The Way Home by Kenneth Pedersen
Style: Parser
Played: 6/7/24
Playtime: 15min, lost, 1.25hrs later, won
The Way Home is an ADRIFT game. For a Linux user, ADRIFT games are … suboptimal. As far as I can tell, the only way to play is to run Frankendrift after installing MS .NET (ptoo ptoo). Which, because I am a hero of BASHian proportions, I did. Frankendrift needs some love it turns out. While it starts zippy enough, over not very much time, it slows to a drag, eventually every command prompting you “app not responding, end or wait?” At which point, your only practical option is to wait it out, save game, kill app, restart, and load game. Unworkable? No. Teeth grate annoying? Oh yeah.
This is not the game’s fault by any means, but inevitably it can’t help but negatively color the experience. I will say I did appreciate the crude but effective-enough mapping window. Thanks to sometimes spotty direction descriptions it was very useful.
The game itself is part 2 of a fantasy adventure, though as these things typically go, is more puzzle than swashbuckling. Also very much NOT required to play part 1. It stands on its own with two meaty puzzles composed of subordinate mini-puzzles. Very classic vibe in that way. I understand it to be an update of a Commodore 64 game? Wow, cool! I can very much see this being of that time and place. Descriptions are spare, from a time when storage was not cheaper than water. Just enough to set the stage and highlight important items, with bare minimum chrome to color things. Gameplay is very much classic parser, with a limited but set-complete vocabulary. Also very classic in that synonyms are in short supply - pretty much everywhere but most egregiously where “VOCAB” in all caps is recognized but “vocab” is not.
I am happy to report that the hint system is fully functional, helpful, and context aware. I needed it twice, once because I was convinced I needed to build a sled instead of … somehow… ride a ladder, and a second time because locksmith was not a synonym for keymaster I wouldn’t say either of those were infuriating, but neither were they satisfying once spoiled. I will also say that while I did solve another puzzle it felt very much like an “if all you have is a rat, all problems look like cheese” situation. There are some death fails, but thankfully they occur early enough in the proceedings that a restart isn’t TOO onerous.
So yeah, very faithful old school recreation, of a time when IF technology was more fussy, puzzles more streamlined and ideosyncratic, and prose less adorned. I didn’t dislike the experience, but it is hard to justify the interpreter struggle to my fellow linux users. For non-linux it is a nice dose of old school Adventure, still cruel but less than most, good for a relatively tight nostalgia shot.