Did I make a stupid Halloween text adventure that’s slightly annoying to play on itch.io?
Did I also submit that to the EctoComp '22 game jam/competition thing?
Wasn’t really very awake or coherent when I made that post, so I didn’t mean to repurpose the thread @a_new_duck made in King of Development. Sorry about that! Anyway I figure I should just have a dedicated space to blab about IF stuff anyway, so here it is.
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AI Dungeon was 2020’s Pornogrpahic Game of the Year and I will hear no arguments otherwise
then they looked at what they were feeding their training models and tugged their collars so hard it yanked a lot of the horny out
yes I understand this thread isn’t about me being insaitiable
no I don’t care
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This is one I’ve been meaning to revisit
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I’ve been kind of bingeing Ryan’s games over the past months. He’s prolific, inventive, and dedicated to providing a good time, and I find myself agreeing with a lot of his stated design goals and methods. Enough so that I subscribe to his Patreon to receive his monthly annotated source codes. A sample:
On New Year’s Eve, he released two games in his series of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl adaptations. The original story has the little girl freeze to death; in Ryan’s version, she doesn’t die, but instead becomes a time-traveling assassin. The second game was made available to the public through itch.io and IFDB, while Patreon subscribers now get to play the newest fourth entry. I hadn’t really played much of any of them previously, so I’ve been doing so. Slight spoilers follow.
The Little Match Girl, by Hans Christian Andersen - we start out firmly in the territory of the original story, as our little girl is freezing to death with only the matches she is supposed to sell to keep her warm.
Striking a match introduces the unifying characteristics of the LMG franchise: looking at fire causes the little girl to jump through time and space. At her home time in London, the narrative is in the third person, but “parser traditional” second-person text asserts itself the moment she is elsewhen—along with a change in background color, and a departure from the Andersonian language of the original text. A quirk of her talent is that, no matter where or when she appears, she can speak and understand the people she encounters, and nobody finds it all that unusual that a little girl should be present. A little girl in the sewers of Paris? In a desert gas station? In Atlantis? Sure, why not?
As I attested on Twitter, I bounced off this game when I first tried it. I usually don’t have much patience for puzzles, particularly traditional text adventure stuff like hunger daemons and maze navigation, and this game started with one of the most fundamental such challenges—a room in need of a light source. After playing though most of LMG2, I came back and finished it, though I did have to consult an external resource because I was too busy imagining a gas station in my head to properly examine all the contents of said gas station.
This is basically the trading sequence from Link’s Awakening! You find something, you show it or give it to the right person, who gives you something else, etc. So, lots of jumping back and forth between eras and a little bit of trial-and-error. In the end, you find some things that actually accompany you back to London, and you are able to bring about a change in your fortune. The ending is goofy and fun.
The Little Match Girl 2: Annus Evertens is bigger and better-implemented. You’re ghostly and insubstantial no longer, and this time around, there’s no need to hop back and forth between periods. You go to a place, you find the fire, and you move on. I’m just going to name a few of my favorite things you encounter with zero context to understand them: the Greek god. The cyber-skull. The pirate journal. The Horrible Flukeworm. The room. This game has some A+ twists and turns.
The Little Match Girl 3: the Escalus Manifold requires a Patreon subscription to access, but I’ve only played a little bit of it because the ambition on display here is frightening. It comes with a 16-page instruction manual. That is not normal among IF games. People with too much enthusiasm for the taxonomy of game formats could object to me calling this IF. I like what I’ve played, but I’m going to have to dedicate a weekend to this.
The Little Match Girl 4: Crown of Pearls is the one that just came out for Patreon subscribers. While the systems complexity has stepped back from LMG3’s heights, LMG4 revels in the narrative world these games have been constructing. It feels like a celebration—like a victory lap. I’m actually stuck partway through, and I do not want help, and it’s already my favorite. Some of the games I’ve been reminded of while playing, in no particular order, sometimes for the most frivolous of reasons: Chrono Trigger. Metroid. Vampire: the Masquerade. Castlevania. Chrono Trigger, again. The Ravenloft campaign setting. Ryan’s own Taco Fiction. Typing of the Dead. Minish Cap. What Remains of Edith Finch. Dino Crisis. Monkey Island. Fairy Tale. Eternal Darkness. I could go on.
In short: games are good.
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Ryan Veeder’s The Little Match Girl 3: The Escalus Manifold was publicly released today! This is a finely balanced text-based RPG. I had a lot of fun with an earlier version of this last month, and this version has bug fixes and an additional area added in part due to the feedback I provided. I might try recording a playthrough this weekend…
As far as I can tell, the game link on mobile does not include the instruction manual, which is a PDF linked on the browser version of the game’s page. I am pasting the raw text below.
