Truthcraze's 2023 (Meal) Reviews of the IFComp games

Competitions
15

THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL 4

Your friend invites you over for a small party - “just some board games and I’ll make dinner!”

You arrive at the appointed hour, and the party is already going - you don’t really know anyone there, they all seem to know each other - it’s initially a bit awkward. But they are super welcoming, and really fun and funny people. They invite you to sit with them at the table, and soon you feel like you’ve known them forever.

Just then, your friend comes out of the kitchen bearing many plates, all balanced up his arm like a fancy waiter. Or at least a Chili’s waiter. Some sort of waiter. Actually, definitely a Chili’s waiter, but one that is a bit too good at what they do to actually be working at Chili’s, but maybe they’re doing this while they’re in school, or maybe it’s a night job while they’re watching their kids during the day, or hey, maybe they just love being a Chili’s waiter. Seeing all those kids on the way to Homecoming Dance. Or the family celebrating a good report card. The baseball team that just won the last game of the season, in the consolation bracket, but a win is a win!

So that’s what your friend reminds you of, as he quickly plops a multitude of serving dishes and plates and utensils and glasses and drinks down. “I was thinking Tex-Mex, but also some molecular gastronomy Youtube videos I saw caught my eye, and then I wanted to try some pacific rim fusion, but also Caribbean - so you are getting a little of each!”

You eat with your new friends, laughing and trying to play some sort of table-top approximation of carnival games that never really works, but it’s a lot of fun. The food is eclectic, varied, well spiced, and quite good. Does it all go together? In a weird way, yes, but in a normal, “planned menu” way, no. Who cares about planned menus and the real world anyway. This way is much more fun.

You leave late in the night, quite full, and mouth aching from grinning and laughing, with your friend promising there are plenty more nights like that in your future.

13 Likes
16

DR. LUDWIG AND THE DEVIL

A brief break from the kayfabe of this format: In my opinion, this is the game of the comp so far. Please play this game.

Dr. Ludwig and the Devil is a perfect cheeseburger and fries, from a “locals only, secret-spot” style restaurant.

The restaurant seems unassuming from the outside, a bit of a hole in the wall.

Upon entering, you feel like you’re at home - immediately comfortable and well taken care of. The proprietor, who also works the grill and the cash register, shouts out “Be with ya in a minute!”

The menu has two choices for sides, fries or tots, and only two for the burger - single or double. But you can have it dressed per your choice - and the reason you are here is for the burger and fries, to be honest. Addition by subtraction.

And the burger is perfection. Crispy bits, juicy, packed with flavor, salty and some just on the tip of your tongue spice on the patty, which is ground in-house from hand-trimmed local-grown cuts of beef. The cheese is perfectly tangy, sharp where it needs to be, gooey and creamy, complimenting the beef while not over-running it. The lettuce, tomato, onions, are all fresh, local grown, somehow all in season no matter when you visit, and offer a crisp crunch that is in perfect proportion to the burger. The bun, of course, is baked in-house, soft and yielding yet somehow substantial and flavorsome. It is dotted with poppy and sesame seeds, each somehow placed in a surprising and aesthetically pleasing precision.

The fries and the tots - you can’t go wrong with your choice of either. Delicious plain, or dipped into the variety of sauces, hot and fresh and golden crispy, light yet holding a hint of the fryer oil with them, just enough to let you know that they are the real deal and still real food from a real place.

When you leave, for an instant you are tempted to keep this place your secret. You don’t want it to become too popular - it should remain “your” hole-in-the-wall. But then you realize that you didn’t have anything to do with how much the place has succeeded in creating a perfect burger, and joy shared is doubled, as Spider Robinson once said, so you resolve to tell all your friends about this perfect restaurant, and hope they have as wonderful an experience with it as you did.

14 Likes
17

RIBALD BAT LADY PLUNDER QUEST

A turkey leg at a ren-faire. Not the best seasoned or cooked, but substantial, and some people seem to NEED and LOVE those things.

The theatre-kid energy at the ren-faire is off the charts. Enthusiastically employed and questionable accents abound, and there are double (and single) entendres slung with abandon.

The turkey leg is large and meaty, but a bit pink in the middle. Is it supposed to be pink? Probably not. Plus you’re pretty sure this is the one the vendor accidentally dropped on the ground and then just brushed off real quick. Kinda fun and not half bad if you can excuse that sort of thing.

But to be fair - you went to a ren faire and bought a turkey leg. You knew what you were in for.

8 Likes
18

This is some of the most thoughtful critique I’ve received, and I understand you completely. Thanks, Truthcraze.

4 Likes
19

HONK!

A full day’s of circus food. Wait!, I promise this is a positive review, despite how that first sentence might hit.

