Reviews by Andrew Schultz

CotC dropped very late in Neo Twiny Jam. On the heels of One Word Warlock and Curse of the Bat's Tomb and Tiny Barbarian's Big Adventure, I wondered just how complex the maze would be! Would there be RPG stats, even?

I'd guessed wrong, though. CotC is certainly sophisticated, but it's more about nuance and emotion and fear and need to escape than anything else. You are, in fact, a sword. You have some sort of sentience. You need to find the right person who will wield you to get out or, as the tagline says, ... better luck next century.

You have some control of the human that takes you, and apparently there's some luck defeating the guard(s) involved. The text is more focused on you worries about getting out and building tension than the directions.

The big question is what happens once you're free from your pedestal. The game's mood quickly establishes there is no easy happy ending. Well, for the character. As a player, it was satisfying, but I don't want to spoil it. Even if you're able to guess, it's worth playing through. The author clearly spent a lot of time on high production values, which paid off. This left it more memorable and worth a replay than a lot of the mood pieces I looked at and, yes, enjoyed as well.

I'm probably never going to have anything I waited a century for. But I know what it's like to wait for something and maybe grab it too quickly. Heck, I remember that one year I forgot about free Slurpees on July 11th until July 12th! (I got them next year.) I took time to think of all this and more, after I failed a few times. Then, I succeeded.

One might even picture the author thinking something similar about creating their game for Neo Twiny Jam. Was this a good idea? The last NTJ was eight years ago. Is there enough here to make a splash? Am I taking on too much? I don't want to have to wait eight more years. (Yes, the jam coordinators want to make this a yearly thing. Yes, that'd still be a while to wait, though I hope people who just missed the deadline are ready ASAP if/when it starts next year.) I'm glad they got it right in one try. Or maybe they tried once a week to write something until they finally got something good, and it slipped in under the wire.

Anssi Räisänen's games together really mark out a lot of territory. No one is particularly big, but they range from fantasy to realism, and they all have that very classic feel to them without flaunting their old-school credentials too intimidatingly. Puddles on the Path is distinctive among his works for the mechanic to solve major puzzles: many powerful spells are, in fact, common sayings. It's always good to breathe new life (ahem) into cliches, and this brief romp does that.

It's just good fun, as Anssi's works tend to be. You're a wizard's apprentice who can't help but be curious--you find a golden egg and try to get it, guards capture you, and then you must escape. Even though it's a null-sum game in this respect it's a lot of fun to find a magic sword and so forth and actually use the spells. Yes, I enjoy the odd syntax of ancient tongues, but it's also nice to breathe life into more well-worn words.

The game ended a bit soon for me, as I'd sort of hoped to use more than half of the proverbs you had in your spellbook to start. That would leave the door open for a sequel, much like Anssi wrote Ted Strikes Back in 2017 to extend his Ted Paladin game from IFComp 2011, which was the first of his works I tried. I remember hoping for a sequel to the original Ted Paladin game, but I didn't realize Anssi had sort of written one. Given it's 2023 and there was, alas, no Ted Paladin sequel within six years this time, it was neat to uncover Puddles on the Path.

Just looking at a map of the London Underground leaves me a bit dizzy. All those colors, all those loops, all those stations! Chicago is a lot more linear, but then again, part of that is due to just not having as much public transport. I remember a family trip to London where I diligently tried to memorize all the stations and hoped maybe we could visit them all. Of course, I wanted to visit all the tourist sites too. I vowed to be back one day, but of course, Life Happened. I don't think I've even gotten to all the Chicago L stations. Some are not in great areas, and I drove by them on the freeway, and that's enough.

Moquette, a Quest game with JavaScript effects (the best by far to me is how the text whooshes off to the left like a train starting off away from a terminal) helped fill in part of my desire to visit the London Underground without having to buy a plane ticket, as it's a faithful replication of, well, the central area. It starts you off at Balham station in the southwestern area. Balham is part of the Northern Line, which made it confusing when I was trying to get my bearings to start! Perhaps I should not have. The game describes your general path to your job: ten stops to Bank, change to the Central line, one stop to Liverpool Street.

