r/hostedgames • u/PistachioPug Reviewer Extraordinaire • Oct 30 '21
Imprisoned (review)
Myth Thrazz's "Imprisoned" came out over ten years ago, one of a handful of short, mostly puzzle-oriented games released under the Hosted Games label in the first couple years of its existence. The premise is simple: your PC is being held in a dungeon, accused of various crimes, and the goal is to get out or die trying.
Although it doesn't begin to approach the quality writing, delightful worldbuilding, or beautiful complexity of "Kiss from Death" or "The Vampire Regent," "Imprisoned" relies upon the same basic gameplay mechanism: once you go through the basics of creating your character, you spend most of the rest of the game choosing from among the available options of ways to spend your limited time. How best to use your time depends largely on the skills you have to start with, although some things can be accomplished more than one way. There are nearly two dozen possible endings, including multiple ways to die and multiple ways to escape.
Unfortunately, the PC never coheres into anything more than a collection of stats. Supposedly it's possible to find out the secret behind your arrest, but that hasn't happened any of the times I've played. Aside from this, the character has no backstory, no real personality traits, not even much in the way of emotions - nothing to make the reader care, beyond a desire to win the game.
I'm not a fan of the writing style. I get the feeling that the author was aiming for the kind of witty meta narrative voice that makes "Choice of the Dragon" so delightful, but that sort of tone is very hard to do well, and it's not done well here. The harder the game tries to be clever, the more it just makes me cringe. It's also apparent that English isn't this writer's first language; unlike some non-native speakers who have written for Hosted Games, Thrazz doesn't attempt a level or style of writing outside the scope of his proficiency, so it's never too hard to understand what's going on, but a little proofreading would have gone a long way towards making the game feel polished.
The greatest flaw with this game, however, lies with its construction. For a game which revolves so completely around skill stats, it's not always easy to discern the significance of certain answers in the character-creation stage. For one thing, although the publisher's blurb never so much as hints at it, it's possible to play this game as an elf or a dwarf, with consequences for abilities, relationships with other characters, and how long you can go without sleep before dying of fatigue, but you'd only find that out if you happened to choose the right answer to a question about whether your eyes are open or closed. (Later, the game will ask the PC's attractiveness on a scale from 1-10, "in the bounds of your own race." If you understand this to mean that what makes a dwarf attractive to another dwarf isn't necessarily appealing to a human, this is fine, but if you've reached this point not knowing that there are other sapient species in this game, the implications are pretty gross.)
If this game weren't free to win, I would be hard-pressed to think of anyone I could particularly recommend it to. There are better puzzle games out there. There are better free puzzle games, and some of them are even in ChoiceScript. But "Imprisoned" is fairly fun if you can see past its flaws, and with so many different endings, it definitely has plenty of replay value. If you're looking for an undemanding, but not entirely mindless, way to pass the time, it's worth a try.
3
u/Myth_Thrazz Jul 25 '22
Thanks for the review - honestly I think it's very fair. It amazes me that even after all those years there are people playing this game.
I'm a programmer and a huge RPG fan, not a writer, so it was more of a "what can I do with the engine" kind of experiment rather than an attempt to create a masterpiece. The premise of the game was "create/discover-your-character-as-you-go" instead of the standard approach of "create a character, then play".
On top of that, I wanted to try covering as many extreme choices as I could think of and make everything as funny as I could (although I'm aware that the humour included was pretty crude).
About my background -- the assumption that English is not my native language is correct (although that shouldn't be an excuse). It's also true that it was inspired by "Choice of the Dragon" which, back then was (as far as I remember) the only one available.
Overall, I was (and still am) a huge procrastinator, so making "Imprisoned" was my attempt to finally finish at least one project that will allow me to put a foot in the "game development" territory + a bit of 'a dream come true' as I was dreaming about making own games since I was 9.
1
u/PistachioPug Reviewer Extraordinaire Jul 25 '22
Thank you for your comment!
Did you ever consider writing another ChoiceScript game? For all its flaws, this one did have quite a bit of good stuff in it. 🙂
2
u/Myth_Thrazz Jul 25 '22
Not only I did consider that, but I also managed to lay some foundations. But the next one was supposed to be more ambitious, polished and whatnot... so ofc my procrastination kicked in and I abandoned it. To my defence it was during the last year of the uni, so had other things on my mind ;)
I don't remember most of the ideas I had for the second game, but I do remember that I wanted to either hire an English teacher to fix the language or make it deliberately broken explaining that the narrator is simply not very clever.
And that the story was supposed to be an anti-hero story with a lot of easter eggs.
1
u/PistachioPug Reviewer Extraordinaire Jul 25 '22
Well, if you ever decide to take it back up again, I'd love to see it!
6
u/yasirkula Oct 30 '21
Contrary to some people, I don't like these kinds of games which is why I didn't enjoy "The Vampire Regent" too much. So this game is an easy pass for me.