Player Comments on Escape From School

- - Quick Review - -
Wow, who knew it would be so hard to escape a school! This was a fun game and I did honestly enjoy working to find my ways out. I would certainly recommend if you’re into puzzles and are up for a challenge.

SPOILERS AHEAD. DO NOT TAKE YOUR MILK.

- - Highlights - -
As I said, this is a fun game. It’s well set-up, and has a distinct way to get out. The difficulty is very fitting for a story of this type; if you get frustrated by things not coming easy then why are you playing a puzzle game?

In regards to the school theme, I thought it was a fun take. The author did a nice job of describing the situation without taking time away from the actual puzzle, and making the character an actual person who’s fun to play as. Everything in the school seemed realistic, from the bullies knocking the mc out to cram him in the locker to the stinky gym clothes in the locker.

This game was very interactive (as you’d expect from a puzzle game). Ogre put in nice descriptions of all the rooms and actions, making it easy for me to visualize where I was in the maze of a school and what I had to do next. There were so many different rooms and tasks, and I loved the escape room feel of it all.

- - Oh no, my shade tree got knocked over… - -
My major issue with this story was that sometimes even when I had gotten the key from the ball room (which nice naming by the way, made me chuckle) it didn’t seem to register that I had it. Maybe this was just me?

Another thing about this story was that I wish that more of the descriptions were more than just ‘This is the room these are the features’. There should be a bit more life to it, make it a bit more fun of a read; it’s a game after all.

- - Final Thoughts - -
Ogre put out a very fun puzzle game story, with a cool escape room type style. It was a sort of adventure to try to find my way out of the maze that was the school. I would definitely recommend if you’re into escape rooms or puzzles. Great game Ogre!

This game brought me back to my Zork days, and I loved every minute of it. It was super old school, and the real sign that it was a great game was when I was interrupted in the middle of playing it to make dinner, and I was completely distracted, thinking, what the *hell* am I supposed to do with a spoon? This is classic text adventure primo, stripped down to its basics. At its heart, it's keys locked behind doors that need keys. But, yeah. That's the genre. And this does it with humor and style.

I have a few bugs, I think, to report, and a few writing things you may want to look at.

Some of the descriptions are structured in a somewhat repetitive way, like "You are standing in the principal's office. You are very nervous because you are standing in the principal's office!" which could be tightened up to make it funnier. And I know it's hard for *everything* to be amusing, but some of the descriptions feel really functional without a lot of interest in the writing (like "You are in the kitchen. There is a swinging door to the north that leads to the serving area. There is a small side door that should lead outside."--I think you could do more there.)

Bugs:
1. In room 211, I picked up a beaker, but it didn't appear in my inventory, and the beaker is still there: " There is a single beaker that appears to have been left out on a table."

2. The directions of Rooms 106 and 107 switch their east/west directions in different descriptions:

Non verbose description: You are in the main hallway of the school. The hallway continues north and south from here and far to the south is the entrance to the school. There are two doors here for the classrooms: 106 is to the east and 107 is to the west.

Verbose version:
You are standing in the main north-south hallway of the school. The hallway continues for a long ways to the north, but you can see the entrance area of the school far to the south. Around the door to the west are huge letters spelling out MATH. In the middle of that section of wall is a door with the number 106 on the door. The other wall of the hallway here is empty, but there is a door there with the number 107. Far off in the distance you hear something squeak, but then all is quiet.




Main Hallway:
You are in the main hallway of the school. The hallway continues north and south from here and far to the south is the entrance to the school. There are two doors here for the classrooms: 106 is to the east and 107 is to the west.

3. I could swear the description of the Serving Area gave me the verbose description in later visits, and then the shorter description when "looking around" but I have to replicate that bug.

4. One of the items (the flashlight?) gave a pop-up message that I couldn't use it in a location as opposed to the other in-game messages that it couldn't be used.

5. I don't know if this is typical, but when I dropped an item I expected it to be still there in the room, but at one point I dropped the shoes and they were thereafter vanished.

Tried playing the game twice and it crashes when picking up the beaker. Not sure why this happens to me and not other players - maybe because of Private Browsing or Safari. The game is fun, though, and I'd like to finish it if the crash is fixed. Judging from the reviews, I was pretty close to the end already though.

Outside of gameplay, I guess 2 things to note are the "skimmability" of the descriptions like Circle_Guard_27 said and in contrast, the protagonists' comments on the "progressive" stuff. Skimmability- I feel like the consistently dry room descriptions are fun at first, but readers will probably start skimming them and that's totally okay - to treat them more like information to solve the puzzles than a description to entertain you. Progressive-at first I felt a bit awkward like the author was expressing their views, but then realized it was probably meant to interpreted as the (young, teenage) character's thoughts.

I also think this game has good marketing or presentation because it's pretty much exactly what you expect from the description.

The crash error:

Server Error in '/' Application.

PostProcessed already!

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Exception: PostProcessed already!

Source Error:


Line 58: case "FollowLink":
Line 59: {
Line 60: StoryStateReturnValues ret = State.FollowLink(int.Parse(Request.Form["pbValue"]));
Line 61: switch (ret)
Line 62: {

Source File: c:\Websites\ChooseYourStory\ChooseYourStory.WebApplication\green\Story\Viewer\Default.aspx Line: 60

Stack Trace:


[Exception: PostProcessed already!]
ChooseYourStory.Stories.StoryState.PostProcess() in C:\Users\builds\AppData\Local\Temp\InedoAgent\BuildMaster\192.168.44.60\Temp\_E455055\Src\ChooseYourStory\Stories\StoryState_PostProcess.cs:184
ChooseYourStory.Stories.StoryState.FollowLink(Int32 linkId) in C:\Users\builds\AppData\Local\Temp\InedoAgent\BuildMaster\192.168.44.60\Temp\_E455055\Src\ChooseYourStory\Stories\StoryState_PublicInterface.cs:258
ASP.story_viewer_default_aspx.OnLoad(EventArgs e) in c:\Websites\ChooseYourStory\ChooseYourStory.WebApplication\green\Story\Viewer\Default.aspx:60
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +68
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +3785

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.7.4092.0

It was kinda boring

I think this was a pretty well made game. It is a little repetitive, but fun. It was a bit crazy with the areas.

Tony has made your unreasonable sadism invalid, ogre.

not fear you can be cuat

i love it

Super fun, especially because I got to make a map and mark all of the rooms. Second floor is a bit confusing but I'm also a weirdo. Anyways I really enjoyed this and discovering everything! :>

Well, congratulations for setting off my OCD. I made a beautiful map for that school, and you completely ruined it by having certain areas in the map that overlapped. I hope you're happy! >.<

Also I was mildly irritated that there were certain doors I never got to unlock and certain objects I never got to use. (Do you realize how long I spent looking for a bicycle pump to blow up that basketball?) That aside though, I spent way too much time fucking around on this infuriating little game... And I found it all pretty enjoyable. Well done. ^_^

I’m mainly commenting just because of how proud I am to have beaten this. I literally had to make a map of the maze becuase it was so hard.

Luckily, I didn’t have to back track any, but I know that you made it pretty easy to do so. The beginning was probably the hardest part, so I’ll give some small pointers, otherwise this will have no ratings. This is setup so that you can only access certain rooms after getting the right keys.

SPOILERS AHEAD
Here are some hints: The first key is on the first floor to the east. The O stands for office. You’ll need a key that seems like it serves no purpose to escape. You’ll need a total of 5 keys and 2 misc objects to escape.

This was difficult, but nowhere close to “Jurassic Fairview Park” difficult. I actually needed a guide to complete that. Try harder next time.