{"id":602,"date":"2010-10-08T20:59:27","date_gmt":"2010-10-09T03:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/islemaster.wordpress.com\/?p=602"},"modified":"2010-10-08T20:59:27","modified_gmt":"2010-10-09T03:59:27","slug":"ifcomp-2010-gris-et-jaune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/ifcomp-2010-gris-et-jaune\/","title":{"rendered":"IFComp 2010: Gris et Jaune"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Gris et Jaune” by Steve van Gaal<\/p>\n

She wanted answers. He wanted a cure. You just wanted to live.<\/em><\/p>\n

Comp game #2! I’m glad the blurb is in English, I was worried that I’d be unable to review this one. It also includes this very nifty “handbill” that gives nothing away. Spoilers begin now. <\/p>\n

I gave this one about 100 minutes. 60 minutes in, I hit the hints menu with gusto. Another 40 minutes, and I gave up and turned to the walkthrough… and discovered that I only made it halfway through the game. Wow! Tough stuff. It took me a while to put my finger on the premise of the game. I thought I was a vampire for about one minute, a golem for the next fifteen, and finally worked out I was a zombie once the game opened up.<\/p>\n

Big points for a good premise and setting. I am a zombie wandering a Louisiana-like deep south cajun town, trying to get my life back. I’m apparently something of an innocent bystander who’s been caught up in a feud between Mad Doctor Gris and Witch Doctor Mama John. I have to break free from their influence and find my soul. The writing is good, the setting captured my imagination, and the ingredients are all in place for a good story.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I got most of this from reading the hints. I found the game itself confusing. I spent most of my time wandering around talking to characters, and I still feel like I got almost no explanation of what’s going on. It didn’t help that I had trouble keeping character names straight, and that I sometimes couldn’t tell who was speaking. And some elements felt like red herrings; I wasn’t sure if I was doing things in the right order, or skipping steps. So Gris is a crazy addict… what does that do for me? So I can drug-trip and see a tree-man behind me in the mirror. Is that some kind of hint? It sure doesn’t seem like one.<\/p>\n

I got as far as freeing myself from Mama John’s mind control, and discovered that I needed some of her writing. I found a note from her, but the game wouldn’t let me take it, so that was no good. The hints explained that I needed a book… a book that was in my possession at the beginning of the game, but was taken away by Gris. I scoured his house, high and low for it. The last mention of it was in the lab, but it just vanished from there. Finally I gave up and went to the walkthrough. Apparently I was supposed to march up to Mama John, fight her, and take the book from her home. How did she get the book, how was I supposed to know she had it, and why did I die last time I tried to fight her? Too frustrating for me.<\/p>\n

I also encountered just a couple of technical issues. I saw some repeated narrative text the first time I entered the foyer location, and actually got some “Programming Error” messages in my first conversation with Mambo Felis. These weren’t game-breaking, but they did shake my faith in the rest of the game, especially in light of the disappearing book.<\/p>\n

That was my experience with “Gris et Jaune.” It does seem like a very good game, but I the enjoyment I derived from the clever setting was diminished by somewhat obtuse puzzles and plot. Also, maybe I’m just really bad at IF (a real possibility) but it was discouraging that I couldn’t solve the game even after<\/em> exhausting all of the in-game hints. I wanted a little bit more guidance. If this wasn’t a comp game and I expected to spend a few days on it, I suppose I would have been more patient with the puzzles, but I would still have been confused about what was going on.<\/p>\n

Verdict: B+<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Gris et Jaune” by Steve van Gaal She wanted answers. He wanted a cure. You just wanted to live. Comp game #2! I’m glad the blurb is in English, I was worried that I’d be unable to review this one. It also includes this very nifty “handbill” that gives nothing away. Spoilers begin now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ifcomp-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}