Ratings and Reviews by OtisTDog

This game is a remarkable achievement, full of cleverly devious (or deviously clever?) little puzzles that are suitable for both kids and grown-ups. The fact that it's written in a custom system that seems every bit as full-featured as any of the major parser systems (like Inform 7, TADS or Dialog) is just icing on the cake.

The simple premise of an apprentice's fetch quest in a land of sweets really undersells the difficulty level of this game. I tried it by myself and never got more than 12 out of 16. When I suggested it to my play group, everyone was quickly hooked by the game's central premise of a decomposable/recombinable set of magical wordlets and had a blast working out all of the ways that they could be exploited.

The fact that there is no checklist of items to gather means that finding all sixteen will require some lateral thinking; part of the puzzle structure is figuring out what things might be convertible into the special ingredients that you've been sent to find. The very British-style approach to descriptions of locations and items means that, though the information provided is sparse, almost every bit of it is relevant in some way or another.

My playgroup was able to obtain all 16 points in the course of a two-hour session, with only a few nudges from me based on previous experience. In a few places there are hints of guess-the-verb in that one must intuit that a particular action can be applied to objects, but with multiple people playing it was never very long before one of us came up with the right idea. The biggest headslapper from my perspective was discovery of two magical ingredients (both flans) in an unexpected location -- it's a bit of a joke on experienced players, but the game was quite fair about this in its hinting. (Spoiler - click to show)In the cottage, there's a remark about desk drawers that you shouldn't forget!

This is a great game for introducing newcomers to parser IF, and well worth the time for anyone looking for some fun with a neat magic system remniscent of Suveh Nux. My hat is off to author Nils Fagerburg, whose impressive talents are on display here.

(The title of the review comes from the game itself. I couldn't resist.)

Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma is from 2010, but its core design sensibilities come from an earlier era. Author Juhana Leinonen maintains the overall feeling of a very old-school game but wraps it up in a fun and reasonably user-friendly package.

I think it's the feel of the NPCs that hearkens farthest back. For a game released in 2010, they are positively atavistic: serving largely as obstacles and treated by the PC as an inferior class of being instead of as fellow travelers in the game world. Scott Bruner notes in a contemporary SPAG review (linked on the game's page): "The characters aren’t one dimensional so much as they’re actually caricatures." This is true, but it is almost certainly intentional.

The game's comedy is almost purely of the bad-things-happen-to-people style. That's phrasing things a bit passively, since you are generally the one doing these bad things -- and when you're not doing them directly, you're certainly setting them into motion. At least one caricature (a "lounge lizard" type) is skillfully portrayed, such that the typical player is probably glad to see the straw man take a beating.

Although the design is "merciful" on the Zarfian scale, there is a smidgen of unintentional cruelty due to it being possible to get the game into a permanent loss state. (Spoiler - click to show)(At least, it seemed that way to me. It's possible to use the gum on the jukebox twice, and the second time the associated NP will be stuck trying to fix it forever. He also won't let you fix it. That means the music can never be changed, which is necessary in order to retrieve something from under the speaker.)

I was a bit disappointed that the actual showdowns on the stage were low on interactivity, since the setup seemed to promise that they would be the center of the action. Instead on a mechanical basis this game is a typical light puzzler in which overcoming obstacles off-stage allows the PC to do better when on-stage.

The presence of at least one game-breaking bug makes this one veer toward two-star territory, but since the average player probably won't run into it and the overall gameplay is pretty smooth, Raising remains safely in "good" territory via competent execution of a conventional design using an uncommon type of setting.

Having recently enjoyed Good Bones: A Haunted Housewarming, it seemed like a good opportunity to check out an older work by the same author, Leon Lin. What a pleasant surprise!

If you're interested in the history of the form, this game is a significant to the study of the evolution of NPCs. It's the first to garner XYZZY Awards for both Best NPCs and Best Individual NPC, a feat matched by only four other games since: Varicella, Lock & Key, Cryptozookeeper and The Wizard Sniffer.

I think what stands out most about this game is that it seems like an obvious precursor to Violet. The plot is oriented around removing distractions for someone trying to accomplish an academic goal by the next day, with a puzzle structure just a little off-kilter from everyday reality in order to accommodate a comic sensibility. There's even an NPC (the award-winning one) who takes over parser messages!

There are plenty of classic IF references (especially to Infocom titles), which may not translate well for someone unfamiliar with them, but these are not essential to the puzzles, which are of moderate difficulty and well-judged to deliver a two-hour play session. The puzzles that stumped me the longest came down to (Spoiler - click to show)missing an object on a supporter that's not mentioned until the supporter is examined and (Spoiler - click to show)failing to realize that I'd need something to use as a makeshift dolly to move a heavy object. Neither one is a game issue -- they're just stumbling blocks for a modern player that arise from certain old school conventions having fallen by the wayside. (I tend to forget about the old school basics when the game feels newer than it is, as this one does. Maybe that means it was ahead of its time? At any rate, if you don't habitually play older games, remember to (Spoiler - click to show)examine every piece of furniture and that (Spoiler - click to show)some things can be pushed between rooms.)

I'd definitely recommend this game as a fun interlude and as a good example of a late 90s game that has aged pretty well. If you liked Violet, you should definitely try Kissing the Buddha's Feet to compare-and-contrast the approaches to two broadly similar scenarios.