Reviews by cgasquid

Pokey the Penguin is/was a webcomic so bizarre that it may well be outsider art.
Various identical-looking characters and their weirdo friends do nonsensical things. Entire sections of the comic are clumsily crossed out. The comic is either ironically or bizarrely bigoted against Italians. It makes absolutely no sense.

Prodly the Puffin is another webcomic that is either a parody or an homage to Pokey. It makes slightly more sense than Pokey, but the characters are even worse people; Prodly is kind of like the Family Guy to Pokey's Liquid Television.

This is a game based on Prodly. It fully displays the crudity, pointlessness, and idiocy of the comic ... which in this case is a good thing. This is one of the few IF games worth playing that allows you to play as a vicious, murderous piece of garbage who torments and tortures his friends.

Whether you find it funny is up to you. There's a strong early-2000s "humor is cruel" vibe to it, and I mean, when it was the early 2000s, that kind of humor had a cruel audience. Does Prodly the Puffin have a place in this more-enlightened-until-it-abruptly-all-went-septic age? I think so, even if only as a time capsule.

I really wish I could convey to people that just because something runs doesn't mean it should be published.

It's also unfortunately common for novice writers to try to write "so bad it's good" games with self-reproachful titles like this one. Thing is, "so bad it's good" does not happen intentionally. When you call your game something like "the absolute worst IF game in history," you're probably going to be right, or at least in the running.

This doesn't even work as a troll game, and I think I put more thought and effort into this review than the author did into this game.

little breaks immersion more than when the protagonist of the game refuses to follow your instructions.

there's a reason why so many people dislike stock parser answers like "Violence isn't the answer to this one" -- if i'm dealing with a padlock and holding a heavy rock in my hand, and i type BREAK THE PADLOCK WITH THE ROCK, i at least want to be informed of why my action failed. the stock response mocks the player for attempting a logical action. immersion break.

in a game like A Matter of Importance, half the actions you try are refused by the protagonist, often for the silliest of reasons. the protagonist is such an egotistical coward that they refused about half the actions i was able to give them, and examining almost anything comes back with a snotty message about it being unimportant.

the first move - third move, actually - puzzle is a guess-the-verb that makes no sense in context. i was only able to solve it (after multiple logical actions were "irrelevant" or "wouldn't help me") when the game gave up and told me (Spoiler - click to show)"maybe it would be better to ignore the cars," which clued the bizarre IGNORE CARS.

i tottered around a bit in what seemed to be the main game area, being informed that despite being a burglar i was not interested in any aspect of the building i intended to break into, nor in stealing anything else, nor in interacting with NPCs. and sometimes when the game informs you that something is irrelevant, it's lying, but you have to use exactly the right verb on the right specific detail to proceed. anything else would give you one of the game's stock "that's irrelevant" messages.

it's an aggravating feeling when the solution to a puzzle is right at your fingertips but you can't work out the correct phrasing to get your recalcitrant, obnoxious player character to do it.

there's a strong suggestion in the INFO menu that all of this is in aid of something: that this is supposed to be a difficult, frustrating game with some kind of manifesto or major twist at the end of it. but i've spent too much time beating my head against this game already.