Playing Fantasy University reminded me of how much I enjoyed text-based adventure games. Not that FU is entirely text based, just the the quest texts and item descriptions are meant to be read.

I checked out Choice of Dragon, a free text-based adventure game  for a web browser or iToy.  The multiple-choice interaction gave me the opened-ended storyline I loved in text games, without the turn-key-in-lock frustrations of a game that parses text entry. (Hey, I wasn’t THAT nostalgic) You play as a dragon in a generic fantasy land, full of princesses to capture (or princes, your dragon can be an equal-opportunity kidnapper), adventuring parties to torment, and treasure to steal.

CoD is a solid IF game. Engaging descriptions of scenes and character never become long-winded. The story uses fun fantasy stereotypes, without going into the complete parody in Fantasy University or Kingdom of Loathing, and uses light sarcasm, but never takes on the unhelpful DM’s tone from Zork or Adventure. The game is fairly short, but reading the game is such a delight, it’s practically impossible not to play through a few times for different stories.

Each decision players choose has an in-game effect. You can fight or flee, split the booty or turn on your ally for the whole thing. Burning the village increases your infamy and treasure hoard, while letting the villagers live as your vassals increases your honor. Your stats continue to affect your abilities and choices, giving you more story options and personalization.

The game could be improved with a way to save the game. At several interesting crossroads,  I was sorry I could not travel both / and be one traveler, long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could. What works in poetry could be greatly improved with a saveslot. Right now, an incomplete game is stored for further progress next time, but there’s no way to return to a particular place besides restarting the game and trying to make all the same choices to lead back to that point. Knowing how way leads on to way, it’s a poor solution that could be solved with an option to save the game.

Choice of Broadsides, another similar game from Choice of Games, won my love with a choice of gender. Some games give you a female avatar, or swap some pronouns around to make the ladies feel at home, but CoB creates a world when young ladies sail the high seas and young gentlemen are sweet domestic angels. You encounter mutinous sailors, brave enemies and honorable sea captains, all female. Later, when one of your salty companions suggests you marry, and give yourself an attractive mate and the comforts of home life, you can choose a husband from an array of accomplished young gentlemen.

I didn’t enjoy the naval adventure quite as much the fantasy one, partly because I’m more of a princess-capturer than a vessel-seizer. I also felt like there were some choices that could be made in CoBroadsides that were just wrong, that in certain crossroads there was a distinctly correct and incorrect choice to be made, while in CoDragon I felt like different dragons and different choices led to different but equally valid stories.

If you also have fond memories of text-based games, both games are available online here or on the App store.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Choice of Dragon

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I went back to my old high school to see my old stats and programming teacher.  He was supervising a study hall on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when I came in.

What I meant to say was, thanks for putting up with my moody high school crap, for letting me hang out in your classroom when I really should have been in gym doing… um… actually I’m not entirely sure what one does in gym since I never went, for pretending you had no idea who built a dummy DOS with a fake reformatting option and left it running on other peoples’ machines, thanks for turning me on to frustration and ecstasy of programming, I never did much with my Pascal skills but it was excellent practice for life in China.

Somehow what came out was a mutual rant about school politics, the joys of students who learn something in your class, and frustrations of precious-snowflake parents. This is because an announcement was made over the PA that there would soon be a fire drill, and that all students were expected to leave quickly and quietly, and wait at designated areas until they returned to class. There was to be no stopping at lockers to get coats, although it’s a planned drill, in November in New Jersey, and no leaving school property, even though students will be sent halfway to their cars. There would be undefined Dire Consequences for rule-breakers. And students must not dawdle on the way back to shortened pre-holiday classes since that would cut into their academic time.  Long winded announcements, it seems, must just be part of the learning process.  Seriously, how can you talk about life-altering influences that made me want to teach English when you have such school admin stupidity in front of you?

We talked for a while, catching up, until the alarm went off. I thought that the incessant clanging would be a good cue to go, so we said goodbye and I made my way through straggling students towards my car. I was feeling like a new stage of my life was opening, since I’d just talked to a former teacher as an equal. And he said I’d grown up!

On my way out, one of the school security guards tried to prevent me leaving school grounds, and I had to explain that I was actually an unauthorized trespasser, and not a wayward student. Perhaps I’m not as mature as I’d hoped.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Standard Deviations

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I’ve been playing Lost in Blue 2 on the DS for a while now, and while I always love games about island survival, like MyTribe, Sims 2: Castaway, etc., there’s a lot of room for improvement in Lost in Blue.

Cool minigames make use of the the DS’s capabilities, but the hundredth time you have to light a fire, it stops being fun. The same can be said for cooking, fishing, catching animals, and every other repetitive action. I’m a big fan of Cooking Mama 2, but this is no Cooking Mama. Also, the actions you need to perform repeatedly are hidden in sub-menus or are only available after a chain of choices, instead of being accessible, one-click actions.

The story begins as two high-schoolers are washed up on a beach after a shipwreck. Players can choose Jack or Amy as their primary character, but they are responsible for the survival of both. I choose Amy, and before I complain any more, I should mention how much I enjoyed playing a sweet teenager protagonist, a girl with a cute haircut and school clothes (did I mention how not-pink they were?), neatly pretty without defaulting to videogame sexy.

