StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Every so often, I peruse the various random things on the front page of fileplanet and see if anything strikes my fancy. I downloaded Experience112 mostly on a lark, but I gave it a chance, and, well...

I was seriously impressed. It's a really inventive new look at the adventure game genre. I highly recommend giving it a try, even if you're not overly enthused by adventure games. It lacks the "lol mouseover every little thing" bullshit that plagues the genre, and it is has a very interesting control scheme. Rather than making you the rat in the maze, it makes you the puppetmaster, after a fashion. You guide the protagonist through your control of security cameras, lights, and devices. As you go, you can gain deeper access into the network of the facility, learning more about just what the hell is going on.

So give it a try and see what you think.

I tried the demo, the interface is clunky as hell having to click back and forth between camera windows, but the idea itself is highly interesting. However the protagonist is to mysterious for her own good I feel.

And another thing, don't you know Moris code? Sure it's clunking but you can tell yes or no via me shaking my camera's at you. Won't you please pay attention when I'm blinking the room lights at you?

Mr Bean wrote:I tried the demo, the interface is clunky as hell having to click back and forth between camera windows, but the idea itself is highly interesting. However the protagonist is to mysterious for her own good I feel.

And another thing, don't you know Moris code? Sure it's clunking but you can tell yes or no via me shaking my camera's at you. Won't you please pay attention when I'm blinking the room lights at you?

The number of people who actually know morse code is far, far less than what hollywood would lead us to believe. At best, most people know exactly two letters, "S" and "O", because ... --- ... is used CONSTANTLY. Aside from that? Yeah, not so much. Let's face it though, chatterbot AI is extremely hard to make, and even the most advanced ones are horrible conversationalists. Making conversation trees with yes/no paths is much, much easier, and the concept is still very believable.

More to the point, if you use the lights for messages, you confuse the command structure, because you have no other way of telling her where to go, which leads to confusion. When she sees a light blinking, is it a message, or is it a request to go to that light?

The clunky interface is mitigated by the fact that it's an adventure game, and thus doesn't need extreme speed. The cameras actually work pretty well, though I am looking for keyboard commands for killing a screen at will. I would like to point out, however, that the "clunk" is almost entirely around controlling the cameras. You can work on just one camera if you want by locking two screens and making them smaller so that your perspective shifts with just one, large view camera. Meanwhile, the time normally wasted mousing over every single millimeter of the screen to see what can be clicked on and what can't frees up a lot of otherwise wasted time.

The protagonist is being mysterious, I think, because whatever is going on in there, it's not on the up and up, and she doesn't know exactly who you are or what your intentions are. Given the condition she was in when she woke up, I'm not really surprised as to her reluctance to say too much.

That said, this is the first adventure game since Indigo Prophecy that's really grabbed my attention.

Man, I haven't played an adventure game since Blade Runner. I might download this demo tonight, it sounds interesting. Is it Sierra-Hard, or Lucasarts-Forgiving?

So far, more forgiving. However, there is a section later in the demo that is a little frustrating because it's pretty realistic, but that's just time-consuming, not "if you lose, you FAIL."

That part's only took ages because I didn't notice the giant 'magnetise arm' button.

And it's totally Critical Path.

The demo was fun, but really, really linear (regarding what she'll do) and lacking any explanation for the useless shit - like the monitors that do nothing. She'll walk over, and then not even look at them or say 'meh worthless', so you get no feedback that you're not just doing it wrong.

I didn't find the protaganist very mysterious at all. It's BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS what's going on, and her personal files contain shitpiles of information about her before whatever happened. About the only thing I'm not sure about is exactly how much time has passed: the ship looks like it's been there for a long time, but it's surprisingly functional. I didn't find any current time business on the UI.

And auto-camera changing is the devil.