Topic: Masked :: An experimental short-form adventure game

[Lewis]

MASKED
An experimental short-form adventure game.



By Lewis Denby. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

***DOWNLOAD***

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Masked is a room-escape game infused with a dark, mysterious and ambiguous story. What is the cracked, crumbling room in which you find yourself? Who is the woman behind the mask? What is your history? And how, if at all, can you escape?

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KNOWN ISSUES
While most inventory items disappear after being used, one key remains. It can be re-used, so does serve a purpose, but this did confuse one tester.
Can collect an inventory item in the final scene multiple times. [SHOULD BE FIXED]

[Tabata]

Congratulations - a nice (even if very short) game! 

I didn't discover the experimental part of it - can you tell something more about that?

[Lewis]

I didn't discover the experimental part of it - can you tell something more about that?

Worth clarifying, actually. The 'experimental' part refers to the narrative design rather than the game mechanics. Obviously, gameplay-wise, it's rather traditional.

I wanted to see if I could infuse a short-form room-escape game with an ambiguous story, and how people would respond to that. That's the experiment, basically. :-)

Thanks for playing, and for your comments!

[david]

finished it and I like it especially that whole "experimental" experience.

That hidden story was very clever. I see your point
NIce work 

[suicidal pencil]

This feels like a nice game to play, even though I didn't make it out of the room. I had trouble figuring out what to do next.

found the strange key behind the planks, opened the floor grate. Found the coin in the water, put it in the slot....now what? I tried examining and interacting with everything I could possibly think of to no avail.

My only complaint is that I have absolutely no idea what to do after the first few interactions. I'm completely lost, and I hate pixel-hunting.

That aside, I like it. I'm gonna try one more time to get out of that blasted room, but whatever the result I like what I played...even if I only played a few minutes of it  

edit: Figured it out. Apparently I'm just an unobservant fool 

I would have liked it to be longer, and I feel that *her* dialogue is a bit...off sometimes for who she's supposed to be and what she's done, but these are relatively minor nitpicks. I enjoyed it 

The story can't end there, can it? That couldn't really have been her that gets shot, could it?

I don't normally play p&c adventure games, but when I do, I always enjoy it ^__^

[Slipshod]

Just finished it. Great job, I loved it. Only one thing:

I wanted more at the end. Just a tad bit, maybe a glimpse of what she looks like behind the mask? Something super creepy  But I suppose its a good thing that it kept me wanting more.

Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It did an awesome job at getting me to want to continue playing, and that's worth a lot in a game.

[zyzzyvette]

Fun game! It was an interesting story and I liked the atmosphere. I got a little confused at

the part where you put the pound coin in the slot. I thought that I either had to try to get the coin back, or that I'd irretrievably wasted an important inventory item. I tried using the magnet on the slot but the narrator scolded me for trying to put the magnet in the slot. So I restarted the game. Not sure if I'm the only one that silly, but if I'm not you might drop a little hint that it didn't work because it was the wrong kind of coin, not because I missed some other important step. Or let the player get the (useless) coin back somehow, just as a woobie.

[FireOrange]

Just finished it. Great job, I loved it. Only one thing:

I wanted more at the end. Just a tad bit, maybe a glimpse of what she looks like behind the mask? Something super creepy  But I suppose its a good thing that it kept me wanting more.

I agree to this! There could be a bit more at the end.

But good work! You can find a review of your game in my 1st person-Adventure-Blog (german only!).

[Cogliostro]

Add 1 part "Saw"
Add 1 part "Misery"
Serve with AGS.

PRO: Nicely done.  Creepy and atmospheric. 

CON: There were parts where her dialogue seemed off - where she changed her "tone".  I wasn't sure if this was an accident, or if it was supposed to come across as a psychological break.  So either eliminate it or REALLY CRANK IT UP.

2)

I have to agree - that can't be how it really ends unless you want to things to go completely surreal, and if that's the case, you have to add something to set that expectation.

 - Cogliostro

[9cupsoftea]

Great game! I love that elegant design and surprises. The ambiguity was really well done too.

[Lewis]

Thanks so much to everyone who's played so far! I'm up to about 2,500 downloads, which is crazy-awesome.

The coin and the slot
Ugh, yeah, that 'red herring' didn't work at all well, as it was pointless. Hands-up: I screwed up some of the puzzle design, and as it was a short-term project didn't have time to revise it properly. This was a shortcut. No excuse, but a reason.

The story
If you're asking "Wait, is that it? Did I read it correctly?" then I've done my job properly. Masked has a definite story, and I could happily give you the full run-down of events if I wanted to, but I don't: I wrote it very specifically so that people could pick at the implications and work out what happened.

The dialogue
The switch between carefully crafted prose and insane-o-ranting was very intentional, but this isn't the first time someone's criticised the writing. That's fine, but it's also probably the one thing I wouldn't change at all. The awkward imbalance I seem to have hit upon is exactly what I was aiming for. That it's stylistically inconsistent was totally the point.

Cheers again, folks!