Judith

By: Derek Yu

On: April 13th, 2009

Judith is a new game collaboration between Terry Cavanagh (Don’t Look Back, Pathways) and Stephen “increpare” Lavelle (Rara Racer, Opera Omnia). If the above screenshot makes you want to play, then you should play, by God! It’s good.

TIGdb: Entry for Judith

Posted in Highly Recommended, Interactive Fiction, Macintosh, Unique / Bizarre, Windows | Tags: increpare, TerryCavanagh

Winterous

I played it, and I have no fucking idea what was happening in it.
It didn’t define what was what well enough.

Good though.
jay

that is an exciting combination of names
ok

meh.

No gameplay, obvious plot and poor visuals.

But im sure the indie-scene will praise it anyway since it’s so “artsy” and “deep”.
Super Anon

That was… Interesting. I’m not sure whether I’m too thick to figure out the logical connection between the two game worlds or if the game just isn’t supposed to make a lot of sense.

I’m gonna have to play this again.
Chicken

I enjoyed it. It really created a mounting sense of dread. I didn’t feel any payoff for that, but it created that feeling very well. Maybe I’m just thick.
Bad Sector

It needs WASD and mouse look. Being desktop game (which doesn’t have any input limitations – like Flash or Java web games for example) there isn’t any reason to not have this. I don’t mind exploring the game, but it was a while since i used a keyboard only setup and it isn’t as natural to me as it used to be after playing hundreds of first person games with a WASD and mouse setup (for those who dont play imagine playing a platform game with O/P for left and right, Q/W for up and down and space to shoot – it isn’t impossible but your brain isn’t wired to play like this).
http://www.creathcarter.com creath

I guess expecting something “artsy”” is valid given the authors, but maybe misplaced as it seems more like something they just wanted to throw together for fun.
It borrows heavily from the story of Bluebeard, and my only real complaint is that the non-interactive sequences are jarring and irritating. Linear narrative is the bane of unique game design.
Amon26 www.lulu.com/amon26

Great idea, cool simplistic visuals, lonesome atmosphere. It gave me the spooks, but it ended feeling so un-finished. I guess if you stretch really hard you can connect the dots, but it still doesn’t add up.

I hope they try another one like this though, it was a fun experience!
Cheif Emu

I thought the music was fantastic, it created a very spooky atmosphere. But I also couldn’t really connect the dots at the end.
corpus

I thought it was brilliant. Didn’t have problems understanding the story, though I sometimes lost track of who was saying what.

Bad Sector, it uses a raycasting engine.
jay

I think the keyboard turning is intentional, you’re filled with dread every time you turn a corner, thinking that someone or something horrible will appear in your vision.

Similarly, the linearity (and the sections where you lose control) just increase the “oh no” factor. You want to do something else but the game only gives you one option.
AmnEn

The Story was easy enough to understand and it was okay for a concept. Linear games are fine, in fact they’re superior to those boring “free world/nothing to do” type of games.
But in this game, the linear nature was annoying me, it didn’t feel like an enjoyable experience.
For example, without spoilers: “I can’t take that with me, I must put it back first!” – Why not? It’s like one of those old interactive movies, that basically asked you every couple of minutes which path to take, and the wrong path always ended in a deadend, forcing you to go back. That’s a genre I don’t miss, I much prefer the modern approach of letting people go and explore those paths and then lead them back onto the mainpath.
ok

Are you for real Jay?

Anyone who is “filled with dread” when playing this game should see a doctor.

Did a single horrifying thing appear in your vision during the whole game?
Oh-noes, a crudely drawn sprite of a humanoid with some red pixels + cheesy sound effects! IM NOW FILLED WITH DREAD!

And what do you mean by “oh no”-factor?

Seriosuly, i hear alot of praise but no real arguments!

The game has a vague and not very well written story. Clumsy controls with no gameplay at all. No puzzles. The art is poorly done (I don’t mean it’s poor because it’s lo-fi, it’s just badly designed/pixeled).

So what’s left?
Quetz

I really agree with jay. Maybe you just didn’t pick up on it?

