Zozzled
A Spirited Game by Steph Cherrywell
This is a solid, mostly well-polished game with lovely humour and great puzzles. Not mind-blowing, just very good. It took me just under two hours to finish, though a lot of that time I was stuck from consistently trying the wrong preposition. In the end I found it was rather perfectly balanced, integrating a lovely and fun story with a decent set of rather original puzzles. The flow and timing of Zozzled is particularly impressive, making it clear that this is the work of an experienced author. Of Steph’s earlier games, I have only played Brain Guzzlers from Beyond! which I found too easy, making it more of a story than a game. Zozzled, on the other hand, manages to combine story and game as well as any work of IF I have played. I’m sure it will be featured on many lists of recommended IF in the years to come.
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Here are some typos and bugs and suggestions to the author (contains spoilers)
- There is a typo in the note on the model. It says “subhman”, rather than “subhuman”.
- The pool could use some restrictions. I was able to put a lot of stuff in the pool, including the dog, without it being affected, not even after having been frozen.
- The place I got stuck was trying to put the stocking on rather than in the cart. It would be nice if “on” works too.
- The ending doesn’t end the game by itself. Rather, I’m stuck in choice mode where no choices work except “quit” (at least from what I tried).