Reviews by jakomo
springthing2022
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Inn-sewer-ants-polly-sea, April 11, 2022Classic farce: a series of escalating mishaps caused by the protagonist, a dodgy insurance salesman (is there any other kind?), trying to fix his previous mishaps at the home of his prospective client, a a famous young baroness. Reminiscent of a Blake Edwards/Peter Sellers comedy, the game has a well-drawn player-character, fabulous environmental descriptions, and an excellent sense of comic timing. It's a shame I didn't get to see half of it, as annoyingly I was never able to progress beyond the (Spoiler - click to show)burning curtains. There are no in-built hints, nor any external ones. I look forward to revisiting when a walkthrough becomes available.
You solved the box, we came. Now you must come with us, taste our pleasures., April 11, 2022From the author of The Long Nap, written in Dialog, and The Lookout, written in Inform 7, comes The Box, written in Kreate. Mr. Polylingual! It's a demo game for the new language and does a good job at showing off that it has all the fundamentals for a solid parser and world model in place. There's nothing particularly taxing here: no conversations (the only NPC is a mouse), no ropes, no noun disambiguations, no complex sentences required. There is some burning, though it's only used once. It's a very straightforward, short escape-the-room game with entertaining puzzles and a tidy (but sluggish) web-GUI: click on a hyperlinked noun to "examine" it, which brings up some clickable relevant actions you can do with it, or just type at the prompt at usual. if you liked Fireproof Games' The Room, you'll certainly enjoy this.
Two minor bugs:
(Spoiler - click to show)
Sitting on top of it is an intricately carved wooden box. On the stone pedestal is a wooden box.
You set the panel on the window sill. It covers the window almost entirely, blocking out most of the moonlight. The panel is already on the sill.
Jolly Roger, April 10, 2022A time-travel romp through multiple eras, modelled on Magnetic Scrolls games. And, like those games, the puzzles suffer from a degree of broken logic and inconsistency. It does have a useful hint system: be aware you can type "help" multiple times for more detailed hints. The (overly busy) UI presents a a multiple-choice interface, but also a text prompt, as well also clickable in-line hyperlinks and (overly big) images. Often, the command you need is not presented as a choice, so you will need to type at the text prompt at times. Story-wise, this is some wacky, absurd stuff, but well aware of it's own utter ridiculousness, and pretty fun as a result. There are more exclamation marks in this game than in every other Spring Thing entry put together! Contains plenty of hot chicks promising to "reward" the PC, like a porn game, but without any follow-through so it ends up closer to a very tame Leisure Suit Larry. A sequel is teased at the end: I think I'm on board.
To thrive in life you need three bones: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone, April 8, 2022This Pratchett-esque comic fantasy adventure has a narrative that I found kinda bland: it doesn't challenge or provoke in any way. The same could be said about the author's previous excellent 4x4 Galaxy and 4x4 Archipelagos, but those games being mechanics-driven RPGs meant the writing was far less important. This is a traditional text adventure, so the emphasises story and puzzles. I found myself skim-reading a lot of the long text-dump sequences to get to the game parts, which is where the cool stuff lies. Attach and detach your body parts (which then become playable characters), swap between them at will, use them as inventory items, there is a hell of a lot going on, but it successfully avoids overwhelming the player. There was only one puzzle (the candle holder) that could have done with a bit more in-game prompting (though external hints are supplied). UI feels a bit clumsy but the game is constrained enough that it doesn't become annoying.
Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy., April 8, 2022Pay off your mob debt by training for, then competing in, an underground cyborg fight tournament. The training part lets you customise your stats, which then unlock different choices during the actual fights. Does a great job at making the fights feel player-driven, despite actually being carefully authored. I was gripped during those encounters as if they were the Rocky films' climactic battles. Your trainer is a brilliant character too. Yes, I pictured Burgess Meredith. The synth-wave neon cyberpunk look-and-feel is beginning to get tired in 2022 but story-wise this takes a hard left-turn away from typical genre tropes in the third act which certainly keeps things fresh.
Yummy yummy yummy I've got bugs in my tummy, April 8, 2022A micro-twine about establishing a restaurant that serves insect-based food. Really funny, well-written and entertaining, and very educational! The kind of twine game you'll want to replay multiple times to read the results of the obviously silly choices.
(Game) Boy meets Girl, April 8, 2022A conversation in a cafe with an old flame. Made with Bitsy, so it has a neat Gameboy-ish aesthetic, pretty similar to Sakura Wars GB. There are only two meaningful decisions to make to steer the conversation, a choice from three options and a subsequent choice from two, so a single playthrough is very short, but it's well worth playing through to see all (3*2) combinations which together give a rounded picture of the two personalities and their relationship.
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