Reviews by Rovarsson

I mentioned the name of this game to my son and soon we were jamming and scatting to it. It lends itself well to improvised didgeridoo-ish mumbling (♪mmballiimm♪bwwiiaannn♪bbwwiiimmm♪) while the other is rhythmically repeating it (taktakkatakBAli-be-EN-be-BAli-be-EN-betakataktak).

That was a lot of fun.

It also put me in a good mood to actually start playing the game. I soon found out that our free and joyful accapella improvisation fit the feeling of the game very well.

When Jack (the game lets you choose name and gender; I went with a young woman named Jack) arrives in Bali to visit her grandparents’ bed&breakfast, they spring a surprise on her: they’re going to Paris! Leaving Jack to run the B&B for a week! By herself. Yaay…

The choices allowed me to fill in Jack’s emotional and practical responses to this turn of events. I went with a mix of youthful confidence, appropriate care for the guests’ wellbeing, and a pinch of let’s-wing-it-and see…

I only played through once, so I can’t compare paths through the game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the story I experienced. I got to eat (and recommend) great food, enjoy pleasant breakfast conversations where people only half-understood each other and had to translate back-and-forth with their phones. I got to name and tame a feral cat and give her a shelter for her kittens (we became good friends, as far as that’s possible with a cat). There was a monkey I soon developed a hate-love relationship with. I got to deepen a friendship with a local young man and hike up a volcano with two teen girls who were glad to spend the day without their parents.

And at the end there was a thrilling sequence where we saved the B&B from a natural disaster!

Bali B&B felt like a combination of a soft hug, a warm shower, a sparkling conversation, a dip in the pool. Topped off with an exciting thrill ride where I felt safe to go with it because I knew the author had my back.

I enjoyed this a lot.

"♫♪♫...tum te dum te dum... ♪♫♪"

While you're waiting for this airlock to cycle open, you take a look at your task-list. "Repair microwave oven. Fix cabinet door." Should be an easy job, getting this crew's living quarters in order before going home. The crew are all in the space station, so you can take all the time you want, you've got this starship all to yourself.

For no reason but my own imagination I thought of the PC in Crash as a middle-aged guy with a two-day stubble and a cigar butt stuck behind his ear, doing this one last job before going home for the night and watching a far-future version of Jeopardy.

Of course, before you've set more than a few steps inside the SS Ugati, all hell breaks loose. The space station explodes behind you, propelling the ship you're on into open space. Darn! Looks like your task-list just got a bit bigger.

A few questions to the ship's computer quickly reveal a backstory of a system-wide rebellion, rivalling factions and opposing planets/moons. I really like this plot dynamic, a normal guy unwillingly thrust into circumstances with far-reaching consequences and no choice but to rise to the challenge.

The protagonist is weakly characterized, making it easy for the player to project herself onto the role or to invent a character of her own liking (the stubbled cigarsmoking guy I mentioned above...)

The build-up of tension is very well-paced, several times raising the stakes and increasing the urgency of the situation. The puzzles follow this arc of tension nicely, with a few simple preliminary obstacles leading up to two more complicated and challenging endgame problems.

All the puzzles are of a mechanical/physical/chemical nature, requiring obtaining and studying information (the ship's computer), and implementing cause-and-effect relations, all the while taking into account the fact that you are in a spaceship.

There is a lot of optional material for those with completionist/optimalizationist tendencies, although doing menial chores while your damaged vessel is hurtling through space does strain the suspenders of disbelief somewhat...

About midgame two NPCs come into play (albeit never personally, you can only talk to them on the comms.) Both are well-defined, they have a definite personal voice. The transition to the endgame requires you to put your trust in one of them. A frustrating dilemma with limited background information, adding to the tension of an already distressing situation.

There is much satisfaction to be found in figuring out the two main puzzles by yourself, perhaps with a nudge from the step-by-step hint system. Do give them a chance before running to the walkthrough.

Great puzzles against a strong but elegantly downplayed backstory.

