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by David Welbourn

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Aunts and Butlers

by Robin Johnson profile

Humor
2006

Web Site

(based on 41 ratings)
4 reviews

About the Story

It's 1920, you're a minor aristocrat fallen on hard times, and your wretched Aunt Cedilla is on the warpath. A Wodehousean comedy of manners, manors, mysterious butlers and unfriendly poodles.


Game Details


Awards

16th Place - 12th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2006)

Nominee, Best NPCs; Nominee, Best Individual NPC - 2006 XYZZY Awards

Editorial Reviews

Jay Is Games

Because of its relatively simple plot and small environment, Aunts and Butlers is a good introductory game for anyone new to the world of interactive fiction. And apart from a rather stale maze sequence, the game feels fresh and interesting at every turn. Put on your tailcoat and grab the teacup, Aunt Cedilla is waiting for you in the drawing room.
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SPAG

If you aren't as much a fan of P. G. Woodhouse as I am, you'll probably see Aunts and Butlers just as a light-hearted, not too deep work with an unproblematic gameplay, good enough to while away an hour or so. It has a slight general adventuring frosting, which isn't necessarily needed and could be removed without anybody missing it, yet, on the other hand, it doesn't hamper the game, either.
-- Valentine Kopteltsev
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Member Reviews

5 star:
(7)
4 star:
(16)
3 star:
(13)
2 star:
(4)
1 star:
(1)
Average Rating:
Number of Reviews: 4
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Most Helpful Member Reviews


7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Zany fun, January 6, 2008
by somegirl (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

I really enjoyed this game. The writing was entertaining and the plot, while off-the-wall, was fairly straight-forward. I found most of the puzzles to be fairly easy but quite clever (more than once I found myself trying something thinking "this is never going to work" and then "whoa! it worked! *helpless giggling*"). Also, I found the various methods of death wildly amusing.

Bottom line? Give this game a try, just don't take it too seriously.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A mid-length and mean-spirited comedy game about inheritance, February 3, 2016

In this mid-length parser game written entirely in Java, you are a petulant British man whose rich aunt is visiting, and you have to take a large number of actions to get her wealth. These include some pretty horrible actions, including killing off numerous people, but it's all presented as comedy.

The parser seemed pretty good. The writing was based a bit on Wodehouse's writing. The puzzles are a mixed bag, with a lot of guessing what the author was thinking; however, each area is so small so that you can just try everything and eventually get it right. The last half of the game involves visiting 8 time periods to obtain enough articles of clothing to enter a certain building.

The game is notable for a mysterious butler figure that attends you and acts at first as an automatic warning system, and then as a summonable help system. He is dry and witty. He was nominated for Best Individual NPC in the XYZZY's, and the game was nominated for Best NPC's.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Not quite, your lordship., March 27, 2023
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: History

The opening paragraph of Aunts and Butlers immediately sets the tone for this game: silly, jolly punniness played off of British stiff-upper-lipness.
The first part of the game succeeds in keeping up this atmosphere. You play an impoverished young man from a wealthy family. Your filthy rich aunt is coming to visit and you will have to jump through hoops to have a chance to get some money from her so you can pay your debts.

The puzzles are not difficult. The game pretty much tells you what to do, in a polite and British way. The implementation might give some troubles: when trying to interact with something, the game does not differentiate between an unimportant object or an object that is simply not there.

Up until here, I had great fun trying stuff out and breathing in the fresh British air.

Unfortunately, after solving the bottleneck-opening puzzle at the end of this first part, the game loses its ambiance and slides off into oldschool incoherent silliness (the bad kind). A medieval knight and a starship are involved, among other things.

In the hints for one of these rooms, the author writes that this room was coded at 11pm the night before IF Comp's deadline. I suspect that he turned to unfunny random madness as a last resort, pushing himself to get something finished to enter in the competition. Pity. I would have loved to see what this game could have been if it stuck to its first-paragraph principles.

Disappointing.

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Aunts and Butlers on IFDB

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Polls

The following polls include votes for Aunts and Butlers:

IF of yours you'd most recommend by blue/green
If someone were going to play one IF you've written, which one would you recommend? This can be based on any criteria you choose: personal favorite, highest rated, most representative, most accessible, whatever. (You can always change...

Games with unique hint systems by delano
I'm looking for games that offer hints in any way, except for printing them in sequence on the screen. For example: characters that offer hints; objects that, when examined or used in a certain way, suggest actions to the player; etc.

A fine bit of homebrew by JonathanCR
Most games here are written with Inform, TADS, or other custom IF-writing languages. Some, however, are written in more standard and less specialised languages, such as C++, Java, or even BASIC. These "homebrew parsers" usually lack the...

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This is version 13 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 27 February 2020 at 11:30pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page