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ParserComp entry has choice-game feel, in a good way, August 28, 2023In The Last Mountain, you are on a multi-day mountain race with a friend, Susan, whom you've raced with before. You're doing pretty well. You might get a medal, which would be a first. But she's a bit exhausted midway through.
This immediately brings up a dilemma, as she says you should go on without her. But you can't. With the races you've run together before, it feels wrong. You can't read her mind, so you don't know what she really wants to do. And from here, there is a trade-off. She will slow you down. And some paths give adventures and realizations and accomplishments that others don't. (There's also a way to get lost!)
In essence, there are three main choices to make. This allows for eight endings. Some are similar, and some are different. I was aware of the walkthrough the author provided, and I planned to lawnmower through when I played it in-comp, but I didn't. It reminded me of other things, from a noncompetitive hike at summer camp where I and a friend started late but wound up getting to the destination first, to other challenges. This might be learning a programming language or getting through a computer game. Or, well, reviewing all the ParserComp games but getting distracted. Or maybe just reading a bunch of books in a short period of time, before they are due back at the library.
Or, one special in my case, writing X bytes a week to my weekly file. It's only a number, but all the same, it establishes something. That I've put in work and focus. And there's always the motivation to do more next week if I can, but that would break me, and I couldn't share my work or see what others are writing. It's a similar dilemma of "try for a medal or help a friend finish before the DNF (did not finish) cutoff." For me writing feels like something I can't give up, whether it's code for a new adventure or IFDB writing or maybe, one day, NaNoWriMo.
I got a lot out of the first endings, as I got the expected sliding scale from helping Susan versus achieving a personal goal. But as I played through them all, one noted that you gave up on racing for a while and came back to it. And it reminded me of other things I'd come back to, not needing to win it, and not needing to be super social. One of the big ones is/was chess, and hitting a certain rating. You want to do stuff by yourself, and you can probably hit a certain rating if you play a lot, but even if you get there, it might not feel good if you are playing to win. How you win matters. And breaking a new personal best rating feels much better if I win a good game instead of winning on time forfeit in a lost position. If I devoted myself too much to chess, I would ignore other things important to me, including sharing writing, even if it is not super-social. But TLM reminded me I still have goals to share, and they are worth sharing, even if I never reach the ratings stretch goals I once had.
Though the two entries that placed above it were deserving winners, TLM might be my favorite from the classic section of this comp, because it touches on issues of fulfillment in a subject and pastime I didn't know much about, but I can relate to it more.
The two above it were more swashbuckling and had flashier or cuter details, along with more humor, but TLM felt to me like it had more individuality, and it was the first of the three I replayed. It reminded me of the real-life adventures I wanted to take and maybe had given up on. It feels more like a choice-based or Twine game, with a relatively fixed plot and relatively few side rooms or things to examine. (You're tired. You don't have time for that!) And it could definitely be remade as one. But perhaps that wouldn't capture the essence of a mountain race as well, if you could just speed-click through. I mean, it doesn't slow you down with deliberate nuisances and annoyances, but the parser has a whole "don't sprint through this" feel which meshes clearly with what you're doing in the game.