A full day’s of circus food - that somehow doesn’t leave you throwing your guts over the railing of the Ferris Wheel.

You get some kettle corn, a funnel cake, a corndog, and wrap it up with some deep fried oreos. The food is all fresh, freshly made, perfect temperature, served with a smile, salty and sweet (perfectly sweet - not cloying, but there’s a bit of sugar in everything). The corndog has a nice snap to it, somehow, and the batter coating is crisp and delicious. The deep fried oreos put a nice bow on the experience, not too many, you don’t get tired of them, but a great treat you can’t get anywhere else.

There are a FEW negatives - not many, but a few. It’s outdoors, so a FEW bugs buzz around the food, and you have to wave your hands over the food a few times - but you eat it up so quickly that you don’t really notice.

Sometimes fair food is just for devotees, or just because you can’t get real food while you’re at the circus/fair/zoo/whatever, but this is good - real good.

10 Likes
20

Aw, thank you for this review! Very happy with this!

3 Likes
21

BARCAROLLE IN YELLOW

Pasta night. The sauce is red red red. The noodles are a bit undercooked - they were going for al dente, but undershot by a bit. A generous portion of cheese is scattered over the top of the pasta, and the sauce tastes strongly of italian seasoning - the kind you can get at the store already mixed together. The meal was thrown together in a rush just before you got there, and there are some telltale signs of the haste in which it was prepared - spots of sauce spatter the table, the stove, even a bit on the walls - but it was prepared with love and verve, and is offered proudly, and is hearty and an honest meal.

10 Likes
22

THE VAMBRANCE OF DESTINY

Chicken McNuggets. Not just chicken nuggets. McNuggets. They come in four packs in kids meals. Laughably small, that order. Also six packs - for bigger kids and some adults. Not enough. Sure, there are 20 packs. Also not enough.

Once upon a time, in my youth, there was a sale, 20 nuggets for $5. And once upon a time, my friends and I had $25.

This game is 100 chicken McNuggets, the best in the business at being small and tasty treasures that you can dip into a million different sauces, which are all basically tomato paste and sugar, and then you can eat chicken McNuggets until you get sick of chicken McNuggets. But you will never get sick of chicken McNuggets.

Sure, some might say they are processed to the point of close to not being food, and some will say that if you want small pieces of chicken you should have bone-in-wings or at least strips, but dammit, sometimes only chicken McNuggets will do.

This is not a paid ad for McDonalds.

9 Likes
23

LAST VESTIGES

When I was a kid, and I was left alone for a meal, or was just hungry like kids get at inappropriate times, I would make peanut butter on crackers.

This game is peanut butter on crackers. No milk, no plate, just smeared directly onto saltines from the jar, possibly just dunked into the jar and leaving saltine crumbs in the peanut butter itself.

Peanut butter tastes great, and saltines are a good cracker, a good ol’ reliable cracker. Nothing fancy. Does the job. Not particularly skillful or made with care, but there is something enjoyable there.

9 Likes
24

Thanks for the creatively written review! Glad you enjoyed it :slight_smile:

1 Like
25

MILLIWAYS: THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

x menu

“…There is nothing left on it. Hmm.”

Fortunately, this meal review is not going to leave it at that - for the experience of Milliways the game is not precisely that of Milliways the restaurant in the game.

Milliways the game is the experience of going back to your home town. There is a restaurant in your home town. Family owned, amazing little italian place. A bistro, but one with heart and soul, where you spent many hours of your youth, first with your family, then as you grew, with high school friends, maybe you showed your first college longterm Significant Other the place when you brought them home to meet the parents. You know the restaurant, every inch, every dish on the menu, you have your favorites and you like exactly how they make the Veal Piccata here (don’t worry, sir, I’ll be very humane).

And you go back after a decade or two or three away, and the place is there, but it’s under new ownership. It still feels the same, but hauntingly different in ways that are hard to explain. The menu has changed a little. They no longer put WAY TOO MANY capers into the Veal Piccata - but you liked that many capers.

You used to know the waiters here, had little inside jokes with them. Of course they are gone now. Of course they would be. All the waiters are college kids now, too young. They smile indulgently at you when you tell them how the place used to be, how the town used to be. You feel the thoughts behind their eyes, though, the wish that you would just hurry up and order already.

You order the lasagna and a cup of vegetable soup. The plate is hearty, the soup hot and a liquid and almost but not quite entirely unlike how vegetable soup from this place should be.

12 Likes
26

CITIZEN MAKANE

A penis-shaped cake from a novelty baker. The penis is a bit inexpertly shaped, at least in your experience, but in a fun and funny way. You hope it is supposed to be in a funny way. God, hopefully this wasn’t modeled after real life?

