Ratings and Reviews by zinze

The concept of the interface is intriguing and different, with options like making deductions that I wouldn't have anticipated or tried to do in a more traditional IF setup. I was kind of excited about that as I started to play the game, but found it difficult to navigate as the majority of the multiple-choice options of what to do were met with generic "doesn't make sense" rejections. I thought being a little girl in Monsterland would let me do some wacky things! It's also potentially cool that it asks you to anticipate the result of your action, rather than trying things aimlessly, but the multiple-choice options rarely to never offered one that matched what I was going for. Those, along with the fact that you could do one thing after talking to a character but not before (even though you didn't need that character for the exposition to figure out the puzzle), sapped my enthusiasm, so I didn't make it far enough in to actually do the cool things (like making deductions) that I was trying to do from the beginning. Hopefully, they eventually make sense and reward people who have a higher tolerance for this kind of interface rejecting choices.

This was one of my favorites in the 2019 Xyzzy Awards, a fun surprise for classic parser fans like me. The world feels very old-school with its own twists, and the puzzles gave me enough variety without getting overly complex or difficult. I didn't find it terribly ambitious or deep, but it was a pleasant play and just the kind of fun I wanted from it.