Jack, Amy’s companion on the island, is not the brightest bulb in the box. You need to feed him, making him more like a rather dim pet than a boyfriend. (If you choose to play as Jack, Amy becomes similarly dull-witted.)  Every time he gets hungry, you need to let go of his hand (one click), target Jack (varies), select Talk (one click), tell him you have something for him (one click), wait for him to ask what it is, tell him it’s something to eat (one click), wait for him to ask what he’s eating, and then select the item from your backpack to feed him (varies, but you select, choose ‘give’ and confirm), he says it’s delicious (one click to confirm). Early items, like raspberries and coconuts, fill his meter between 3 and 5 percent, out of a possible hundred percent, so even if he doesn’t perform any physical labor — like a million walks to the stream to quench his inexhaustible thirst — which makes the hunger meter empty faster, you’ll need to do this series of actions between 20 and 33 times in a day to get him full.

Also, items must be fed from Amy’s backpack to Jack. You cannot feed him items that he’s carrying, and he will literally die of starvation with a backpack full of lunchboxes and fruit. To exchange items between backpack, you need to let go of his hand (one click), target Jack (varies), select Talk (one click), tell him you have something for him (one click), wait for him to ask what it is, select give (one click), wait for him to ask what you’re giving him, and then exchange items between the backpacks. So. Not. Fun.

A lot of the game involves learning about the island, for better or for worse. Discovering new environments is inherently rewarding, and the combination of exotic jungle life and retro platformer right angles was charming. Sweet animations, which Amy looks down over a steep cliff or when she looks over her shoulder to make sure Jack has jumped across the stepping-stones safely, make exploring ever better, although, like everything else in the game, what’s fun the first time is annoying the twentieth time.

Much of the game is based on discovery, but unfortunately the rate of success is skewed so that I felt like I was always thwarted by doing things at the wrong time, in the wrong order. I could solve this by printing out a map, or recipes, or a fishing timetable, but that feels a lot like getting a walkthrough. I’ve used internet hint when I’ve gotten stuck (That would be every puzzle that requires me to distinguish between musical notes…), but I don’t like playing game that require a strategy guide hints to complete.

Certain events trigger cutscene stories, which advance the story but cause their own frustrations. At one point, the characters took themselves home and slept, waking up nearly dead of hunger and thirst. Another story had Jack disappearing, unfortunately with our food in his backpack. While Jack was away, Amy refused to go away from the cave-home to collect food or water because she was waiting for Jack. Another time, Amy wouldn’t go in the cave to cook… You get the picture. This is horribly flawed — a cutscene should not be able to kill me. I was unable to enjoy the stories because I was afraid they would go on too long and Jack and Amy would die of hunger and thirst while they talked about making ropes. (I also disliked the cutscenes because the story seems to be leading to a romance between the two characters, but I like to think that Amy has standards, even if Jack is literally the only guy around!)

I’m having trouble summing up because I can’t recommend that others buy it or even rent it because it’s so flawed in so many ways… but at the same time, although I do turn it off in frustration, I put the game down for later instead of selling it back. Even when I’m frustrated with tools that keep breaking and bored of running to the spring to slake our unquenchable thirst, I keep picking it back up to play a few more days trapped on an island with my dimwit boyfriend.I can’t explain it — I think I have a dysfunctional relationship with Lost in Blue 2.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Lost in Blue 2

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Dear TurboTax,

Thank you for making my taxes kind of annoying instead of a total nightmare. Sure, it cost most of my tax return to pay for the TurboTax version for under-employed freelancers, but that’s fine. You made it easier to turn a stack of 1099s and scribbled receipts into the single-digit check I’ll be receiving from the state of North Carolina. This is the very first year I’ve filed on time, and it’s all thanks to you. (Well, thanks to you and a nagging worry that I might be paying this year instead of receiving, and I’ve heard the IRS is less forgiving about late filing when one is meant to be sending them money.)

But a Captcha at the end? Seriously? A check to see if I’m human after all that? Turbo, honey, if there were a program that could find my gross income from last year’s return, the employer numbers from a half dozen 1099s, my date of birth, my social security number, my special TurboTax pin, my routing number and bank account number, and then put all those numbers into the right little boxes on a hundred different pages… well, if there were a bot like that, I don’t think it would be thwarted by a Captcha image!

Meg

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The TurboTax Turing Test

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For everyone (both of you, ha!) waiting impatiently for the conclusion, I did manage to get paid on Tuesday. My school’s director really came through for me, and I got my salary at 4:30pm, which is 6 hours after I first went to the accounting office to pick up my money, but still on payday. I’m quite annoyed that I spent most of my day going from office to office being told by each person that it’s not their job or their fault, but very happy that I did get paid in the end.

