Reviews by RJ Kowalski

First of all, I love Glumpus, and I would never let anything bad happen to him.

Well-written interactive fiction generally makes the player think "that description makes sense, I can see that object." One of the many routes to making great interactive fiction is to make the player think "Wow, that description makes sense, I want to see that object." Room descriptions, item descriptions, and action descriptions fit together here to create a sense of grounded whimsy. Nothing is absurd for the sake of being absurd; things are mundane to an absurd degree. There are so many pitfalls with comedic writing and the only one I can fairly accuse TMVCITW of is that there's some slang that's going to sound out of date within a year. Maybe sooner.

My playthrough took around ninety minutes. Backtracking was abundant and the game is good-natured about it. I stooped for hints once or twice, and by accident, got myself into the alternate ending the first time round. I ran into no significant implementation issues, and the game bends itself backwards to be polite, in a way that comes close to being cloying but never quite bothered me. The game's in on the joke. It wants you in on the joke too.

Puzzle design is a mixed bag. There are some classic archetypes, a few very practical, think-through-the-logical-ramifications-of-physical-qualities puzzles, and one or two that I found completely off the wall. But to the work's credit, I'm always left thinking "That makes sense, in its own way", and not "never would have thought to try that, not sure why it worked".

The writing, as mentioned above, is generally very good. It delivers the comedy and doesn't overstay its welcome. In one case, good writing completely saves a plot device that would be tiresome in almost any other title.

Everything comes together pleasantly. A minor annoyance struggling with a verb, a poorly cued puzzle, or a joke that doesn't land can sour me on a title quickly- but nothing here does because there's always another joke around the next corner, the puzzle is generally funny even if I couldn't make head nor tail of it, and the game goes out of its way to help me along with things that might involve struggling with the parser. It wants to be enjoyed, not fought with. I had a great time.