Reviews by Andrew Schultz

I may have bumped HP's rating up because of the author's notes as they told what they were trying to do -- the vision and so forth. Because I think there will be a divide between people giving up on it and people who are willing to poke around. There's a bit of heckling involved in all of this, which may not fit the tutorial/helpful tone the jam wants you to take, as well. This may bug people, but having finished, I find it amusing. I liked the ASCII art, too.

The first time through HP, I was happy simply to find an ending. I figured it might be the worst ending, but it was something. Writing anything in what is not your first language is tricky, and some of the writing bears that out. But getting to an end is fun, if a bit chaotic. I was surprised how rewarding the best one (being the life of the party named in the title--though it's someone else's home) was, after finding the two "bad" endings and the okay one. But I did have to use the author's notes to get through in a timely fashion. However, said notes and source gave me insights into their thought process.

The tutorial feeds you what to do, perhaps a bit too on-the-nose. People are playing Cards Against Humanity, and the game ends after you follow some simple instructions. Then you go wandering about Bert's apartment. You run into other partygoers, who do feel like somewhat papery NPCs, but their alliterative names are charming, e.g. Winner Wendy or Shy Sinty or Anonymous Andrew (ha!) They're even randomized each playthrough, so there can be Winner Wendy or Anonymous Anton. I had the feeling of being slightly out of place, which I think is what the author wanted. You jump from a card game to assembling a lamp, which feels like a reference to A Christmas Story based on the pieces. Maybe a gummy worm doubling as a wooden rod should have prepared me for the surreality. It's a bit of a jump from a card game, though once you see what needs to be done, things may click. And it's just after the tutorial ends, and some of the parser responses misdirected me.

Talking to the NPCs at the party is important, but sometimes I felt like I didn't really notice how or why until I read the source. They give obscure references to assembling items or finding popular party items. For instance, there's a knife blade and hilt to assemble, and the final puzzle is a disco ball which -- well, it's not intuitive, but it makes sense. I think the switch between doing surreal stuff with items and the everyday partying/people just hanging around is a bit much. And I felt like I needed more to go on than "find all four endings" to keep looking, and I might not have anyway in a larger jam. But I kept going, determined to have the game label me as more than a bad boyfriend or person, once I found ending three or four. The "bad person" ending is kind of clever, as you may forget the whole thing is a flashback, but once you remember it, you know why a certain action is awful, and the game does warn you. I got the neutral ending where everyone eats cake and goes home where I wasn't a bad person but my girlfriend found me kind of bore. Eventually, I achieved the "lousy neighbor" ending for catalyzing such a successful party! But at least I was not a lousy text adventurer, and that's what's really important.

Home Party reminds me of Simon Christiansen's PataNoir from 2011, or Kateri's Krypteia from 2014, due to the objects that are weirdly literal -- I can't imagine it's the first game to do such things. But having it in the setting of a party is obviously quite different from these other two. And it brings a certain charm to it, as it turns out the YouTube video people are watching is important. You also need to figure a way to create two players to play Mortal Kombat (the actual mini-game was curious, as I just spammed FIGHT and beat some braggart easily,) find a secret passage, and protect bronze statues from the sun in an odd side trip.

A lot of people will probably miss this, and some of the surreal uses of certain items are really stretching things, but they make sense. For instance, you have to wear a sweatshirt to take a certain item. But I think Home Party would be far less of a work and might miss the mark completely if the author tried to be conventional.

Still there are some pretty staggering jumps made just because, and while it's impressive that someone can write something like this and what isn't their first language, the small nuisances do pile up, making it tough to figure what the surreal possibilities are. And one of the endings for the party occurs only after you try to leave. Then people call you back. This isn't well hinted, but on the other hand, the game does say "explore everything."

I'd have been a bit lost without the source code. It's well annotated, and it shows what the writer is getting at. With it, I was able to make sense that a lot more headway. A lot of care was put into it, and that helped me be patient until I figured what was going on. But in a tutorial jam, "look in the source code for help" may not be the option you want. And while I could talk to a lot of NPCs, they did seem to blend together.

