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New Twine game on Kongregate

Published a twine game up on Kongregate A Simple Delivery

Comments and feedback welcome.

You play a 'prentice mage charged with delivering a simple package to a local Baron...

Main features are a time system, a spell system, and an endings page that records all the different ways you completed the game ;-)

Twine 1.4.2 Sugarcane with rewind and restart enabled.

Comments

  • Hi mykael
    It looks good
    There are a few typos of course, e.g. "even though those studying there comes fom", should be, "even though those studying there come from".
    "Awoken" should be "Awakened"
    "Balthesars being as helpful" should be "Balthesar's being as helpful"
    "Your a noble" should be "You're a noble"
    and so on

    “Balthesar” may be problematic as there are historic characters of the name. It might be better choosing another to avoid confusion.

    You can increase the power of some sentences by making them active.
    E.g. instead of,
    "You've been here for a year and have learned a few minor spells. You've many years of study ahead of you if you ever want to be a powerful wizard like Telmir"
    How about
    "You have learned just a few minor spells in the year you have worked here, but if you ever want to be a powerful wizard like Telmir, you have many years of toil and hard study ahead of you."
    and
    "Balthesars Chambers are in one of the newer wings, and its takes you a while to get there."
    could be
    "It takes you a while to get there because Althesar’s Chambers are in one of the newer wings."
    In active sentences you try to put what is more important at the start.

    Note I changed "its" to "It" as well and changed “Balthesars” to “Balthesar’s” in the above sentence.

    There is a list of options to do before setting off for the tower. Are any of them essential. E.g. if you don't get food or a tent will have to come back again? Or will you die from hunger or cold?

    I tried a number of screens, but I wasn't challenged in any way. I was expecting to have to find things, solve puzzles/problems, fight creatures and so on. Perhaps that comes later, but the going was so easy I felt disinclined to continue for now.

    Sorry if it sounds negative
  • Thanks for the feedback.

    There are a number of different ways to end the game - some fatal, some not. Most of them arise from you not preparing properly for your journey - and then making some silly choices (or having them forced upon you by a geas). If you prepared well and stick to the path, it's a fairly safe stroll. Did you pick up the back-ground in the White Worm? Get dunked in the night wood? Find the doors to the Grey Temple? A couple of the choices in the list are distractions, and can end up with you being sent on your way under a geas - with whatever kit you'd got to date.

    No puzzles, other than how the spells can be used to make life easier (and in one or two cases save your life or make new endings available). No combat yet either - always seemed a bit to random for my liking. I'll try and fit some more challange in my next one.

    Three endings are good - and one of these doesn't require you to even leave the tower (the short ending). There's one neutral ending (the fools ending) and the rest are fatal.
  • Thanks, I was just checking, but you seem to have most things covered. Personally I wouldn't have an easy road, except in test mode. But I'm more a story writer than a game player
  • Tis more a political/detective story than your classic monster bash. Can you discover Balthezars schemes and foil them or will you perish along the way?
  • edited December 2015
    I wasn't thinking monster bash. More like you starve because you forgot to bring food, or is gets spoiled from swimming across a polluted pond, so you have to trap animals before you continue, then you have to turn north, but you haven't a compass, sort of thing. For example, a simple one I am writing for a couple of young kids is based loosly on a fairytale I wrote. They find a gift tied with string, and if they try to open it, they get a message that they don't have scissors. So they have to look around and they see scissors through the window, lying in the garden, but they can't open the door, so they have to look for nursemaid, but they need to follow clues to find her, and so on.
  • Walking through rough hills in the dark isn't good, neither is climbing down a cliff face in freezing rain without proper clothing. A day without food will usually just leave you hungry and unhappy however. Now, if it was a longer trip...
  • My current story is over 210,000 words. It would make quite a game :-)
  • How much do your spell choices actually matter? For a set-up like this, I always wonder how balanced the author made the game. Are there 20 instances of use for each of the 5 spells, or more like 20-10-7-15-5? And/or are they balanced in that while some may have fewer uses the benefit from them is still on par with the others?

    I'm just starting your game (and Twine, mostly), but if your magic choices (and perhaps inventory later, if you have that) matter somewhat frequently, how annoying was it to write so many condition statements to play out each Passage differently?
  • edited December 2015
    I seem to be stuck in a loop at Tolman Cross. I set up camp... and "Pack up and get going" makes me examine the contents of the bag. From there I can only Examine or Sleep... which brings me back to "Pack up...", then Examine, then Sleep, then Pack Up, etc...

    Edit: In the Broken Hills, after becoming wounded from a fall, casting Healing says it patches you up... except you can continuously heal yourself, leaving you only to drag yourself away and make a camp, where you die of your wounds.
  • Truth_ wrote: »
    I seem to be stuck in a loop at Tolman Cross. I set up camp... and "Pack up and get going" makes me examine the contents of the bag. From there I can only Examine or Sleep... which brings me back to "Pack up...", then Examine, then Sleep, then Pack Up, etc...

    Edit: In the Broken Hills, after becoming wounded from a fall, casting Healing says it patches you up... except you can continuously heal yourself, leaving you only to drag yourself away and make a camp, where you die of your wounds.

    I am stuck in the same loop I'm afraid. Though I am enjoying the story thus far.

  • edited December 2015
    I'll have a look at that.

    You should be able to use Rewind to go back to a point before the loop started.
  • edited December 2015
    Truth_ wrote: »
    How much do your spell choices actually matter? For a set-up like this, I always wonder how balanced the author made the game. Are there 20 instances of use for each of the 5 spells, or more like 20-10-7-15-5? And/or are they balanced in that while some may have fewer uses the benefit from them is still on par with the others?

    Some spells are more useful than others. They're all useful on at least one story branch. Divination, Healing and Silken Shield are only useful once (although there are three places you can cast divination). Invisibility and Light are general walking around spells. Generally the game only prompts you to cast the spell if it could be useful and if you have it memorized.
    I'm just starting your game (and Twine, mostly), but if your magic choices (and perhaps inventory later, if you have that) matter somewhat frequently, how annoying was it to write so many condition statements to play out each Passage differently?

    Biggest pain was getting the outdoor and unlit areas to work with the lighting - daylight, light spell (like a lantern) and darkness.

  • Fixed the loop, fix uploaded. Sugarcane doesn't really understand gosub. When it returned from examining the bag to the camp if was setting the return passage for the camp to the examine routine ('cause it was a goto, not a real return). Fixed by only setting the return for the camp if it was previously blank and using a setter link to zero it when you returned from the camp.
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