Rovarsson's TALP Thread 2022

Without any intention of doing anything like full analytical reviews, I made a little space here to let people know which TALP games I played and what my general impressions were.

I’m starting with the downloadable games. Not for ideological reasons, just temporarily intermittent internet access. I’ll try to play the web-only games later, when and if Zap the God of IT grants me back an uninterrupted connection.

9 Likes

Grandma’s UFO

As I have written elsewhere, the introduction of Grandma’s UFO nearly knocked me off my chair laughing. Such an absurd premise delivered in such a deadpan matter-of-factly tone!

The actual game almost feels as an addendum to that first punchline. It keeps a straight face while recounting an incredible adventure, but understandably it never attains that first impact again.

There is one easy and short chain of puzzles. ADRIFT’s mapping feature is helpful in the TALP objective. Strong writing.

11 Likes

Lonely Troll

An important basic staple of IF puzzles is the stepwise fetch quest. This game exemplifies it. Good structure.

Lovely ASCII art, friendly atmosphere, gentle guidance.

Let’s hope that was a tooth-fairy I helped with her wand. This is a very sweet game…

12 Likes

Espiritu Roboto

A small and charming puzzler with roughly sketched but very likeable characters.

I particularly enjoyed the in-game rationale for the skewered English the parser forces the player to use.

9 Likes

Carpathian Vampire

A little castle crawl with a nice variety of puzzles.

A well described setting for a compact vampire story.

9 Likes

Wizard’s Club

What an adorable little adventure!

I had fun!

But I was also a bit scared that the pirates would jump at me.

5 Likes

Kobold in search for Family

I liked the setup. The little kobold is a very sympathetic PC.

The two-word parser complicates things instead of making them easier. (example: DROP means different things depending on circumstances. PUT PLANK ON/OVER [x] would have been a lot more intuitive..) A few more synonyms for verbs and nouns would also make for smoother playing.

I was glad to get the little kobold home, and I thought getting past the crowd was a clever puzzle.

5 Likes

Barry Basic and the Speed Daemon

Wow! This game drew me in deeper than expected.

A flimsy story where you enter a video game serves as background for an engaging and challenging puzzle romp.

There are actually three games layered on top of each other (quite literally), one for each of the PCs. These supposedly represent novice-student-expert levels of difficulty. The only serious hiccup I had was in the student level. (The sleeping bear.) Turns out I was way overthinking things.

An enjoyable and well-crafted adventure game. I’ll play the other Barry Basics for sure!

8 Likes

Glad you enjoyed! :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

Dessert Island

This is quite addictive… (Which apparently is a good thing in the context of computer games…)

Underneath its lovely casual appearance (love the map!) is an intricate language/spell-forming mechanic.

I haven’t figured everything out yet but I will return to Dessert Island.

5 Likes