sniffer
Word of the Day

Nice… spreading the word of this in 3 2 1…

For Tuuli (next week if the schedule goes well), I can’t see the show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so if you could change it to Tuesday or Thursday then I could join the show.

I think I’ve calculated correctly the change of hours. It is 9 pm for England and 10 pm for Spain.

For reference, unless anything has changed, LGlasser has been very good about saving the streams as videos that are watchable after the fact. Of course watching live is a special thrill, but if you miss it, not all is lost.

The UK is enjoying British Summer Time (a.k.a. Daylight savings time), UTC+1, until October 29th. Therefore the stream will be live at 8 PM in UK time (BST). On October 29th and subsequently, when Greenwich Mean Time (UTC) takes over from British Summer Time, the stream will begin at 7 PM in UK time (GMT).

The stream will begin at 9 PM in Spanish time (UTC+2). Spain also has DST so on October 29th and after, the stream will begin at 8 PM in Spanish Time (UTC+1).

Monday’s games:

(Note: I had an issue with sound that caused a bad echo starting towards the end of Domestic Elementalism. I know what caused it and I’ll have it fixed by tomorrow.)

Hexteria Skaxis Qiameth
This was cute and I loved the feeling of simultaneously playing with words while learning about these cultures that did the same.

Domestic Elementalism Echo starts on this game.
This was a fantastic game! Great concept, great system to serve that concept, great puzzles, great descriptions. I hit a few rough edges, but I was overall delighted by the game. I’m bummed that there was an echo that ruined this recording, because this is probably one of my favorite comp games.

Escape from Terra The echo is really bad on this one.
I had trouble getting the game and the walkthrough to work, which is a shame because it seems clear that a lot of work went into this game. I may revisit it at the bottom of the pile once I’ve had a chance to try the other games (and once I’ve figured out how to get a working walkthrough).

I’ll switch the the Tuuli cluster to take place on the previous day, then (replacing Rainbow Bridge + Charlie The Robot). Cheers!

Just to double-check, when is Charlie The Robot being broadcasted?

Assuming I can keep to the schedule, next Friday.

Hi! I notice that you’re planning on streaming my game, Guttersnipe: St. Hesper’s Asylum, on Wednesday. Could I reccommend that you play the downloaded version, if possible? A few people have reported some lag with the online version. Thanks!

Of course! I try to play the downloaded version if it’s possible.

I enjoyed watching you play 1958: Dancing with Fear today, and I’m looking forward to seeing you play my game Redstone on Thursday. Thanks for all your participation!

Awesome, thanks :slight_smile:

May I ask if there are differences in the approach to the show and the games when the author is in the room?

Thanks.

As a side note, this seems to be a consistent issue with large Quest games played online. Downloading for PC is recommended for these in most cases.

Unfortunately, there is no offline Quest solution for Mac that I’m aware of.

Authors tend to be able to give hints or tips when I’m stuck or missing something cool. I feel like that’s the main difference for me.

Insignificant Little Vermin
Great, straightforward presentation of a fun Dungeons and Dragons type adventure. Awesome art, descriptions, and intuitive, player-friendly UI. It reminded me of the Sorcery! remake (although not nearly so unforgivingly twisty!) The short-ish cycles did a great job ramping me up towards the idea of reaching my goal.

10pm
There is an unappreciated beauty in well-designed symbols, but even an untrained eye could see that this game was absolutely gorgeous. I loved the way that it represented non-standard communication (possibly sign language, but I don’t think it was ever explicitly stated) and it was rough going through the parts with less-than-stellar parenting. I feel like this game is a rousing success all around, a beautifully raw slice of life.

Guttersnipe: St. Hesper’s Asylum for the Criminally Mischievous
Great grenadine grapesnickets, this was an amazing game. Wonderful tone, wonderful puzzles, wonderful characters, wonderful feelies. And it’s well-paced and well-written all up and down. This game, more than any I’ve played over the last few years evokes the tone and style of SCUMM style games (while ditching some of their more annoying design decisions). This is straight-up one of the best adventure games I’ve seen in years. Is this the year that a Quest game with the competition? I know it’s too early for me to call anything but gee whiz, I sure hope that it does. I know I’m planning to replay this one with my husband for funsies. Cheers to the author! And for sure, I’m checking out that Guttersnipe comic.

The Fifth Sunday (bad sound balance - my fault)
I know that some players get upset at translated works, but I love playing them. I’ll happily overlook any English errors and dive right into the meat of the works. Unfortunately, that was a little trickier with a murder mystery where you need to hang onto every word and every clue. That trouble was compounded by the fact that there were some annoyances with the system. The game was clearly meant to be replayed repeatedly down different branches, but there was no fast-forward button. The text color was difficult to read against the background, but there was no way to select it to highlight it. I’ll replay because I’m curious who the killer was, but I feel like this game would have been better served with a different system (Ren’Py?) and maybe with help from a native English speaking friend.

Redstone
This is definitely the year of homebrewed systems! And I love seeing them really shine this year. I liked that the system had space for pictures, the buttons all made sense (somewhat reminiscent of the SCUMM system), and I heard (didn’t test) that it works well on phones. I feel like this system compares most directly to the Quest system, and I’m curious what the intended benefit of this homebrewed system was (perhaps phone accessibility?)

The story was pretty standard, but competently executed, and I had a fun time scribbling down the different times and combing for inconsistencies or gaps. I really only ran into one snag where I forgot an important detail of my side quest and got stuck for a bit. The art was certainly programmer art, but since it’s better than what I can do and since there’s art for every location and most of the NPCs, I was actually impressed.

AND WHEN I SQUINT IT LOOKS LIKE CHRISTMAS
I love this game on so many levels. I think it’s an amazing story with amazing writing by itself, but considering it as a children’s story just elevates that. Like a Miyazaki film, it depicts a childhood that contains wonder, happiness, and beauty alongside sadness, fear, frustration, and just… all the emotions. It’s a real kid meeting real people, here. Furthermore, it depicts a reality where people who are disabled or shunned are shown living their lives, achieving victories, helping each other out, and just being awesome, all without feeling like tokens meant to evoke pity or gratitude. I had occasional suggestions about how to make this game more marketable to actual kids/parents-reading-it-to-their-kids, but I don’t think any of those things should stand in the way of any of the judges enjoying it. If this game won, I’d definitely smile and wipe a tear from my eye.

It looks like you’ll get to NIGHTBOUND in maybe two weeks or so. I’ll try to check back in when you announce dates so that I can try to be present!

This is really cool of you to do:)

Thank you for your very kind words on AND WHEN I SQUINT IT LOOKS LIKE CHRISTMAS. I’m very glad you enjoyed it. :,)

It was so much fun watching your stream of Off the Rails - I’m sorry I couldn’t be there live, but it’s really nice that you make video clips for each game. Your comments and reactions are also really helpful for a first-time author like me. Thank you!