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Message: 2067

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 06/03/2001

Subject: Multiple Death Scenarios/Matt's style

 

the banyan tree
(why is there a tree

in the house??)

I don't know. Maybe that part
of the mansion isn't indoors after all, or maybe
it's just Smithian surrealism?

i like the orangery (and neighbouring parts) alot, it always had a sense of riskyness about it. do you think that this risk factor (the risk of falling off and losing all your lives) can and

should be used as a device when designing
screens? or is it too unfair?

(i've used a

few, i like the effect, personally.

it

'punctuates' the player's experience)

I know what you
mean - it can be good to have that thrill of terminal
danger from time to time! We Pretty's " THESA FET YZ ON
E" is a prime example of this (you can get stuck and
have to quit), but I now regret the fact that you can
fall out of "S TEA KANDBE AN CURD" to your death, as
happened to me when I played We Pretty again a few weeks
ago! :-o A moment's carelessness is all it
takes.

Traps and MDSs should be avoided in general, and
certainly shouldn't be overdone to any extent at all (the
original edition of The Continuing Adventures is the worst
offender that springs to mind), as it's very unfair and
frustrating, especially when you've come a long way towards
completing the game. (Even more unfair and frustrating is
the tendency of Geoff Mode and JSW128 games to crash
every time I've completed about ten rooms, which is why
I want a save feature for real
Spectra).

I've twice found the time to sit down and try to
complete willy to the rescue, and twice I've been foiled
by MDSs: the first when I fell the wrong way down "i
wonder what's down there", and the second when I did a
careless jump out of "headz" and overshot the platform in
the room to the left.

I've just started typing
where's woody into my real Spectrum, BTW. It has to have
the longest and funniest scrolly (I decided to start
with TITLE.JS7) ever seen in a MM/JSW game!
:-)

i'm longing for someone else to do a JSW game

set in and around a house or building, and done in the same surreal style! (i know we've had remakes with buildings: willy's holliday and

bulgarian requiem spring to mind, but none have been done in matt's style - i wonder if i could

'emulate' it?).

That depends on what you
mean by "matt's style", for we have certainly had
plenty of games set around a building, some of them
based (too) closely on the original JSW (such as JSW
1-1, which I've just finished typing in). Join The
Jet-Set! is very much in the Smithian
style.

Goodnite Luddite is set in and around a Selesian
monastery, and is being done in my own surreal style, which
makes the original JSW look very ordinary!
;-)

Party Willy will be closely based on the original JSW
(I think there are too many games like this already,
but I still want to have my own take on it), but I'm
not explicitly trying to recreate Matthew's
style.

--
Andrew
Broad
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/

 

 

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