This is very good.

I never knew that when birds speak English, they sound like the lovechild of HAL and Spock!

Bridget's counting the days until the end of summer camp. The people are okay, but phones are not allowed, the food sucks, and she's never been one for all this physical nature activity sports stuff.

Also, she's been having these really weird dreams lately...

On the other hand, that girl Bell Park seems nice. Maybe more than just nice...

Through the slow escalation of the tension in Bridget's dreams, the horror of the bodysnatching bird-people infiltrates the reality of camp-life. The organic, off-hand incorporation of the magic realism drags the player along unnoticed, until it becomes clear that the "reality" of this teenage story has become quite unreal.

Birdland masterfully achieves a balancing act of realistic teen drama and creepy horror.

The core story is funny in its over-the-topness, while remaining easily recognisable. It acknowledges the importance and sincerity of the feelings and priorities of its teenage characters. Some of them are there to fill predictable roles, others have more depth, all of them get space and freedom to breathe, not squeezed into a mere caricature.

The horror slowly seeping in could have been a liability to the earnest depiction of the characters, threatening to disturb and overshadow the gentle and detailed approach to their relations in the story. It isn't. Instead it presents a carefully crafted narrative opportunity: to fade out the NPCs into mindless birdslaves for the second half of the game so the budding relationship between Bell and Bridget can develop more freely. Once they are they are left alone, the mind-enslaving bird-people trying to take over the human race offer the necessary obstacles to overcome together, allowing the romance between them to grow.

Almost the entire story is in direct conversational (theatrical) writing, with the surroundings and immediate events described in "off-stage" cues between brackets. This means the diversity of the characters' personalities is related to the player solely through "show, don't tell". The words and actions of the characters themselves bring them to life, not the author's descriptions of them.

The player interacts with the story through clicking options. Some may have hidden consequences (I played through only once) or are there only for flavour. During the crucial dream-sequences however, the choices very clearly do matter, and feedback on the results is given immediately after. Increases or decreases in stats are explicitly, proudly displayed, and later in the game some options are labeled as available because of a stat being high enough, or greyed out for too-low stats.
Still a relative newbie to choice-games, I found this overt "gaminess" quite jarring in the otherwise emotionally/socially involved narrative, a true-to-life (except for the bodysnatching-bird bits) exploration of a developing teen romance. I quickly got used to it though, and it was a helpful realisation that my choice of path was completely up to me, that there were no right or wrong options. I learned to follow my personal preferences, not worry about closed-off options, and work with the choices I did have.

I am very impressed with how Birdland has an effectively scary and alienating horror subplot that serves as a means to put the romantic main story in the limelight.

Great story, endearing and life-like characters, warm and romantic bodysnatching horror.

1958 Dancing with Fear is a very cinematic IF experience.
We are dropped in medias res in the head of Palomé, a woman we know next to nothing about at the beginning, but who clearly has an intruiging history.
As play begins, she is persuaded by an accomplice to accompany him into the Grand Mansion they are conveniently standing right in front of. He wants Palomé to strengthen his disguise (infiltrating a ballroom party is less conspicuous with a beautiful woman on your arm...), and he also needs her to be ready to create a distraction should that be necessary.

This wasn't part of the plan, but reluctantly (and slightly excited by the prospect) Palomé agrees. Within minutes after entering the mansion, the plan goes south, the accomplice is discovered and the success of the mission falls upon Palomé's shoulders.

You (the player) help Palomé by investigating the surroundings and talking to the guests at the party, some of whom are familiar from her past. This brings memories to Palomé's mind, gradually uncovering her eventful backstory while at the same time providing clues for handling obstacles.

While the main story and the mansion it takes place in are small, the use of flashbacks adds a lot of content and substance to the game. You get to know your main character better and better, causing you to align your game-objectives with her in-story motivations.

The flashbacks and the various obstacles in the mansion play out as short scenes in a movie. This gives the game a strong forward drive, pulling the player along with Palomé's discoveries and her memories.
It also means the game is very much on rails.