The visuals don’t have to be top-notch to relay some emotion anyway. I’ve played lots of dread-inducing IF.
PizzaBoy

Could anyone that understood that story connect the dots for me? I’m seriously lost.
Corpus

“Seriosuly, i hear alot of praise but no real arguments!”

I may well be completely missing the mark, here, but that may well be due to the fact that nobody was actually arguing anything.

It’s worth noting that you, yourself, did not make any arguments, real or otherwise, in the second paragraph of your comment. It’s obvious that you were implying that crudely-drawn sprites and cheesy sound effects could never fill you/anyone with dread, but I’m quite in the dark as far as your reasoning goes.

I wonder, do you have any imagination? Have you ever used it before? It isn’t looking that way, unfortunately.

Further points:
– “No gameplay at all” doesn’t actually mean anything.
– A lot of games do not involve any puzzles. They’re not required features. Of course, you’re wrong anyway, because this game DOES involve puzzles – the story is one big puzzle while it’s playing out. Also, the thing with the book and the bookshelf (you know which bit I mean) is clearly a puzzle, albeit one which is not at all taxing to solve.
codekitchen

The story had me going for a while, but I thought the ending was really weak.

If nothing else, I have to hand it to the authors, this game must have been a ton of fun to make. I’m a bit jealous on that count.
Solved

The game was, interesting, the theme was very unsettling. The bit at the end when you found Emily and she just acted as if everything was fine was very odd, how the hell did she get so lost that she ended up there. I felt very weirded out then, and expected something to happen, but the game just ended. Very weird.
http://www.paul-jeffries.com Paul Jeffries

Obviously if you go into this expecting a game you’re going to be disappointed – it isn’t one, and it’s probably unfair to judge it as such (there is no real choice involved, and the only way you can actually ‘lose’ is by getting bored enough to quit). As an experimental story-delivery system, on the other hand, it’s interesting. But, only interesting; without any attempt at gameplay the whole thing rides on the story, which is sadly no masterpiece and to be honest is not really helped by the delivery format, and once you figure out the way it works (trudge into secret passage, look behind newly unlocked door, press space, trudge out, repeat) any atmosphere it might have quickly evaporates.
WineBlood

I found it quite good. Like it was said before, the fact that you guide Judith’s choices, even though there’s only one valid, makes you enter on her mind and, in my case, it did trigger some sense of guilt. I must admit though that either I don’t understand the ending or it’s really leaving the player on its hunger. Anyone who expects a traditional game is bound to be disappointed – it’s more of an interactive short story.
DanDanger

I felt very uneasy playing this game, really made me feel uncomfortable for some reason. Which is reason enough to play it if you ask me ^_^
Bad Sector

@Corpus:
“Bad Sector, it uses a raycasting engine.”

So? I’m not talking about vertical mouse look (altough somewhat possible), but horizontal. Just check the mouse X’s difference between game updates (not frame updates) and add it to the “rotate” (or “turning” or “camera_angle” or whatever is used) and make sure that the mouse doesn’t get stuck at the edges of the screen (an easy method to do that is to keep the mouse at the center of the screen once you use the delta). SDL even has support for this without the need to keep track of the mouse coordinates: just use x_delta (or whatever is called – check the mouse structures).

I’ve made it at the past with a raycasting engine and i know its possible and works much better than plain keyboard controls.
Guy

I am going to spoil it, since people have already spoiled a bit.

I liked the atmosphere, it was definitly disturbing and sad.
However, I thought it would be cool if the action of one character, would determine which one of the two characters would live.
That is what I thought the game is about, but I guess it was just linear.
durp

25th
Trotim

Okay.

I didn’t get the story at all. There was a lot of repetition, but at least it didn’t get too boring.

Why did he simply not make the player able to examine locked doors at first (which I like) but then went the old, annoying way of making the player check every single one every time?

The engine itself is nice, I liked the textures, the music and the sounds. (Especially the door opening one, that one is gold.)

What I didn’t like were the sprites. They just looked out of place in that environment.

In the beginning I was able to bug the camera by walking alongside the wall.
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/6587/judithu.jpg

All in all a good experience, but I can’t see anything special about it.
Alice

I thought the game was creepy enough. I like to imagine there’s more to the story then I think but I think maybe the back story there is just to lend suspense to the fore story.

