Spring Thing games: The Epic Origins of CamelGirl!

I have been wishing for some new IF to play, and conveniently, Spring Thing games are out. Judges are permitted to comment on games during the competition as long as such comments are clearly marked — so consider yourself warned. Some comments follow, on the Epic Origins of CamelGirl!.

“The Epic Origins of CamelGirl!” sounded somewhat dubious to start with. The premise didn’t seem to have much to do with the title, and besides, it was hazily presented and in such a way that it was hard to feel much sympathy for my character’s goals. I wasn’t crazy about the writing, either; it’s full of self-conscious, effortful humor that never quite made me laugh. Then I got to the moment in the story where the main character is bitten by a radioactive camel. No: the main character is bitten by a camel, under such circumstances that you realize it’s going to turn out to have been radioactive. At that moment the title and the wacky circumstances clicked neatly together into a Spiderman reference, and I started to enjoy myself.

This enjoyment lasted exactly until the end of the cut scene, when I got:

And then you see nothing more.

[more]

[Runtime error: integer value required]

> look
Introduction

> n
You can’t go that way. There are no obvious exits.

Oh well. I tried replaying exactly from the walkthrough, in case it was something I’d done that had triggered this unfortunate outcome. But no; even if I exactly obey the instructions in the game, I get an error and then my character is stranded in a featureless, exitless room. [This is on Spatterlight 0.4.8b under OS X.]

2 thoughts on “Spring Thing games: The Epic Origins of CamelGirl!”

  1. Hi, I’ve had the same problem on Windows with Gargoyle, when I tried playing it with the html TADS player it worked. I encountered only one mildly serious bug in the game besides this one, and I rather enjoyed the rest of it though so far my favourite of the competition is “The Reluctant Resurrectee”.

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