We’ve added a Mac version and it works fine on my end but I’m not entirely certain how others might experience it. In case any Mac users are interested. This game has a peculiar genesis, to say the least. 
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I tried but was told I had no application to open it.
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Hopefully someone in the near future who owns a Mac (or a few people with the various Mac chip sets) can download and compile the game source code and send you the resulting binaries.
EDIT: Depending on the state of the current compile, this reply may or may not be useless lol
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Hey, @AmandaB, I noticed that @outgrabe has now added a Mac version just for you. Now you’ve got no excuse not to play it. 
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Unfortunately, I still can’t open it-- mac tells me I have no application.
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You will have to run it inside the Terminal app.
First, you have to change its file attribute to executable. I got it to run by opening Terminal and typing sudo chmod a+x followed by a space, and then (in Finder) dragging the “MoonHouseTechnician (Mac)” file to the terminal window, which will automatically give you the full path of the file, and pressing enter. You will be prompted for your computer password. After that you should be able to run the game by dragging the file to the terminal window again and pressing enter.
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Thanks, and I hope this is useful information to others. But I flatly refuse to do any of this. I’m glad that Tyler is taking steps to make the game easily accessible, and when it is I’ll play it. But I have a hard and fast rule that I don’t jump through hoops to play games. I might make the exception for Counterfeit Monkey 2, but that’s about it.
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Rather than just pluck a number out of the air based on gut feel, I try to judge these games objectively where I give 1 to 5 points for each of a number of categories. I have added a category this year for “Ease of use” as follows:
- 1 point if it’s playable online
- 1 point if there’s a downloadable version
- 1 point if it uses a conventional interpreter
- 1 point if it has clear instructions
- 1 point if it works
Most games get 3 or 4 points for this category, but I haven’t got onto the custom parsers yet. The lowest score was 1 point.
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I certainly hope the lowest score remains one point! It’s going to be hard to judge otherwise.
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I’ve been trying to play The Samurai and the Kappa, but my computer blipped and I forgot to save a game because I always forget to do that, and then I had to go through all the long undressing of long japanese-named garments, and then rewearing them for the second time, and the old school parser is just killing me. I just can’t type ASK WOMAN ABOUT SATSUMAIMO one more time. I hate the word satsumaimo and dread ever needing to type it again. I just misspelled it both times here even after having typed it so many times in the game. I had the bright idea to C&P whole chunks of ask about X. Ask about Y, but that didn’t help because they were too long to paste and I had to keep changing the genders.
Garry, I normally love your games, but I truly wish TAKE OFF CLOTHES worked. And I really wish there was a menu of things to ask about for the logic puzzle. I’m not entirely sure what I would do with all that information in the logic puzzle once I get it. And I spent a ton of time walking around the courtyard trying to see what the numbers on the stones were, and if I hadn’t gone back and read the game’s page, I’d still have no idea. And after futzing with those stones for over an hour, even now that I know what it is, I’m not sure what to do about that in the game world.
So I’m bowing out of this one. If you like old-school games where you have to OPEN POUCH, GET COIN, GIVE COIN (and I know y’all are out there), you’ll love this. But if you have arthritis in your hands you will suffer from the typing.
I hate to leave it on this note, but I just can’t sweat my way through this one. It will not have escaped anyone that this comp has made me very cranky, and I apologize if that has made my tone snippy.
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I just played Yurf before I read your review and I had the same thought. Very whimsical and fun!
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I had Phantom Tollbooth and Alice in Wonderland in my notes for it too. Definitely that kind of schoolish but playful fantasy world where each character is mono-focused on some learning concept like maths, colours, rhymes etc.
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Regarding ‘The Samurai and the Kappa’, are you playing the same game that I wrote? I suspect that you have missed or ignored many of the in-game hints. And there’s plenty of them. If you get desperate, you can always type HINT, but you shouldn’t need to. Just for the benefit of others:
First up, this is not an “old-school” game. Quite the contrary.
