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The War of the Willows

on ifcomp-2015
Interactive fiction competition 2015 is over. There were 53 games and you can see their results here. But the games are still worth discussing so let's do it.

This article is spoiler-free.

Author: Adam Bredenberg.

It’s hard to describe that game. It has a single puzzle in the spirit of crude CYOA-like combat of old about fighting a living willow on a gladiator arena. And it’s presented like poetry but I can’t even tell its rhythm.

It’s not polished, especially for a console text-only game. For example, you have to take note of the character case when typing the responses (you can’t enter “Love” or “vordak”) Also, it gives weird JSON printings every once in a while on both Python2 and 3.

I hate text combat like this. I just HATE it. It doesn’t offer a good feedback to calculate if you should hit or run. The author guide actually says that you’re not supposed to understand mechanics and it’s semi-randomized so… use your luck, I guess.

It’s a puzzle that you’re not supposed to crack. You don’t spend 10–20 tries on this just to beat it. You take one or two shots, miss, shrug and move on. So that’s what I’m doing.