Ad Verbum

Baf's Guide

A wordplay game reminiscent in some respects of Infocom's Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It. Some of the puzzles work better than others--a few are just obscure--but there's one section of the game that's simply astounding. Specifically, there are alliterative rooms where the parser has been rewritten to allow only commands in which every word begins with a certain letter--and all the responses are likewise rewritten. For example, >EXAMINE EFFIGY elicits "Enemy effigy. Extreme enormity evident. Execrable evildoer!" The puzzles in this section involve figuring out the appropriate commands to take certain objects and get out of the rooms, but it's more rewarding simply to try to push the limits of the game's literacy (and it takes a lot of pushing). The rest of Ad Verbum doesn't quite live up to that portion of the game, but the alliterative section alone makes it worth trying.

-- Duncan Stevens

SPAG
[...] The game itself presents the player with a seemingly simple stint: acquire all objects from a house and dump them in the Dumpster. The catch is that the house once belonged to the "cantankerous Wizard of Wordplay", so it's not as simple as going through each room and picking up the objects. You have to obey the rules. For example, in one room, you can only use words that begin with the letter 's', however the only way to leave it is to the north, which is a word you can't use. You also have to be able to pick up objects in those rooms, again only using 's'-words. [...] (Mark J Musante)
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>VERBOSE -- Paul O'Brian's Interactive Fiction Page

Up until about halfway through Ad Verbum, I found that it was very well prepared to handle anything I threw at it. However, as I moved to other puzzles, it started to reject perfectly valid commands, which caused me to lose faith in the game with distressing speed, despite how impressed I had been with it up until then. After that frustrating period, I turned to the help and didn't try very hard to solve the rest of the puzzles, which is a shame because some of them were really excellent puzzles. The problem is that because Ad Verbum requires such specific input, when it isn't prepared to handle what little input is valid under its rules, it seems much more broken than does a typical IF puzzle when it rejects alternate solutions. I can't say I blame it -- frankly, I'm astonished by how well coded it is already, even despite what it still lacks -- but that didn't make my experience any more fun when the game was rejecting correct answers.
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Average Rating: Number of Reviews: 3 Write a review

Witty Wordplay With Wry Whips, June 8, 2010
The game has no plot to speak of, which is fine. The puzzles are similar to Nord and Bert, where you use wordplay to obtain items, and to exit rooms.

Some of the rooms are obvious, such as the room where everything begins with S only allows commands and nouns that start with S. Which makes it difficult when you're trying to find ways to go north.

The parser is pretty smart, however, the nature of the parser forces you to think so far outside the box it might become frustrating. (Spoiler - click to show) Especially when you try "walk where west was" to go east and get no response. . Some puzzles are straightforward, like knowing more dinosaur types (Spoiler - click to show) Though I think "anything"saur will work, since it accepted "boobasaur" . I found what I believe to be a glitch that made the game unwinnable concerning the sofa (Spoiler - click to show) I was apparantly not supposed to be able to remove it from the upstairs room without the verbosifier, but I did, and the verbosifier wouldn't work in the other room .

All in all the game is great and different enough from standard IF games that it will keep you occupied beyond the "take all" nonsense. The included hints don't give the answer completely away, but do tell you what you need to know. Interesting is the fact that in some rooms "save/restore/undo/quit" don't work, but that's in the nature of the way the author redesigned the parser for each room.

Gives a lot for an aspiring player or writer to live up to!

An excellent challenge in wordplay, December 15, 2009
``Protagonist lacking puzzle. Objects have hold on wizard's plot. Put plot wizards on hold; have objects puzzle lacking protagonist.''

Your last quest completed, you make your way to the adventurer's day labor corner. There you are hired to remove all takable objects from the Wizard of Wordplay's mansion so that your contractor can demolish it. The story line goes no deeper, but this premise inevitably leads to a very satisfying set of puzzles, all of which (well, almost) are founded on lexical cunning.

Every puzzle is immediately accessible, so you may try your hand at them in any order. Also, it is always possible to leave off one puzzle to go work on something else. In my moments of frustration, I really appreciated that.

I was also grateful that the game was designed to have no unwinnable states. I say ``designed'' because there is a sole exception: one puzzle can only be solved once. If you undo your work you will be stuck forever. As best I can tell, this is a bug, not the intent of the author, for in all other cases the game politely prevents even the most stiff-necked attempts to fail.

As for the puzzles themselves, a lot depends on choosing the right thing to say or the right way to say it. Yes, there are many instances of guess-the-verb, but they're well clued enough to be enticing, not exasperating. Really. A thesaurus is certainly useful ((Spoiler - click to show)even for getting the toy dinosaur), but I found that it's much more fulfilling to bear through unaided.

Much has already been said elsewhere about the novel idea of a room where every word in your command must begin with a given letter. I agree that this is a clever challenge, but the other puzzles deserve some recognition too. Particularly, there are several points where the word pattern to use is not announced so obviously, and the reader has to do some probing of his or her own. Maybe some will find that irritating, but the game's strength is in aha! moments. Ultimately the challenges and clues are balanced.

Beyond the puzzles themselves, Ad Verbum is worth exploring just to enjoy some of its witty parser responses. A strong four stars.

Clever puzzles based on wordplay, June 7, 2010
Ad Verbum is solely a puzzle game (no story or plot). Unlike traditional IF puzzles, the puzzles in Ad Verbum are word puzzles, mostly of 'guess the verb' form. In general, I detest 'guess the verb' puzzles, but this game succeeds beautifully by creating logical constraints for the verbs. While playing it, I found myself happily mulling over synonyms for 'take' and 'exit'. The writing in the game is very clever, and the author does an exceptional job of following the rules presented in the game, managing to give entire room and object descriptions using only, for example, words that begin with 'w'.

The game is relatively short. Most of the time you spend playing it will be spent thinking over puzzles. Ad Verbum is great for delivering the 'ah hah!' moment of a cleverly solved puzzle. It's also a terrific game for involving others in the puzzles. Normal IF puzzles are difficult to share with others, but it was simple to turn to my husband and say "I need a word that means 'exit' that begins with 's'." Indeed, my husband provided the necessary solutions for at least two of the puzzles.

This game is highly recommended as a diversion from more traditional IF, and is a must-play for any puzzle-lover.

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