For the time travel element suggested by the jam? Well, it is a flashback, driving home from the party. The actual puzzles have a bit of nostalgia about them but not too much. There is an old Playstation, and the thing is, you don't just put CDs into it, you put other weird stuff there's a bookshelf with one book that seems out of place, and you also have friends watching YouTube videos of classic movies. One of the main puzzles at the end is to find a disco ball, which is very 70s indeed. All this stretches belief a bit, but if you operate under the "okay, things must have uses somehow" principle, you can knock things down. You also may have to appreciate the author's nonconventional sense of humor. I took a bit of time to. So I think that while this starts out with a pretty solid tutorial, it eventually has you do stuff which is a bit beyond what you'd expect for an introductory text adventure.

The author has an active and capricious imagination, and this all led me to come back after I found the first ending, just happy to have made some sense of things, and then once again once I found the second ending which was also a bit abrupt. There's a bit of a gulf between them and the successful endings, or relatively, but I was surprised how pleased I was to actually get the party going, even though I don't especially enjoy big parties like this. I enjoyed seeing the names of the NPCs, with no last names but just adjectives, and if it all felt a bit too surreal, well, it was better than a "my lousy apartment" game. It has its own unique style, and that makes it worth playing and, yes, even searching through the source code for the puzzle where you're stuck.

This review is for the comp version of the game. The thorny bits I saw feel like something that was just missed while implementing an ambitious project, and with the feedback of a comp/jam, the author can probably make some quick fixes that render my complaints obsolete.

Fixing Time works hard to gain your trust and approval, and overall, it gained mine. Though it's tough sledding at some points, and if you miss one detail you're in danger of getting stuck and unsure what to do next, not due to a technical glitch, but due to some inconsistency in the verbs accepted. This is borne out by the introductory tutorial, which is overall well-done: you have four rooms, called Navigation, Objects and Interactions. You learn how to move around, how to take items, and how to use them. The main puzzle is getting to the end room, and in the process, you learn a few basic verbs that will serve you well. Once there, you're a bit stuck, unless you RESTART. which is only cued once--and it hits the Adventuron default "Would you like to forfeit the game?" Given the gadget-based fun in the game proper, it'd be interesting to have, say, a trapdoor leading to the main makespace.

And what happens there? Well, there's no direct drama, but you find evidence a friend has gotten lost. As you explore the hackers' makespace, evidence accumulates that he likely used a time machine and got lost in time. But the time machine itself is broken!

So your object is to repair it, finding items around the makespace and using them properly on the various machines stationed around. Sometimes it's hard to figure what to do next, unless you apply reductionist logic: namely, what items haven't I used yet, and what items aren't useful because they're not really technological? This is a bit hard to do, because the game has a lot of florid passages about how everything is well-loved, and that gets in the way of learning what to put together, and there are a lot of non-technical items that give a small smile but ultimately are distracting, as red herrings. Perhaps an option to flag game quest-critical items could help here, as could one to give brief descriptions. I found it tough to focus, even the second time through before writing this review. But I did play through it, and it did go smoother the second time, once I was aware of what I Was doing and how things were organized. It just isn't brought to light clearly enough. And there is a struggle with the parser. It could be something as simple as making corkboard/board or newspaper/paper synonyms. Or it could force you to TAKE something to READ it, which is slightly annoying with inventory limits.

That said, FT does a whole lot right, and so my major caveat is with playing the original version, if the author chooses to update post-comp. And I hope they do. The issues above feel very fixable without too much effort, but they also feel nontrivial to uncover even with dedicated testers.

FT has, at its best moments, the feel of reading an interesting instruction manual and actually Getting It and wondering "why can't they all be like this?" There is a puzzle to get the time machine's circuit board working. Finding the spare parts requires you to examine a lot. Once you do, the REPAIR verb is highlighted in color, and you need to find the relevant machine in the hackspace. With fourteen rooms, this isn't bad at all.

You visit three time periods before finding your friend Andy, meeting three very different inventors who are famous throughout history. It's a neat contrast to the other time-journey games in the comp: Tempus Fugit had general globetrotting, and Time Crystals of Cythii brought you to just before big disasters. Each inventor needs the help of a much better machine than they have access to in their time period, maybe just to repair what they have or build something better. This really brought to life some machines that to me were just technology other people would use: a soldering iron, a 3-d printer, a laser cutter, an oscilloscope and even a classic sewing area with scissors. And the special verbs, like REPAIR, are highlighted, giving you a relatively clear set of things to do, along with things you need. In some cases you even get an ordered list.

