Honk!

This was fun! I completed it without using the walkthrough or any hints, which always makes me feel accomplished; the puzzles weren’t too easy, either, but were lightly challenging in an enjoyable way (and there was one I found especially clever). The circus setting was well-detailed; I especially liked the variety of useful props I acquired. The writing was funny (“The Ringmaster began his career as a tightrope walker, and to this day he’s still high-strung”), the NPCs were all distinctive, and I’ll always love an anti-greedy-developer plotline. I also really appreciated the casual queerness, e.g.:

You’ve watched her pull off many incredible feats over the years, among them pulling a rabbit out of a hat, sawing herself in half, transitioning her gender, and pulling a rabbit out of a different hat.

I do think it would have been a stronger game with a bit more polish. Some examples:

-Unimplemented nouns providing the classic “You see no [thing mentioned in room description] here.”
-Conversation options for each of the NPCs still showing up long after they don’t make sense anymore.
-While I liked each of the three acts being its own self-contained puzzle, being able to repeat them (endlessly?) after failing felt like it broke the narrative a bit, especially since you couldn’t discuss your failure with the involved performer at all.
-A portion of the end game sequence seemingly not having anything for the player to do besides wait.

I think a post-comp release could easily take care of these things, though, and make for a truly solid game.

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