Hoosegow

by Ben Collins-Sussman profile and Jack Welch profile

Western
2010

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5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
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2 star:
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Number of Ratings: 39
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- k42write, October 28, 2023

- sw3dish, October 14, 2022

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Oklahoma outlaws., March 19, 2022
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: Western

I'm normally not one for one room games, preferring to explore the wide plains and hills beyond the frontiers, but I enjoyed this game immensely.

Hoosegow is an escape-the-jailcell game set in the old West. The difficulty is just enough to keep one pleasantly engaged for an afternoon. The puzzles are original and mostly well clued. Some solutions can be found only by experimenting and examining everything. (And I mean everything.) Not only will you find some surprising and entertaining solutions, but you will also be rewarded for your thoroughness with lots and lots of funny responses. Once you get on the same wavelength as the game, start thinking in the same slightly off-kilter way as the author when writing it, the puzzles will start feeling natural.

The characters, both PC and NPCs, add a layer of comedy to the game that is its strongest point. Pastor Pete's ramblings, the deputy who'd rather spend his time with the "dancing girls" in the saloon, your idiot savant accomplice and the lazy jail dog., they all made me laugh at least once.

The characters (and the parser) talk in a heavy western hootin' tootin' accent. It stays just beneath the line. Any more would have been annoying, not to say incomprehensible. It stays funny as it is now though.

The game gives you the option of running away right after ecaping the cell, but of course you would rather stick around to clear your name with the Marshal like any upstanding citizen who happens to have been found with a bag full of silver next to a derailed train and been charged with trainrobbery just because of that. Yessir.

Near perfect in all aspects. Must play.

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- Edo, March 17, 2022

- nf, August 2, 2021

- Karlok (Netherlands), April 14, 2021

- elias67, March 12, 2019

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Dang fine, August 9, 2017

As a casual IF player, I found this to be pitched perfectly - the puzzles are tricky, but not too hard. It's a single room, so no need to remember directions or map it out, which appeals to me. Also, I didn't have any issue playing guess the verb, as other reviewers have stated.

However, the thing that I enjoyed the most about this was the writing - the language and content are both mighty fine, and oftentimes made me guffaw like a hyena at the circus.

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- mrfrobozzo, July 26, 2017

- Sobol (Russia), November 21, 2016

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Great, folksy writing with fairly standard puzzles, February 4, 2016

Hoosegow's writing is a delight. In this straightforward but slightly difficult one-room escape game, you play a reluctant outlaw with his silly buddy and a drunken pastor trying to get out of a jail cell.

All of the standard messages have been changed to be folksy and homelike. The writing is just great, if you're into hometown western stuff.

The puzzles did not inspire me. It's one of the large class of puzzle games where one or two of the puzzles are unfair, and you could play forever and then give up. It's rare to find a game where the challenges are difficult but fair.

I recommend this game, and very strongly recommend it for group play, to get through the puzzles and have fun reading the responses.

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- hoopla, September 19, 2015

- leanbh, August 9, 2015

- BlitzWithGuns, December 21, 2014

- Simon Deimel (Germany), March 25, 2014

- E.K., February 5, 2014

- Shadow Fox (Texas), August 20, 2013

- DAzebras, April 28, 2013

- _eMMe_ (Milan, Italy), April 13, 2013

- Andrew Schultz (Chicago), December 2, 2012

- AADA7A, September 19, 2012

- o0pyromancer0o, April 21, 2012

- bloodzeed, April 20, 2012

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A great bit of hokum, March 7, 2012

As the other reviews make clear, this is a witty and entertaining game. It's certainly not the hardest game you'll play.

There are a number of particularly nice touches, beyond the clever setting and the splendid use of language. One is (Spoiler - click to show)the series of "alternate endings" you can see with the EASTER EGG command - a lot of fun. A more substantial strong point is the originality of the puzzles. I particularly liked the fact that the apparently obvious solutions to the various problems aren't, at all. (Spoiler - click to show)For example, you don't use the coffee to wake the preacher, you don't use the meat to distract the dog, and you don't use the key to open the cell door.

I did, however, encounter some bad guess-the-verbiage. (Spoiler - click to show)I worked out quickly that I should fix the stool with the tube, but finding the right choice of words for this took a long time - especially as I had used "fix" before and the game seemed to understand it. But not for this. I also tried to examine the deputy once I'd knocked him out, eventually having to resort to hints to find that only the verb SEARCH would give the desired results. Worse still are some apparent bugs and inconsistencies. (Spoiler - click to show)Trying to do actions that the game won't allow sometimes results in it telling you that the object is out of reach in the office, even when you're holding it. Trying to touch the deputy when he's lying in front of the bars returns the same message, even though he's certainly not out of reach.

A more minor matter is that despite the great writing, it's not entirely consistent. It struck me that while the "error" messages are written in cowboyese, the rest of the narration is not, which is a little odd.

So the game could certainly use a bit of smoothening up. Despite that, it's a lot of fun, a bit more original than your standard escape puzzle, and consistently witty. Certainly a worthy competition winner.

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- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), July 15, 2011


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