PB Parjeter's IF Comp Reviews

[pbparjeter]

Where Nothing Is Ever Named by Viktor @Sobol

This is interesting. It’s a game loosely based on a chapter (or a few paragraphs) of Alice In Wonderland’s sequel, Through the Looking Glass.

The game asks you to interact with two unnamed things. You need to use them in a certain way. In some ways, it’s experimental, but it also uses a pretty traditional ‘interact with objects’ system.

It’s like a smaller and easier version of The Gostak, except it removes labels from things instead of applying labels based on a made-up language. Only one reviewer has compared the two games so far (@DeusIrae), but it’s a very close point of comparison, and I expect future reviewers who haven’t read either of our posts will also draw a comparison.

It’s a short game. You can win it in two turns. So, how hard is it to solve? It depends on the mindset you come in with. Here’s how I approached it.

Very, very heavy spoilers

I knew right away that the small thing was a cat. It will eventually meow no matter what you do.

I also remembered that “Through the Looking Glass” starts and ends with a cat, so I brought that assumption with me, even though this doesn’t actually have anything to do with the chapter this game is based on.

However, my next assumption was that the other thing was a larger cat. “Snorting” and “brown” wasn’t enough for me to make the assumption that it was a horse, and while I knew it was larger and too heavy to lift, I never guessed that I should sit on it — the key to winning the game. I tried a handful of other verbs though.

In hindsight I feel silly for being fixated on my large-cat-or-similarly-sized-animal assumption, and I don’t think most people will make the same mistake.

There is a walkthrough. I also read the book chapter alongside the game, but I would advise against that. The general assumptions anyone will make are correct, and it’s the specifics that make up the puzzle. The specifics in the actual chapter do not quite match the specifics in the game.

There are some custom responses. Given how minimal this game is, I expected a few more custom responses (you’ll get “Incomprehensible” a lot) but there’s nothing wrong with what’s there. There is also some light wordplay and structural play at times.

On that note, I’d strongly recommend downloading this game rather than playing it online in Parchment. The game rejects commands like save, restart and — something that Parchment players will likely miss — quit. You might not realize it at first. It’s a good idea and appropriately chilling at times.

[pbparjeter]

Turn Right by Dee Cooke (@dee_cooke)

This game was pretty good but didn’t really make a good first impression. Despite being advertised as fifteen minutes long, it immediately hit me with two arguably short pages of instructions and a complicated-at-first-glance diagram.

@DemonApologist mentioned they liked the diagram as a bit of dry humor. I’m not sure whether the author intended it that way or not, despite the game’s wry tone.

Anyway, I kept at it — I remember liking one of Dee Cooke’s “Barry Basic” games — and found out that “Turn Right” is simple as it advertises.

As far as I can tell, you really can only try to TURN RIGHT to advance the plot. Any other actions are there so the parser can reject you. It’s a waiting game. I think you need to try to turn right around 30 times to finish. I also tried to TURN LEFT, GET OUT, and WAIT several times, so it took a bit longer.

I wasn’t sure if the game would actually end, so I was relieved when it did, which I guess was the author’s intention.

There are a few things that happen that imply progress – like when you’re noticed by the supermarket manager for waiting too long — that gave me confidence the game would end.

Ultimately, I would have liked more ways to break the system. Very few games try to be “waiting games” like this, so it’s largely uncharted territory.

I mentioned in my review of “Lime Ergot,” which is also deliberately repetitious, that you can lose the game in a few satisfying ways.

Then again, allowing for subversive ways to reach an ending might have undermined the intentional frustration of “Turn Right,” no matter how much I wanted to get out of the car and go to the bus stop. So maybe alternate endings are not appropriate here. I don’t know. This game is what it is.

[dee_cooke]

Many thanks for your review!

[pbparjeter]

For sure, and best of luck in the comp! (To you and everyone else I’ll review.)

[pbparjeter]

Miss Gosling’s Last Case by Daniel Stelzer (@Draconis )

This was most my anticipated game of IF Comp, mostly because I’m convinced that it’s connected to Daniel Stelzer’s discovery of a murder mystery that says “do not break this seal”, a pseudonymous Twine entry titled “Uninteractive Fiction” that tells you not to play it, and the big IF Comp mystery.

