Submitted by acmfox on Mon, 07/27/2015 - 10:53pm

Dear Game Developers,

Yea, you know who I mean. You're the folks working with the graphic artists who develop beautiful imagry and the writers who develop fantastic story lines, and you are supposed weave those two together with your gaming engines to produce a fun distraction. But you could do better.

I mean really. First I explore the shed. You let me pick up the crow bar. But that beautifully rendered box of dynamite? Can't touch that. Like I wouldn't have a use for that.

And then the farm house. Seriously, who doesn't lock the door?

So I go in to explore the house. The front parlor is delightful. Kudos to the graphic artists. But all you programmers let me do is open the desk to find a flashlight. C'mon, there's blood spattered all over the walls, and the furniture has been trashed. There ought to be something more I can do in this room. Maybe set the furniture right? Wash the blood off the walls? But to do that, I'd have to go to the kitchen for cleaning supplies.

But who knows what's really in the kitchen. I can't open any of the cupboard doors. All you let me do is take an apple from the fruit bowl on the table. There's obvious evidence of violence in the parlor. I want a weapon. A nice, sharp kitchen knife would be nice to pick up. But no. Not even to slice the apple.

Upstairs, there's a .44 magnum on the nightstand beside the bed. But do I get to add that to my inventory? Nope. Seriously, I'm not sure why you even let me explore the bedroom. There's nothing here for me to take. I guess the graphic artist wanted to draw a bedroom scene, so you had to include it.

So I leave the house by the back door and head to the horse stable. I pick up a rope on the way. 

I feed the apple to the horse. It takes the apple and moves away exposing a manhole cover. I use the crow bar to open the manhole and use the rope to shimmy down. It's dark down there, so I use the flashlight.

And stare eye to teeth of the most humongous alligator to ever roam the sewers of Rhode Island. And I have nothing with which to defend myself. No gun, no dynamite, and my trusty crowbar vanished when I opened the manhole.

Seriously, who wouldn't take the crowbar down into the sewer with them in a story like this?

Frances

Mon, 08/03/2015 - 10:06pm

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This was a lot of fun to read. Have to admit I'm not into playing such games (more apt to spend time with very sedate card games like spider solitaire), so I'm not sure I understood what you were getting at. Was it the incompleteness of the programming earlier, which didn't provide all the options the player thought should be there, which foreshadowed the disappearing crowbar in the end? Or am I misunderstanding entirely?
In any event, I enjoyed it.

In most games of this type, you pick up items and they go into your inventory (stash) until you use the item. Once it has been used for the intended purpose in the game, it generally vanishes from your inventory and you cannot use the item for anything else.

Fun little scene. I like the character, actually I don't like the whiney, why didn't you do it the way I wanted, character and do like that he is face to face with a giant alligator and has no weapons. I never got into computer games but this does seem like a good description of one.