There's some mixing of the time zones: a puzzle for area two builds on an item you find in area one, which seems valuable. (This is a bit odd, as it involves searching in someone's house -- but again the "search everywhere" principle may get you started.) And everything has one use, pretty much, except for (Spoiler - click to show)the slot on the time machine, which adds a new era to go to with each important item you find. The writing on the time machine suggests there will be ten eras in a future release, but you need only visit three before you are led to your friend Andy.

FT is very satisfying for all its rough edges and over-description that overcompensates for the game's technical nature (everything is lovingly made, etc., "as if/suggesting an air of...") and fights with the parser. I'd be interested in the future release with better cluing. Though right now, I'm glad I had a bit of walkthrough help so I could find the right verb to do what the game indicated. I felt very competent and technologically sophisticated indeed when I figured what to put together, and if there was some retro "fun" of fighting with the parser, I overall enjoyed the experience, which (though time travel is fictional) felt derived from what was likely the author's own time well spent creating odd gadgets with friends and dreaming of making even cooler ones.

The best preparation to help ensure you enjoy Fat Bear is to have a map ready in landscape mode, or download a map from the Internet. It's not that it has a ton of extraneous locations, but rather, many puzzles take a couple rooms, and the map grows into a pretty big world which burst the bounds of my first map draft. There was a lot to do. It was worth doing. Also, there are no spoilers in a straightforward map, as any location not immediately accessible is, well, somewhat blocked off by humans who want to bear-proof their dwellings.

You can pretty much guess what sort of FB will be from the cheery cover art. And even better, the humor avoids cheap fat jokes, although your weight is a factor in some of the puzzles--if you haven't eaten enough, you aren't heavy enough to do something. There are twelve meals to find, which replaces the usual score. It's a fresh variation on the tried and worn treasure hunt, even if some food is described as not fresh for comedic effect. Some foods I expected. Some, I didn't. Nothing too gross, just--well, you aren't going to uncover fine cuisine in the wilderness. They're a lot more fun than the usual gold and jewels and priceless artwork and so forth.

The puzzles start out trivial ("Sitting on the ground here is a cupcake. It's the last of a batch you swiped from some little human scouts last night after you scared them away" with a helpless berry bush a few rooms over) before requiring more thought and even some timing. They work well, as does the world. You don't see a lot of people, because they're scared of you even if you don't ROAR or GROWL (a nice game-specific command.) Townspeople flee at the sight of you, and even the park rangers you need to outwit stay back, since they're not in the hunting business. The terrain spans an airstrip, a riverbed, two cabins (one reputable, one not,) a fire tower, lots of woodland, and a small town with a gas station and restaurant. The puzzle variety, including a chase where having a loop to walk in is handy, validates the large map, which would otherwise be slightly at odds with the competition's goal. And I'd definitely hate to see this game cut down to five puzzles. Twelve feels about right.

There's some stuff I didn't pick up on, which doesn't mean the clues aren't there, but you might want to watch for them. Your weight plays a factor in some puzzles. You aren't heavy enough to break certain things, until you've scored enough points--I mean, eaten enough. In one location, you need to run back and forth before you cause a thin roof to collapse, but it wasn't obvious to me. The raccoon's purpose was clear without being cliched to me and my minimal outdoorsman experience.

There are ways to lose, too, but they're pretty clearly marked, and they take a good deal of dawdling, or the game outright says "It's a good idea to save here." For instance, at the park rangers' cabin, you have to get their attention and then cause some comic property destruction. You can kill yourself in the process, or you can just sit around and not try to break into the cabin. They then hit you with a stun gun. It's not the most serious risk you face, as later on, there's a person who dislikes you very much indeed.