The author gives the player some leeway. Examining everything closely is encouraged. Even unimportant details will give a small insight into the personages' lives and the social/political climate of the time period.
However, any actions other than X run the danger of going "off script", leading to a swift discovery and a failed mission. These losing endings are just as engagingly written as the main line of the story.

To strengthen the immersion in the time-period, it's very much worth the time to just LISTEN (or WAIT) multiple times in the ballroom. The author has gone through the effort of providing a very large variety of background murmuring and gossiping for the guests. An effort that adds immensely to the atmosphere.

When you pay attention to the clues in Palomé's backstory, the puzzles shouldn't be too difficult. Sometimes the order in which to tackle one or the other obstacle is a bit unclear, as some of the clues seem to be applicable to more than one situation. This shouldn't pose too much of a problem though, and if you should go too far off script, there's always RESTORE (or multiple UNDOs) to get you back on cue.

Dancing with Fear is engagingly and enthusiastically written. The subject matter is quite a bit heavier than magical kleptomania, but it is handled in a balanced manner. Heartwarming notes, action sequences, and personal revelations are spread throughout the game which, mingled with the socio-political background motivations, make for an equally entertaining as though-provoking IF-piece.

Unfortunately, there is a noticeable amount of typos and language errors in the text. Not enough to ruin the pleasure, but they are distracting and immersion-breaking.

At the end of the game, the player has several choices (six, to be exact, of which I found three). They make it possible to insert your own views on the matter at hand (which I've kept deliberately vague in this review...), and choose an ending according to your personal preferences.

A great spy-infiltration thriller with deep background. Heartily recommended.

Hush... Be still... Be tender...

This is a story to be read with quiet care. Until vicarious anger kicks in. But also sympathetic understanding. And most of all deep empathy.

[since this is a heavily story-oriented game, spoilers will follow]

Ending a story about a love-relationship with a car-crash is about as subtle as an anvil-drop.
Beginning that story with the car-crash however, and then working backwards is a deeply captivating narrative technique.

After the Accident's detailed and thoroughly implemented opening scene serves as a gateway to an ever expanding exploration of memories. The more the main character observes what is left of the car, the deeper she delves into the debris of a broken relationship.

Memory by memory, scene by scene, the twisted dynamics between her and her lover become apparent. Apparent to the reader, that is.

The protagonist herself, she has flash-backs. Dropped in the middle of defining episodes of her life with her lover. While these episodes cause caution, perhaps alarm, in the reader, the protagonist is caught in an anger-but-love forgiveness cycle.

The author captures these ambiguous feelings in a series of small storylets. She uses everyday objects which convey a depth of information about the ambivalent nature of the protagonist's feelings. Particularly strong story-writing is the description of a present from the lover. It's an object imbued with contradicting symbolic meanings. (Spoiler - click to show)The sweater is soft and comforting in itself, she accepts it as a token of love, but the smell of the fight that came before still lingers.

I am very impressed at how deeply Amanda Walker can see both sides of these feelings from the protagonist's point of view, as well as translating them with deep-felt empathy to the reader.

This piece shows a deep feeling and understanding for the intricacies of love, even when that love is skewed.

The car-crash, symbolic and real, is a cathartic ending. I wouldn't have wished for the protagonist to endure more of the loving manipulating gifts.

The Bones of Rosalinda has a very compelling storyline. The minimally interactive prologue sets the mood, prepares the scene and introduces the characters. The equally minimally interactive epilogue provides very satisfying closure for the story, not only for the protagonist but for the side characters too.
Both are quite long and very well written, giving the player the opportunity to dig in to the story.
In between is, of course, the game. It's up to the player to pick up the introductory setup and carry it through to the finale, jumping through a great deal of hoops large and small while doing so.

