Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Red Radish Robotics: IFcomp 2020

 

Red Radish Robotics is a choice-based science fiction story by Gibbo.

This entry asks you to escape from the 7th floor of a research facility that has become a giant deathtrap. There are many, many ways to end your escape prematurely, although you are given 10 "respawns" that function like an "undo" button.

Red Radish Robotics does a good job of telling a story. The narrator's childlike perspective explains why you are given some choices that are self-evidently terrible, and although the brief identity crisis is not a shocking plot twist, other developments are effectively foreshadowed with more subtlety.

In some places, the story got in the way of the implementation. A few locations and objects needed to be re-visited and re-examined multiple times because the narrator was not properly motivated during earlier encounters. The "respawn" activity was also unusual, rewinding time in some places and just resurrecting me at the original starting point in others.

Overcoming almost every obstacle is a matter of finding the right links and clicking them in sequence, which meant that I enjoyed uncovering the story more than solving the puzzles in Red Radish Robotics. As you search for a way out of the building, you gradually reveal what happened, why the facility was abandoned, and why you were left behind.

Artwork from Donald Conrad: 



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