The detraction of control is amusing and certainly the last point where you have only one choice is poignant. Especially from a player’s perspective one more or less knows what will happen.
BeamSplashX

Side note: Aren’t we all a sizable chunk of the indie community? Talking about how the indie community will accept it as if it excludes us is a little odd…
http://www.dyson-game.com Alex May

Bad Sector: you want WASD? Why would that make this a better experience? I think you missed the point.
Maskfield

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

@Pizzaboy:

There are three concurrent storylines in this game:

1: The story of Emily and Jeff, the present-day(ish) couple who are cheating on their spouses to come to the castle.

2: The story of Judith and her unnamed husband, set in the past.

3: The dream Judith has.

Emily and Jeff are looking to keep their secret love in the castle, Jeff loses Emily somewhere in the castle, and eventually finds her.

Judith keeps looking through her husband’s dirty laundry in the castle, and is eventually locked away in the room Jeff finds Emily in.

The dream Judith has is of a man mourning the loss of his dead wife.

The tagline says that this game is about control, and it is 100% correct. Secrets and control (and what is a secret but an attempt to control information) are what the two major plotlines have in common. Jeff and Emily go into the castle to keep their love a secret, and Judith tries to find out her husband’s secrets. As we control Judith, we are given less and less control over what she does in the much-maligned sections where we watch what she does, because the guilt of her actions drives her forwards. We lose control of her as she loses control of herself. Her husband also feels out of control, he cannot allow himself to trust her with all of his secrets, and locks her away forever. (This comes from Judith’s dreams, which are about her husband.)

Emily and Jeff are doing this in a sense to each other by both staying in the castle. They have locked eachother away in secrecy.

tl;dr All of the game’s storylines feed into each other as a commentary on secrecy as a trap which progressively limits our control over what we do.
Bad Sector

@Alex May:
How is having more intuitive controls “missing the point”? I didn’t commented on the game itself (which seems nice, although i’m in constant struggle with the controls to enjoy it). I’m commenting on the controls which are plainly bad.
Guy

By the way, doom didn’t have a mouse and it was just fine without it.
http://www.dyson-game.com Alex May

It’s like 5 minutes long dude. You don’t need to be in your FPS comfort zone.
vadram

this game sucks big time
Bad Sector

@Guy:
Doom *did* have a mouse, and Wolfenstein 3D too! In Doom (not in wolf though) you can even configure it to use WASD (in fact this is how the version that comes with Steam is preconfigured).

@Alex May:
How is the game’s length relevant to the controls? Anyway i tried to play the game and it took me more than five minutes (not finished it).

You know its not like this is the only game around and i don’t have to comment on it. I’m just /contributing/ my opinions and suggestions on the game so it can be a little better because otherwise the game seems to be interesting.

I could just download the game, see that the controls are bad and move on without saying anything. But how that would help the developer? Instead i’m trying to make a strong point about the controls so the next game the developers make which uses a similar environment (first person /something/) will have better controls, if not fix this game. And beyond that, others who might make something similar will see that there /is/ someone complaining about the controls, so it /does/ matter.

If nobody pointed out the negative aspects of games, then it is possible that the people who made the games wouldn’t realize these aspects and continue including them in future games.
ok

When i read my posts again i have to apologize for being a bit annoyed/hostile.

Mview of the game remains the same. I respect the fact that other people might enjoy it for reasons i can’t understand.

I just feel that games like these get hyped way to much by indie-blogs and forums.
Quetz

I think this is a case where the controls really fit the game. Not only is using the arrow keys kinda retro like the art of the game, they’re also a little clumsy because you can’t look in all directions or turn around quickly etc. which really aids in creating atmosphere. Trying to achieve that effect with a mouse would just be friggin’ annoying.

Anyway, the game is much more than the sum of its parts. The controls are nearly irrelevent because there’s no gameplay that requires the razor-sharp movements of a mouse or anything and the arrow keys do what they’re supposed to.
Hokku

I liked it. I was confused initially, but I figured out the story. It was an enjoyable way to spend half an hour.

