My fourth game is Starry Seeksorrow, by Caleb Wilson.
This was a compact little adventure involving looking up the properties of magical flowers and then using that knowledge to solve some puzzles. The puzzles were straightforward, you just had to take the time to understand what was happening.
In the Clash Of The Type-Ins podcast, Caleb mentions wanting to make a game where you have to consult topics in a book, having felt that that had gone out of fashion. The genre and interaction style reminded me a lot of my own Sub Rosa. In both games you consult topics in books, learn a few secrets in the backstory, and solve puzzles based on the magical properties of plants. In Starry Seeksorrow, if you learn enough about the backstory you can work out an additional optional action to help save the day even more.
I was left with one question at the end: was it possible to destroy the Starry Seeksorrow flower? If it was, I couldn’t work out how. I could only move it from the immediate area. If there’s something more I could have done, let me know and I’ll give it a try…
Starry Seeksorrow was made for the second Shufflecomps, which is a great recurring competition. This iteration of the competition wasn’t strictly ranked, but as the game came in the top 30%, it was “commended”. In recent Shufflecomps, ranking has been based on the average of “use of songs” and “overall goodness”. As it happened, the last game I played, Messages From The Universe Graveyard, was also made for a later Shufflecomp but scored middling for use of songs and so despite it having the highest overall goodness, it failed to win the competition and came 4th. Obviously, people playing years later will care more about whether the game is actually good. But for what it’s worth, I listened to The Violet Hour by Dolls Come To Life, and I think Starry Seeksorrow would score high on “use of songs”, with the setting clearly inspired by both the song lyrics and the band’s name itself.
Overall, I recommend the game to anyone who likes the rich genre of magic learning text adventures.