The Ascot is it worth the price

General
1

Has anyone played this. If so, whats your opinion on it. I was a tad surprised to see the price tag at max 4.99. I just bought PSY HIGH and Robot Story. I wanted some input before I decide to spend my money. Like what’s unique about it. And general thoughts.

This is an update: I actually played the free Verizon. I have to say I’m not really impressed. For the price tag. It gives very little detail about the story. Just a few sentences then it has choices come down to “Yes” or “No” then a question mark. It has a wait timer if you played the free preview, which you can bypass for one dollar.

To be honest. I don’t even really understand it. It seems a tad overpriced to me. Just my two cents.

2

I haven’t played it, however it says here you can play the game once through for free. https://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/ascot So I’d suggest doing that, seeing if it’s worth it, and then letting us know.

3

That’s the thing. I tried the free one. It’s different…it’s only game on the hosted games that has a timer. Even if you play it for free. You cannot play it again till it runs out. My timer is at 4 minutes. It’s a bit unusual. I don’t mind paying for the games. I think I bought every game once, even the hosted games.

I’d like other people to play the free one, tell me what they think. To me the story is really short with almost no detail and no plot. The Robot story for example was a very compelling and complex story with an extreme high replay value. That priced at 2.99. Yet this one. I just don’t understand the 4.99 for such a short story.

I could be wrong.

4

It’s a hosted game. It may be that the author was the one who set the price on it and not Choice of Games. It may be because it’s a different style of game it was decided that they’d try out experimenting with a different payment model. I don’t know.

I just played The Ascot and it wasn’t to my taste.

Note that Choice of Robots is currently 40% off. The full price is $5

5

That’s what I’m trying to get. People who play the free one, and tell me what they think. I was just a tad surprised. Usually the story’s are really interesting and compelling. I was simply curious why a story that seemed to lack much was priced so high. I honestly, still don’t get the story but to each their own.

I may one day write my own story. I always been interested in choice games. I reach Goose Bumps when I was a child. The first time I interacted with choices. Each choice lead to a different path in the book. It’s nice I found this site where main objective are choice games.

6

The Ascot’s story seems to be an Excuse Plot, though that might not be the nicest comparison to make.

The gameplay seems to revolve around finding the best ending through trial-and-error; the story exists only as a justification for the gameplay. Many interactive fiction games, that use a parser, tend to place more emphasis on the player solving puzzles as opposed to the player being engaged by a detailed plot. Arguably, The Ascot could be seen as rarer example of a game that places emphasis on solving a puzzle (finding the best ending), but has no parser for the player to use.

That being said, I hate puzzles. And I hate the parser.
The Ascot is an exception to my eternal malice towards puzzles because it does not use a parser, but I only find it to be mildly enjoyable.

The plot is deliberately silly; don’t play The Ascot expecting to have the feels after completing the game.

I still have not found the best ending.
I am not sure if, upon reaching the best ending, the game would lock itself and require a purchase for the player to continue playing.
I am not sure if the unlimited version contains additional features not seen in the free version.
There is a general vagueness plaguing the game that makes me reluctant to shell out the five bucks needed to disable the free version’s five minute wait.

By comparison, Tin Star is also five dollars, but it is very, very, meaty. The source code for Tin Star exceeds 1.3 million words, which automatically adds some justification for the steeper price tag.
That being said, Tin Star was a remarkable game. I’d have been willing to pay ten bucks for it.

The Ascot? Not quite my cup of tea.
My guess is that The Ascot justifies its high price tag due to it being a nominee of the 2009 XYZZY Awards for Best Individual Puzzle; this means that the game has been around for a while and may have received a fair amount of attention and popularity.

Nonetheless, I would agree that the current pricing is a bit high, especially considering that other, less expensive games exist in CoG’s lineup that offer the player a richer experience.

7

Jason_Miller it is pretty much a puzzle game.

However, at it’s current price point, I couldn’t recommend The Ascot to someone unless they wanted puzzles. The other thing to bear in mind is that it is easy to get all the achievements in about an hour or so (at least for me it was).

I know it was trying to be silly, but the humor fell flat for me. And if you are looking for quality writing (as in narrative, etc.) the Ascot didn’t have that either (obviously this is subjective).