Having liked it, however, doesn’t mean I think it’s worth wasting time arguing with other people over whether my whole basis for liking it was because it was “artsy” (an offensive enough assertion as it is a poorly based one). Reading this thread has shown that the people who are making accusations about the poorness of this game are by far using worse argumentative methods than those who are defending the basis of their enjoyment of the game using *reasons*, neverminding the fact that it’s a matter of taste and telling the people that liked it why their taste is wrong is a frivolous and stupid argument in the first place.
Corpus

I feel like this game would have been better if my hand was further west on the keyboard. Pls fix. Thanks
Guy

@Bad Sector
IIRC, doom originally didn’t have a mouse.
You also couldn’t look up or down.
Though I remember that on some remake version you could look up and down.
So, perhaps on some remake version for windows XP, they added the mouse support.
Besides, even if there was a mouse support, you didn’t need the mouse to play the game.
It might have been better playing without the mouse.
undertech

The music was nice.
BusinessBear

40th
dog partae

@Bad Sector

Shut up about your mouse and WASD FFS!

Nice game, but I think the two different stories should have different textures, so the later castle looks more run down, I got a bit confused as to who I was at some points
Guy

@dog partae,
I didn’t think the story had a past/present relation.
Because after judith opened the door to the prisoner, it became open to that married guy.
Or I didn’t understand that bit?
Paul Eres

“I just feel that games like these get hyped way to much by indie-blogs and forums.”

“No gameplay, obvious plot and poor visuals.”

“But im sure the indie-scene will praise it anyway since itâ€™s so â€œartsyâ€ and â€œdeepâ€.”

Maybe because indie games are largely about doing things that the mainstream industry doesn’t? It sounds like you enjoy mainstream games. Why not play those instead? Games like these are for people who are kind of tired of mainstream games and want something different.

It just doesn’t make much sense to me to play games that you know you won’t like and then complain about them. You’ve probably played games by increpare and terry previously, right? So why keep playing them if they’re not your thing? If it looks like a game you won’t enjoy, just pass on by.
http://jimmythechang.livejournal.com jimmythechang

Maybe it’s really time games moved past the requirement of being “fun.” Not to say that I didn’t enjoy Judith – after a second playthrough, the depth of the narrative floored me – but as far as interactivity goes, it *is* practically nonexistent.

But somewhere in this medium’s history, we got it into our heads that a game HAS to be entertaining, and that ignores the medium’s greatest strength.

It’s greatest strength is allowing you to be something else. Or to do something you can’t. And sometimes those things are things you don’t want to be or do. But isn’t your experience furthered all the more for it?
http://jimmythechang.livejournal.com jimmythechang

also asking for mouselook in this game is like asking why in gran turismo i can’t get out of my car
AmnEn

Game’s have always been about entertainment, perhaps that’s why people are kinda expecting entertainment from it. Don’t be as arrogant to think you could redefine the century old definition of game. And for no valid reason either.

Just call it Visual Novel and no one would comment on the lack of interactivity. Hell, pick a new term like “Art Experience”, that would fit a lot better than trying to label it game – something it doesn’t excel in or even fits into.

@jimmythechang
Asking for mouselook in this “game” is like asking why there is no manual gearshifting in gran turismo (I guess there is).
It can do without, but it would be finer with.
http://pqgames.wordpress.com mirosurabu

The keyboard control scheme is fine in my opinion. I can’t see why one would cry for ASDW+mouse when you use it only to move around in two dimensions. It’s easy to adapt to it also. So no real reason to change to ASDW+mouse.

The game took me longer than five minutes, but I see that as a very good thing. It did immerse me into the story but I agree that better ending could strengthen whole experience. But, oh, well, nothing is perfect.

The strongest point of this game, in my opinion, is cinematic gameplay set in a game using raycasting renderer. That isn’t something I have seen before and it works quite well.

I did notice several minor issues such as frameskipping in garden, but it wasn’t nothing serious.
Annabelle

This is my favorite game of terry/increpares so far! Arguing over it is stupid. You either like it or you didnt. What’s the big deal?
Tenderfoot

Maskfield, very good explination.

That game was fantastic.