But by then the light-hearted "break things already kind of broken" tone has been established. I enjoyed revisiting and enjoying the jokes/puzzles at a slightly faster pace, with the assistance of a map. There was some stuff which felt like it could be fixed in a quick post-comp release (you could EAT some things without GETting them) but that will probably be obsolete by the time anyone reads this looking for old Text Adventure Literacy games. (Also, I didn't check if softlocking yourself out of maximum points blocks the good ending, but that I'd look forward to replaying it to check this says a lot.) It's an entertaining world to poke around in, and if the size is a bit intimidating, it's pretty clear what to do in the endgame, because there's just one thing left. In the meantime, you build up a good variety of verbs to solve puzzles, and it feels old school in that way, but not in the guess the verb way. So even though you as the bear can't speak and can only ROAR, you wind up doing a lot. The end is surprisingly dramatic and a bit dark, so be warned there. But it's well paced and a good conclusion, fitting details beyond "I haven't gotten inside that building yet" together.

FB took a lot of time to get through, but I was involved enough, it wasn't until after that I wondered if my character burned more calories running around than they gained from eating their meals. When I replayed it to write this review, I didn't burn as many calories--the puzzles all made sense. But I slightly missed that sense of wandering around.

TFM features two main puzzles, classical ones you likely have seen before. Not the "wolf goat cabbage", liar/truth-teller, find the wrong-weight pebble or logic grid sense, but technological discoveries. This is a good choice for the tutorial, especially since there is a story woven in with them. A mysterious woman takes you to her hut, and you need to make fire. There are magic gems which aren't explained but definitely give motivation to see what they're there for. There's even tension over whether this woman is hostile. You don't know much about her, not even her name!

All this is promising, especially with only four rooms, where it's pretty clear where you need to do what. The graphics, too, suggest nothing tricky needs to be done. They'er functional, and I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment. A river has fish. A future fire pit has rocks nearby. Cut-scenes have you sitting with your new acquaintance. The story isn't very florid, so florid graphics aren't needed.

But things break down a bit with the parser. TFM seems to try to establish confusion, but gives a litany of "what are you thinking?! Come on" or (paraphrased) Geez, flaky, focus there, which probably weren't intended to heckle the player, but it feels that way. Then there are a lot of fourth-wall clues like "you can probably figure out what to do here." Where I had, but I hadn't figured out the exact language.

Combine that with the tutorial that only shows up if you ask for it at the start or type TUTORIAL, and I felt left out on an island. And the thing is: there shouldn't be much confusion with starting a fire. There's some guessing verbs (I tried COOK FISH when the right verb was ROAST,) and in one case SIT TABLE gives the generic error where SIT works. TFM recognizes some synonyms, but this seemed like the ideal place to have *match "_ ROPE"* syntax to let the player know they're on the right track.

The second part is a more recent technology than fire. It's all in the room description in the cave, what you need, but the problem is that the graphic and text combine to take up more than one full screen. A chance was missed here to highlight (or have the option to) the things that were useful. GREEN for what you can use, YELLOW for what's used later, maybe. As it was, it wasn't enough to get a parser error when something didn't work, because I couldn't quite trust the parser.

Creating fire (and a meal) and the other technology both lead to a cut-scene which suggests a magic world. It was a legitimately good reward for the puzzles beyond not having to fight the parser, and it suggests the author would have nailed things down if they'd just have known. (The game lists testers, too.)

I replayed TFM after winning, because it did have a good enough story, and also because I wanted to try an experiment. How much could I remember of the verbs I needed to guess? I missed a few. It would have been smoother with a little more testing and a better narrative voice/internal dialogue, which unfortunately might serve to chase newer players away (an option for harsh or helpful mode would've been neat!) But it deserves credit for its ambition.

PSaD does a lot of things right without being spectacular. The author mentioned they were rushing at the end just to have something presentable, and indeed they got that. Apparently a few bugs made it into the comp, but even with them, the mid-pack placing seems fair. It's a relatively tidy game with fairy elements that shouldn't be too overwhelming, barring a few minor parser fights. It's pretty clear what to do, but the parser doesn't always cooperate. Fortunately there are only so many things to guess, so it isn't too bad.

And the tutorial is very good to start. It leans nicely into the story. While many tutorials do the job, telling you to X THIS or TAKE THAT, this focuses on you, the princess, working with your friend the dragon who helped you escape the castle and the prince you don't want to marry, to get something you can eat. It needs to be cooked. As you'd guess, the dragon plays a role. It's not clear how you are saving the dragon later, but a cut-scene reveals this.

