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Comment by statico | Hacker News Reader

It’s a retro experience with a text adventure game. I wrote it to prove to myself that I kinda knew WebGL after shutting down our browser gaming startup.

Only one person has beaten the game. Most don’t make it inside the building. Guess I’m not a great game designer ;)

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I guess most peoplw don't even try. It was almost trivial to get inside! :)

I'm curious if I skipped something or did as intented... Are you supposed to find the complete keypad number? (i.e. all 4 digits?)

The game begins after you enter the building. I think you're supposed to "activate Ian's memories" using a port in the control room.

I'm kind of disappointed it didn't respond to "brute force it" when I got to the keypad.

Cool idea. I'll add some parsing for that, but you might be the first to use "brute force" as a verb in the game.

Haha cool! I'm going to get inside that building eventually... Does it keep a log of all of the different things that people type in?

Update: I'm in!

Nice!

Yes, I keep a private log of all input in order to improve the game.

Lots of people try, but the clue you find wasn't obvious enough. I fixed that and also made the keypad a lot more intuitive. But, no, the entire keypad code isn't shown.

I admit I had to open the github page to find clues :P Oops should I said it here?

That's fine, and I put the beginning of the game up as a coding example. And it of course tells you how to get the initial clue. But the rest of the game is all server-side, so you're on your own from there :)

Oh this is sooo nice!! Finally a break from templated internet and ads. Love how clean, simple, fast it is.

Game - I am bad at text adventure games so obviously gave up after a few tries

Yeah, I get it. A lot of times it's all about guessing the right verb. There is a "help" command which has pointers on how to play (thanks to a handy "extended help" library for Inform7)

"xyzzy: nothing happens, nice try!"

Drats!

Nice little tie-ins with memorabilia as well.

I started writing a similar thing myself based on the Amstrad CPC look-n-feel. I should go back and finish it.

Thanks! The game here is written in Inform7, and it was so difficult to make progress that it took me three years on and off to finish the game. So if you do it that way, beware :)

Abridged story: https://github.com/statico/the-archive-public/blob/master/Th...

Backend server: https://github.com/statico/glulxe-httpd

Ah, perhaps this is why I periodically got no responses, and eventually was reset out of the game. I was deep down!

This was a lot of fun. I appreciate `ls` being handled.

Thanks. There are a bunch of things like that that people try thinking, or at least hoping, that it's a real prompt somehow.

Never did I think I would hate the phrase “Violence isn’t the answer”

Awesome! I just ran out of time chatting to the cyborg! I wanna come back later. Thank you for this!

Glad you're enjoying it!

This is excellent! I never really played any text games before but reminds me a bit of MoTaS and some other mystery online clicking riddle game I can't remember.

Also like the difference between mobile and desktop!

Oh damn I think I may have died. Didn't think that was possible! I am hooked!! All I'll say is Qball

Hmm actually seems like the first time I died (and the most recent) was actually not intended, the game just kind of hung after some repeated actions and dropped me outside the game (needing to type "game" again) but in between these I actually did properly die.

Weird! I'd love to know how you got in that state. Please email me :)

This is amazing and very well made!

> Most don’t make it inside the building.

I just got into the building!

"examine computer" is a nice touch :-)

Thank you. You can get the full dose of nostalgia by using floppy disks...

I really enjoyed the text game and the design, thanks for sharing!

Loving the game so far!

Very similar feel to The Room, but in text adventure style.

Thanks!

Too late to edit, but realized I should specify that I meant The-Room-the-game-by-fireproof-studios, not The-Room-the-movie.

Stuck after opening the port, anyone any hints?

Tools give you leverage ;)

I love how it looks. Please, can I have a hint?

try cursing? lol

Already tried that one... :)

Definitely try reading through the help commands. Use the page up and page down keys if you need to scroll. Hope that helps :)

Very clever and fun.

I beat it :)

Awesome! Thank you for playing!

Really cool !

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