Latinorum
by Roberto Ceccarelli
The salient features of this game are “copyright © 1985,2026”, “A Commodore 64 retro adventure”, and, from the author’s notes, “Playing “Latinorum” took me back to my high school days, the setting for the story, which was inspired by real events (later reworked in the game).”
Either you want to play this game, or you don’t.
I enjoyed it! It’s exactly what it says on the tin: a very limited custom parser game set in the author’s high school. There are a billion modern conveniences that it doesn’t have, but it was designed to its own limitations, so it still works. The majority of the descriptions take up exactly one ‘screen’ of text, which somehow felt satisfying; none of the puzzles felt like I was groping for the right verb. Well, OK, one puzzle did: at one point, there’s a latched door, and you’re told you could unlock it with something thin and flexible. ‘Aha!’ I thought; ‘this is what the >INSERT verb is for!’ But no: you just type >OPEN DOOR when you’re holding the correct thing.
Did the author have something to say? “Hey, remember 1985?”
Did I have something to do? Browse someone else’s memories of not liking Latin but knowing an awful lot of it. And solve some puzzles.