GAME:                   The Three Hour Competition

AUTHOR:              Various

DOWNLOAD:        ADRIFT Home Page

PLATFORM:         ADRIFT

 Briefcase by Woodfish
Interesting game. You're a thief hired to steal a briefcase from a house. The game is nicely written although it has a few annoying features - doors having to be unlocked and then opened before they can be walked through, a note at the start of the game advising the player to look on top of the cupboard to find the briefcase yet the cupboard being referred to in the game as a bookshelf.

There were a few strange bugs towards the end of the game. I picked up the briefcase and tried to open it only to be told I wasn't carrying it! Finally I was able to open the briefcase and there seemed to be some kind of opening inside. However, attempting to enter the opening left me with the strange message "which briefcase. the briefcase or the briefcase?"

Ranking: 6 out of 10


Shadrick's Travels by Mystery
A very strangely written game indeed! Most of the text is in speech marks and narrated by the main character, although some of it isn't - leading to a really jarring read sometimes. It also doesn't help with the style of narration that the game is written from the "you" perspective where most of the text is from the "I" perspective.

But, that aside, it was certainly an interesting read and quite a bit better than most of Mystery's full size games. Unfortunately it wasn't without problems. At one point I had to save my brother from a bear yet the most obvious command of them all - kill bear - isn't implemented. Instead I had to perform a complicated puzzle involving making a swing and then swinging on it. A confusing way of doing something that would have seemed at first to be reasonably straightforward.

Still, it was good. I liked it.

Ranking: 6 out of 10


The Amulet by Daniel Hiebert
Quite well written and quite interesting. Also nice to see a game not set in the Sun Empire universe - variety is the spice of life and all that!

The spells were a pretty decent touch but all in all the game was far too short, even for one written in three hours. At a pinch, I'm pretty sure the same game could have been written in an hour.

But, quibbles aside, it was decent enough.

Ranking: 6 out of 10


Lost Souls by Mel S
I was quite enjoying this game until I ran into some really poor programming with regard to the trunk. In the attic I found a trunk which I wasn't able to open. After hunting around for a while, I came across a key. "Ha-ha!" I cried. "This must be what opens the trunk!" In theory, yes. In practice, no. After running into several failure messages when trying to open the trunk, I cheated and looked in the Generator and found that the same command - "open trunk" - had been used for when the player tried to open the trunk with or without the key. The without message came first, therefore making it pretty much impossible for the trunk to be opened with the straightforward "open trunk" command. Fortunately the game understands other commands but that was a really bad oversight there.

Ranking: 5 out of 10


Zombie Cow by Amber Rollins-Walker
A strange little game, and one without any real point that I could see. You play the part of a cow who is mysteriously turned into a zombie cow due to a red dust which is sprinkled on your food. You then set out on a killing spree, the days of being kept in captivity over for you

Unfortunately, while the intro was amusingly over the top (it reminded me a bit of Evil Chicken Of Doom), the game goes downhill very rapidly after that. Most items aren't described and after the one puzzle involving getting out of your stall, it's just a simple case of moving around to get you to the end.

Ranking: 4 out of 10