[bookclub] LYG - a mechanical perspective of gameplay

[Salvasan <salvasan@yahoo.com>]

First, I'll mention the game version I played, so that we don't end up
arguing about apples and oranges:

  Losing Your Grip, a Journey in Five Fits
  Version 4 (Nov 29 1998) Copyright 1998 by Stephen Granade
  Developed with TADS, the Text Adventure Development System.

played on an interpreter compiled for i386 Linux.

The following are a few disorganized notes on my experiences playing
this game.  I haven't played much IF over the last two decades so
consider this a case study of how a newbie approaches a game such as
LYG.  The focus here is on the mechanics of game play rather than on
any metaphysical interpretation or any such philosophical pondering.


[ Warning: The following contains spoilers for LYG ]



* Fit 1

Starting play I first set out to identify the genre.

: A section of the air just above your head shimmers.  A small pyramid falls
: from the disturbance to the ground below.

This suggests a certain fantasy element to the adventure; something
I'm not particularly fond of.  More on that in Fit 3.  Soon enough I
realized this was more of a dream sequence rather than a troll-fest so
I pressed on.

What struck me first was the lack of objects to pick up.  I wandered
around for the first half hour with nothing but a coat and gloves,
plus this dog.  Almost everything else illicited canned responses of
"There's no need to..." and "Don't worry about the...".  This made it
difficult to ascertain the objective of this round.  What would I have
done without Frankie? Regardless of the symbolic meaning conveyed by
his presence, he seems to serve the role of game rule book.  I prefer
discovering the objective myself from the evidence around me, rather
than having it told to me via questioning of just one individual.  But
this is a dream state so why expect logical objectives?

I figured out the insulation-coat problem and the wheels-sludge-heater
problem without help. However the rucksack trick was clued in only
subtly by the dog. I only realized what to do when I consulted the
walk-through to figure out how to bridge the fence cables.

Previous IF has conditioned one to avoid anything that causes instant
death. The last thing I expected was a solution that involved carrying
out an action that does exactly that. In dream sequences anything goes
it seems. There is at least one other puzzle in LYG that is like this.

I thought in modern era IF vital objects are not hidden under pieces
of furniture. I probably tried "look under X" more often than in other
games.

Lot's of red herrings here also. The broken light, the missing benches
in the balcony, standing behind the lectern, the hot water tank, the
scratched desk, the muddy floor. All these superfluous details only
served to reinforce a behaviour that would lead one to miss vital
clues in later Fits.


* Interlude prior to Fit 2

Figuring out how to resume dreaming was a puzzle in itself, so much so
I was disappointed that no points were awarded. I realize the author
has neatly divided the five Fits into 20 point packages, so rewarding
an interlude with anything more than mere progress probably would not
have fit in with the overall game design. Oh well 20/100.

* Fit 2 hospital

I thought the atmospheric elements were quite effective here.
Amazingly I completed this Fit without any hints, but a helluva lot of
restore/undo owing to the many ways to reach an unsolvable state,
especially if you forgot to bring your rucksack. Once I passed right
by the first hospital bed without ever meeting Mr Grey. There is also
some implementation bug regarding the BP cuff. If I slip it on my arm
and then give it to the nurse, later I still seem to be wearing it
according to "x arm" but I'm not able to refer to it.

Anyway I thought this Fit to be quite playable and well paced. The
puzzles didn't seem to be blatant obstacles with get-X-use-X
solutions. Even the one locked door already had the key in it, though
prior IF conditioning almost had me searching for this key.

* Fit 2 med school

[ Only when I first dipped into the walk-through for Fit 3 did
  I realize there was an alternative Fit 2. Restore. ]

As with the Hospital Fit I too found this to be quite playable (again,
no hints). Unwinnable states abound here too. The least obvious
unwinnable state was freezing the ceramic square in a solid block of
ice. It never occurred to me that all that equipment was merely a
substitute for a much needed bottle. Wouldn't a sponge do?  Too bad
clothing wasn't implemented

: >put tuft in water
: There's no need to put that in the water.

A minor quibble -- players unaware of the alternative 2nd Fit will be
confused by the sudden reappearance of the dark sunglasses in the
rucksack even though the PC never explicitly placed them there.  No
other object from Fit 1 is given similar treatment -- not the gloves,
not the coat.  The player will thus credit the sunglasses with more
importance over other items, yet in this Fit these facial accessories
serve only as a red herring (unless I have missed an alternative
solution or Easter egg somewhere -- maybe I should have tried them on
at Stephen's beach)

[ Yes, the author makes a cameo here -- you have to push through one
  of the grey misty doors twice.  How many IF authors program
  themselves into a game? ]

It would be difficult to fix this inconsistency without rendering the
hospital Fit2 unwinnable, since one always ends up wearing the glasses
at the end of Fit 1.

