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Pared-down puzzling, October 27, 2017DiBianca's Inside the Facility won Miss Congeniality in last year's comp, featuring a huge in-game map, a pared-down parser and puzzles which involved not much more than the simplest object manipulation.
The parser in The Wand is similar, with well-circumscribed limits to what verbs might be used. This time, though, we have a much smaller map and a configurable wand to play with, which gives the player different abilities, paring down the parser further.
Puzzle clues are given abstractly, like Flash escape room games of yore. Object manipulation is more complex, since the player can do more with each object. Puzzle-solving in The Wand doesn’t quite have the same snappiness as In the Facility, but there’s some nice framing of the central game premise here.
The Wand is overall a polished game, with a streamlined puzzle system. If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy Sub Rosa by Joey Jones and Melvin Rangasamy.