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.
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.
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.
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!