And so you take the Northern Line to work. There's a constant intimation you, Zoran, might want to do something else than go to your vague tech job today. Eventually the game pushes you out at London Bridge, one stop short of Bank. It's actually possible to get to Liverpool Street, where there's no way to get to leave the Underground and go to your job. But all the same, you can't go further. You want freedom, but you don't want to end up in the middle of nowhere. (One wonders what people on the north side think of Balham. Perhaps it isn't the middle of nowhere, but on the other hand, it's impossible to visit the Highbury or Upton Park stations in Moquette.)

This isn't just arbitrary by the game. Part of what makes the London Underground so interesting to me is all the loops and runarounds and interchanges, and if the station names far out seem interesting, it does get linear. So it seeks to maximize the confusion and looping. Without a map I was baffled to see myself winding up at that same place I hit about eight moves ago.

There's not much, strictly speaking, to DO in Moquette. You look at people, think about their histories and what they want to do, and ponder changing. You leave the train if you feel it may wind up in the middle of nowhere. Some people may quit before this, and it's a satisfactory experience. Eventually you stumble on a girl named Heather, whom you sort of liked. This all is a bit awkward, but there's more of a point than just emo stuff. You fail to converse adequately with her, or you think you do, even if you remember stuff she liked.

Fortunately, an unrequited crush is not the main thrust of Moquette. It goes a bit further than that, and if I didn't particularly like the end, which felt too swervy and too on-the-nose at once, I do recommend the journey. First through without the map, then trying to hit specific places. The people-watching bit is well done.

My own experience with public transport is spoiler-tagged, as it rambles a bit, much like Moquette does, but I've rather enjoyed myself more than Zoran, just reading a book and occasionally people-watching. (Spoiler - click to show)It has revolved largely around getting near tricky-to-find places. There are city and suburban buses to go with the Chicago L. I remember one library in the northwest suburbs that had the only copy of a book I wanted to read, and I took three buses there. I enjoyed planning the bus trips. Then one day I realized it wasn't hard to transfer my city card to work in suburban cards, and if they weren't too far away, I could place holds. I sort of missed the adventure, but I'd done things once. And that library? It's gobbled up into the consortium which means a Chicago resident can just sneak north to Evanston, place a hold, and not have to go through some mazy public transport. I sort of miss the adventure. And sometimes even on Chicago's grid, you realize you've been going west and then south to somewhere, and you've never gone south and then west. It's weird seeing a place you remember, thinking you took a route you never saw.

That's enough adventure for me. It feels like there should be more, and you can't get it just by public transport, but it's often a good start to make you want more. Moquette did that for me, even if I felt its ending didn't stick the landing.

This feels like it might be a mood piece at first. You wade through a few rooms of dead household appliances, repeating a story about a heist you performed with a friend. Eventually this story trails off, and your inner monologue stops. There's nothing to do but find the treasure.

You have a shovel and a napkin, and on that napkin is written a clue where you should dig. There are a few approaches to finding the right place to dig. One I tried that failed was to (Spoiler - click to show)turn the flashlight off and look again, which didn't work. Depending on how observant and/or lucky you are, it should turn up. There's no super-hidden item, but on the other hand, you can't just go spamming words you see in the description. DIGging in the wrong place just seems too much.

The household appliances are an interesting choice of scenery. They are useless now, a perfect place to hide a stash, yet at the same time appliances could be a great target for burglars. They're also a sort of crime against the environment, whether from individual homeowners, or from corporation or governments who don't put enough money and effort into the science of recycling. Or perhaps the appliances are a symbol of a stable home that non-criminals take for granted but criminals never can, especially the air conditioner in the final room to the south. One suspects the narrator would do anything, with all their money, to have air conditioner repair bills to pay. They also reminded me of game shows where I never understood people were so happy to win a new dishwasher.