If you have the tutorial on (and the instructions strongly recommend that you do), then the game reminds you to do a save when you’ve finished the tutorial. By doing so, you don’t need to redo the tutorial if you restart. You can just restore. If you ignore the advice, well, you can’t blame the game for that.
It does. I just tried it to make sure. A faster sequence is REMOVE ALL.DROP ALL. No Japanese words needed.
To get dressed again, you can GET ALL. WEAR KAMISHIMO. WEAR POUCH. This sequence is required, because you can’t put the kamisimo on over the pouch. If you did, you would never be able to get to the pouch.
You don’t need to. Even if you do, once you’ve asked her once, you don’t need to ask her again. You can ask the villagers about lots of things, but you really only need to ask them about three things. The village elder will tell you what they are. No Japanese words involved. For male characters, the sequence recommended in the instructions, the HELP command and in-game is:
TALK TO MAN (to find out his name)
ASK HIM ABOUT <1st topic>
ASK HIM ABOUT <2nd topic>
ASK HIM ABOUT <3rd topic>
It’s similar for female characters. You can press the up arrow to repeat the previous action and backspace to change the last word. Minimal typing involved.
Did you keep a transcript? If so, send it to me in a PM and I’ll point out all the clues you ignored. (I think I know what they are, because of the things you did not mention, but this is not the place to discuss them.)
This is a big game and the middle part of the game is primarily an information gathering exercise, so you’ll need to keep notes along the way as advised in the instructions and the HELP command. If you choose not to, well, you can’t blame the game for that.
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I haven’t played this particular game, and I want to be clear I’m saying this as a user instead of as a mod—but I’m not sure this is a productive way to respond to reviews. When students aren’t understanding something I’m sure I explained in lecture, the result is that I need to explain it again/better/differently, no matter whether it’s a problem with the students or with the lecture.
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Just trying to help.
EDIT: Maybe I should have said “missed” rather than “ignored”. I didn’t mean to sound rude.
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You can practice solving Nurikabe here. Even if you don’t like the game you might like solving the puzzles themselves 
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That’s one of the web sites I gave in the instructions on the game page. However, I suspect Amanda has missed several clues and is not ready for that just yet.
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Instead of responding to each and every point here:
1.) I’m not a fan of long ASK PERSON ABOUT TOPIC commands, especially when it’s a central feature of a game. I’m just not. I’m never going to like it. I don’t think it’s fun. This is just my opinion! It is not everyone’s opinion. There are plenty of people reading this and thinking, “That’s a dumb opinion.”
2.) I annoy the crap out of myself on a regular basis by forgetting to save games and then suffering for it. In this case, I was playing the online version, where I’m not sure you can save. But I highly recommend you download this game and play it in your interpreter instead of online.
3.) There is lots to love about this game and I’m quite sure I was the wrong player at the wrong time for it. It’s entirely possible that I was just a bad player.
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I’m going to wrap up this review thread by discussing a peculiarity of mine that everyone has certainly noticed. Many players/reviewers (@mathbrush and @DeusIrae come to mind) seem to feel honor-bound to figure out how to play everything and play them through to completion no matter what. This is a nice quality, but I don’t share it. I won’t try hard to play something that requires tech-y gymnastics. And in this, I think I’m a pretty middle-of-the-road player. I doubt many people will, given the amount of games they could play that don’t require work just to get running.
If a game really, really doesn’t work for me (for instance, if it requires too much lawn-mowering of long commands), I will stop playing. I will use a walkthrough if one is provided so I can see the game as the author intended it to be seen, and I encourage everyone to include walkthroughs for their games, both because I think this is common behavior, and because sometimes people just need more help than HINT gives.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be a reviewer because of this. Maybe it’s not fair. Given the amount of games in this comp I had trouble with, I’m definitely considering the perspective that I’m the problem. That said, I do think I reflect a significant proportion of players in this regard, and that it’s a useful perspective for authors to have. But it does seem to cause hurt feelings and I don’t like that. So I’ll be mulling this point before writing any more reviews.
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It’s completely fair.
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