Improv: Origins

by Neil deMause

Part of Frenetic Five
Superhero, humor
2022

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Number of Reviews: 5
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Bugged but excellent puzzles and very funny, January 31, 2023
by Denk
Related reviews: Inform

This is a very funny, puzzly, one-room parser comedy. However, it is also very hard and in the version I played, I had to work around a bug.

I rarely give a game with a significant game breaking bug five stars. In this case I made an exception because I realized that it was a bug and managed to work around it. Also, the author should be working on a 3rd version and I completed the 2nd version after having given up on the first version. So I think it is a shame if such an excellent game will be forgotten because the author didn't fix the bugs in time for ParserComp, even though the author is of course "responsible" (no one got hurt I suppose). In addition there are some other bugs which may require you to restore an earlier save, but they are quite obvious. So save often.

So if anyone found the game disappointing during ParserComp I understand.

I just think that this game is a real challenge: You start out with some rather easy puzzles and they gradually get harder, really hard. The hard ones are only very subtly clued but they are clued. But if you do not notice the clue you may have to start over to realize it - not sure, didn't investigate that issue.

Unless you are in a hurry, you might as well wait for the third version which hopefully takes care of those bugs and you will be playing an excellent parser comedy, assuming you love hard puzzles. However, knowing that there are bugs will probably make you notice it and quickly experiment to see what is triggering that bug. To me, the puzzles were great and the humor very funny so it was worth it to work around that bug.

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