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[OldGrover]

How did you get yourself into this?   Awakened by your friend Melody this morning, she pressed you into service 'for a good cause'.  Before you knew it, somehow you had volunteered to help her arrange a Christmas Party for some local orphans.  Not a big deal, you figured, and it'd make you look good with her - maybe if you do well here, she'll finally agree to go on a date with you.

Your heart sank, though, when the two of you walked into the dingy hall that was supposed to be the location for the party - it had certainly seen better days.  Even Melody looked dismayed for a moment, though she quickly swung into action, "Alright, you set this place up for a party and I'll be back at 1:00 with the kids and the food." She smiles that warming smile, "I know you can do it!"  With that, she presses a large cardboard box into your hands and heads out the door.

It doesn't look good.  This place looks awful, there's no decorations, there's no nothing - and since you are flat broke, you can't even go buy anything.  You'll just have to make do with what you can find here.

The Christmas Party is my first IF and is written in ALAN. 

Entry Information :

My entry is at : http://www.israndomrandom.com/misc/the_christmas_party.a3c

If you are running Windows, I recommend Gargoyle as a good, all purpose IF interpreter (which, conveniently runs my game) : http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/

If you are running any other OS, the official interpreters are available at the Alan site (note that this is in AlanV3) : http://www.alanif.se/downloadv3.html

Thanks to Pacian and the Rampant Coyote forums for bugtesting!  Hope you enjoy the game!

Known Bugs

I seem to be tickling a problem with AlanV3 (also occurs in Gargoyle) - undo breaks the game.  Fortunately, there's no way to die or get the game in unwinnable state, so just don't 'undo' and it'll work fine.  Thanks! :D

[OldGrover]

Can you save Christmas for the orphans? And maybe find some Christmas Cheer of your own with Melody?

[MedO]

Sounds very interesting so far.

[OldGrover]

Yay, all done

[Daniel Benmergui]

It's not opening for me using Gargoyle...the window shows up and then closes.

Should I use another interpreter?

Daniel.

[OldGrover]

Weird - I know people (including me) have used Gargoyle and I just checked it with the current build and it works for me...

You can download the official interpreter from : http://www.alanif.se/downloadv3.html

Hopefully that'll work for you!

[Pacian]

It's not opening for me using Gargoyle...the window shows up and then closes.

Weird - I know people (including me) have used Gargoyle and I just checked it with the current build and it works for me...

I had that happen to me with one of the in-between versions, and in fact it's happening with this latest link too. Download it yourself and see, Grover.  Try re-compiling and/or re-uploading.

[OldGrover]

Aha!  Sorry, the link should work properly now - I must have uploaded it in 'ASCII' mode rather then binary mode when I ftped.  Stupid mistake.

Thanks, guys!  It seems to work now.

[Akhel]

This is a pretty nice game. I thought some of the puzzles were a little unclear (like cutting the ball to make decorations, or... um, what the hell should I do with the popcorn after popping it?), but it was overall well-executed. I got 145 points, but a terribly annoying bug prevented me from going further. I don't have access to the game right now, but it had something to do with, IIRC, memory overflow (?). You should really look into that.

[OldGrover]

This is a pretty nice game. I thought some of the puzzles were a little unclear (like cutting the ball to make decorations, or... um, what the hell should I do with the popcorn after popping it?),

Some people seemed to get those instantly, others just never did.

but it was overall well-executed.

Thanks

I got 145 points, but a terribly annoying bug prevented me from going further. I don't have access to the game right now, but it had something to do with, IIRC, memory overflow (?). You should really look into that.

Weird.  Which interpreter did you use?  I didn't write the system, just the game itself, so I'm afraid there's not much I could do to fix a memory overflow, but I could let the system writer know.