Ratings and Reviews by bkirwi

I played this one all the way through in one go. This is because it is rather short (three hours of diagetic time, quite a bit less of mine) but it is also because it is tense and tightly paced; I'm not sure what the IF equivalent of a page-turner is, but this is definitely that.

The game itself is a linear series of classic parser puzzles, none very difficult, all reasonably well clued, and most tied to progress in the story. (A bit artificial, since most of it is our character explaining more of the backstory, but narratively it works just fine.) Normally I appreciate a little more freedom and challenge in a game, but in this context I think this all well - it's more of a gauntlet to run than a world to explore, and complex puzzles would have spoiled the fast pace and made the time limit frustrating.

First off: while the game description does contain the word "erotic", it's not actually particularly explicit or anything; while the protagonist certainly has a vivid and prurient imagination, nothing is spelled out in uncomfortable detail, and the humour is more in the bashfulness of the character than the raunchiness of the jokes.

This is a short and quite funny game. One gets points for poking around the room and unlocking amusing little bits of text, or making progress through a rube-goldbergian comedy of errors. Aside from some lingering default messages, the protagonist's voice suffuses the game, keeping things appropriately humorous and light throughout; there was some occasional awkwardness in the language, but this didn't feel out of place given the general awkwardness of the protagonist.

Like other reviewers, I found the final ending a little abrupt. It comes by surprise; doesn't clearly connect to anything the protagonist was up to, and feels more like a puzzle to be solved than a satisfying conclusion to the story. (And since there's no walkthrough from the author, I'm still not certain of this!) In any case, playing around and trying to ramp up your score seems to be enough to get you the three distinct endings mentioned in the blurb, and is certainly a nice way to spend the 15-30 minutes you're likely to need to get there.

Narratively, this is a lighthearted and comic fantasy story; mechanically, it's an interesting mix choice-based game with RPG-style elements and a world that wouldn't feel out of place in old-school Infocom.

The main characters are quite likeable, and the imagery is often strong. (Having one character riding around in another's empty eye socket is an unusual and visceral mental picture.) It's written in the third-person past tense, which I found a little hard to get used to, though in the end I do think it works for a game with this sort of storybook feel to it.

The world model is unusually well developed for a Twine game, as richly modeled as many parser fictions. The puzzles are also pretty old school - finding, using, and combining objects, exploring underground passages - and well put together. The implementation is (characteristically for the author) very solid and thorough.

One of the more unusual features of the game allows switching between multiple characters or detaching body parts and letting them move around independently. This is narratively interesting - you get multiple perspectives on parts of your environment, for example - and it sets up some unusual puzzles.

The interface is also well implemented, but sometimes a bit tedious. For example, what might in a parser game be `put arm on table` would involve several clicks: list parts, detach arm, pick up arm, open inventory, select arm, use arm, select table. Streamlining these sorts of manipulations might have kept the momentum up at that critical moment when the player's figured out a puzzle and is putting the solution into action. The game also preserves some rather unloved aspects of classic parser games, like an inventory limit and a maze, though I found to be only minor trouble.

There's little about the game that hasn't been touched on in other reviews, but, a few things that struck me in particular -

The protagonist was beautifully rendered. The swashbuckling hero, with both a refined sense of manners and a total lack of scruples, will be familiar to anyone who's read Dumas or similarly-flavoured French period fiction -- and his character suffuses everything from the room and item descriptions to the structure of the puzzles. I laughed out loud several times, which I do rarely when reading. This is certainly a puzzle game, and the story is not the focus -- outside of the feelies, which are excellently done and worth reading -- but the prose here is nevertheless among the best of any IF I've read, and very fine even by Short's usual standard.

The puzzles are centered around the game's form of magic, but almost all of them also rely on an elaborate physical simulation of the world. Liquids and light are particularly deeply-implemented, and interact in a consistent way with the "linking" mechanic. Once you've experimented enough to learn the rules of the world, the puzzles are all logical enough and frequently have multiple good solutions... the game is overall still quite challenging, but a thorough player can work their way through the whole thing without a walkthrough.

Altogether wonderfully done.

The main blurb gets the premise across pretty well: you're in a metal band, the (terrible) act ahead of you in the lineup is running over time, and you need to assemble your bandmates and save the show. (Though things do eventually get a little weirder...) The author satirizes the metal scene without ever coming across as mean-spirited; the characters are all a little stereotypical, but written with affection and humour, and the story works even if you're not super familiar with the genre.

Most of the puzzles are based on a novel, central mechanic, introduced around the midgame. While it's not the deepest mechanic, it's a lot of fun to play around with, and the game's short enough that you don't end up exhausting the possibilities until the final moments. None of the puzzles end up being particularly difficult; if you get stuck, experimenting with different combinations and locations is enough to keep things moving without being frustrating.

The game was a little bit under-implemented: verbs that felt natural weren't there, significant objects described by the game weren't there at all or didn't have the right behaviours, and there's a little bit of guess-the-verb. Nothing huge or game-breaking, but enough to add some friction to an otherwise-delightful experience.