Ratings and Reviews by Rovarsson

"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!