Linux

Star Control II

I loved Star Control II so much, for many many reasons, but the game is unique in my heart for a different reason. I really hated how the game wouldn't keep track of where you had to go, or what to do at first, because upon encountering a new alien race they had so much to tell you and various tidbits of information that I couldn't keep track of all the stuff they told you.

That is, until I came up with a simple solution. I actually started keeping my own "journal" for the game, physically writing down notes inside a journal with a pen. I would write down coordinates of planets given to me, I would write down random hints that aliens would give me (like the location of the of the Arilou place), or objectives they gave to me.

This was actually really a lot fun for me, I think mostly for the fact that I could piece together little pieces of information from various aliens that I met. For example, if one alien told me a description of where a planet was located, and another told me the coordinates of a planet, I would see that from the coordinates that they were talking about the same planet and I could kind of connect the dots. I guess I kind of felt like a detective of sorts, piecing together all of the clues to figure stuff out.

I originally hated how the game made you figure out where you had to go, but because of this I actually grew to enjoy it. I actually had fun of trying to unravel the clues of where to go next and what to do.

I recommend anyone who is stuck in the game because of this to simply try and write down stuff. It really made the game so much memorable to me.

I can't imagine how you could play it without jotting down important information about planet locations and other stuff. I usually enjoy taking notes for every game I play even if it's not necessarily required.

Right now I keep a handy notepad by my side playing Fallout 3 and keeping not only of the stuff deemed insignificant by the developers to get into journal, but also the list of my goals and current priorities.

I still stubbornly refuse to draw maps for IF games.

The thing about maps in IF is that they should only really be needed in mazes and any IF maze-crafter worth his salt is going to come up with a new system for making mazes even more unfair for players, diminishing the value of mapping to near zero. (It's... on the surface of a mobius strip! And, like the Escher engraving, it's covered with ants... which will carry away and move any objects the players leave behind to mark their progress!) Me, I liked the pseudo-random jungle mazes in Zak McCracken that didn't keep track of which exits you took, just how many screens you'd passed through.

(This sidesteps the problem of mazes being a "filler" puzzle more fitting in text adventures and with little legitimate place in modern IF, only interfering with the narrative by inserting a disruptive genre cliche in there.)

I am remembering that a version of SC2, most likely the original, had a feature allowing you to review a log of the contents of a conversation before ending it. (I believe this feature was dropped in the 3do-based re-release.)