Since the game was released, a few people have reviewed the game or sent comments to me privately. Here is a random selection of a few of them. I have kept the previously unpublished comments anonymous, but if you want me to give credit for or remove one of them, please let me know, and I will be happy to oblige.
Some comments from rec.games.int-fiction...
"a charming gem that will stay with me for a while" - Jen Skripac
"charming NPC's (I want a sweet little sheep in all my IF from now on!" - Jen Skripac again
"I liked this one a lot and I can't quite explain why ... it reminds me a lot of the The Little Prince and presumably this is obvious and intentional since it's got a snake and a sheep and so on ... Becroft has done a fine job of creating a world that feels, hmm, pleasant and pastel and dreamlike, and it's nice to wander around there and look at stuff" - Dan Shiovitz
"More of an art-piece than a game" - a sort of backhanded compliment from someone called Niz
"a pleasant enough short fantasy ... some simple but effective screen changes to mark the passage of time ... contains nicely rendered landscapes and logical puzzles" - Eric Mayer in examiner mode
Good game dude. First good one I've played. After 3 bad ones I was getting worried. Thank you. The bird puzzle was excellent. The sheep was funny.
I just wanted to say that I've this moment finished Journey From An Islet and thought it was very well written. The complexity was just right for a short game, and the depth of description and alternate paths made the game seem rich and well-nurtured. I was delighted with the way you handled even the most irrelevant of 'examine' descriptions, and made them change with time and place. (I wandered around the island examining the sea, the sun, the mountain, the forest, etc.) The snake was lots of fun to talk to (though I only discovered you could talk to him when I tried to kill him). You must have had a lot of good beta testers and payed awfully close attention to everything they tried to do! The use of background color and small inserted pictures set the mood perfectly. Congratulations!
The following is a review published by J. D. Berry (more of a lukewarm
response than the first two above)...
Journey from an Islet ENJOYMENT (E) Immersion (2/5 pts) I did get a feeling for the lands, but the senses weren't employed (touch, smell, listen). This is important for fully experiencing the vistas. I didn't get an idea of self, either--who I was or why anything mattered. Not that anything HAS to matter, there can be the joy of the experience in and of itself. But then we're back to the lack of interaction and senses. Effective use of shading depending on the time of day. I thought that was cool. Subjective (2/5 pts) Rather flat--the fiction isn't there. The prose is fine, but I need more levels of story and interaction than are offered here. The artwork is hit-or-miss. I love the journey.jpg, but the sheep and the stars left me rolling my eyes. The player is guided nicely at times, exits displayed when he goes the wrong way. Other times, I was at a loss of what to do. I wanted more. The author clearly has the "tools" to capture a setting and to write well. Stretch the imagination! QUALITY (Q) Bugs (3/3 pts) None I could find. Prose (3/4 pts) The writing is fine as far as it goes. Skill (1/3 pts) Here's a case where I feel the author has talent but that he just didn't put much of it to use here. E + Q / 2 = Overall rating: 5.5
I really liked your usage of the `terp backgrounds to signify the the ambient light conditions, and your usage of illustrations was a nice touch as well.
I found the topology of your gameworld comprehensible and enjoyable, I guemapped it as a matter of course, but this was in retrospect completely unnecessary.
I found the puzzles comprising the first section of the game fun and very accessible, however as the game progressed I found this to be less true and was thankful for the prescence of the walkthrough. Without the walkthrough I don't think the end puzzle would have ever occurred to me.
This is another game for which I have mixed feelings. It did not start too well because I was giggling (in poor taste admittedly) at the graphics. The writing was better although I found it rather dull in its occasional use of hollow adjectives (e.g. "dark fantastic shapes", "soft breezes", "bright sun"). Once I got used to the writing, though, I found myself running from meadows to mountains, from dense forests to deserts, with sheep and with rainbow birds. I found it quite charming. The time of day progressed as I discovered more of the island and the descriptions also changed. Wonderful.
There were only a few puzzles. I came upon a few bugs but they were not fatal. There were no clues or hints in themselves but there are two NPCs which helped me in different places. I thought the game was quite clever in using one NPC (who followed me around) to emphasize things I might have missed. There was one lovely puzzle, lovely in conception and in execution. If you have played the game, look at spoiler for my comments on this.
The game was quite short. I was disappointed, especially because it ended with the lovely puzzle I mentioned above. Fittingly so, I suppose. I wish the author had had more time to develop the game. There were interesting ideas yet unexplored.
SPOILER: The bird puzzle is simply beautiful. It's physically impossible but that just adds a mystical quality to the picture. The puzzle itself is just right in difficulty, not too easy and not too hard. There was a satisfying "aha" when I figured out how to bring all the birds down. Another "aha" when I guessed the purpose of having them on the ground. I seldom typed as fast as when I finally sent them flying one by one, I was so excited. A very satisfying puzzle. Bravo.
I'll admit I was a little worried when I read the text file accompanying your game. Reading "It is the first text adventure game of any note that I have finished, and for this reason and the fact that it was so rushed, it is bound to have many imperfections." always brings to mind images of bad sentence structure, obvious program bugs, etc.
Was I pleasantly surprised! The writing is very poetic, the story is
beautiful and the world is well-implemented. I got so involved in playing
the game, I forgot to take notes of specific examples.
I thought the puzzles were very well done. I did resort to the hints (I'm not terribly good at puzzles), but everything was logical and I think I could have figured out the solutions without the hints if I had taken more time.
I've just finished your game "Journey from an Islet" and want to comment it. You know, I liked it -- not bad geography descriptions (I mean literate describing). I had melancholic and peaceful feeling -- I think you intended that. And picture of the lone sheep hit some spot in my soul. But -- this year we have a very strong competition and you misapply your game. Perhaps you didn't know, but your game badly fits into "the IF Competition". We're interested here more in _interactive_ games, those with more action in them. Yours is a landscape observation, I think.
I finished this game at 252 moves in the Evening, and quite liked it. I appreciated that there was hand-drawn art and how it was nicely integrated into the game: it came at just the right times, not too often - the sunrise and seeing the snake in the sand were both little surprises - and had the same simplicity and sweetness as the writing. The writing is nicely evocative of different natural settings, and it managed to suspend my disbelief at the fact that I was on this island without a clue as to how I came there or what I was supposed to do. It's nice to see a game just do this - encourage exploration and let you slowly figure out what the goal of the game is - without resorting to something like an introduction explaining how you lost your memory in an emergency crash landing :-)
The only aspect of the setting that interfered a bit with my enjoyment of the game was that I assumed you could run out of time. I like that you see morning go to afternoon go to evening, but I was saving and restoring near the end so I could solve the bird puzzle before nightfall. As it turned out, this wasn't a problem and I was carried away by the birds in moonlight.