The characters in Bones are a joy to get to know. They all have enough detail and glimpses of a backstory so that not one of them feels (or smells) like just having been pressed out of a plastic mold.
I particularly liked Piecrust, a talking mouse with a rather bleak outlook on the world and his future in it, and a distracting enthousiasm for foodstuffs of any kind. The apathetic deadpan delivery of his remarks made me laugh more than once, especially near the beginning of the game.
The elaborate conversations and cutscenes provide the player with background and insights to fully appreciate the characters.

The difficulty of the puzzles was just right for me, once I really got the central gameplay mechanic. It's PC-juggling.The player has to switch player characters with different abilities (and sometimes assemble them...) to solve the problems facing the protagonist.This mechanic is introduced gently and later expanded upon, providing a gentle learning curve.
Besides the PC-juggling there is also inventory-juggling. Lots of it. A shortcut to directly GIVE an object from one PC to the next without first dropping it would be nice. Also, (Spoiler - click to show)the ability to ATTACH limbs straight out of the backpack would come in handy.
Most of the puzzles are variations on the lock-and-key theme. The Bones of Rosalinda shows with gusto that original variations on that theme are still possible. Very satisfying.

I had a blast playing through this game. Highly recommended!

"Miss Duckworthy’s School for Magic-Infested Young People"

Read that title.
Not “magically gifted” or the more neutral “with magic abilities”. Not “magic-afflicted” or “magic-infected”, which might be appropriate if the children were in some way endangered by their powers, as is often the case with the newly-magical.
No.
“Magic-infested”. Like pestilence-spreading vermin.

Indeed, in the world of Miss Duckworthy’s School for Magic-Infested Young People, those who show any signs of supernatural powers are to be eradicated, or in those more lenient countries who have subscribed to the MagiCore Accords, picked up at gunpoint and isolated in a special school.

This setting, introduced in a mere handful of screens during the prologue, is impressive and wide enough to accomodate a whole series of games and stories, and I hope the author delves deeper in its history and culture in future works.

This particular game plays out in the school from the title where magic children and young people are isolated, yes, but also allowed to develop their talents. That means magic lessons, yeah!

And yes, there’s a bit of that, partly depending on the choices of the player. At the heart of the game, however, are dangerous intrigue and a high-stakes power-struggle.

I really liked the personal development of the protagonist. In the character-creation screens, I coblled together my main girl Jacky, a purple-haired Canadian car thief who is “gay as a bucket of rainbow glitter”. That made me laugh really loud. She quickly made a few friends, and the conversations and banter between them flowed very naturally. There was one low-key opportunity for romance, which I bypassed it at the time thinking it was a bit too soon. It never came up again, but I was just as happy being just friends.

There is ample room for the player to steer the direction of the narrative and, with the choices taken, the sort of person their protagonist is. The further the story progressed, the more I felt the weight of the responsibilty and danger in my choices. Not only was I genuinely concerned about Jacky, I also felt I had to protect her friends. This made me weigh my options carefully, trying to judge if the “heroic” choice that I was sure Jacky could handle, would inadvertently harm her friends. Very engaging.

The introduction felt a bit rushed to me, like I was plunged in without having a chance to dip my pinky toe in to test the waters. One second I’m joyriding with my buddy, the next I’m jumping off a bridge and I’m a troll. Just like that. No glowing aura of transformation, nor a bonecrunching metamorphosis. No vague premonition or sense of apprehension that Jacky might be on the verge of changing, and that this stressful action might push her over the edge.
It could of course be that in my specific sequence of choices, I missed a bit of exposition.

The writing’s very good. Good and clear descriptions of the school and its wildly differing levels. Intuitive and natural conversations. Shocking and/or exciting action scenes (which is hard when the player is allowed choices while the action plays out.)
And most importantly: an beautifully sketched main character, an organic blend of the outlines provided by the author and the colour added by my choices. I felt intimately connected to Jacky, like I could grasp her anxiety or joy or anger all through the game.

