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Of dreams, music, and playing to the crowd (or not), December 25, 2022So, a game in GrueScript! If Robin Johnson isn't in IFComp this year, it's good to see his engine makes an appearance, which is the next best thing. I've been curious about GrueScript for a while–sometimes it feels like it could capture everything I want out of a parser, except maybe for gag commands like XYZZY or SING or profanity to be coyly rejected. I dabbled in USE X ON Y, hoping to make guess-the-verb less of the puzzle, and I may go back to that. But I realize how efficient GrueScript can be!
LatM is a bit of an odd game. There's no real market, officially, and I was waiting for one to show up, but it never did. It's more about your dreams as a musician and how you go about finding them. It felt a bit surreal to me, which given my stuff, I can't complain about, but it took a while to realize surrealism was the intended effect. You just need to find things to rig so that you can escape from various situations, some of which feel very odd. For instance, you are locked in a bathroom, but you have enough tools to make a hole and get out by trial and error. In another place, it turns out you're just in a dream, and you have to find a way to destroy that dream. Orr you talk with an old man who may or may not be your future self before doing something odd and symbolic ... but it makes sense in retrospect.
Your ultimate goal is to make it to a concert, though there are other endings that provide failure. In one, you avoid the stage and open an envelope, and you decide not to go on with things. It feels like the author had some metaphysical recollections they need to include, but they didn't, and they're leaving a bit too much hidden. And unfortunately this seems due to unintentional omissions. There are a couple bugs where you search scenery X and an item appears in the room. But if you search X again, the item reappears, even if it's in your inventory. This is particularly odd with a wardrobe after you've worn your costume to go on stage, which probably isn't the dreamlike effect the author wanted.
There are two ends, one where you give up on your dreams and one where you don't. You have a choice whether to sing a pop song enough. It feels like something the author could've explored more, and on balance, a lot of what seem to be philosophical statements feel a bit overgeneral. Nevertheless, LatM felt complete, though quite possibly the scope of its ambition was cut short by the IFComp deadline. It was a good technical demonstration of what GrueScript can do in the hands of someone other than its creator. I hope we have more.