INSTRUCTIONS
the
little
match
girl
3
THE ESCALUS MANIFOLD
i n s t r u c t i o n m a n u a l
About the Little Match Girl
The Little Match Girl was once an extremely
poor little girl with no name whose father
forced her to sell matches in the street. Whilst
attempting this occupation in vain one horribly
cold New Year’s Eve, she almost froze to
death, but managed to survive by activating a
mysterious ability to travel through time and
space by looking at fire. This discovery led to
her adoption by the famed philanthropist
Ebenezer Scrooge, who christened his new
daughter Ebenezabeth. Since that fateful
night, Ebenezabeth has learned to leverage
these strange powers in her new occupation as
time-traveling assassin.
But she won’t be able to handle her latest
assignment without some help…
The Party System
In The Little Match Girl 3, Ebenezabeth will
team up a bunch of other adventurers to form
a “party.” This creates sort of a weird situation
for text parser purposes.
When the narrator refers to “you,” it usually
means Ebenezabeth specifically. The “you”
taking actions outside of combat is normally
Ebenezabeth. So, outside of combat, you’ll use
a command like WEAR AMULET to make
Ebenezabeth wear an amulet, but PUT
AMULET ON WHOEVER to make someone
else wear it. (TAKE AMULET FROM
WHOEVER will cause whoever to take off the
amulet.) In combat, the agent of a command
will be whichever character you’re currently
controlling.
The INVENTORY command displays only
what Ebenezabeth is carrying, but this
basically functions as the party’s common
inventory. In combat, anybody can USE
POTION ON WHOEVER as long as
Ebenezabeth/the party is holding the potion.
(Paraphernalia carried by other party members
is stuff you don’t really have to worry about.)
The STATUS command gives you the basic
information for all party members. You can
LOOK AT a party member to see their
detailed stats—including any amulets they’re
carrying.
Combat Basics
Battles in The Little Match Girl 3 follow the
conventions of JRPGs like Final Fantasy or
Super Mario RPG, where a round of combat
begins with each unit deciding whether to
attack or cast a spell or whatever. After these
choices are locked in, the unit with the highest
Speed statistic goes first, and then the next-
fastest unit, and so on down the line.
I do not know how ties are resolved. Inform 7
handles that part. It might be down to which
unit is named first in the source code.
When it’s time to give commands to your
units, they will appear in order of their Speed
stats. This might seem odd (it won’t always be
Ebenezabeth who takes orders first) but it
should be helpful strategically.
The most basic action you can take is of course
ATTACK WHOEVER. Although each playable
character has their own name for it (SHOOT or
STAB or whatever), they’re all synonyms for
the underlying Attacking action. You can just
type A WHOEVER if you’re looking to save
time.
The DEFEND option increases the unit’s own
Defense and Resistance stats by 5 for the
length of the current round (including before
the unit’s turn actually comes up).
When entering a command for a transitive
action (like ATTACK), you must stipulate the
target of the action. If an ability’s description
says that it affects “an enemy” or “an ally” then
it’s probably transitive, but if it refers to “all
enemies” or something then it’s probably
intransitive, so, don’t specify a target for that
action.
You can use the INVENTORY and EXAMINE
commands during combat without wasting a
turn.
Ebenezabeth’s weapon is her Colt revolver,
which she must RELOAD from time to time.
Outside of combat, you can check her stats or
the revolver itself to see how many bullets are
chambered; you may also RELOAD outside of
combat if need be.
When an enemy unit falls to 0 HP, they
typically leave the battlefield. When a party
member falls to 0 HP, they faint and can no
longer act. If your entire party faints, you lose
the battle! But if you beat all the enemies,
then you win the battle.
Options
If you don’t feel like memorizing all this, there’s
an OPTIONS command in the game that’ll
give you the rundown.
By default, descriptions for all of a character’s
combat options are displayed when it’s time to
pick that character’s action. The COMPRESS
command will change that to a shorter list,
and the DECOMPRESS command will restore
the more detailed list. I recommend leaving
this this “uncompressed” at first, and then
“compressing” after you have a good handle
on your combat options. (You can always see
the full rundown of a character and their
actions with the LOOK AT WHOEVER
command.)
By default, there’s a “press any key” prompt
after each unit takes its turn. I think this makes
it more dramatic (and easier to follow) than
having all the actions of a round show up at
once. But you can use the FAST BATTLE
command to turn off this effect, or the SLOW
BATTLE command to re-enable it.
By default, the list of units in each party shows
up at the beginning of the round (and
whenever you LOOK). If you’d rather not scroll
up to see that list in the middle of assigning
actions, you can use the TOGGLE FULL
COMBATANTS command to make this list
appear at each combat command prompt.
How Each Stat Works
Level: Generally, individuals with higher Levels
are stronger than individuals with lower Levels.
Affinity: A unit gets a bonus to the damage of
spells it casts that match its elemental affinity.
It also takes less damage when it gets hit by
spells of that element. (There are no fancy
inter-alignment interactions, so Ice-aligned
individuals do not take extra damage from
Fire-aligned spells.)
HP: This is how much damage a unit can take
before it keels over.
Attack and Defense: The damage dealt by a
normal attack action is the attacker’s Attack
stat minus the defender’s Defense stat. This
calculation also applies to some other non-
magical offensive abilities.
