Next I went searching for a very specific type of game, a light, traditional parser game. After filtering for parser games, skimming past games that had extensive content warnings or promised extensive reliance on AI, or games I’d already played, there wasn’t much left. “The Semantagician’s Assistant” by Lance Nathan made the cut.
Semantagician is a wordplay game, in the style of Emily Short’s “Counterfeit Monkey”, but much more constrained. In fact, this is essentially a one room escape game that could be completed in about an hour. Nothing wrong with that. It will be many years (if ever) before we see another game as ambitious, massive, and polished as Counterfeit Monkey. As a one room game, Semantagician certainly holds its own.
After a short opening scene, the PC finds themselves in the Semantagician’s Dressing Room, surrounded by all sorts of magical props and a talking rabbit who occaisionally gives hints. The introduction of so many magical items, all at once, was a bit overwhelming, and after giving everything a once-over with “examine”, I found myself a little lost. Once I learned the “use” verb, my path forward became a little more clear. The “use” verb gives additional details about the magical equipment (most helpfully, the verbs that can be used with each item) which is not always evident from “examine” alone. But there were still a lot of things to try.
Like the devices in “Counterfeit Monkey”, each magical tool operates on a word, not on an object. A two syllable word like “railroad” could be split into a “rail” and a “road”. Letters can be cut off, added, switched in sequence, or operated upon in other ways to generate the particular objects which are needed to escape the room.
Compensating for the fact that there are so many new operations introduced all at once, is the feature that there are just a few takable objects in the game world to operate on (initially) and also that most of the transmutations that are allowed, are necessary to advance the story.. If a transmutation works at all, the player can feel pretty confident they are moving in the right direction. I’m sure there are some hidden Easter Eggs here, but for the most part the game falls short of fully creating the illusion that the player could create absolutely anything with their semantamagic powers.
I can’t help to keep comparing this to “Counterfeit Monkey”, but also it is unfair for me to do so. It would be like comparing a short moment of close up street magic to a two hour Las Vegas show. “The Semantagician’s Assistant” stands on it’s own. It has an entertainingly light tone, a working parser, a series of thoughtfully designed word puzzles, and an NPC rabbit imbued with a real personality. Moreover, this game was just what I was looking for when I found it.