The Semantagician’s Assistant
Lance Nathan
It took me ENTIRELY TOO LONG to figure out what on earth was going on with this game, and I think on balance I’m going to have to kind of blame the design on this, though I’m not entirely blameless, as we shall see in a moment. The main problem is that the initial ‘intro’ puzzle has nothing whatsoever to do with the puzzles in the remainder of the game–it’s a different category altogether. And the next problem is that after the initial puzzle, you’re presented with six different devices, and a handful of portable items, and almost none of the combinations of stuff to mess with does anything. However, this problem was compounded for me when I chanced upon one of the very few legitimate combinations… and the ‘it did something’ message was about as long as all of the ‘you can’t’ messages, and I scanned past it without even realizing it was different:
[Major spoiler for the first puzzle of the game!]
>put won through rings
You reach out towards the rings with the won. But as you get close, the air seems to thicken, until you feel like you’re moving your hand through molasses. You’re not going to be able to put the won through the rings.
>put cartoon through rings
You reach out towards the rings with the cartoon. There’s a faint shimmering, and the cartoon blurs as it passes through, until it comes out the other side as a carton, which you take with your other hand.
>put note through rings
You reach out towards the rings with the sticky note. But as you get close, the air seems to thicken, until you feel like you’re moving your hand through molasses. You’re not going to be able to put the sticky note through the rings.
>put photo through rings
You reach out towards the rings with the photo. But as you get close, the air seems to thicken, until you feel like you’re moving your hand through molasses. You’re not going to be able to put the photo through the rings.
…yeah, that one might be on me. I read the first sentence, thought, “Yup, another thing that doesn’t work,” and stopped reading. In my defense, I will say that I had already kind of disengaged with the game at that point, and had looked up some unhelpful hints, and felt about ready to give up altogether.
A few moves later, I read through the hints long enough to where it said I was supposed to <do the second thing I had typed in the above snippet>, went to go look for that item, and it was missing, and suddenly in a flash I finally twigged to the premise of the game.
At that point, it was great! My relationship with the game did a dramatic 180, and I did all the puzzle-y things you want to do in a puzzle-y game: think about the situation, figure out a general plan, find things to experiment with, formulate a more specific plan, mess with things some more, consult the hints a little but not too much, and emerge triumphant on the other side.
The story, such as it was, was kind of disappointing? I’m not sure if it actually promised something I didn’t feel it delivered, or if I just wanted it to promise something it didn’t deliver. And the sardonic rabbit character, who seemed pretty fun at his introduction, kind of lost his personality for me once the game actually started. Neither was the point of the game, of course, but improvements on either front would have been appreciated by this reviewer, at least.
Did the author have anything to say? ‘Here is a platform for some puzzles, and I’m not going to tell you what genre they are.’
Did I have anything to do? Rage against not knowing the genre, and then finally enjoy myself after figuring it out(/being told).
(Also, here’s my full transcript of the game, which may be helpful to the author if they were wondering 'how did it take this guy SO LONG to figure out what was going on?)