Reviews by Andrew Schultz

Back in college, chain email jokes had started to be a thing. There was one Christmas joke about the twelve days of Christmas where, in fact, someone does get his true love the twelve gifts, and she winds up sending him a restraining order. From what I knew, nobody ever really liked that song anyway! So there was a bit of schadenfreude and a sense it might be overdone if it lasted for the length of, say, an Advent calendar.

12D lasts about the right amount of time, too. Anyone acquainted with the song will know what to do. There is a question of how. You have a bunch of gifts, not quite twelve, in your storage closet. You need to dump them in the room with the Christmas tree to the east. There's also a kitchen east of that. You have an inventory limit of three, as well. This is rather clever. It prevents brute force solving, and what's more, you have a list of gifts on your cell phone. So in case you forget what you have left or can do, you can read it. And, of course, if you haven't, you can drop it and have a bit more freedom to shuffle items to get everything in place. 12D gets a lot of mileage out of its only mechanic, which is that DROPping something makes you act on it unusually. This is most useful in the kitchen.

How 12D winds down is mechanically effective, as with each present you get in place (it is there in rainbow text,) there are fewer possibilities for your next wrong guess, and you may have a lightbulb go off. And if you place something in the present room before you're ready, there's some explanation why it doesn't quite fit. For instance, one of the three birds you need will fly away because your tree is not decorated properly. This is a good introductory puzzle, but you don't have to start with it. Some presents do rely on others finishing first, and it's all pretty logical. There's also a good deal of cluing when you wind up with, say, six of an item.

You'll also have to notice some puns or double meanings of words, which are kind of cute. There's even myrrh, too, and years after seeing The Life of Brian, an occasional "just what is myrrh, anyway" joke works well, even though I know danged well what myrrh is. None of the jokes bring down the house, and they don't need to, because they're quite effective all told and the sort of thing you need when you're slightly flustered trying to get presents organized.

So what feels like just schelpping items about is a good deal more sophisticated than that. There will probably be one present that you don't get at first, or something you DROP may do something by accident, and you have the a-ha moment.

That 12D placed next-to-last in the Adventuron 2020 Christmas comp and yet has over four stars on IFDB as of January 2023 is a strong indication that there's a lot of other stuff to look at. (I haven't much, yet, but I plan to!) If you are in the mood for a short game that gives bumpers but not outright spoilers and maybe could leaves you less annoyed at that one Christmas song (I was after playing,) it's very nice indeed.

STF intimidated me a lot the first time I played through it. The map is not small. But fortunately, when I sat down to take another shot at it with David Welbourn's maps, things went a lot easier. I noticed it placed 8th in the Adventuron 2020 Christmas jam, which left me thinking, "Man, how good are the seven ahead of it?" While part of the low placing may be that some people probably found it tough to get going, that can't be all--there must've been quality stuff ahead. And I'm glad I got to unpack this, over two years later. The advent (heh) of Adventuron had passed me by, so I missed this sort of thing, and I'm glad it's still fresh.

STF is very much a directed treasure hunt. You, as Eldrid the trainee elf, get a list of basic tasks to perform. They're pretty pedestrian kids' toys, the sort kids might not even really like these days. They're certainly not cutting-edge technology. But what can you expect, being at the bottom of the rung? Nevertheless, I was quickly left feeling that these toys would be fun to give and make in a way that, say, potion-mixing games to be strong enough to beat up monsters could never be.

You should quickly find a manual that tells how to make the toys, as well as a list of kids who are getting gifts. And since there are several supply rooms, you can get most stuff done by brute force. You can't run out, either.

But ... but ... the neat part is that you can and must leave Santa's house to find everything. That includes a lump of coal for the one bad kid on the list, which is probably the very easiest task. There are other items that are lying around, which are useful but replaceable, so you might as well take them. There are a few puzzles to get to special rooms. And there's one puzzle I find well-clued: Mrs. Claus asks you to get a box of gingerbread cookies from the top shelf of a pantry. You have a box, and it's not quite tall enough, and neither are you. It weaves in nicely with another puzzle, so that STF is about more than reading recipes and dumping stuff in Santa's sleigh.

Most of us poking around in text adventures have, of course, long since stopped believing in Santa. Perhaps we are cynical about the gift-giving of Christmas, with good reason. But here there are no ads or comparisons of expensive gifts or even stress over sending out holiday cards. (Note: gifts and holiday cards with people we care about are good things. But, well, they shouldn't feel obligatory.) And we may even be cynical about ways to bring the magic back. Somebody's profiting off it, right?

Only for STF, that wasn't quite it. I mean, just finding Adventuron existed was a neat gift at any time of the year, even though I didn't discover it for a few months. It was another nice way to connect that we sort of needed with COVID. And it was also something I dared wish for when younger: something more sophisticated than Sierra games, with lower load time and more colors. And a lot of the special effects, too, mirror something I'd have loved as a kid, and still enjoy now. The presents you find or build have alternating green and red text, which flies in the face of our cynicism about too-gaudy HTML. The pictures of each room are fun. The list of tasks changes them from red to yellow to green. It's cheery and practical, without any of the "Oh, it's holiday time, if you can't be cheery now when can you be cheery?" that it feels more commercialistic holiday routines, or holiday office parties or whatever, inflict on me.

Santa's place is pretty well drawn out, too. Some rooms are clearly blocked off, such as Santa's Bedroom, and there are NPCs willing to help you but also reminding you of your job as a trainee elf. Instead of making you feel small, period, this actually funnels you to your tasks and leaves some wonder of the sort of things you could do or see if you did your job right. And while the interaction isn't intense, there's the feeling you're working together with the other elves. In a neat touch, there's also a metals room for advanced toys where you don't need anything just yet. (You can verify this with your toy making manual.) It hints at perhaps a sequel which, even if it doesn't arrive, is easy to imagine. STF has a bunch of neat responses to custom verbs as well. So it's well-produced, and while I think even a middling game would've left me with unexpected gratitude, having something nice that someone made for free, in their own time, feels good.

Part of me is a bit upset I didn't discover Adventuron right away, but it and the Christmas jam and this entry were waiting for me to play, and I did. I wasn't expecting too much of a gift, but perhaps I was more in a frame of mind to enjoy it than I was two years ago. Also, I was suffering through Adventuron withdrawal--this year's IFComp game had no Adventuron games! So STF filled that void and also pointed me to where I could keep filling it. I've been fortunate enough to take advantage of a few neat no-obligation trial offers this holiday season. I appreciated them, even as I felt slight guilt about canceling them even though all that is baked into the business model. But I appreciate a nice experience like STF, with even fewer strings attached, even more.