Or, you know, it's just amusing descriptions of a forbidding surreal landscape as a sad story unfolds, even if the main actors are criminals.

DMP was the author's first full-length game (he had written two Speed-IFs before, one for Pax East 2010, where, if memory serves, the Infocom Implementors talked about their experiences in detail, figuring that was probably the best time to do so.) And I tested it, and while I usually don't review things I tested, this is different. First, nine years later, it has no reviews ... and second, I was looking forward to the author writing something new. They were longtime IFMud regulars, and like all regulars who just liked to play text adventures, they eventually considered stepping into writing one. Some went on to make it a habit.

I think IFMud must've had a testing exchange program, but however we got in contact, I enjoyed working slowly through more of the game. It's not a huge one, but there's enough in there that things can go wrong without testing, and they did. I bugged Royce a lot. I worried I bugged him too much. I worried I missed stuff. I hope I told him he wrote something well worth writing and playing. I certainly enjoyed it nine years later.

The title clues what DMP is about: namely, someone has died at a party. You've already done the whole dying thing. Maybe not at a party, but still, you're glad you got called in to be a junior Reaper. Hey, it beat sitting in a grave for all eternity! And this is your first solo trip. Nail it, and you may become a full reaper!

Now your character knows what to do to prepare, though you-the-player doesn't. This is handled by a checklist which mentions you have a gauntlet that makes most things easy. This is nice for the game but disturbing as to the actual ramifications--even low-level supernatural beings can change things at will if need be, and even if it doesn't change the world at large, there's a sense that death is extra inevitable.

Following instructions gets you most of what you need, but there's still the matter of the finicky scythe dispenser machine. It's not VERY hard to figure out, but it's enough of a puzzle. Then it's off to Mr. James Phillips's house. Poor chap just took a lightning bolt to the chest, and time's frozen there, but you can communicate with him. It seems like it should be in and out. Use your tools to put him in the spirit jar, and off you go! With everyone frozen in time as you do the honors, it seems there's not much to do.

But wait! James has two small last requests: put his ring and will out on the dresser, to make things easier for his wife. All spirits get the courtesy of last wishes to put certain small things in order. Of course, his wife could find that stuff eventually, but really, he had a pretty unexpected death. So it's the least you can do.

Neither puzzle is especially tricky, though one thing in the note makes amusing sense: you have a lock to open, but it repels your glove, and you may be able to guess why before you open it.

Replaying DMP, it felt very smooth. I enjoyed the jokes along the way, and when I got to the end, I noted in the AMUSING section there were other things I could have done with the glove. DMP was short enough I was glad to go back through and play it. I like it a lot, and I'd like to think it just missed the "commended" level for ShuffleComp, although the vote totals were anonymized. I don't know which it would have replaced. And yet looking back, the author's game writing career seems to have ended as suddenly as poor James Phillips's life. But who knows? He might be back. I hope so.

One other thing: I remember a Grim Fandango CD I bought and never played. From what I understand, this game wasn't just Pratchett-y, but it also owed a small creative debt to Grim Fandango. Somehow, I couldn't find that CD after playing. Maybe I will find it one day.

ALL CAPS titles usually raise my blood pressure slightly. The writing contained under them often tries too hard. I know what I'm supposed to feel, but I feel forced to, and that ruins the effect. It's like someone using too many meaningful pauses or voice inflections. Even if I get it, I may just want to pretend I don't get it out of spite. Yes, yes, you're very avant-garde, that's very nice.

But I quickly forgave HRE. It doesn't force anything on you, although it does lay things out so you can't miss some very clever jokes. The flip side is that you are probably so involved you missed a few. There's no shortage of games that poke religious fanaticism as well as those who poke the sterility of a robotic approach to the world, and HRE somehow pokes both without seeming like yet another South Park episode that needs to make sure it's tried to annoy everyone. I'm amused to say that, here in a dystopia where robot popes now control the levers of religious power, the solution to missing anything is to do a good old-fashioned text dump.