I’m no further ahead on any of that, but I did enjoy “Miss Gosling.”

Here, you’re an aging private investigator, seemingly styled after Miss Marple. As the plot synopsis suggests, you’re dead, and you need to solve your own murder. Because you’re a ghost, you can’t physically interact with things. Instead, your dog Watson can handle some objects on your behalf if it’s plausible for him to do so.

Watson...

The dog is clearly named Watson in reference to Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick. Interestingly, Dr. Watson is usually the narrator of the Holmes stories, whereas Ms. Gosling is generally the third-person limited narrator in this game. The game’s mechanics convey the idea of “sidekick” here.

Limited Possibilities and Streamlined Actions

Because you’re generally instructing Watson what to do, the possible actions that you can perform are limited. This cuts down on the number of things you need to think about. For example, a dog can definitely pick up things with its mouth, can possibly pull a chain or turn on a stove, but definitely cannot pick locks.

The game also lampshades many of Watson’s more unlikely abilities in a very funny way — especially the fact that Miss Gosling had the foresight to teach the dog compass directions and how to take inventory.

The game also streamlines things in another important way. It often describes rooms and objects through Miss Gosling’s personal thoughts, feelings, and memories. For example, in the reception room:

You designed this room specifically for uninvited guests. Back when the front door was at the west end of the house, they’d have to wait awkwardly outside until you had the sitting room or dining room in order. Now, there’s a place to sit and take tea with them at a moment’s notice—and admire the framed case reports on the wall—and that can make witnesses ever so much more willing to open up. [List of exits]…

As a result, the objects you can interact with are very clearly set out. I rarely confused scenery with things that you can interact with. That made me open to trying combinations of things because I knew I probably hadn’t missed any vital place or object.

(On top of that, the fact that you can only handle one object at a time also helps cut down on possibilities. Plus, you can jump between rooms or jump to objects with a keyword. There is a lot of streamlining in this game.)

Approachable With Intuitive Puzzles

In all, it’s a very approachable game with intuitive puzzles. It also has Invisiclue-style hints, which are good for players like me who can’t usually solve everything. I’ll collapse my comments on puzzles here.

Spoilers

One puzzle was a bit difficult. After moving a flashlight to a water logged room with a dumb-waiter, I had to move to the next room. So far so good.

However, I assumed I had to somehow hold the door open while holding the flashlight — possibly by propping the door open.

Instead, the game abruptly changes gears and requires you to navigate the next dark room by smelling based on a clue foreshadowed much earlier. Finally, it requires you to exit the dark room based on sounds that you need to set up. As always, not everyone a lot of difficulty with this, but I did.

On the flip side, there was a color-blindness puzzle that was over a bit too quickly. The game told me which roses to take as soon as I had looked through both tinted bottles. However, I hadn’t even started to work out the black-and-white light deductions that I expected I would have to do.

I expect “Miss Gosling” will do well in the comp. It’s innovative but has enough of a traditional structure and popular genre trappings to have broad appeal. The light humor is also very endearing.

It has link-based and parser-based play options, which should have further broad appeal. I hope it’s not overlooked because it’s listed under If Comp’s “other” category.

Ghost Gimmicks

One more thing. What Heart Heard Of, Ghost Guessed by Amanda Walker @AmandaB similarly lets you play as a ghost that can’t handle with physical in the usual sense. I like the idea, but I found it little confusing.

I don’t know how common the ghost gimmick is across the entire IF catalogue. @Mathbrush also mentioned Erstwhile. Based on reviews, I think you need to read people’s minds. I don’t know if prevents you from handling objects. In fact, it’s choice based, so maybe the authors never implemented an object system in the first place.

On the face of it, I think “Miss Gosling’s” secondary-character-as-proxy approach is the most straightforward way of approaching ghostly limitations that I can think of. However, it does water down the limitation a little since the lost abilities are so replaced in such a direct way, for better or for worse.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

Thank you very much for the review! I’m glad you enjoyed the game!

[pbparjeter]

Sure! By the way, I happened across your comments on making the puzzles non-obvious based on the available verbs. Hopefully I was on-base in my explanation here.

