Starbreakers by E. Joyce. Co-written by N. Cormier. (Twine)
Spoilery Review
This was much more “game-forward” that the first two I played for the comp; at first it seems like a series of puzzles with a very thin frame story; gradually we learn that we’re an AI breaking out of a lab into the internet.
One thing that really stands out about this work is that it’s presenting types of puzzles and a variety that I don’t see as often in the comp, the sort of thing you might find in a newsstand puzzle book: A crossword, a word-search, a riddle, a dialogue puzzle, a few “balance the scale” puzzles, even a maze and the Towers of Hanoi. (Kudos to the authors on using that last one as a punchline.) They are particularly impressive for their implementation and presentation in Twine. Some of these puzzles are timed.
Some of them I liked a lot more than others - I’m particularly terrible at the “balance” puzzles and wasn’t in the mood to work things out on paper. Fortunately the authors have included a discoverable and comprehensive contextual hint system, allowing me to breeze through puzzles I find particularly frustrating and see the game through to its end within the time limit. Great work on this.
The puzzles are so central and concrete that I found myself not paying much attention to the frame story; I sort of mentally dismissed it as “hand-wavy.” There’s a set of characters (other AIs) that you’re competing against and it’s clear that some effort put into giving them distinct personalities, but I didn’t end up caring about them much. On reflection, this might be because I didn’t interact with them. That is, my character interacts with them in the story, but as a player my interactions were very puzzle-centric so I didn’t think about the characters as much.
Overall this feels like a learning exercise polished up and submitted to the comp; and in fact it is - the authors admit this in their about text. But it’s a robust learning exercise, and it’s very polished, and I had some fun with it. Thanks Joyce & Cormier!