Arqon

"Arqon" is a simple, straightforward game featuring a great deal of simulated combat. I suspect that most D&D fans, on discovering IF-writing tools for the first time, may have dreamt of putting together something like this. And it's been done before, of course; but not very often.

The thing about simulated combat is that it can be brute-forced with save-and-restore, which is more powerful and reliable than any spell or potion you could put in the game. I suspect that this is one of the main reasons that, for the most part, simulated combat in IF has not really caught on. With all the monsters functioning identically to each other, there's really not much to do but hit what becomes the equivalent of a "next" button to wait out the combat. There would have to be something special layered on top of this to make one sit up and take notice. "Arqon", unfortunately, does not provide us with anything new or unique. So we're simply going rounds against each individual opponent until we come through with a sufficiently low level of damage to ourself, and that is the extent of our strategy.

As might be expected, the writing is a little on the cheesy side. Our hero is an ex-con, and every NPC (if they aren't trying to kill him) seems to take it as their divinely mandated duty to refer to him as a "criminal". It's almost a case of giving a dog a bad name. Annoying as it might be in real life, I find that here it's actually a little amusing.

A cheese sandwich and a glass of milk.