[pbparjeter]

Birding in Pope Lick Park by Eric Lathrop

This is a pretty eye-catching game that has a really nice visual design.

The first thing I noticed is that it clearly uses icons to differentiate observable things, in-game locations, and external websites. This approach goes a long way in making the game navigable.

It feels more like navigating a website than a real place, but it’s helpful anyway — navigation is something I often have trouble with in Twine games.

Despite a good basic design, there’s also a lot content on-screen at any given time. You have the core story text, photographs of each location, and non-toggleable image descriptions for accessibility. So it can feel like information overload at times.

---

How much you enjoy the game probably depends on how much you enjoy collecting things in games. It’s not really my thing. (Outside of IF, I thought that the highly-praised Alba: A Wildlife Adventure was very overrated, and I’ve never tried to remotely complete a Pokedex in Pokemon. Collecting and cataloguing is something I’m prone to in real life, and I don’t want to do it in games.)

So, in the end, I didn’t try to see every single bird in Pope Lick Park, and I don’t know if there’s a reward for completing your list of birds or any secrets to find. That’s for someone else to find out.

As for length: the story description says it’s half an hour long, but you can spend as little or as much time in the game as you like. To end the story, you just need to go back to your car.

Similar to “Turn Right,” this seems to be based on a real life experience. Unlike “Turn Right,” “Birding” presents things as they are without much criticism or commentary, and the author describes a lot of things that you might notice incidentally in a walk through the park. However, the author of “Birding” mentions a storywriting workshop in the credits, so maybe there is more fiction here than I’m giving credit for.

[pbparjeter]

Why Pout? by Andrew Shultz

I beta tested Why Pout? in an almost-finished state. If I’ve written anything that no longer applies to the final version, @aschultz, let me know and I’ll edit it.

Like a good portion of of Andrew Schultz’s catalogue, this is a wordplay game. Here, you’re manipulating homophones to transform objects.

Decent Plot Beats

I think I’ve played four of Andrew’s games over the last decade, most recently Tours Roust Torus in 2022. I get the sense that he constructed the world for Why Pout? a little more thoroughly than he did for his other games.

Why Pout? relies a bit on fantasy tropes, but never to the point of cliché, and it has some decent plot beats built around identity and comradery.

I don’t agree with BJ Best’s criticism that the gameplay suffers from ludonarrative dissonance simply because the puzzles use arbitary objects.

Looking to other games for precedent … one title that set a high standard in this regard is Counterfeit Monkey, which touched on themes of separation and unity both in its puzzle design and its plot/characters. It also featured an endless variety of shapeshiftable objects that were often out of place or inappropriate, sometimes to humorous effect.

Why Pout? doesn’t attempt anything as ambitious as Counterfeit Monkey. Still, I think that puzzles, wordplay-based or not, necessarily provide enough of a basis for any sort of plot about overcoming challenges. The specifics don’t always matter.

(I also think that no matter how well a wordplay game connects story and gameplay, it’s always going to feel a bit weird to play. That’s not a bad thing.)

Challenging Wordplay Puzzles

I also wanted to comment on difficulty. After reading a few other reviews, I think I can safely say that Why Pout? is a challenging game at times.

Most puzzles are mandatory. Critically, BJ Best had trouble with some of the same homophones that I did, particularly MENSCH ELF and MANNA CURB. (@DeusIrae also had trouble with the second one. According to @Tabitha it’s not mandatory, though? I thought it was.)

There were a few other ones I had trouble with. Part of the problem might be this: I believe Andrew was going for perfect or near-perfect homophones. I think that matches that don’t sound so perfect might be more intuitive. I think players would be more likely to try commonplace words even if those words are not perfect homophones — though I can’t prove it.

To be clear: even though I found the game hard, it wasn’t always hard. I got through a good chunk of the middle game without hints, and I enjoyed the parts I did solve on my own.

[alyshkalia (Tabitha (ey/em or they/them))]

@pbparjeter

According to @Tabitha it’s not mandatory, though?

Ah, I meant that after you get “manna curb” and manna goes into your inventory, you don’t have to solve it as well—I kept trying things like “man, uh”, but of course that was just my brain being stuck on the wrong track.