Magic and Resistance: The damage dealt by a
spell attack is the attacker’s Magic stat minus
the defender’s Resistance stat. A character
with a higher Magic value also has a better
chance of inflicting additional effects on the
targets of their spells; a character with a higher
Resistance value has a higher chance of
resisting such effects.
Speed: This determines the order in which
combatants act.
Skill: This is the chance (out of 100) that a unit
has of scoring a critical hit with their normal
attack action. A critical hit deals double the
damage a normal hit would (so if a normal hit
would deal 0 damage, so does a critical hit).
A defending unit whose Speed is higher than
the attacker’s Skill has a chance of evading an
attack entirely. This applies to normal attacks
and simple spells, but certain more powerful
abilities aren’t subject to this calculation.
Leveling Up
Most enemies, once defeated, leave behind a
tiny Mirror Shard. Ebenezabeth and her allies
wear Silver Phylacteries for the purpose of
collecting these shards.
The simplest command for putting a Mirror
Shard in an ally’s Phylactery is USE SHARD
ON WHOEVER. When you do this, the wearer
of the Phylactery will level up!
The bonuses for leveling up in this game
follow Fire Emblem rules: Each party member
has an underlying “growth” value for each
numerical stat that represents the likelihood of
that stat increasing when they level up. So
some levels will be better than others, and the
results are somewhat random and not entirely
fair. But the game should be easy enough that
this won’t be a big deal.
A character who levels up may also learn a
new ability, which is a much bigger deal. Make
sure you try out all your characters’ abilities!
Just so you know, no playable characters will
learn any new abilities beyond level 5.
You cannot remove a Shard from a Phylactery
to give it to someone else. But there should be
enough Mirror Shards in the game for all
playable characters to reach at least level 5.
So, don’t stress about it too much. Just relax.
It’s supposed to be fun.
Some Advice
• Pick your battles. A lot of encounters are too
much for Ebenezabeth to handle on her
own. If a challenge is too hard, don’t bang
your head against it. Go look at something
else, and come back to the hard part when
you’re better prepared.
• Don’t worry that you’re messing something
up. I don’t think there’s any way to reach an
unwinnable state, or miss out permanently
on an opportunity. I guess it’s possible to
spend your Mirror Shards unwisely though.
• It’s okay to lose a battle. You’ll just respawn
at a convenient spot nearby.
• It’s also okay to run away. There’s no
penalty for fleeing.
“The Little Match Girl” and Ebenezabeth Scrooge
are copyright © 1845 Hans Christian Andersen.
All rights reserved
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Even Some More Tales from Castle Balderstone is novel in how it presents a frame story in Twine with four parser games written in Inform 7. While previous Balderstone games have presented miniature sub-games that wouldn’t really stand on their own—to various degrees, anyway—the four games here feel more substantial. One of them is called Visit Skuga Lake.
Visit Skuga Lake is amazing.
I cannot explain why without spoiling several surprises about its structure, but in general: this game combines concepts that I’ve loved in several console games in a way that I consider very rewarding. It does not represent a huge space, but it’s bigger than it might seem. Having wrestled with the implementation burden of a combinatorial explosion, I’m in awe of some of the things Ryan has done here. He’s mentioned plans to release a standalone version in the near future, but it’s easily worth playing in its current state.
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I promise that I’ve been playing games by people other than Ryan Veeder—I played (and replayed) several games on the that ballot I submitted for the Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2023 Edition) back in September, and I probably should have linked IFComp 2023 (it’s been a busy month), which has just concluded voting but has not yet announced its winner.
However, I’ve also been catching up on Ryan Veeder’s output because he’s prolific and because the number of games in his The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen by Ryan Veeder series has more than doubled since the beginning of March. The latest of these is the unnumbered The Little Match Girl against the Universal Sisterhood of Naughty Little Girls, which is essentially a follow-up or DLC sequel to The Little Match Girl 4: Crown of Pearls. LMG4 (available through its entry page on the IFComp website) is one of my favorite works of IF, and while LMGatUSoNLG really depends on familiarity with that previous game, playing it is such a treat. I feel like I’m too biased a source to review it on IFDB, but I’m not ashamed to gush about it here.
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You may recall my enthusiasm for The Little Match Girl 4: Crown of Pearls. Thanks to its high placement during IF Comp last year, Ryan won the option to have a moment from the game illustrated as a mini-comic. It’s pretty cool:
For my part, I’m going to stop working of Moondrop Isle for the night so that I can try out the beta version of The Little Match Girl 5: The Hunter’s Vow, available on Ryan’s Patreon.
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You are cordially invited to visit Moondrop Isle.
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Probably have to wait until this weekend to play but I’m excited to check it out. I wonder if it would play nice with an onscreen keyboard on my Surface if I tried to play it curled up on the couch
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If you decide to try, I’ll be eager to hear how it works for you - I know we had somebody trying to play on tablet during the testing phase, but I don’t think it was a Surface.
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