Hungry Goblin by Boze
http://www.axeuk.com/quest/games/hungrygoblin.zip

"Feed the hungry goblin. This is a demo and not very big yet but is actually a complete unit. Treat your aim as "get into the tavern". Game runs out there!"

Please post any reviews, comments, requests for help etc. to this thread.

Hungry Goblin by Dave Aldridge


Blurb: "Feed the hungry goblin. This is a demo and not very big yet but is actually a complete unit. Treat your aim as "get into the tavern". Game runs out there!"

Descriptive Level
Descriptions were a little more verbose than most Quest games, but only a little. The game might go from a reasonably decent (by the standards of the last few Quest games I've played anyway) location description such as

YOU ARE IN A NARROW TUNNEL.
THERE IS A POINTY STICK HERE.
YOU CAN GO EAST, WEST, UP OR DOWN.
THERE IS A FAINT SMELL OF GOBLIN HERE. THE TUNNEL SLOPES UP TO THE EAST, WHERE THERE IS A SMALL GLIMMER OF LIGHT, AND DOWN TO THE WEST, WHERE IT GETS DIMMER.

to something like:

YOU ARE IN A CAVE ENTRANCE, BY A SWAMP.
THERE IS A FEARLESS DRAGON-SLAYER AND A CAMPFIRE HERE.
YOU CAN GO EAST, WEST OR DOWN.

Now the first makes an effort to add a bit of depth to the game (and succeeds), the second doesn’t.

Spelling and grammar-wise, the game has few faults. The writing isn't especially polished and only rarely has any real effort been expended to make it any more readable, but there's nothing especially horrible here.

Plot
Sparse. In the extreme. You're a goblin, you're in a cave and you're hungry. That’s it. You wander from place to place, finding food, eating it, and then hunting for some more.

It’s possible to die regularly. The hunger factor (an unpopular theme in IF precisely because it’s such a pain) kicks in after a while and kills you off if you haven't eaten anything. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t actually tell you this is going to happen beforehand, so it’s likely you'll need to die to discover it. If you're going to kill the player off, particularly in a game written with a system that doesn’t have an UNDO command, you ought to warn the player beforehand that it could happen. Eat food and your hunger timer decreases a little, giving you a bit more time to find some more food, although it’s kind of strange seeing my little goblin drop dead of hunger two minutes after he’s stuffed himself on some venison.

Interaction
Better than average for a Quest game. There were a few honest to god puzzles here in relation to some of the objects, and I even managed to use a few of them to perform simple tasks. On the negative side, the game uses the same kind of bizarre wording that seems prevalent in Quest games. If you're carrying, say, a stick and need to pick up, say, some venison with it, you can’t type the simple and straightforward GET VENISON WITH STICK but instead USE STICK ON VENISON. Still, as this is the kind of thing I've come across in more than a few games before (Quest games and otherwise), it didn’t require too much of an effort to figure out what I needed to do.

Another refreshing thing, and so rare in Quest games in general, is that items and NPCs don’t necessarily need to be referred to by their full name to be recognised. So the fearless dragon-slayer can be referred to as slayer and will still be recognised. I wish a few more authors did this.

Stability
The game didn’t crash on me (thankfully) and I didn’t run into anything that was definitely a bug, although the hunger timer certainly needed some work. A proper timer shouldn’t increase itself when a typo is entered, or when you're saving or loading the game.

Originality
Well, I've never before played a game where I was a goblin who needed to eat every few minutes or die of hunger, so in that sense the game was original indeed. At the same time, it wasn’t a particularly good idea, and after dying a dozen times in almost as many minutes from hunger, the novelty was beginning to wear mighty thin.

Overall
An amusing little, albeit frustrating, game if you have five minutes to spare. If it was improved with a bit of background, some better location descriptions, and maybe even a hint or two to steer the player in the right direction, it might not be a bad game at all.

3 out of 10

Glad to see people take my ideas suriously.