HOWEVER. The cake is perfectly baked, rich and full of flavor, iced with a light and airy and delicious whipped frosting. The cake is layered, with a dark, almost burnt but not quite salted caramel filling between layers, that perfectly sets off the cake.

What flavor is the cake? …vanilla.

But it’s a vanilla that KNOWS it is vanilla, a vanilla with vanilla bean specks in it, a vanilla that says VANILLA IS A FLAVOR AND NOT A DESCRIPTOR FOR BLAND.

So sure, you tried the cake for the humor of it all, but found it to be a really really nice cake, surprisingly so.

I mean, it’s still a penis cake, though.

With black licorice strands as decoration on one end.

12 Likes
27

And there it is, the complete set of my randomized parser Inform games. I might dip my toe into the choice-based games, or some of the non-Inform parser games.

Authors, let me know if you want me to hit up your game and give it a meal review. You can probably infer from the above reviews if the meal I will give you will be a Michelin star or a grilled cheese slapped together by your babysitter.

Of course, who is to say which of those would be preferable?

11 Likes
28

If you do wind up dipping into non-Inform parser games, I’d be curious to hear your take on LAKE Adventure.

But only if you decide to write more; I appreciate all you’ve written already. :slight_smile:

5 Likes
29

Note that Milliways was not made in Inform, as I’m sure you know. It was the original language of Infocom, ZIL.

2 Likes
30

Great work getting through all the Inform games!

I echo Drew’s suggestion of LAKE Adventure, but it’d be neat to see your opinions of non-Inform parser games. And if you are up to it, a review of Hawkstone and/or Artful deceit might help the review spreadsheet get to “all entries have 10 reviews.”

But I’m looking forward to whatever you want to poke at, if you have the time.

4 Likes
31

Thank you for this mouth-watering review!

5 Likes
32

At least one more meal - an after dinner mint, perhaps.

HAND ME DOWN

A three course meal at a catered wedding. The first course is a salad, fresh greens, a few bitter vegetables, some nice plump cherry tomatoes, and an overall tang of vitamins and nutrients and not much “fun”. This salad is health food, and will not stand for your frivolities of cheese and candied pecans and crunchy tortilla strips and all other things that make salads tasty and calorie packed. You do get a choice of one or two dressings, and the salad is well prepared and crisp and tasty, even with the lack of cheese and nuts and fat and sugar and artificial colors.

The second course you are dismissed table by table, and you can choose about a million (or fifteen - plus a dozen or so “bonus” odds and ends) little amuse bouches and appetizers and tapas and small plates and little bites. These all fit the theme, but the theme seems to be aimed just a bit younger than a wedding, or a sweet sixteenth, to be honest. It seems a bit like a wedding merged with a six year old’s birthday - but then there will be one particular appetizer that is insanely complex and sophisticated and difficult to eat (in a fun way - maybe this is escargot, complete with the little fork) that you rethink the six year old part. And then every tenth bite or so there will be an astringent, bitter flavor that undercuts the fun and whimsy of the set of dishes. The bacon wrapped asparagus in a mouth puckering, eye watering citrus sauce. Your eyes are definitely watering because of the sauce. Not because weddings and birthday parties and whatever this is make you think of the passage of time, the turn of the years, all those who have left your life and not come back. And then the next bite is a chocolate covered potato chip.

After your fill of the tapas buffet, you come back to your seats. There is a slideshow playing while they cut the cake. Is this a wedding, a birthday, a wake - all of the above? The slideshow music is Time of Your Life (Good Riddance). While you eat the cake you can talk to your table mates about the buffet meal, or about the heavy issues of life - or just eat the cake. The aftertaste is a bit saccharine, the cake is just a BIT too sweet and not balanced with sour or bitter - but sometimes that’s all you need from cake, is a nice sweet wrap-up to the party. And it’s not a wake. It’s not a wedding. It’s not a birthday even - it’s a baby shower.

13 Likes
33

Perfection.

5 Likes
34

LAKE ADVENTURE

A PB&J sandwich from a fine dining restaurant, intentionally nostalgic, and childish - but the bread is sourced from local wheat, an artisinal cultivar, hand ground by a team of sous chefs, raised with wild yeast harvested from the earliest known bakeries in the country. The peanuts are hand selected, individually roasted, smashed into butter in an authentic 1800’s cast iron press, then sweetened with local honey. The jelly is fresh made from berries from a garden behind the restaurant. It is sweet, hearty, surprising, nostalgic, fun, easy to eat yet redolent with a depth of flavor that is surprising considering the form of the food, but not considering the restaurant.

But the aftertaste is bitter, and lasting. See my latest post in the “Spoilery Question about Lake Adventure” post for my non-meal thoughts on it.

11 Likes