Ratings and Reviews by mg51

I've played this game through about eight times now. The setup is something of a scavenger/treasure hunt through an old antebellum mansion, grabbing antiques while filmed for a reality show. Most non-passive commands cost you fifteen seconds, and you have half an hour to collect items and pass through the foyer with them (or else put them in their special location, which you must guess based on the item and what rooms you've seen). It doesn't take long to reach the end point, and as you learn more about the value of various items, how to access different parts of the mansion, and other factors, you start working on how to allocate your time best. My first playthrough, I ended with about $6000, whereas my most recent I had almost $18000 (still a far cry from the high scores listed in the links).

I wish there was a way to play without the time limitation, just so I could play through the entire game, but I understand why having that sort of gameplay available would cheapen the timed play, since it would be easier to make choices once you had the entire place mapped out, and more room for trial and error on the special locations was allowed.

Did I mention you're wearing a chicken costume for the TV show? You're wearing a chicken costume for the TV show.

I have absolutely enjoyed the experience of playing this game. I'm one of those people who likes mathematical thinking, but who hasn't been in a math class for about a decade, so this is perfect for me because it isn't prohibitively challenging as far as the sort of math you have to actually perform, but it requires you to test things out and think outside of the box as more ways to create numbers become accessible to you in the form of "spells".

There's a charming little plotline with NPCs to provide the story propping up the puzzles, but I'd definitely say this is a puzzles-over-plot game.

If you enjoy logic puzzles and growing a toolbox incrementally, this is a game you should enjoy.

I appreciate what Being Andrew Plotkin was trying to do, but it fell a bit flat for me. Between the kind of unnecessary and awkward romantic plotline and a lot of jokes that were probably just too meta for me, it felt repetitive and overly linear, with almost no room for exploration with the frequent P.O.V. switches, leaving me with an overall sense of dissatisfaction with the environment. And in spite of the frequent P.O.V. switches, I never found myself attached to or invested in any of the characters. I should say I haven't seen the film this is based on, and while I don't know if that would have made me enjoy the game more, it probably would have given context to some elements I wasn't a fan of.

Basically, to me, this game relied too heavily on plot and not enough on gameplay, an issue I had with Photopia too, but unlike Photopia, the story wasn't interesting enough for me to continue forward anyway. When I reached the point in the story where you can find yourself in an infinite loop and couldn't figure out how to stop it, I gave up on the game.

So, because I didn't finish, please take my rating with a grain of salt. I can't speak to the entire game. I have selected to have my rating excluded from the game's overall rating too for this reason.