The Wizard Sniffer

I introduced my partner to IF with this game, not quite knowing what to expect. I haven't played much since the 90s, and I wasn't sure what they would make of it. It was an excellent choice.

The writing is clear and dryly funny. Room descriptions are shown once in full, and then it cuts to the chase. The limited verb set avoided any scramble to satisfy the parser. What's more, the constrained parser serves the story in both shallow and deep ways.

The puzzles were just difficult enough to be fun without ever shutting us down---we resorted to hints just a few times, and the hint system is as well integrated into the story as everything else. Relatedly, there are no "dead-ends": you can't make a choice so wrong that you'll be stuck, and you can always UNDO to get back to where you were. What could be bad?

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