Who Iced Mayor McFreeze? (Damon L. Wakes)
Hey, it’s a sequel to last year’s ‘Who Shot Gum E. Bear’! Last year, I thought the game was delightfully off-beat, but that it suffered a tonal shift in the final puzzle, from being a ridiculous setup that took itself seriously, to a ridiculous setup with a ridiculous conclusion. This year, to my delight, I felt it took itself seriously the whole way through! This game is, essentially, the game I had thought I was playing last year: a hard-boiled detective mystery where all the characters are anthropomorphized candies and sweets.
I am somewhat amused that this is the second game in a row for me (after ‘Ribald Bat Lady Plunder Quest’) where the setting is intentionally ridiculous, with inhabitants who don’t know they’re in a farce. Which makes it funnier!
My favorite example of the world taking itself seriously in a surprising-to-us way is that it’s a vital clue to the mystery is that a candy cigarette has a blueberry flavor on it from the last person who smoked it. One might assume that this is the titular blue Mayor McFreeze, a blue slushie, but if you >TASTE MAYOR (their dead corpse!) you discover that he’s blue raspberry! It’s a great situation where the rules of the world push you to do something unthinkable in a regular setting, because it makes sense to the protagonist.
On the other side of the coin, I was disappointed that you are told several times that “It’s always night in Sugar City”, which would mean logically that (somehow) the scheduled demolition of the taffy factory tomorrow ‘at 9:00 AM’ should never take place. But this never came up, which I felt was a missed opportunity.
Apart from the lovely setting, this is a pretty short puzzle adventure, with (for me) slightly uneven puzzles–several where I felt clever and solved them, others where I needed a hint. All of them made sense in retrospect, which means that a little extra nudging (and implementing actions like ‘untie’) would probably push more people like me into being able to solve everything.
Did the author have something to say? The shortness of the game made it a little lightweight, but I still have to go with a solid ‘yes’ to this question. The worldbuilding was the main gimmick, and was done well, with the mystery being reasonable within the rules of the world.
Did I have something to do? I did indeed have puzzles to solve, some that I appreciated more than others. But more than that, just being able to inhabit the world itself for a bit was delightful.
Transcript: iced.txt - Google Drive
EDIT: forgot to blur the spoiler! Ack! Sorry.