Quest for the Sword of Justice by Damon L. Wakes
Last year, Damon L. Wakes gave us Gorth Loinhammer, a rather amusing parody of the gamebook experience which not only allowed, but actually encouraged you to cheat with the character sheet. This year, we get Quest for the Sword of Justice, a piece that was built in RPG Maker and looks like a top-down map on which you steer your character around. It took me a while to learn that you can interact with the world by walking up to things and then pressing Enter; a little guidance would have been useful here!
Like the earlier game, Quest for the Sword of Justice is a parody of common RPG tropes. In this particular case, the traditional “this guys is the HERO” and “please pick up every object you find” tropes are combined with a rather real-world conception of law and property, meaning that the player character will inevitably end up in court. If he has stolen everything, he’ll end up in jail forever; if he hasn’t stolen much, he’ll be acquitted, but in the meantime the Evil Guy has destroyed the world.
Is it funny? Some of the sequences certainly are (especially in the court), though I can’t help but feel that Girth Loinhammer was fresher. The trope of picking up everything that isn’t nailed down has already been parodied so many times that it is not really clear what we gain from yet another parody. The RPG Maker format also requires us to spend a lot more time wandering around aimlessly and pressing Enter to read default refusal messages, which dilutes the comedy.
My most serious criticism, however, is that the game is frightfully unclear in communicating to the player when to play on and when to stop banging their head against the wall. I spent at least 15 minutes in prison trying to get out, encouraged by the appearance of some imaginary friends. But you can’t get out, so that was time wasted. The same thing happened when I searched for ways to avoid the two endings already described. I certainly don’t mind a game where the expected ‘good’ ending turns out to be non-existent! But I would like the game to signal this to me at some point, rather than leaving me to fruitless exploration. So this is one area where I think Quest for the Sword of Justice could be improved both dramatically and easily.