Fragrant blooms and flowers to sniff. Fresh green leaves to nibble. An abundance of IF to lick!
Most of Spring Thing will have to wait until next week, we’re going to France for Easter vacation.
But I couldn’t resist this one succulent little sprout:
A Quiet Scurry (Moss & Quill Studios)
An ittybitty mouse goes about its nightly routine. There are tasks to do and dangers to avoid, a belly to fill and sweet rest to seek.
A delightful little slice-of-life, if you keep in mind that each thin slice of this mouse’s life could be its last. I’m impressed at how well this game succeeded in communicating the immediacy of the mouse protagonist’s needs and impulses. Thirst is. Fleeing must. For a short while, I very much enjoyed inhabiting the fluffy fur of this cute and brave mouse.
The Universal Robot (Assembled by Hex) (Agnieszka Trzaska @agat)
The first few exploratory clicks in the starting room of this game already had me filled with a mixture of emotions. There’s a burning satire of capitalist hyperefficiency, resource-draining profit-hungry shortsightedness, and subsidy-guzzling greenwashing scams which made me angry. All this was presented in a matter-of-factly deadpan tone which I found hilarious.
The satirical tone subsides somewhat once the door opens and the rest of the map becomes available, but it reverberates in the mind of the player, colouring the examination of many objects and events throughout the game.
The writing is sharp and witty, without becoming a barrage of puns and jokes which brings down many satirical/comedic games. Several times, a clever turn of phrase or an unexpected event had me giggling, but the game never took its focus off the puzzles and end-goal to indulge in mere silliness. (Which is not to say that there is no silliness…)
The world-model with its movement around the station, interaction with machines, and handling of portable objects worked consistently, with all changes refelcted in the text on repeated examination. My one point of friction was in the handling of the inventory. The game generally works with USE [item]. This gave no problems at all with objects in the room descriptions (there are nifty cogwheel icons!), but I was a bit confused at first at how to use one inventory item on another item also in my inventory. This didn’t feel so intuitive, but maybe that’s just me.
A very enjoyable puzzle-clicker in Agnieszka’s recognisable and appreciated style. I had a lot of fun going back and finding some alternative endings. There are twelve of them for the most completionist among us. I settled for four, of which two had me grinning ear-to-ear: training the robot on my own drunk brain, and putting the training helmet on the secretary bird…
Fun! (Be sure to check out the Gizmo-ring around the resource planet!)
This started off great, but it soon sank into a bog. Although the game has the word “plot” in its title, there was none whatsoever I could discern.
What was there was a repetitive series of locations thrown together in a wholly inconsistent world, with the same few tactical choices that I never figured out. There is probably a strategy for when to use which option, but I wasn’t engaged enough to bite down.
At first, I was excited at the pleasantly gloomy descriptions and the dark atmosphere. After about ten turns however, I felt as if I was being pummeled with globs of a Lovecrovianese thesaurus which had been thoroughly blendered into a porridge of monotonous randomness.
So, good attempt at atmosphere, but not enjoyable as a game to me.