Spring Cleaning

This fantasy title has a simple, janitorial premise: a messy wizard’s tower needs a good cleaning, and you’re just the chap for the job. “Spring Cleaning” is both easy (I, a certified meathead, got a perfect score on my second try), and fun. The imagery is spare but funny, the puzzles easy and few, and the atmosphere well-suited to its apparent design goal: a farewell nod to the late E. Gary Gygax (achieved with a brief sprinkling of references to his work, from bending bars and lifting gates to the infamous random harlot subtable of the old Dungeon Master’s Guide). It’s a cheerful five-minute whirl with a gentle touch of nostalgia.

The game’s disappointments are mostly technical, due to the “Speed IF” nature of the work. Synonyms, in particular, are in thin supply (trying to call your sack a “bag,” or trying to refer to a stack of newspapers as the “papers,” will bump your head against the parser). Similar parsing and phrasing issues were frequent distractions in my otherwise-enjoyable plays through … my hope is that the author will be encouraged enough by the game’s fans (I count myself happily among them) to create a followup release with the necessary spiffs. With a fresh coat of bug-fixes, this is a game I’d happily recommend to my gaming buddies.

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