A Goblin's Life Reviews
Author: Burnout & BBBen
Date: 2007
ADRIFT 3.9
 

Reviewed by Grimm Sharlak

Now we get into the more high concept stuff – certainly an original idea for a game, but also for methods. Since you play a somewhat unattractive (to humans, at least) goblin, not only is the game world different than the norm, the ways of getting along with the ladies is different as well.

Being a goblin allows for a different kind of writing, and the goblin you play as comes through well in the writing, rather than being a faceless avatar for the player. Not to mention the actual puzzles are quite inventive as well.

The game isn’t implemented as well as it could be, but due to the authors just scraping in for the deadline this is quite understandable. The game certainly has no game-killing bugs, anyway.

Rating: B
 

Reviewed by Softiron

I’m not the best person to review this game, as I like my sex to be between humans. And good- looking humans at that. So I have a hard time enjoying erotica by beasts, even if they’re attractive for their race. On the other hand, being from other races, I was not as repulsed by the rape scene.

The characters were fleshed out well, and the writing was competent. But I was frustrated with the coding. For example, when I dumped the paralysis drug in the soup and shot the goblin with the dart, both events related to each poison occurred simultaneously (without affecting each other), which made little sense. Also, the backpack was left out of the room description and the “look” description when visiting the campfire, so my frustration continued to mount.

I did find two of the four positive endings, but had little motivation to find the final two.

A Goblin’s Life sounds brutal, as a 7th place finish on my ballot would attest to.

Stroke Meter: ??
 

Reviewed by David Whyld

The third game I came across in the minicomp and the first I can say I actually liked. You're a goblin, you’ve been sent to murder a oomie male and bring back a oomie female to the camp for a little fun. So off you go, armed with your blowpipe, a knife and some poisons.

Nice intro. Seemed quite refreshing to have a game with a bit of a storyline. Typos and grammar errors aside, it wasn’t bad at all. If only – oh if only! – the authors had taken as much time and effort in testing the game. For it’s buggy, y’see. Very, very buggy indeed. I spent a while after finding the oomie trying to interact with her and the game not seeming to understand what I was attempting. Oomie, as she's referred to, isn't recognised, not is ooman (as she's also referred to) but female is. Ouch. Then there are the strange problems with the blowpipe and the poisons. I fired one poison at the poor female and she started pleasuring herself. All well and good. Only then I decided to try and paralyse her as well. Which I was able to do despite the fact that she was busy pleasuring herself. She was even said to be paralysed at the exact same time as pleasuring herself. Clever girl. Another time I tried it the other way round and succeeded in paralysing her first and *then* made her start pleasuring herself even though she was about ready to collapse due to the paralysis!

The game ends with the player’s death or defeat quite often. It also uses ADRIFT’s standard end game sequence which is a pain, particularly when you're seeing it so often. Being able to UNDO the last move instead of continually restarting the game would have been nice.

Dear writers: liked the game but please shoot the testers.

Arousal: suspiciously close to aroused.
 

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