In the meantime you go about kissing a frog and finding fairy dust and building a golem. The game pushes a lot of buttons of a classic fairy story, but they're mixed up quite well, and it definitely keeps the map (which you can refer to at any time by clicking MAP in the header -- a nice touch) manageable at just ten rooms.

There's enough to do there, with pedestals and crystals and fairy dust and so forth, and it's pretty clear what to insert into what. There's a cut-scene and then a final fight, which you can win one of two ways, which I liked.

From the author's comments in the feedback section, it looks like the graphics are AI generated pixel art that they modified. That's all okay--the author wasn't trying to do too much with it--but often the graphic takes up too much of the screen, even if it's wider than it is tall, so you need to refresh a lot.

Overall it's a very solid game, and it has a strong sense of economy that leaves it feeling like time well spent despite some parser wangling. I enjoyed the NPC interactions, especially with the dragon, though there's a fairy as well. You may wonder if it is trying for any great subversion with the title, and there isn't a huge one, but it also doesn't do anything crazy or disbelievable. The character arc that develops as you find stuff and meet odd creatures works well.

Lulu and the Asteroid of 100% guaranteed Doom starts out giving a very cute first impression. I mean, of course, there's the title, but there's also Lulu the cat following you around royally, especially for a cat. Well, okay, the tutorial has you feed her among other things at the start (it's done rather well--a variety of relatively simple things and make sure that you have them nailed down and even a mention that you can abbreviate some commands) but it gives the impression of a "my house with an adventure with a silly twist later" sort of thing. Also, I thought it was well-done how the two things you found in the fridge are used in almost opposite ways to deal with NPCs you meet.

There's nothing too difficult in Lulu, as you find out about the asteroid that's likely to strike the Earth, and worse, Lulu finds a new crack in your basement and ... jumps in. Hearing no THUD, you investigate. And from here the map sprawls a bit. Certainly when I looked at it, I was intimidated. Was this really a good fit for TALP? Well, it worked out okay in the end, but I can see how people may be put off. There is a big reveal at the end, and there's a story to go with. The main reason I was able to figure what to do was, I'd find a blocker and look at my inventory and realize, okay, item X in my inventory needs to do something.

The puzzles are wide-ranging, though I'm not sure if they really cohere. In general you look to find nonviolent solutions to get past bad guys, and you also want to help the good guys. For instance, you rescue a rabid merchant from a dog, and they help you fix an item, which you use to sort-of befriend but eventually dismantle another villain. Which is cute, but then there's a logic puzzle that gives a few clues to ask how to rank which metals go in which forges, from warm to super-hot. It's an odd swerve, and it feels a bit like busy work. The in-game graphics also didn't gel for me. I think they were generated by AI, and they give the feel of trying to be impressive, except the game's tone is not impressive, especially with some of the sillier puzzles. While things do take a serious turn with spells you need, the melodrama in the image distracted me from the writing, and from other concerns, like "Why does Lulu disappearing for stretches?" I mean, beyond moving the plot along to make you explore the map and find her. Some of this is rather cute, where she is cowering in fear. The full in-world reason explained at the end, and I found it adequate. In the meantime she helps you in a few combats.

So Lulu is not perfect but I'm a bit surprised it placed as low as it did, even if there were strong games ahead of it, and the rating gap between it and the entry below it was higher than it and what was above. At times it goes together smoothly, and other times it feels a bit helter-skelter. Yet it's relatively welcoming, and I enjoyed the time I spent with it, even if I needed a map the second time through to make it through quickly and check off on things for this review.

One Sierra game I remember fondly is Mixed-Up Mother Goose. It simply puts a bunch of items in random places around a sixteen-room map, and you must reunite them with their owners. It's replayable because of the randomness. The graphics are cutesy. So when I saw WKMG I expected something like this, what with the last two words of the title being the same. Of course, the first two words may suggest entirely different plots. You, as grown-up Jack Horner, are tasked with finding who kidnapped Mother Goose. (Well, everyone else is too preoccupied.) As you explore the town, you learn stuff about the other subjects of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. For the most part, life hasn't been very kind to them, and there are a good deal of jokes. Most of them land, and it reminded me favorably of the novelty song I heard on Dr. Demento called Charliesomething, where the singer acts as Charlie Brown, all grown up, with all the Peanuts characters running into troubles of their own.

