Hand Me Down by Brett Witty
In one important, though easily missable, note in the parser section of Hand Me Down, we find out that the protagonist’s dad thought that the best way to give new energy to his relationship with his wife was to take her to an escape room. He enjoyed himself, getting totally caught up in the experience, while she was not enjoying it at all – but he didn’t notice. Until she made him notice by exclaiming, loudly, the she wanted out. Out of the room. And out of the relationship. It’s hard not to sympathise with her, since her husband clearly had no idea what she needed and seemed singularly insensitive.
The reason that this note is important is that it exactly mirrors what happens in the game as a whole. The protagonist’s dad has made her a TADS3 computer game to show her his love, even though she is not into interactive fiction at all and would no doubt have preferred him to express his love in other ways. Pick-nicks maybe. Or talking. Or something that fitted her needs rather than his.
There’s a beautiful depth to the way this game is constructed. You are given a parser puzzlefest, yes. And the game clearly wants you, the player, to enjoy it. But at the same time it presents this game as your dad’s attempt to connect with you. And it clearly isn’t a great way for him to do that. I mean, it’s sweet. It’s the way he was able to express his love. It’s full of fun and jokes and invention – while the game suffers from some implementation problems, especially concerning disambiguation, it is really inventive and contains some good jokes, e.g., identifying the cheese. (It had to be cheese. This is itself is an interactive fiction joke that only old-timers would get, and therefore perfect for the dad. Explanation: Emily Short used to have a running gag about her love of cheese, including a scale on which games could be rated for how well they included cheese. And of course it’s also a Monty Python joke. This dad ticks all the boxes.) But, it’s also not very good as a vehicle of a father’s love. It’s not personal enough. It doesn’t really delve into the emotional stuff. It doesn’t really connect with you, as the person you are now, but only with memories of your childhood.
This is a difficult thing that Brett is trying to pull off! We’re supposed to understand both the success and the failure of the father’s attempts at connection, and then, in the frame story, we must get some kind of emotional pay-off. I’m not sure that that happened exactly. The fact that the parser games doesn’t delve into the real relationship is essential in portraying this relationship, but at the same time it means that we spend most of our time not getting new insight into the relationship… which lessens what emotional pay-off we might get. I fully agree with Mike Russo when he writes:
But, and I think Mike might well agree with this, it’s not really possible to do that! For if the father had created a game that was more emotionally resonant, he would not have been the father he is, and the protagonist would not have been in the situation she is in. Brett takes a gigantic artistic risk in giving his least emotionally mature character the reigns of the author for most of the game. I salute him for taking the risk, and for getting as far with it as he does. But it doesn’t quite succeed, and maybe it can’t fully succeed,
Nevertheless, Hand Me Down is a really interesting (and enjoyable) experiment, which I am glad to have played. And it certainly raises some questions that hit close to home for me; for a man who spends evenings behind his computer writing about the relation between Xanthippe and Socrates while God knows that his own relationship with his wife, in these intense years of having small children and demanding jobs, could certainly benefit from the application of more of his energy.