In procrastinating responding to reviews to thank reviewers for their time and thoughtful attention (really, running on the fumes of my morning coffee and waiting for the Tylenol to kick in,) I figured I might also toss in my guess on who’s going to be Best in Show.
Not original either, I’m afraid- but I definitely think ‘Fairest’ is going to be a really strong contender. It’s well implemented, beginner friendly without feeling obnoxious or intrusive in providing tips, and its subject matter is fairly friendly to a broad audience. I think the tipping point for me was that: despite being someone really new to parsers and frankly, a bit intimidated, especially with the learning curve in how to play them- the game was a wonderful experience and introduction to that style of play, and I could very happily recommend it to people who are also similarly new or confused by parsers.
It’s like, baby’s first training wheels, while not making a new player feel condescended to or sheepish about being guided through. Also, it’s fun to play! It made me want to play more of it after initially sitting down, and something being fun to play even for someone who’s not typically in its audience (I usually dislike fairytale re-tellings and fantasy in general) says a lot about the quality of the work. It’s not my usual cup of tea, but it was a lovely treat all the same.
Now, asides from that- I do think there are a couple of names I’ve been seeing float around already in this thread due to innovation or name recognition, and those probably have a solid shot at it too for that. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them took home that particularly shiny ribbon!
EDITED TO ADD: I also want to say that while I’ve usually just shrugged off looking at parsers because I assumed ‘nah, I’m not smart enough to figure out how this works, and anyways, it’ll be a nightmare trying to progress and I always get confused when I try,’ after trying out Fairest and some helpful tips in that thread, it gave me enough confidence to try out other parsers people chatter about on here like Sting.
I didn’t write a review about Sting not because I couldn’t find something nice to say, (I avoid doing reviews where I can’t find at least one thing I loved about the game), but because I find it difficult to write about semi-autobiographical works wherein I can’t rely on some sort of shared personal experience to connect to, since those games feel much more personal than say, critiquing some generic shoot 'em up or something like that.
That being said: it was a very evocative experience that I sat down with for a bit afterwards, the same way I sit down and have to have a little moment to let the end of a really good novel wash over me and linger in the aftermath. I am very grateful that I ran into Fairest, 'cause otherwise I would’ve missed out on experiencing Sting outside of secondhand reviews. So that also definitely contributes to my feelings towards Fairest.
The damn sailing portion still tripped me up massively, but I don’t think I was alone in that, haha! And also, it did fit the piece, especially after reading through comments from the author about how he wasn’t the best sailor back then, which did make me giggle a little.