WKMG's not a huge game. The map is beginner-friendly: a north-south street with houses or businesses on each side, and some dwellings have a back room or backyard. But it's big enough, with enough characters, you do feel you've searched high and low by the time you find Mother Goose. (You'll know where she is. You just can't get there right away. It definitely gives you something to pull for.) The detective work is pretty satisfying, as is examining side stuff not needed for your quest. David Welbourn's walkthrough covers a lot of this and gave me a lot more to see than my original run through, where I was just trying to win. There's some riffing on how you are just straight up walking into people's houses, and with Wee Willie Winkie there's the problem of getting his attention without him kicking you out. There's not a whole lot of nostalgia here, which suits me fine -- I was never a big fan of the fairy tales so I'm glad they're not held up in reverence, and the funniest bit for me was learning to distract the kids from a fountain where you yourself want to go fishing for coins.

The puzzles to outwit the ogre and troll are also worthy -- while there are some timed puzzles, it's pretty obviously they're going to BE timed. And the kidnapper's lair outside of town is well designed. I have to admit, the first time through, I was wondering who it could be and suspecting the subject of a nursery rhyme I maybe forgot.

The only real criticism I have is that the humor can be rather blunt. Nothing mean, just everyone is living in squalor an there's the fear it might get old. (It doesn't, with the game at a manageable size.) That and other things speak to good game design. For instance, the tutorial has you look at a coat you find, then wear it, then take it off. The coat is important later.

I'm amused comparing WKMG to The Wolf, another entry in TALP 2024, which had a fairy tale theme. WKMG has everything except wolves, and The Wolf is about the Big Bad Wolf. But they both turn the fairy tales they look at on their heads with, I think, good results. There's a mystery in each, of sorts, though one narrator/main character is more reliable.

Nothing can make me nostalgic for nursery rhymes, but I enjoyed how WKMG kicks them when they're down a bit (or lets me feel it is) while adding a solid murder mystery. It shouldn't be too hard, but if you get stuck, there are rhyming couplets as hints, which is a nice touch that made me feel I wasn't just begging for help.

When you think of minotaurs, you think of mazes, which generally aren't a great thing in text adventures--and probably not what you want to expose new players to in a jam like TALP! But one thing about mazes in text adventures is, there are so many good ways to subvert them. We're still finding good ones.

LatM, thouugh it takes place in a maze, doesn't focus you on getting out. The real problem is removing four obstacles to the exit. It also focuses on the relationship between you, as Lysidice, and the Minotaur Achilles has injured grievously--your first task is to find the ingredients of a potion that will heal him. LatM gives progressive hints, making it playable even for experienced text adventurers, even spoiling the way out early on for observant adventures. Well, the directions out. There are gates and a chasm to cross. None of these puzzles is super-esoteric, either, but they're satisfying. And I think the interplay between Lysidice and the Minotaur works well. You only play as her, as she figures what to do and talks to NPCs, and the Minotaur, though injured, provides the muscle and even grunts out what passes for yesses and nos for minor hints, so you know if you're on the right track without full spoilers.

The NPCs range from generic animals to characters in Greek mythology. One of them asks you to find two items, which are related to another myth that ends tragically, and knowing this left me sad and slightly amused. There's another moment where you run into another woman trapped in the maze, but you may freak her out, and finding why is rather neat. One item had me thinking its possibilities, which I forgot by the time I got near the end For many of the puzzles, you can guess what you need to do, though there's enough misdirection to keep things fresh. The third gate you face, you think, oh no, another key. Except it's not.

LatM also has a lot of nice aesthetic touches beyond just coloring nouns or verbs you need to use, like changing the blinking yellow rectangle "press any key" cursor to a golden spiral, which matches the text and gives the game a nice ancient feel. So it uses Adventuron well. It also has a robust out-of-world hint base. The ending also slightly varies based on if you explored the side rooms, which I found worth it. And I also found genuine tension over whether the Minotaur would heal fully or maybe even die. I won't spoil it, because I'd like to encourage you to play LatM, if you haven't.