I’ve been in China close to two years, so I should be adjusted to the Chinese way of solving problems, but it still irks me that so much time is spent proving that whatever has gone wrong isn’t your fault. I really don’t care who’s made the mistake, and I’d rather spend the time fixing it, rather than being convinced by each person that they’re blameless and it’s someone else’s error. I really have no desire to point a finger or get revenge on the person who goofed… I don’t think the Chinese do either. I think the vague excuses are a face-saving measure, but as an American, I think a flimsy, complicated explanation of how your dog ate your homework is much lower face than just saying you won’t let it happen again. Time spent explaining why, for example, you couldn’t possibly have been the one who used up all the copy paper, is time better spent refilling the paper tray.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Empty Paper Tray

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Last night, Stick predicted that I wouldn’t get paid on time, because the new shift in the state holiday calendar has led to an increase in mei you frustration. The holidays were rearranged to break up the long Golden Week holiday and give out more 3-day weekends throughout the year, which is actually a nice thought. I don’t know how this works in other fields, but for teachers, that means you need to make up an extra day’s worth of classes in your free time, because you have Monday off because Sunday is a holiday.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be paid on the tenth of every month, so I went to the financial office today to pick up my pay. It wasn’t there. A bunch of different reasons were discussed, I think it had something to do with someone along the way not submitting their timesheets to the school’s general payroll in time, apparently the deadline changed due to the holiday.

I went back to my boss and mentioned that today is payday, and I’d like to get paid. I was first told that there was no problem, then told that nobody else’s pay is ready, either.

Now, I don’t know what everyone else’s contracts promise, or whether everyone else would like to be paid on payday. But telling me that everyone else is also screwed doesn’t pay me OR increase my confidence in my school’s ability to solve this matter.

Also, there’s something my mom used to tell me about what everybody else is doing. Something about everybody else and jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge…

I argued with different people in different offices for a while, which started to make me feel like a demanding, entitled foreigner, until I remembered that I was arguing to get paid my agreed-on salary on my contract-specified date.

Then it was pointed out to me that it’s actually the tenth of the month all day long, so I really haven’t been screwed until the close of business today. And maybe if I wait, they’ll have it all straightened out by this afternoon. Maybe.

Related: Dragon Boat Day two years ago in Yantai

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Frustrations

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Yesterday I started taking a beginning Chinese class. I’d forgotten how much better I liked my life without anyone saying “no, no, is zh not zh“. At least the prof doesn’t giggle when she says it.

She has the same frustrations as I do when trying to teach basics in a native language. I am completely baffled when my English students, here or in China, can’t identify a verb. It’s the word that’s doing something, how could I possibly make this more clear? I think my Chinese teacher feels the same way. There are four tones, except when there are five, how could I possibly make this more clear?

Our text seems to be well-organized, and I’m excited about having classmates on my level. But I still have such basic questions about Mandarin. For example, some Chinese nouns need zi on the end but it doesn’t have a meaning but you can’t leave it off. Or certain word order seems to change the tones (or I’m just saying ti wrong, which is probably just as likely) and I don’t know how that works. I think I really want to learn Chinese in a Westernly logical way.

(Please try to keep the ???? emails and comments to a minimum this time, ok?)

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Meg vs. Mandarin, again.

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(Written on 6/1 but Dragon Boat Day is 5/31 so I’m backdating this)

Once there was a Chinese poet called Qu Yuan (??). Depending on who you ask, Qu Yuan either jumped or fell into a river and drowned, and the Chinese celebrate today as the anniversary of his death. (Maybe he wasn’t a very good poet?) Today is also Dragon Boat Day, a holiday involves which involves racing dragon boats and pushing poets off the boats. Ok, I may have made that part up. I think the races are actually to commemorate Qu Yuan.

I can’t seem to find two people who tell the story the same way, but everyone agrees this is a very important day. I’m actually pretty sad that my headmistress hasn’t included the foreigner teachers in celebrating Chinese holidays, but I’m not sure if that would be intruding. I think I’m biased because Stivison family holidays usually involve at least one friend from far away, like a British exchange student, the entire international student population of Wesleyan University…

Like all Chinese holidays, this one involves eating a lot. Today’s food is zong zi, which is a rice ball wrapped in a leaf. The rice can be filled with red bean, pork, sugar, fruit, fish or anything else you can think up. Instead of eating them, you can also thrown them into a river for the drowned poet.

Also, you’re supposed try to stand an egg on it’s end at exactly noon. If you can do this, you will have a very good year. And you should put a special kind of herb on your front door to protect your home from bad spirits. (I didn’t try either one, didn’t I already ruin my chanced by crying on New Year’s Day? And don’t I already have a good year from fireworks on Lantern Festival?)

Lily and her husband Bag invited me to have dinner with them, so we gorged ourselves at the nighttime food court as an appetizer for our zong zi. I love the night market, you can get such awesome food there! In fact, I think I’m starting to really love cheap Chinese food, it’s only the classy stuff that’s foul. Anything considered a delicacy is totally wasted on me. I had a really good time with Lily and Bag, eating good food, getting the elusive cold beer and just enjoying a summer evening by the beach.

This morning when I left the house, I saw that my neighbors had tucked some leaves into my door to protect me from bad spirits.

Related: Dragon Boat Day two years later in Beijing

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Dragon Boat Day

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