You can read the following as a joke if you wish; I like the game design in Synopsis Quest. 25 mini-quests, played in total, give an impression of a more or less pleasant 8-bit RPG plot. What I find interesting is how the set anticipates, if you will, how the player will play it. The "solutions" or "goals" do not necessarily flow from the visual information available. We can call that originality! This is what I find interesting! There's a cleverness in the execution, which I hope you'll agree with me is easy to spot, and the following pieces of the quest I wrote my thoughts on. I'll give you a moment to try the game for yourself! Shouldn't take you longer than 15 minutes!
[ . . . ]I found the following to be noteworthy:
Quest 2 - Create a Hero, it was entirely interesting to note that your PC could be born a villager, in which case
the game would not start. Also, a profusion of stats apparently inverts your alignment. (Start as a monster?)
Quest 5 - Greet the Hero, Why in this age of immense 3-D productions and middleware engines and relative narrative freedom has no one ever started a chapter as an NPC, who could explore the town and get information directed for their eyes and ears only? It would be great to have to track the PC down in a widely detailed map with real-time lighting; as the day fades your hero (you) finally emerge from the inn, and your job is to greet them. I know every game lets me fight in a fight with a minor character. This is not what I want.
Quest 10 - Making us battle differently. Apparently repetition is the new innovation, regardless of what you think of FFXIII, the battle engine is not designed for defensive play. The fact that the whole structure of the game is based on speed and rewards based on that makes things predictable. I'd love to see a battle where it was to outlast patience with some slimes. A Dragon Quest homage, cute.
Quest 11 - Finding the right bed to sleep in to advance the plot is as they say, old as the stars. But! Clever misdirections can mean even a direct command "talk to the princess" is fun. Confusion can be fun!
Quest 13 - I never played an 8-bit game with a day/night cycle. Now, I sort of wish I had.
Quest 17 - This and the next are my favourite ones. They deserve essays to the both of them; here is an example of visual misdirection, being in a garden of stone statues, knowing you must overcome a curse, but having the curse being something unrelated and potentially overlooked "really does it for me". I guess I just like uncertainty when playing a game, and things not being what they seem. I am a fantasy enthusiast, folks.
Quest 19 - I think we all know when an RPG is winding up for "the great revelation". A man in a tree with a beard, with a telescope, a man a character has known all their life but we are just being introduced to, a ghost from the past that may be someone's late parent, etc. But this one is the best of all of them. Does anyone dig what's happening here?
Although I do program, Synopsis Quest does not the programmer in me enthuse. All the tricks here are conceptual, not technical. The magic is that the originality perhaps shines over all other considerations? I like living in this very modern year of 2010. I like the way some things are- but I still like and love the way things were. We should be able to have and keep having inventive 2-D games. If everyone gives the short little game a go, I figure we can share whatever our impressions.
I'm inspired, and malign that my skills can craft no sprites, so to the forum I go.