I enjoyed this very much, and I’ll probably replay with a different protagonist ((Spoiler - click to show)I hear there's a cat companion in there somewhere...)
If Jacky will let me, that is…

Another entry for my ever-growing list of Mansion-games! (I promise, I’ll get round to putting an actual list on IFDB one of these days. I swear…) The fact that I even seriously entertain the idea for such a list shows that dropping your protagonist in a mansion without much of a preamble or explanation and basically saying: “Now off you go! Just poke around and figure out what goes on here,” is a premise that a) is done a lot, and b) has proven its worth.

It’s a set-up, a frame for the author to let loose their imagination within known boundaries, and to play with the expectations that pop up in the player’s brain as soon as they notice it’s a Mansion-game.

In other words, it’s all about the filling.

And hoooo-boy does Mandy Benavav deliver on the filling!

From the get-go, the description the Mansion sets the tone:

—“The house is a small two story Victorian, remarkably well kept, with dark siding and darker trim. It stretches toward the sky unevenly, like a cat arching its shoulders - cordial, but cautious.”

An unsettling scene, leaning towards the dark and the Gothic, with an unusual and evocative image, a simile both vivid and slightly droll.

The writing continues in this vein, delicately walking the tightrope between earnest gloom and frivolous spark.

Not too far along in the game, the source of this consistent tone makes itself known: the narrator peeks from behind the curtain and directs some remarks straight at you, the player. One would expect this breaking of the fourth wall to also shatter the carefully woven moody atmosphere, but it doesn’t.

—“The foyer stands ready, awaiting your eye. Let’s not pretend we’re above snooping - after all, who doesn’t love a good snoop? You’re among friends - I won’t tell if you care to poke about the room. A narrator’s job is not to judge; merely recount.”

Instead, by revealing himself, the narrator re-affirms the unity of tone. The deep tone of his (I imagined an Ian McKellen reciting the story in a grave note, unable to keep himself from interjecting his own comments on the state of affairs every once in a while) voice suffuses the Mansion and lends character to it, and reassures the player that they’re in good hands.

Indeed, instead of concealing the directional and inventory options under functional clicks so bland as to be almost unnoticeable, here the narrator generously sets forth our options in elaborate and (jokingly?) empathic propositions:

Has the scent of pulp overpowered your senses? The ticking of the clock quickening your pulse? Then perhaps you should return to the foyer.
Or perhaps you wish to take stock of your possessions.

----looks over his shoulder at the wall of text rising above him----

Ahem! Well. I really like the narrator. That’s probably clear by now.

But…

Of course this disembodied narrative voice, regardless of setting-infusing gravitas or witty side-remarks, must perform the job set before him: recount the text the author has written.

And it’s good text.

I’ve already mentioned the descriptions, moody Gothic with a twist.

—“The webs occupy only a tasteful amount of ceiling space; not so much as to give the impression of homely neglect, but just enough to give the spiders their due.
You think you see your echo wiggle slightly in one of the webs. You wonder how many others are trapped up there.”

(The detail about the trapped echo made me shiver with delight and trepidation…)

What is most impressive however is the variety of unique characters that inhabit the Mansion. Each with their own little mannerisms and idiosyncratic speech, they come across as singular individuals. Grotesque, perhaps, somewhat caricatural. On the edge of becoming a menagerie of quirks and oddities, a display of curiosities, even.
But here again, the tightness and consistency of the narrative tone (----Yes, Sir Ian, take a bow, so everyone can see you…----) provides a unifying frame where all these eccentrics may perform their personal peculiarities freely and naturally to their hearts’ content.

—“In a shower of soapy water, the Octopus again raises all eight appendages, this time holding an assortment of dirty dishes, brushes, rags, and sponges. For each dish, a cleaning implement.
It begins industriously scrubbing, three dishes at a time, with one arm on drying duty. With its final arm, it holds a can of tuna, which it periodically slaps with its dish towel at rhythmic intervals.
As it scrubs, you discern a certain pattern in the noise…”

***

“You strain your ears. It could be your imagination but you could swear that the rhythm of the brushing is set to the drinking song from La Traviata, with the occasional soap bubble popping to emphasize the high notes.

