The Magpie Takes the Train by Mathbrush
This parser game is an authorised sequel to 2018 IFComp winner Alias 'The Magpie’ by JJ Guest. Which I really enjoyed, so was looking forward to trying this followup. Fortunately you don’t have to have played the original to enjoy this. It sets things up quickly and efficiently at the start, so you know what you need to know from word go.
The aim of the game, unsurprisingly for a world-renowned thief, is to steal something. And yes, you need to use the Magpie’s famous disguises. The game is a one room puzzle, with changing status allowing you to do different things at different times.
A number of extra mechanisms are in place. I found the conversation topic mechanism somewhat unintuitive. It does give nice clues though. I also ran into some verb/noun issues when trying to cover the light from the window. Maybe my British terminology! Also there’s an unimplemented “out”, which should be a synonym for “south” at key points. Smoother was the change of costume mechanism, which had nice restrictions on when you could use it. Well handled. I also like the built in help, though the context sensitive clues could have used more. It also includes the walkthrough.
Ultimately this is a logic puzzle, albeit a very forgiving one, without a time limit that I could spot. So you can try different things without penalty. Though in the end I switched to the walkthrough, to polish things up. I was pleased to see that some of the different commands i tried (different from the exact versions in the walkthrough) worked. And ultimately it was an extremely satisfying ending.
So good stuff, albeit for me some niggles over the conversation mechanism (that is never easy to handle smoothly), and some under implemented bits. But it was extremely competent, and good fun. Thanks!