Flow

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.23
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.79
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.19
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.94
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.66
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.37
Flow is a text adventure, written in inform7.

It’s playable on the web. If you play a lot of interactive fiction you might have your favourite interpreter, in which case you can download the gblorb file.

There is no graphics or audio in this game, so I opted out of those categories.

There is a bug in the compo-version that makes it possible to skip a puzzle, so I made post-compo release. In it, I also added one or two verbs that I saw people try and that should really have worked. The original version is of course still there.

screenshot

Comments33

Fictions
Fictions6 Oct 2019, 20:15
I never felt so lost and calm at the same time :3~ Amazing Job!
Gabriele
Gabriele7 Oct 2019, 06:36
Love text adventure games, and this one is quite innovative, I deeply enjoyed the writing, will definitely finish playing it in the next days.
NachtWitch7 Oct 2019, 13:39
I love text adventure games!
mortalfosca7 Oct 2019, 14:41
Never played text games before so I was bit lost at start. Will try to finish when I get the time for it!
seems like a cool title and heard of Inform the first time and its very interesting. never programmed in a natural-lang-processing thingy before! syntax felt similar to Prolog tho.

Anyhow, well done!
TwinTurboDouche7 Oct 2019, 15:04
Nice text game! I could have used a few more hints to help me along but plays well!
PurpledArtFrog
PurpledArtFrog7 Oct 2019, 16:28
@frank-gevaerts (copy from game page) Thank you very much for your input and rating :smile: I have had a look at your entry as well - good job… :thumbsup: it’s been a million years since I’ve played text adventures … It still somehow “works” Have a great day :smile:
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor7 Oct 2019, 22:13
@nachtwitch @mortalfosca @nachtwitch @purpledartfrog thanks for playing! I tried to make the game give more hints automatically (compared to previous LDs), but I'll admit that I ran out of awakeness before they were all there so I decided to call it a day rather than risk introducing bugs by coding half-asleep. I suspect that's mainly a problem in the second half of the game. Inform is a fun thing to play with if you're used to "regular" imperative or OO stuff, it feels very different :)
Mikeality
Mikeality8 Oct 2019, 07:45
I got stuck as the fish :(
But it was cool being God at first!
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor8 Oct 2019, 12:36
@mikeality I don't know if this exactly where you got stuck, or if you even want hints, but did you get to the ocean floor? I assume "down" or "go down" from the ocean isn't too much of a spoiler, but I'm hiding the rest (click to reveal)...

!> Once you are on the ocean floor, you'll find three objects, a treadmill, a shoehorn, and a pair of shoes. There is one "hidden" object on the side of the treadmill (which is mentioned if you examine/look at the treadmill) , the slot. If you examine all of those, you should get some hints of what to do next.

If you (or anyone) are still stuck after that, I'll be happy to provide further help. I found that you can prefix a line here with "!>" to mark it as as a spoiler, please use that if you need to provide detail!
DeathStorm8 Oct 2019, 15:46
A nice game, with some cool hints and eastereggs. I like how it all went perfectly together :))
Rombus
Rombus8 Oct 2019, 17:11
Very cool game, it set's you in the right mood. Got to finish it without issues and that's always good :D congrats on the entry!
Yngvarr
Yngvarr8 Oct 2019, 17:46
So, it _is_ a first person text adventure, huh? :D

It was relaxing. Got stuck a bit, but chuckled when figured out what to do. :) Great choice of words!
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor9 Oct 2019, 18:59
@deathstorm @rombus @yngvarr thanks! Yes, I did make a first person game :) I once contributed to an open source billiards game, so it's not even the first time (and arguably that one even counted as a first person shooter!)
Baturinsky
Baturinsky9 Oct 2019, 19:09
Command line adventure is too complex format for LD imho. Multiple choice version would work better.
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor9 Oct 2019, 19:25
@baturinsky I don't think I agree. Sure, a big text adventure wouldn't work, but this one can be finished in ten to fifteen minutes. If that's not possible because I made things too hard or didn't map enough synonyms, that's a bug of course and may warrant a lower rating, but LD is full of more complex management and puzzle games that take at least as long to get going, and I'd hate not to have them.
Hajden
Hajden9 Oct 2019, 21:22
I haven't played many text adventure games, but I appreciate good writing and you're a good word smith.
I got stuck a few times (for example with the fish, I wanted to "swim" and "travel" but the game wouldn't accept that, it did accept "walk" which got me more confused, as I was a fish...).
Anyway, I reached the loop, is there anything I missed?
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor9 Oct 2019, 21:24
@hajden thanks! Yes, my greatest fault in these is not thinking enough about other words that people will try... There isn't *that* much to see in the game, so I think you saw it all.
Hajden
Hajden9 Oct 2019, 21:28
Thanks, I did have fun with it, it evoked a nice cosmic mood
RealityCheck
RealityCheck9 Oct 2019, 21:40
Nice little text adventure. Now, I haven't played one of these since the dawn of computers :) So, I struggled a bit with coming up with the words to use to trigger the story events.

Did enjoy how it all tied together at the end though, and the writing was nice.
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor9 Oct 2019, 21:43
@realitycheck thanks! I'll try to do better next time so people can just enjoy the story and the puzzles instead of getting frustrated by not finding the right word.
Trusty
Trusty9 Oct 2019, 23:43
Created a nice atmosphere, had fun.
HumphreysMedia
HumphreysMedia10 Oct 2019, 13:48
Don't usually plan text based games, but this is great! Reading the dialouge made me think of the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth, well done!
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor10 Oct 2019, 21:29
@trusty @humphreysmedia thanks! I'll admit that while making this I often doubted if I'd end up with anything worth playing, but all comments so far make me feel it was worth it :)
commanderstitch
commanderstitch12 Oct 2019, 05:24
Well, i got further than the last one that I did with the bear chasing you down. xD Nice feel for a nothing start in the theme. You nailed that. Thanks for the ride. :-)
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor14 Oct 2019, 12:21
@philstrahl sorry about that! I'm sure you would have completed it even without that bug :)
Phoenix Fireflower22 Oct 2019, 21:15
Great job giving players enough hints for what to do without telling them too explicitly.

Some more synonyms (for example, "Grab" could be used "Take") would have been nice.
Local Minimum
Local Minimum23 Oct 2019, 17:12
Cool, though I got stuck with the slush planet, I tried a whole lot of things, but now I realize I forgot to try and drink it :tropical_drink:. Maybe that was the solution... I get the insane amount of work it would be to get to the flexibility that the player doesn't feel like it's the game that doesn't understand the player and still keep it a challenge... but at the same time, I think, I kind of need that amount of understanding from the game for me to not get frustrated with the format.
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor25 Oct 2019, 08:58
@phoenix-fireflower yes, that's one of the big problems with me and this sort of game. I never put in enough synonyms...

@local-minimum Drinking is not the solution :smiley: Sorry about that. I should have put in more (or any, really) hints in the later parts of the game.

If you still want to finish it (don't feel obliged!), here's a spoiler for that particular bit:
!> When you're around the slushy planet, just "look at planet" or "examine planet" (or "x planet" if you like the standard interactive fiction shortcuts) will get you further. After that, you'll have to look at various things you encounter to figure out what to do with them.
Collin Thompson
Collin Thompson27 Oct 2019, 17:58
Love text-based games, the writing was very good, I could visualize the whole thing. Great job! One of my favorites of the jam!
Frank Gevaerts
Frank Gevaertsauthor29 Oct 2019, 09:17
@collin-thompson thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

During every ldjam I participated in at some point I wonder why I'm doing this, but then during the rating period I get comments that answer that question :)

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