So who are you, and what's your goal? Well, Morgan Santemore, instructor in robot decorum at the Mathedral of the Heavenly Code High School. Oh, and a deputy Robot Inquisitor. And with Pope Fortran in town, your goal is to kiss his ring. Everyone wants to, though.

And as the absurdity quickly hits you, the puns and incogruence come flying. Of course, there is winning the game, but if you're like me, you'll want to know the words to the DOSology and Ave Machina. You'll groan at entering the crypt ("you have been encrypted!") or wonder if the 9 in Saint Number 9 means anything, or if the fuse from a saint is more a votive candle or piece of their heart. The puzzles are silly in their own way, too--the final one requires placing a brain in the Robot Pope's guardian, after which they gratefully let you by.

The puzzles, thankfully, require no great robotic calculation. They really do feel classic, the first point coming from more or less following instructions to process a student's test. While some might object to the hygiene and ethics in some of the puzzles, that can be hand-waved away by saying "well, you're a Deputy Inquisitor. You get to do what you want!" You wind up exchanging a lot of dollars with a hermit for a lot of items that seem useless. They give a full refund for slightly-used stuff. This may not make perfect sense, but it's worth a try. Perhaps the implication is that humans can be suckered around.

Oh, there's a chronological list of robot popes, too. It's well worth reading, as many of them are named after languages. Their rule started in 1 ARA (after Robot ascendancy? The mystery is interesting--perhaps we humans are meant to feel silly we can't figure it out) and it's one of those small shaggy dog stories where you don't have to understand the languages to get most of the laughs.

Amusingly, in this well-implemented game, one item that isn't described is a fiction paperback--and the joke works well. There's also a discussion with your supervisor about their job, which ... well, turns into a disturbing inquisition. We've all had power struggles at the office, or stuff we need to say to the boss to make them feel great, but this, oh man. There are a lot of these conversations, which are to the point about what to do (after all, robots don't care about frippery, and anyway you should be smart enough to figure it out, right?) but they do leave me feeling quite hopeless for the main character. This is the neat stuff on the side, besides the puzzles and jokes you must see to get through the game. So you may walk away worried you missed a bit.

HRE does feel intimidatingly smart, and it's very well put together. Coming back to it after a few years, I remembered it as being much bigger than it was. It uses big words like Narthex, which intimidated me (but when Cragne Manor came around years later, I was PREPARED.) It may intimidate you with just how smart it is. It certainly blew me away with "you'll love this or hate this" vibes early on, but after reading the descriptions in the first two rooms, I knew which side I was on. It's really extremely clever, and perhaps my main gripe with it is that I couldn't think of all the thematic puns and such. They populate the game, and they're what you'll notice most, but there's also an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and authoritarianism and idees fixes through the laughter. Sometimes that is the only way to approach such issues.

Oh, also, there are some Tom Swifties once you win, as a bonus.

As LMWH starts off, you don't know what to do, and you don't know who or what you are. But this isn't an amnesia game, far from it. It's a tightly contained game where you, quite simply, have to help someone find their way. You are some sort of ethereal spirit, and you have the ability to give an electric charge to one item at a time. The goal, as stated in the story, is to bring someone home--figuratively or literally.

This person is the most beautiful person you've ever seen, with no direct description why. The story implies it strongly, and it's not hard to figure out, but of course it works better than if you'd been told directly.

Objectively, the person you guide seems a bit stupid as they bump around oddly, but it's not hard to care for them in the game, because of who you guess they might be, and what they need to do, and how powering certain things up makes them move around.

There are only a few things you need to power up or down, but that is enough for a satisfying story. Too much, and the person might seem clueless indeed.

