Ratings and Reviews by greenbug
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Light and Lovely Noir Romp, August 24, 2021A lovely noir genre item, set in "Fieldtown". Noir tropes combine with the twee nursery setting in a fun way. The hint mechanism---a soothsaying Detective Murphy---is fun and helps smooth the edges around some of the puzzles.
I tend to prefer a limited vocabulary, and I occasionally had trouble with the parser (sensible things to do don't get a response that points you elsewhere, though even the first hint was fairly lucid without being a spoiler). The narrative is fun and noirish, with interesting choice points---but it's also a bit of a railroad.
Overall, this was a very fun ~2 hour play. Not nearly as deep or engaging as other work by the same author (The Wizard Sniffer, Oppositely Opal), but still very fun.
Hard but fun puzzles, thin story, October 23, 2020My partner and I had a mostly fun time playing this game. The characters are cute in concept, but the general story is underdeveloped (though the 'moral' is pleasing).
The puzzles were definitely clever and challenging. It took us---relative novices---about two hours to play the whole thing, getting just two or three hints. (The hint menu offers tiered hints---we went only two or three in on a single topic.)
Other reviewers seemed to get a kick out of chatting with the gnome, but we weren't so engaged.
We quite liked the "point counter" approach---getting a point was a lovely reward for our struggles! Guessing the first move ((Spoiler - click to show)you could say we followed our nose) set us up with some unrealistic expectations about what else we'd learn. We were disappointed to finish with only 6/7 possible points, though. When we read the corresponding hint, well... maybe we would have gotten that point if we had been more immersed? Or maybe not.
Quick, witchy fun, October 23, 2020Spent about an hour this evening on this pleasant, funny story with a delightful theme. The one hint I got was clever and didn't make me feel like I'd "cheated". Good mechanics without any tedium.
The atmosphere was light but contributed to the overall mood. (Do we get to learn more about witch's court---presumably a kind of night court---and why they hex people who lose lawsuits? No, of course not.)
Towards the end, I fought a bit with the parser. (Spoiler - click to show)I had to go the walkthrough to be sure I was really at the end, after spending five minutes to try different approaches.
Hysterical telling of a sweet story, with fun puzzles to boot, October 16, 2020I introduced my partner to IF with this game, not quite knowing what to expect. I haven't played much since the 90s, and I wasn't sure what they would make of it. It was an excellent choice.
The writing is clear and dryly funny. Room descriptions are shown once in full, and then it cuts to the chase. The limited verb set avoided any scramble to satisfy the parser. What's more, the constrained parser serves the story in both shallow and deep ways.
The puzzles were just difficult enough to be fun without ever shutting us down---we resorted to hints just a few times, and the hint system is as well integrated into the story as everything else. Relatedly, there are no "dead-ends": you can't make a choice so wrong that you'll be stuck, and you can always UNDO to get back to where you were. What could be bad?
Quick play with fun puzzles, October 16, 2020Spent an hour or two solving the delightful little puzzles. A progress indicator lets you know you're doing a good job unpacking the interesting magical mechanics, an ancient counting system, and a sneaky little beastie.
I held back from five stars for two reasons: I wish there were a bit more story or character to it, and I got stuck for twenty or thirty minutes on a parser issue. (I played back in the 90s, but maybe only one parser game since then... so I'm a touch rusty.)
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