(Actually, @Pacian had three formal updates today, but I’ll bracket his two subsequent ones together)
I’m liking this cast of characters, though of course the fairy themself is the best one (just ask them). I’ll note that my fellow judges seem to think we’ll be nursing a crush on Lind, but I’m not sure his infatuation is mutual, we might just by fluttering our eyelashes as we flutter by because we can’t let a good prophecy hang about unfulfilled.
The scribbled picture of the Sanctum is also helping me get a better grounding on where our challenger is headed; I see the crooked desk as well as a chest, an altar with a sort of focusing stand for a mirror or lens in front of it, and – a dunce cap, maybe? That cone is stymying me, but between the visuals and the progression of engineering tasks outlined in the subsequent chart, there’s plenty of fodder here for an escalating series of challenges, so long as those noisome goblins give us enough time to putter about (hopefully Pacian isn’t planning on relying too heavily on eau du orc for the flavoring!)
We’re starting to get some gameplay hints in the excerpts, too:
So those noises seem like they might function as instructions to the stranger, with successful results sometimes turning on what the stranger’s carrying? But in addition to figuring out what the beeping means, the player also seems like they might have to create a running translation for ordinary-English words like “dingus” and “doojigger”, which might be the harder task (at least if a dinglehopper shows up, we’ll know it’s a fork) – and with the fairy, the stranger, and Trala and Lind all assigned to different behavior as things progress, there are plenty of ingredients here for an out-of-control farce!
Meanwhile, on the Iron ChIF’s side of Keyboard Stadium:
This is a masterful stroke, because in the back of my mind I’ve considering whether one reason the tentative-translation mechanic I mentioned before hasn’t shown up in previous parser games involving language is that typing TRANSLATE FNARGLESZHARFCK AS DOOR would drive the typo-prone to distraction; leveraging one of Dialog’s most powerful built-in assets to keep the opened-up gameplay space manageable for the player is a lovely bit of design (assuming, of course, that it winds up working).
These tablet examples also make some of @Draconis’s earlier fiddling clearer – the player will know which words came from which objects, so that inscription-assigning macro helps set all that up elegantly (this seems like a rough analogue to how relations work in Inform, I would now say if I had the slightest idea about how relations work in Inform).
The glimpses and aromas we’re getting of both chef’s dishes are making my mouth water – but there’s a lot of cooking left until we get our meals, and plenty of time for the unexpected to creep into these well-laid plans!