I just thought I'd try something different for a change. It helps to dissect the game that way - keeps everything you want to say neat and tidy - but I'm not sure I'd want to do that for every review.

Removed 2 posts not to do with this topic.

thanks for that review. I will stay clear of that game.

this is making me think of how i could do a game with SHUZ.

CheerleaderChick wrote:this is making me think of how i could do a game with SHUZ.

something along the lines you have to change shuz so often or die? that could be amusing. 8)

Maybe you could combine the two ideas, and give the Hungry Goblin game a new dimension where the Goblin loves shoes and has to collect lots of different ones, or he will die of shoe withdrawal?

Hungry Goblin

I did not play through the entire game yet. I do not have a lot of time to devote to playing/figuring things out. If a file is a CAS file and I find problems or am stumped, I generally stop playing after searching and trying things a number of times. I think I will actually try to get through to the end of this one due to it's playability.
It was an interesting and well put together game for the most part. I liked the troll bit near the beginning. However, I am not 100 % sure but I think you can screw up the game to where you have to restart if you don’t do the right thing with the troll. (I am shamelessly [and lazily] going to ask for a hint on the correct way to handle the troll in order to get into the pub. I found two ways to handle it and I think neither are the correct way.)
The worst thing was probably how quickly you can die by not eating. It would be tolerable if there were certain parts of the game that were “timed” but the through the entire gameplay, you must be on the look out for food or you die.
The grammar/spelling was good. The gameplay was fairly easy. I could say 3 or 4 out of 5 which would logically score in at 3.5 but that’s not how Alex’s original scoring was designed so I will be lenient and call this a:
4 out of 5

Steve, have you played any of the classics of interactive fiction? And if so, what rating out of 5 would you assign them?

I have. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be a 5 out of 5 most likely.
I don't really recall any specific details on other games I've played.

As I mentioned before, I score out of 5 based on Alex's original scoring system.
If a game is completely pitiful, I score a 1.
If it's pitiful but there was some effort put into it, I score a 2.
If the game was playable but still had spelling/grammar errors and non-fatal bugs (depending on the situation), I score a 3.
If the game was very playable, had a decent plot, and VERY few to none errors, I score a 4.
If the game was perfectly playable, had a great plot and no errors (judgement call here), I score a 5.

You're scoring is different from mine. That's fine. But that's the beauty of multiple people playing and judging games. The average of the scores can be helpful. Different points of views can be helpful.
It's like watching movies. Some people love a movie, some people hate it. If everyone based their decisions to play or not to play a game on your reviews, only one or two games would be played. No offense. I encourage you to continue judging the way you do. It is insightful.

Hello, sailor

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

For salvation without the usage of the magic word, seek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction.

Yes, there are a few allusions to past games there and they are very poor

By 'classics', I actually meant modern classics (although I realise I never made that clear). Check out Emily Short's City Of Secrets or Paul O'Brian's Luminous Horizon for an example of what I mean. I think you'll find they're light years better than this game.

The point I'm trying to get across is that I can't see how this game can possibly be rated 4 out of 5 on any proper scale. Granted, it's one of the better Quest games I've played but there are so many things wrong with it, I think I was generous with my 3 out of 10 rating.

I hate to ask this but you're not just giving the game a high rating to encourage people to use Quest and check out its games?

Personally, I thought 'Spider and Web', by Andrew Plotkin, was excellent and well thought out. I played it several times.

davidw wrote:By 'classics', I actually meant modern classics (although I realise I never made that clear). Check out Emily Short's City Of Secrets or Paul O'Brian's Luminous Horizon for an example of what I mean. I think you'll find they're light years better than this game.

I'll have to check those out.

The point I'm trying to get across is that I can't see how this game can possibly be rated 4 out of 5 on any proper scale. Granted, it's one of the better Quest games I've played but there are so many things wrong with it, I think I was generous with my 3 out of 10 rating.

4 might have been too high, I agree.

I hate to ask this but you're not just giving the game a high rating to encourage people to use Quest and check out its games?

Absolutely not.