Well fancy that.”

The puzzles in An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There are a combination of fetch-quest chains and social interaction with the quirky inhabitants who all seem to want something that involves getting it from someone else.

Which means you need to know where everything and everyone is. Exploration time!

The Mansion is not that big, but it sure is very full and alive. The social fetch-quests force you to repeatedly visit the same rooms, but with the prospect of a new conversation topic or even the conclusion to a puzzle and the accompanying reward, this never gets dull.
Each floor of the house is gated off, ensuring that the player has seen and adequately searched the rooms on that floor, and has been introduced to the characters residing there.

While on the topic of exploration, I have to specifically mention the bookcase in the library. That thing is a goldmine for fantasy and horror references. There had to be something of importance in there, so I started clicking a few of the books (nicely rendered in a minimalist graphic) at random, thinking I’d have to dig my way through a bunch of increasingly far-fetched made-up titles. I got a real jolt of nerdy joy when I stumbled upon (Spoiler - click to show)Gormenghast! And there were more: Wooster&Jeeves, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Tigana, Terry Pratchett,…! I jotted down a bunch of titles and authors I don’t know to look them up in the local library, although I doubt if they will have a copy of A True and Accurate Account of the Invention of Penguins by Lord Pendleton Stickwidth, Royal Explorer…
It’s a bit of a cheap trick, namedropping to remind the reader of a shared membership of the coolest club on earth, but it works. With each title I recognised, I glowed a bit more.

In a very parser-like fashion, the individual objects of importance are often buried under a few layers of clicks, going from the general description of the room to a list of items to examine closer.

And it’s here, in this hybrid parser/click gameplay, that I at last find some small naggles to complain about. Some minor annoyances to give this review at least a semblance of critical assessment and attempted objectivity.

On the parser-choice scale, the hybrid that is An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There sometimes has trouble choosing and holding its spot. While you’re meticulously searching rooms, manipulating the environment, and running around carrying objects (in a perfectly handled inventory) from one room to the next to offer them to NPCs or use them to solve puzzles, which are quintessential parser-things to do, there are also a number of times when the game carries out an action for you or automatically solves a part of the puzzle. At these moments, I felt robbed of the agency that the heavy parser-feel of the game had promised me.
Two examples, one of slight disappointed surprise, one where my parser-expectations made a solution invisible:
-(Spoiler - click to show)I would have loved to be able to TAKE the teddybear, instead of having automatically added to my inventory. Just that small moment of picking it up as a separate action, with an accompanying description of touching the soft fur, or sneezing because of the dust…
-(Spoiler - click to show)The fact that the eggs were just waiting on the kitchen counter until I had the other ingredients, that I wasn’t able to manipulate them as a separate object during my first search through the kitchen, blurred my memory of them as useful objects. I tottered up and down the stairs half a dozen times, looking in the rooms for links unclicked. When I finally turned to the walkthrough and saw “Don’t worry about them - they’re next to the stove, you’ll just grab them when you go to cook.”, I felt misled. Perhaps by my own misplaced parser-expectations (which the game had nourished all the way through), but misled nonetheless…

In short, I think An Account of Your Vist to the Enchanted House & What You Found There would benefit from a firmer stance somewhat more to the finer-grained parser side of the spectrum.

In conclusion, I loved it. Such flair and mood, such wonderful characters and conversations, such beautiful atmospheric writing!

(based on the IFComp 2024 version)


An artist’s spirit is present in their work, be it a sparkling glow or a faint after-image. When offered the chance to gather seven paintings to remember your loved one by, you must choose thoughtfully, tenderly, attentive of those moods and feelings you want to keep closest to your heart.

Thoughtful and tender is also how I would characterise the delicate writing in this piece. This being a text-game, each painting is a carefully crafted paragraph evoking colours and shapes, images and sensations, helped along by suggestive sounds and contemplative background music.

