IFComp 2008: April in Paris
Comments(3) Jim Aikin brings us a story of an American tourist in a Parisian café. Spoilers follow the break.
I think the most striking thing about this game is how good-natured it is. It could have easily gone the other way. The initial premise, being ignored by a snooty waiter, certainly injects some human pettiness into the story from the get-go, and suggests a worldview in which people are obstacles, which is pretty much the norm of IF anyway. But no, this is largely a game about being nice to people. I mean yes, some of the people in the game are in fact obstacles, but the solution isn’t to overcome them, but to talk to them and treat them like human beings.
For example, at one point you need an item from a plumber’s toolchest. He’s busy fixing the plumbing, but not so busy that he won’t notice you trying to sneak off with his stuff. Nothing you can do will distract him. The solution: offer to buy it from him. So simple! And yet so contrary to adventurer habit. Generally speaking, trading in adventures is always initiated by NPCs, and is more often than not an excuse to send you on a quest for the one object they’ll trade for.
By the end, nearly everyone in the café has had their lives brightened a little by the player’s actions. The one exception is the waiter himself, your nemesis, who must be blackmailed into submission. But even this requires learning enough about his situation to understand why he’s being so mean, which humanizes him.
As you can imagine, the game leans heavily on conversation, which it does through the traditional “ask x about y” system. There are people who really dislike this system, but it doesn’t bother me, provided that it handles a reasonably large range of topics. It’s notable that the game also handles a simple “talk to x” command, which basically just greets the person and provides them an opportunity to talk to you whatever topic they’re concerned about. That’s something that would probably otherwise be handled by having the NPC address you on entering the room, but breaking it up the way this game does makes for a nicer narrative flow, in my opinion.
One other thing worth mentioning: The whole game takes place in the café, which is divided up into multiple locations, but they’re mostly visible from each other, and in many cases a command that references something or someone in a different location will cause the player character to automatically go there. So, there’s some good stuff going on technically here too.
Rating: 8
For example, at one point you need an item from a plumber’s toolchest. He’s busy fixing the plumbing, but not so busy that he won’t notice you trying to sneak off with his stuff. Nothing you can do will distract him. The solution: offer to buy it from him. So simple! And yet so contrary to adventurer habit.
That’s an interesting point. I found this bit harder than I should have, precisely because I was expecting a tricky-adventurer solution rather than the obvious one. Much of the rest of the game seemed predicated on taking a non-obvious route to achieve one’s goals, rather than using relatively normal resources wisely. (Several other games this competition were much more of the latter form, and in general I find that form more conducive to plausible story-telling.)
But then, I may also have been predisposed to view the PC a little less kindly. The accordionist solution felt downright mean to me — I felt like I was hurting the guy’s feelings by asking him to leave, and of course the whole point of the exercise in the first place was to deprive another customer of something he was plainly enjoying.
I didn’t find plausible the way everyone *except* the waiter reacted favourably to the PC, calling him ‘mon ami’ or ‘buddy’ or telling him that he ‘seemed nice’, etc. Especially the musician, praising the PC’s ‘generosity’ after receiving the price of a cup of coffee. The friendliness didn’t seem justified by the PC’s actions. It seemed, rather, a sign of a self-insert character, the kind whom the author tries to sell to the reader by having all the characters talk about how great s/he is.
However, I was prejudiced against the PC from the beginning by his unwillingness to speak one word of French.
Judging by the review, you had a better experience with the game than I did. I didn’t *dislike* it, though. Maybe I just expected more. I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the six-zone main area of the cafe (I kept forgetting what was where, and I really just had a tough time visualizing it at first). I didn’t take from it the same message you did (being nice to people), which is a shame, but in hindsight that seems exactly right.
I ended up scoring it a point lower, which is still pretty decent. I was probably biased, too, after having played the game just prior — which, IMO, stands a great shot at winning.