- Poetic Justice [SeedComp]
(Onno Brouwer’s game is based on my own little seed. I had no pre-formed idea about what sort of game would grow from it. I think Onno Brouwer has found a great continuation.)
You stand before a court of renowned dead poets, accused of intellectual thievery and lack of originality. An honest and sincere poet yourself, convinced of the worth of your work, you must refute their objections.
The writing in Poetic Justice is not itself poetic. It’s more practical and to the point, with short accounts of the arguments, divided in condensed paragraphs. This is for the better, I think. One would not want to encroach upon the domain of the greatest poets ever, for one, and secondly, the contrast of matter-of-fact writing about quarreling poets is funny.
The central puzzle of the game also stands in contrast to the theme of poetry. Your method of proving your point to the judges consists of getting them to realise they don’t have the last say on what good poetry is themselves by leading them to disagree with on another. At its core this is a logic puzzle where you need to figure out a sequence of questioning and responding so that each judge finds fault with another judge’s “improvement” of a poem you lay before them.
As before, I liked this contrast. A logic-sequence problem in the framework of a dispute about poetry.
Finally, I loved the surprise unveiling of who I actually was. The identity of the protagonist is kept in the dark during most of the proceedings, until it is time to present some of your own work. And then…
I enjoyed this a lot.