A small visualization problem: the rounded box is the size of a bread
box. The cylinder is knee high and topped with a funnel. Somehow:

: You put the cylinder directly under the end of the pipe so that its funnel
: lies under the box's hole.
       ^^^^^

Just how big is a breadbox? How short are my legs? The PC must have
the legs of a faery, which brings me to Fit 3

* Fit 3

In LYG, "examine" is not synonymous to "search". Assuming otherwise I
missed finding the clover.

I really don't enjoy fantasy outings. Objectives and sub-goals
can be so arbitrary. Yet this fit in rooted in a reality of sorts -- a
sharp contrast of childhood imagination and strained relations. I
played along to find out how the PC's view of his father would
progress.

Allowing me to extract my own blood was an interesting red herring.  I
even cut my poor dog. Since visiting Terry's dad seemed suicidal, the
last thing I expected was that Terry's father would oblige by cutting
himself. Hint book time.

Thus rendering myself invisible to animals my dog still reacted to
seeing me. He is of course my magical companion in a dream world where
anything can happen.

The author put significant effort into implementing the faery prison
cell -- the unwinnable state reached when the PC eats faery food.  At
least I think it's unwinnable at this point. I wonder why there is so
much detail here. Is there something more?



[ I consider both 4th Fits as being rather mathematical. One focuses
  on spatial relationships whereas the other... erm... let's just say
  that finding the symbolic representation was the key ]

* Fit 4 symbolic

I wish I knew more Greek mythology.  Cost me a hint.  I plead
ignorance, your honour.  What were those rivers again?

I did manage to solve the Russian doll problem using the subtle hints:

: The two pieces slide together effortlessly, as though magnetically
: attracted.

I was wondering when IF would attempt an infinite regress.

The strands problem was just plain unintuitive. What a weird way to
give commands to a device.  A verb/noun parser encased in a thick
layer of frustration.

I never did figure out the purpose of the fist sized knob on the
asymmetrical arch.

* Fit 4 spatial

The puzzles here all had some logic to them. Discovering the logic was
the hard part.  I solved the rot-tr-inv problem almost by trial and
error. The description of the shelves was like that for the mirror box
in Zork III.

The Cartesian coordinates levitating belt puzzle reminded me of the
time machine puzzle in Zork III. The positive real line puzzle didn't
make much sense at all. I half expected to see a Greek sprinter
chasing after a tortoise.

I did encounter a slight hindrance with TADS's parser in the sphere
room, mostly due to my inexperience.

: >push crate
: In which direction would you like to push the crate?
: 
: >east
: As you approach the walls, you find yourself off-balance.  The closer
: you get to the walls, the worse the disturbance in your inner-ear
: becomes.  You are forced to give up the attempt.

From this I assumed incorrectly one cannot push the crate.  Evidently
a case of being bitten by assumed parser disambiguation. I know. I
know. Whenever pushing a free standing object, always supply a
direction. I got bitten by this playing Change in the Weather.


I also discovered a triggering problem with the coloured
crystals. Being the greedy adventurer that I am I thought the object
was to collect the crystals, the red one being first filched. Later I
discovered they fit together. I placed the whole rainbow assembly on
the pedestal and what happens? Nothing.  I had to remove the top
violet one and replace it to trigger the end of this Fit.



My problem with the 4th Fits was that they seemed totally unrelated to
the rest of the game.  It is like a building extension constructed as
an afterthought just to house cool stuff -- in this case a bunch of
unrelated puzzles with clever gimmicks and with no direct relation to
the underlying plot.  One could have made LYG a story in four Fits and
not miss anything storywise.  In contrast to the previous Fits, Fit 4
seemed to be an excerpt from the days of Zork.  Am I missing something
here?

This was all very discouraging to me. I was prepared to give up at
this point and not bother writing this article.  I dived into the hint
book quite frequently here.  Maybe I need to rack up some experience
points playing more contemporary IF.


* Fit 5

Thank goodness for UNDO.

Seeing the PC's dog mature and age through the Fits did suggest its
eventual demise. Nevertheless I felt sorry for the NPC.

I'm left with many loose ends. Perhaps this is part of the game design
-- many points of reference open to reinterpretation, to ponder long
after completion.

I'm not one for commenting on prose, but the passages worked for
me. The writing style did not distract. My interest was stimulated
enough to attempt the alternative Fits. Overall however the whole game
seems like one long dream state. You wake up in the end with a
fragmented recollection of the adventure and no satisfactory
conclusion tying it all together.