To Sea in a Sieve by J. J. Guest
Playtime: 35 minutes
[Note: I haven’t played the other game in this series.]
TLDR: It’s an escape room, except instead of a room it’s a jolly boat and instead of escaping you’re trying to ditch your pirate treasure so you don’t sink.
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Many fun examples of plunder in the boat with you, this game is making the most out of the potential for colorful and interesting items.
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The captain’s commentary on each item is very funny (particularly his lament as you get rid of each [to him] priceless treasure)
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The unique mechanics of bailing / weighing are well implemented, I appreciated that the GUI had info about both.
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This was a real case of “puzzles too hard-itis” for me. There’s an unfortunate feedback loop: if I get driven into the walkthrough too early in a game, and particularly if that first solution makes me groan and think “I would never have thought of that,” then the next time I start to feel stuck I’m now even more likely to go look at the walkthrough because I doubt that I will figure out what the author meant on my own . . . I was at the un-fun end of that process with this one and ended up feeling like I was just re-typing the instructions for the back half. A few places where I think more/different clueing could have helped me avoid frustration:given that I couldn’t get the bag from the captain, I was pretty surprised to learn from the walkthrough that I could search his pockets or cut the bag’s strap and then take it. Or, I think I got told "putting things on the barrel would avail me naught” when I tried to put the gunpowder or a fuse on it, which didn’t exactly help me figure out I was supposed to put the gunpowder and fuse into one specific part of the barrel.
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Sometimes when I’m struggling with the puzzles I’ll still feel very engaged with a game based on the plot or characterization. Here, unfortunately, I also found the main objective just a bit un-fun. This is very much on me because we are absolutely cued about it from the first lines of the game, but I was still kind of hoping there would be a subversion, I would find an alternative, etc etc. I’m a pirate! The last thing I want to do is get rid of all of my loot! (and can’t I row us to another location while bailing every 20th turn or whatnot? And then at the end if you succeed you get cursed for your trouble.