Meet the timesheet by Garrulus (aka Jay)
In case you couldn’t tell by my jaded attitude towards a lot of things, or my inability to comprehend complex writing, or the fact that I keep posting these in the middle of the work day: I’m severely burnt out at work. IFComp isn’t really helping me be motivated to do a knock out job at work, but spending significant parts of the day playing games and writing about them gives me the illusion of control over my time and is making my life more enjoyable. We do what we can to get by/this forum thread might be a cry for help. It feels particularly ironic to play Meet the Timesheet when I should be reviewing PRs or telling Claude to do stuff. It’s like I can actually sense my PM is sniffing me out to ask for proof of my work (jk she is too underwater to care thanks AI). Side note: Does anyone know the best way to prompt Claude when you have no fucks left to give? I’m stuck on that bit and struggling to figure it out. Maybe I’ll check out the walkthrough.
Ok, but the game:
It is cool that there are two modes to choose from. I played on easy mode. I have nothing to prove. It was nice to have a relaxed environment to understand the nonsensical, never-ending office space. There is an in-game hint system and some generous tips upon death with an ability to undo and try again that enabled a mostly smooth experience of creative problem solving without letting things get too frustrating. It was also pretty flexible to input, and there were some surprising outcomes for verbs I didn’t expect to have anything special. I did in fact try the winning move of Demonstration at one point and got a much more appropriate response! It’s probably one of my more positive experiences with a parser game so far. I suspect playing on easy might be boring for the parser enthusiasts. I think I missed out on some game secrets or needing to do certain things to win. I never did make any use of those pins or chips, probably because I didn’t need to try very hard to evade my hunter. In the end, completing the game successfully felt inconsequential. But…I suppose that is how it is when you fill out a timesheet. I still had fun.
Thanks to other reviewers who called out the walkthrough, which I probably like better than the game itself. I wouldn’t have needed it because the in-game hint system was sufficient, and unfortunately it probably isn’t screenreader accessible (though idk maybe those are getting better at reading scanned handwritten text?) It’s basically a little art book based on the game and it reminds me of tumblr-era Post Secret. It is super cool and I’m glad to have opened it. Can we all do this for our games? (ok ok I know we don’t all have the time). If nothing else, check out page 28. It’s a gut puncher of a page.