Sugarlawn

by Mike Spivey profile

2019

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Number of Reviews: 7
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Fun and fast-paced with high replay potential, November 16, 2021

I've played this game through about eight times now. The setup is something of a scavenger/treasure hunt through an old antebellum mansion, grabbing antiques while filmed for a reality show. Most non-passive commands cost you fifteen seconds, and you have half an hour to collect items and pass through the foyer with them (or else put them in their special location, which you must guess based on the item and what rooms you've seen). It doesn't take long to reach the end point, and as you learn more about the value of various items, how to access different parts of the mansion, and other factors, you start working on how to allocate your time best. My first playthrough, I ended with about $6000, whereas my most recent I had almost $18000 (still a far cry from the high scores listed in the links).

I wish there was a way to play without the time limitation, just so I could play through the entire game, but I understand why having that sort of gameplay available would cheapen the timed play, since it would be easier to make choices once you had the entire place mapped out, and more room for trial and error on the special locations was allowed.

Did I mention you're wearing a chicken costume for the TV show? You're wearing a chicken costume for the TV show.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Gabriel Knight's Nightmare, September 3, 2020
by deathbytroggles (Minneapolis, MN)

An absolute delightful treasure romp in the vein of Hollywood Hijinx (only with loads more charm), Sugarlawn had me simultaneously hooked yet a tad frustrated.

I do love a logical treasure hunt and a game show might be the most realistic modern raison d'etre for taking everything not nailed down. And because it's a game show it's clear from the beginning that replays will yield better results; thus, I was prepared for obsessive map-making and note-taking which I thoroughly enjoyed. What frustrated me is the nature of optimization puzzles. For a while I enjoyed finding shortcuts to improve my score, but after a while the diminishing returns were more exhausting than invigorating. For example, one way to improve optimization throughout your treasure hunt is to pick up or drop multiple items at the same time, which to me is more of a trick of the parser than a realistic strategy. So after four or five meticulous runs through the game I felt sated, despite several puzzles not yet being solved, because I knew even if I solved them I would never have the patience for peak optimization.

Despite this I wholeheartedly recommend playing it at least once, if for nothing but the fourth-wall breaking whimsy. It's always clear while playing that you're on camera (this fact is used for puzzle-design as well), and it's frequently played for laughs. If you regret a decision and type undo, a voice calls, "All right, we’ll just record over the last thing you did.” And I've always had a soft spot for New Orleans culture and history, and so I got to bathe in that to my heart's content.

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Good times, March 14, 2020

I had fun with it. Used trizbort to make a map, liked the history added in. Will definitely go back and do the "amusing" suggestions. Puzzles on my first one were too much for my fibro-fog brain, but I plan on going back to figure stuff out.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
An excellent optimization-based treasure hunt with good humor, November 19, 2019
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 2-10 hours

I beta tested this game, and I love it.

You play as a contestant on a reality show that apparently involves finding antiques while wearing a chicken suit (?).

You run around a mansion gathering items while a timer ticks down each turn. Some items are easy to find, while others require a great deal of ingenuity.

Knowledge is the key in this game, player knowledge and not character knowledge. You can learn secret codes that help you succeed. There are secret bonuses. On top of all of this, all of the items have an 'optimal placement location' that gives you even more money.

This game has more narrative than most shameless treasure hunts, and a lot of funny lines, but the focus here is on getting the best prize. Your host comments on your score each time, and you are able to replay as much as you want in-game, with it being interpreted as re-takes of the show.

Love it, think it's great, and I think people will be playing this one for years. I play IF for many reasons: love of stories, love of characters. This game satisfies my itch of 'take/drop/N/E/S/W', which is the same reason I love the original IF game Adventure.

This game takes about 30 minutes to finish the first time but hours to get a good score.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Optimization problem with easy and hard puzzles, November 18, 2019
by Denk
Related reviews: inform

In this game, you are participating in a reality TV show on the Sugarlawn Plantation. Your objective is to earn as much money you can within 30 minutes. You earn money by finding valuables and return with them to the foyer. Even better, if you can find out what the target location is of a valuable and put it there, you will get a bonus. In addition, you get a bonus if you manage to escape from the house. There is also mentioned a secret bonus. Bonuses will be doubled if you do not bring the sack to carry stuff. In other words, if you accept an inventory limit, your bonuses will be doubled. So this is a rare example of a game, where it makes good sense to have an inventory limit, since it makes the game harder but you earn more points.

This game has a lot of original puzzles it seems. The fundamental gameplay is quite similar to Ryan Veeder's "Captain Verdeterre's Plunder", which isn't a bad thing. This game is however bigger and some of the puzzles are harder. In both games you need to optimize your playthrough to earn as much money you can, which is hard, since there isn't time to get all valuables and bonuses. I like both games very much.

This game has a lot of humor in it, and it is very well implemented. Within the two hour limit I kept increasing my score, and I feel quite addicted. I hope there will be an online high score list at some point, which is the case for "Captain Verdeterre's Plunder". Such competition would give the player an incentive to keep improving. As it is now, you are mainly playing against yourself, which is also fun but could be even more fun with a high score list. Anyway, this is a very fun game I highly recommend.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A new twist on the traditional treasure hunt game, November 17, 2019

This has probably the best blurb in IFComp 2019; I read it and I just had to find out what that was all about. What it’s about is a reality show in which you run through a historic Louisiana mansion in a chicken suit trying to grab historical antiques for big cash prizes. You’ve got thirty minutes to find as many as you can, and you’ll get a bonus if you can not just collect them, but leave them in the appropriate locations. The unique setting and focus on history puts this several cuts about the traditional IF treasure hunt it resembles. The game doesn’t just want to give you a bunch of valuable stuff to snatch – you actually have to engage with the purpose and background of the items to figure out where they go, and sometimes using one properly can give you hints towards another.

I made $10104 on my first runthrough – not that hard, as many of the treasures are in plain sight. I didn’t figure out how to get any of the locked-away ones, though, and I only figured out the right location for three. This is a game that demands multiple playthroughs to figure out everything and optimize your path – the fact that knowledge from previous playthrough is required is cleverly justified in-game as you being offered the chance to do multiple takes. I'm not mathematically inclined enough to tackle the problem of complete optimization, but I've seen a lot of other people playing and enjoying the game on this level.

I didn’t find any bugs at all, although I did mostly just run around and grab things, so I’m not sure how it holds up to playing around more with the items. Overall, a lot of fun.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Treasure hunt with a stiff timer, October 11, 2019
by hsgerard (Portland)

Here’s a classic run-around-and-grab-stuff treasure hunt in a mansion, although Spivey elegantly bypasses any questions of the ethics of stealing someone’s stuff by framing the entire game as reality television, complete with a host providing color commentary on Louisianan architecture.

The game has a lot of lock and key puzzles, some that require the use of a good-old pen and paper, as well as an interesting mechanic of treasures being worth twice as much if placed in the room they belong. I think this does a pretty good job of adding an additional layer of gameplay – it’s easy to drop off the loot in the room as you run around completing other puzzles.

This frame story also includes the additional caveat of a thirty minute timer, which gives the whole game a sort of Hollywood Hijinxs meets Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder feel. This I was less jazzed about. Building a parser game around replayability is tricky: too short and it isn’t worth replaying, too long and replaying seems arduous. Sugarlawn hits right at the “almost too long” mark. Once I finished the game for the first time I immediately started again, but after realizing I hadn’t noted treasure locations the first time it felt more like a chore.

If you haven’t played Sugarlawn yet, I highly recommend it, with this advice – take detailed notes the first time.

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