10.05.2008

"Trein" by Leena Kowser Ganguli

This IFComp 2008 entry is not a confident text adventure. The prose has a coherent tone and style, but when the player interacts with it, the game quickly dissolves into standard responses where helpful (or at least flavorful) replies should be and gaping holes where implemented nouns should be.

This review contains spoilers.

It seems to me that Ganguli has not taken the player into account. She had a specific course in mind when she wrote the game, which she expected the player to follow like a trail. Most players do not like to follow trails; they prefer to wander, gaze, prod.

Down a dark alley, the player encounters the following description of nearby hovels: "If even one stick is taken away, the entire construction would collapse altogether!" This is clearly intended as hyperbole, yet still inspires the obvious command TAKE STICK, which only provokes the standard "You can't see any such thing."

The game suggests dozens of nouns in its descriptions, very few of which have been implemented. In the first "room," a road outside a country tavern which leads to Trein's castle, the description provides details about PEOPLE who close and bolt their DOORS when they see me coming; the STREET on which I'm walking; the CASTLE in the distance. There are a few nouns which, though not explicitly listed, would be logically visible here, most notably SKY and HOUSE. Consequently the world feels very empty, thin. Even the TAVERN, a major set-piece here, cannot be examined, let alone entered. We are forced to GO EAST in order to enter it.

Upon arriving at the tavern, we meet several people inside, yet we can interact with these people only in a very limited sense. We can't ask the barkeep about ALCOHOL, only about ALE. We can't ask her about TREIN, DISAPPEARANCES, LORD, or KING, all obvious choices given our backstory.

Once we obtain a coin (inexplicably lying on the road elsewhere in the game), we can purchase some ale. There is a DRUNKARD here, and the obvious adventure-game choice is to give the ale to the drunkard. However, there seems to be no in-game indication that we should do so. The drunkard rewards us with rope and other tools so that we can break into the castle, but who this drunkard is and why we should have known he would reward us remains a mystery prior to our gift of ale.

Typing OUT and EXIT don't move us from the tavern; we can only GO WEST.

At this point I lost patience and ran the walkthrough. The game remains similarly uncompelling and poorly implemented.

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