The author seems particularly good at making these nice short stories that provide a quick burst, both as a player and as someone who'd like to make a few more good short games or scenes. Replaying this years after it came out for ShuffleComp, the combination of what I remembered and what I forgot felt about right.

The Cave of Montauk seemed simple the first time, and indeed, the solution is not hard, but I wound up coming back for the graphics a lot. As part of the Adventuron Cave Jam it's about finding treasure in a cave, guarded by a troll. Getting in is not too bad--you have to figure how to get an apple from some high-up trees, and once inside, you need a light source. These puzzles string together well.

Inside there's some guesswork as to which item a statue wants, but since CoM is not a huge game, a bit of trial and error is more than okay. In fact it shows off some more nice graphics for the side rooms that ultimately don't matter.

CoM is a very safe game, and if it is not terribly ambitious, it's aesthetically pleasing and welcoming, which I think was the thrust of the Adventuron Cave Jam. Though there's no risk getting lost, I still do wish there was a bit more and that the author tackles a bigger project in the future.

There's a lot packed into BOE--although it took 3 hours to code (since it is SpeedIF,) the author obviously did a lot of planning in his head to give a very complete experience.

The story is this: you are a vampire, and you need blood. You've already been without it for a bit, and X ME describes you as taller than you should be, but hunched over. Worse, the current train is snowbound, and there's been a murder!

The whodunit is of little to no concern for you. You have your own survival at stake, and the body may give you a lifeline, because the humans traveling all manage to be protected, enough, against you. Nuns wear crucifixes, and so forth.

And there are a few bad endings as you go through the train. There is another vampire you must outwit, and you can also unleash a horrible monster or carelessly expose yourself as a vampire. None of these are the recommended fourth "winning" entry where, it must be said, you show yourself as totally amoral, where you manage to do something awful in plain sight. (Not that the game's explicit about this.)

The highlight of BOE to me is a cooking puzzle that is funny once you see one of the ingredients. Perhaps you can guess it. There are only three ingredients, but as a vampire, you have logistical problems. There are also amusing encounters with other train riders and terse descriptions, especially of anti-vampire items. There is a pet that you will find useful. And in the final scene, you may walk away making quite a good impression.

The author has always been one to go his own way and challenge the status quo. Mister P and his Paul Allen Panks tribute game, The Idol, are examples. BOE deals with more conventional tropes that make us laugh, but it mucks them about cleverly. I enjoyed EctoComp 2011 but would've been surprised if this hadn't won, and years later I'm still impressed with the design and touches of humor.

I first stumbled on the community in 2010, when I beta tested Leadlight, and -- well, conventions had sprung up. And new programming languages. There was a lot to catch up on! Back then, ABOUT and CREDITS were strongly recommended, and too few people went along with that. And there was the Player's Bill of Rights, as well as other basic stuff parser games should implement.

I think it's no great spoiler to say that Mite requires you to X ME to make a certain puzzle at the end solvable. I got stuck there, despite the nice in-game hints. But even if I'd spun out there, it would have been an enjoyable time.

Mite takes place in some fairy realm where you are a pixy who can jump on mushrooms and flowers and such, and you'll need to. You've found a lost jewel belonging to the prince, and this coupled with your own basic decency and a sense that Things Are Generally Getting Worse lead you to return the jewel. But there are obstacles.

There's a neat puzzle where you must keep track of the wind, another where you must kill a predatory spider, and then there's an invisible bridge you must find and reveal somehow. None of the solutions are mind-blowing, but they are all extremely pleasing to me. And there are all manner of magic creatures and talking animals and such.

When this sort of game is done right you don't really notice the effort and love that must have been put into it. But on taking a step back you soon realize a lot of care into making things work. There certainly was enough care put into this so that I remember it years later. Oh, and also, I think back to it whenever X ME gives me something particularly salient. As X MEs go, it's still one of the best I've read.