The memories associated with your chosen paintings, just as empathically written, come together in a somewhat coherent but necessarily fragmented picture of the beloved artist’s personality and history.

Both paintings and memories are gathered in two separate windows where you can revisit them together to more easily discern the common themes or the hooked barbs that stand out.

Despite being emotionally drawn to this piece, there were a few aspects that grated and disrupted the smoothness of my engagement.
-The order in which the paintings are presented to you is randomised to such an extent that it happened multiple times that I saw the same one twice in a row, which significantly diminished the impact of the described images.
-The memories attached to the paintings are sometimes proffered as the direct inspiration for that specific work. I don’t claim to understand how a painter’s inspiration works, but the link between a specific memory of an event and the painting that supposedly flowed from that event felt strained to me at times.

In the concluding sequence, you are given the chance to finish a work that your loved one lightly sketched on the canvas. This is done by adjusting several features of a actual visual image of a painting. I was excited by this opportunity to try my hand at giving creative input and steering the artwork with the impression of my chosen loved one’s spirit still fresh in my mind as guidance.

However, the flat and bland computer-rendering of what should be a heartfelt handcrafted painting made me wish deeply that the author of Imprimatura had opted to just describe this final painting in the same sensitive and eloquent manner as the previous works of art in the game. The words of the writer struck much more closely to my heart, elicited much more honestly felt emotions in me, than the dull and texture-less picture my choices produced on the computer screen.

What should have been a cathartic and freeing experience of closure turned out to be an emotionally drained excercise in Paint™-for-beginners.

Very impressive, deeply felt, visually evocative and imaginative writing. Seriously flawed and disillusioning in the design and execution of its conclusion.

(based on the IFComp 2024 version)


----<nagging voice>“This game is way too big for IFComp. How can I be expected to play even half of the list if people dump these kinds of behemoths in there?!”</nagging voice>----

I’m very grateful some authors make these big games and enter them in the Comp. It’s a brave gamble, because we are obliged to determine our scores after an alloted maximum of two hours, and big games often take their time to draw the players deeper and deeper into focused engagement with the world of the game, the style of puzzles, the mood of the map.

I haven’t finished Hildy in the two hours of sessions I’ve spent in it so far. I don’t expect to finish it in another two or even four hours. I will play it until the end, even if this means nibbling some time away from other entries. Because playing IF is ultimately about enjoying the game in front of you, and I can hardly imagine a game further down the list will be so right up my alley as this one.

Many of you will already know what this means: a big parser with a sprawling map to explore and draw, a variety of not-too-hard but slightly twisted puzzles, moody and evocative images in the descriptions, solid writing with a generous sprinkling of humour.

Since I haven’t solved the entire game yet, I will look back to the very start of my experience and show you my reaction after a mere 45 minutes of play. This is the (lightly edited) PM I sent to the author to share how impressed I was after playing the intro and getting to know the protagonist:

A protagonist with a name (“Hildegund”) that sounds like a character from Wagner’s Ring der Nibelungen, but who acts more like 'Lil Ragamuffin from @bitterkarella’s Guttersnipe series of games. Fantastic!

I’ve played the intro (bathing and getting dressed after ), and I already know I’m going to love every bit of this game.

In that short opening sequence of tasks, Hildy has earned my complete and utter trust. I’ll go wherever this game takes me, die a hundred times and still happily restore to do it all over again.

Funny and compelling writing, captivating PC-personality. And pruning all the boring bits out of the magic system while giving perfectly appropriate in-game justifications to succeed in maintaining the direct link to the Enchanter-universe: brilliant!

Rovarsson

After 75 more minutes of playtime, I stand with everything I wrote in this first enthusiastic impression. If anything, it’s getting even better.

Hildy is classic text-adventure material, happy to stand on the shoulders of giants, but not so intimidated by the Imps that it shies away from stretching the mould and putting its own stamp of creative ownership down.

Great game.

Edit:

A HOLLOW VOICE BOOMS OUT: “I just finished it. The endgame’s fantastic!”