Note from an author's perspective: I've found the author's games make a welcoming enough experience that I often say "You know, that's something I could've/should've taken the time to do." Maybe something not completely obvious, but worth it to give the player their best chance to figure what you want them to do, not only to win the game, but see its secrets. Here I had a clear path to the end after solving the last obstacle, but I didn't want to leave right away, with more rooms to explore.

The name Camelot Jack brings up, perhaps, President John F Kennedy for those of us who live in america. It's a good solid title without that, because we have an idea of what fairy tales get mashed up, namely Jack and the Beanstalk and Camelot with King Arthur. But unfortunately, the homebrew parser gets in the way of the author's ideas, and we're left with some minor laughs about how the author had trouble getting stuff done, and they try their best, really, but things never take off, even if the puzzles presented are a nice short jaunt to try and leave a prison. The author seems to have gotten the scope right, but CJ isn't really a good fit for the competition, as it feels more like "my first parser game as an author" than "let me help you play your first parser game."

The layout is impressive, with buttons to push for common parser commands. And having Swordy, your sword, help you along in the all-too-brief tutorial helps to not take things too seriously and forgive some rough bits. But it's also hard to do simple things like take inventory or even go north. While clear GUI is nice, though, CJ doesn't understand abbreviations like I for Inventory. NORTH gives "I know not this north of which you speak." So the humor does try a bit too hard.

Nevertheless, sitting down with a walkthrough and going through (going off course may make the game unwinnable,) provides a smile or two, and by the end, you see what the author was getting at, but it could probably have used more testing. You probably know what to do with cheese if you've been an adventure before, so that's good for beginners, and there's a neat little main puzzle where you have to choose between three trapped containers, and one item that didn't seem handy comes in handy, and it makes sense, and you feel clever outsmarting an NPC. This is something to build on. Once you win, you don't really win, but you get a message that the author had hoped to do more. They definitely can one day, as the GUI is impressive here and shows the author knows what he's doing, but the competition really isn't focused on that sort of convenience.

While many of the entries in the TALP 2024 took the more classic Western fairy tale approach, Bakemono no Sekai went in a different direction, with Japanese fairy tales, and it served as a sort of double tutorial for Japanese folk tales, culture and terminology, as well as text adventures. I don't particularly need the second, but I was glad to have the first. I'd heard a lot of the terms off and on, but here I had sort of a chance to ask about them and interact with them, via an NPC and a book in the library. People interested in Japan on the Internet get a bad rap, rightfully or not, but this was straightforward and did not drown me in information. Just small additional descriptions where needed. It kept the focus on what I might want to know, not what it id.

Although you have mythical beasts to kill, it's a relaxed affair, as they're not the super powerful type. They're more the sword born out of people's fears, who just annoy them and distract them from doing what they really want. But there's something odd going on here, because they don't just vanish, but they leave behind a sort of black powder. I was able to guess what that black powder was, and I feel smart about this, though I may not have seen the full ending. The game revolves around you solving this mystery, and there isn't a whole lot of abstract stuff to do, but there's enough. You have a notepad with tracks down things you need to ask about, and later you find a book at a library that tells you about it.

About the only real puzzle is finding money to buy stuff at a shop, and you only need to find one coin to buy three or four things. There's also a puzzle about finding light, but it's relatively trivial. it does involve blowing past the game's warning saying, "Oh, sure, you can search something if you want, why not?" So maybe that's a bit artificial, but there aren't a whole lot of false trails, so you probably will say, okay, I might as well look.

PunyInform seems like a good tool for this. I don't want too much too fast at me, and this felt about right, giving twelve or so things to ask about at the start and pushing you forward once you've asked eight. You can't leave your house until you do, and then you go to town and discover a library which offers more information. Along the way you pick up some items which seem like they'll be useful, and you're not sure how, but removing the curse has a small ritual which I also found effective.

Games about Japanese culture have a bad rap, based on the sort of stereotypical person who like them, but this and others that I've played via comps has turned out very well. I'm not surprised this did well in the TALP contest. There aren't any big tricks or bends in the map, but it is big enough that you do feel you're walking through a town and its outskirts, and the few puzzles you need to figure are satisfying while not crushingly difficult. One final thing: I didn't know enough to be fully moved by the twist at the end, only recognizing some of the terms, but I was still able to stand back a bit and say it was nicely done.