Moving South to “His Majesty’s Royal Space Navy Service Handbook” by Austin Auclair, 2nd place winner of Seed comp 2023. I had never heard of this game before, which is one of the cool things about this Great Play Marathon.
This game reminded me of a lot of early TADS games, with the obsessive searching in, behind, and under everything in sight to find eight (or nine) hidden chapter of the service manual which Sheryl is expected to assemble before leaving work on a Friday night. I say that in the kindest way. The implementation is so solid that it never gets tiring searching everything so thoroughly. Throughout this game, I don’t think I ever ran into a non-customized response. The verbs are handled nicely also. The available actions are very carefully defined, and then progressively removed from the word bank as the player finds the hidden documents which required their use. I only found one verb which wasn’t defined on this list, a real Easter Egg, but not a difficult one for players steeped in the history of 70s interactive fiction.
The actual text of the titular Service Handbook is left largely to the player’s imagination, however every other object in this game is described in ways that build setting and character; The PC is Sheryl, a mid-level supervisor in a autocratic bureaucracy (or is it a bureaucratic autocracy?) with a cult-like devotion to their dear leader Smurg IV. Sheryl is only referred to by her name in third person throughout the story. I assumed Sheryl is a female, but suppose it doesn’t matter. It was an unusual and distancing perspective compared to the typical first or second person view which is more common in IF.
Collecting all eight (or nine) book chapters is a challenge, but one I completed without consulting the hints. Took me a little short of two hours to complete, slowed down somewhat by problems I encountered with online play through my Chrome browser. Desktop play might be faster. The ending was clever and well written.