Pit of the Condemned is an Evade-The-Wumpus-like game in which you play a convict sentenced to die at the hands of The Beast. The site for your intended death is an abandoned city that's now used only to host deadly spectacles. A bloodthirsty public watches your struggles from innaccessible locations overhead.
In the paragraph above, I just summarised a mixture of information from the game's blurb and from its opening scene. And the blurb component of that info is not even fully present in the game, meaning if you didn't read the blurb, you'd never know it. Unfortunately, the above summary is about all there is to the aesthetic of Pit. None of the implications of the game's setting or vaguely Hunger Games-sounding society come up during play. It's purely about the mechanic of moving through a large network of empty rooms and searching for a weapon or escape route while the beast chases you.
Pit is a short game to play, and in its simplicity it again ('again' in the context of my reviews of this year's IFComp entries) reminds me of the BASIC games David Ahl collated in books for the then new microcomputers of the 1970s. Unlike War of the Willows, the game I made this comment about the first time around, Pit doesn't have enough additional adornment or flair to sell its universe, to make its chase vivid or exciting like it needs to be.
Further reviewage with spoilers below.
I won the game fairly quickly by setting a trap for the beast in the Royal Palace. I then wiggled around a lot until the monster followed me into the trap. I found it easy enough – too easy – to avoid the creature in general, thanks to the proximity warning messages the game delivers. These are handled well technically, as is the occasional warning generated by line of sight programming.
When the beast isn't close, the game tends to dullness. Almost all locations are empty and there are a lot of them. I was tempted to start mapping, but didn't, and it ultimately proved to be unnecessary.
Location descriptions are utilitarian and some obvious commands aren't covered. The very first thing I wanted to do in the game was try to KILL MAGISTRATE, the guy who had sentenced me to death. I expected that the result would be that his sidekick guard would immediately kill me; after all, I was weaponless. The game's reaction was to instead print the default Inform anti-violence message: 'Violence isn't the answer to this one.' And that shouldn't be the case in a game about violent spectacle. The protagonist doesn't have a physical description, either. These are typical Inform oversights that can be caught if you get just one Inform experienced person to test your game.
Pit of the Condemned is OK mechanically, but I found it thin and unexciting.
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