Cold As Death
My entry for the March 2010 edition of the Experimental Gameplay Project is finally done. It is the first time I ever participate, and I am excited to finally get something out there. Check it out, and please come back here to leave a comment and let me know what you think.
Explanation of the game (also on the game page):
This game is my entry for the March 2010 edition of the Experimental Game Play Project. Music was done by Totally Corny Productions and used here under the Creative Commons license.
My first inclination was to make an action game, a little in the style of Earth is a 3D Planet, where in my version you would have 10 seconds to clear the level or the number of enemies would be doubled. However, thinking that I wanted to try something more experimental, I decided to make a text adventure and and see if it would be possible to transfer that adrenalin filled feeling of time-pressure to the text adventure genre. This is also why the game takes place in the cold; the basic idea is that the player needs to keep moving in order to keep warm. If the player stands still for a certain number of seconds, he dies.
In the beginning the time limit was 10 seconds. However, I quickly raised this to 15 seconds as you don’t need to type much wrong in order for the time to run out. Having a small trial with an external tester, this time has now been raised to 20 seconds
So did I succeed? Not sure, as I don’t think the continuous pressure gives the player enough time to get emotionally vested. Perhaps a more traditional text adventure, with the occassional time limited choice would work better.
Great game…the pace is crazy, I have yet to beat it
Thanks for using my sample from ccMixter. I gave your game a mention in my blog too.
Good luck with the competition
Thanks, I hoped the music could help set the pace. Though, in hindsight the game fails on a number of factors, and people never really seem to get it into that run/jump mode I had hoped. Neither do they ever get to any of the action sequences. Lots of plays, but a big fail on my part I am afraid
Interesting experiment… I don’t think it worked out so well, though. Most other text adventures I’ve played lend themselves to quiet contemplation and calm reading of the prose, but the time limit in yours prevented me from doing any of that – instead I was preoccupied with simply using ‘run ‘ to get more time on the clock. Also, your text parser is very limited, which just added to the frustration when paired with such a short time limit.
It was actually exactly my idea, to see what happens when you take that environment, which is supposedly for quiet contemplation and then put a pressure cooker on it.
. Thanks for playing and giving your opinion. It is highly appreciated.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you that the experiment didn’t succeed. Also, I doubt if anyone but a very few, actually came so far as to get to some of the action sequences and more varied game play.
Well, next time