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An exciting mini-whirlwind of crime, mumbling ponies, and pirate fight moves, January 1, 2023It's hard not to enjoy a game where you play as an animal. And in AMHU, my biggest groan was realizing I'd missed the pun in the title. (If you missed it: highest/heist.) It's a bit less serious than last year's Finding Light, to say the least. You're Anastasia, the Power Pony, and through this brief game you collect evidence after the crown jewels have been stolen, then you go fight the baddies to retrieve said crown. The only other entry I can think of offhand that does this is Peter Nepstad's Slap That Fish, and there, you're fighting with animals as weapons (Anastasia's weapons are her hooves,) and there's more strategy and less to do outside of that. MoHU allows for a good deal of showmanship and style points that weren't my thing, but I was glad they were in there. They fit the comedic tone of the heist.
The evidence collection is not hard. You do it considerably better than Sir Ponyheart or Commissioner Mumblebumble, who is true to his name. Sir Ponyheart understands the Commish, but you can't. The evidence quickly points to some evil llamas, and once you track them down, the fighting starts. This is one case where excessive disambiguation works. It captures that you're beating up a bunch of llamas at once, like a true action heroine.
And the author makes it hard to lose, with the focus on humor and creating a detailed fighting scene rather than intricate puzzles. The main thrust seems to be cluing you how to perform fighting tricks. The fight's on a pirate boat, and anyone who's enjoyed a pirate movie will be able to figure a couple of them and will probably want to. This factors into your rank at the end of the game. I'm not sure you can really lose, as there seems no ending besides the default, where you-the-character leave slightly disappointed, but I-the-player did not. I was amused by it, as well as the in-game good-bad puns. And the title. It's genuinely good-hearted, and my fears it might get too twee never materialized. It seems like a really good type of entry to expose interested people to the parser, too, because it's got a clear vision of what it wants and achieves it without feeling light-weight, and in a fight sequence, well, custom verbs seem almost necessary. I even appreciated the music, which feels like a really neat chiptune tribute and is appropriate for such a bouncy game.
AMHU already has a post-comp release, and I'm glad it did. I can't be the target audience, but that doesn't matter. I really don't care much about pirates, and the bonus content for choreographing pirate or dance moves or similar things isn't something I'd prioritize. That doesn't matter--I wound up enjoying the craft, and it's the sort of entry that makes me glad I at least tried to hit all the IFComp entries. I probably won't play the post-comp release due to general time concerns, but it's cool to imagine the possibilities opened up by the author's change logs, and given the good work they did in-comp, it's good to see they're dedicated to their craft and this won't be the last thing they write.
