Ratings and Reviews by Lance Cirone

One Does Not Simply Fry is fully aware of how ridiculous its premise is, but goes full-force with it, and that's why I love it. It's a cooking competition set in a parody Lord of the Rings. It'd be easy for something like this to just come off as a gimmick or disposable, but the theming really does tie everything together. The game is also incredibly funny, and made me laugh out loud multiple times. I loved every bit with the bread. I realize a lot of complaints about this game come from a perceived overdose of puns or just finding some jokes weak, but I didn't really notice that. This is part of the complete commitment to the bit; it reminds me of In a Manor of Speaking.

Gameplay-wise, this is really engaging and makes good use of the ChoiceScript format. There are four characters you can play as, each specializing in different areas of cooking or having things they can use to their advantage (such as strength or persuasiveness). First, you get to choose how to budget your money to buy ingredients. During the cooking contest, you go through each step of making your onion ring, and can try to sway the judges or sabotage other contestants with your downtime. It really makes you stop to think about your choices because they all add up in determining whether or not you win. The ending also does a good job of letting you know what specifically you failed on and what you did well, so you can plan around that next time. The only luck-based element I can see is that every contestant has a 1 in 6 chance to get a premium kitchen, but the game is pretty open with showing how this is calculated and when it happens, and it does improve the replayability. The game also has a good amount of achievements, which is always neat to see.

I didn't do very good on my first run, but I'd be glad to play it over again to see if I can do better with a different character. The only real criticism I have is that a few parts feel a bit long with the rules, but they do have a good amount of comedy and you can skip the repetitive parts on replays. One of the weirdest choice-based games I've played, but I had a great time with it.

The Wand revolves around a single core mechanic that the game never runs out of creative ways to use. You have a wand with three colored sections you can set to different combinations. Each combination has a different effect, like one puts out fires while another acts as a magnifying glass. You have to find these different combinations and use them to solve puzzles and reach the castle's tower. Not all of the combinations are spelled out for you: some require piecing together multiple clues. Figuring out one and seeing what it did always feels rewarding, especially when you know exactly what you can use it on.

Another important aspect of the game is that you can't touch anything in the rooms, so the wand is the only item you're allowed to handle. It helps streamline the game and makes your thought process always involve figuring out what to do with the spells you have, or figuring out where to find new ones. The final puzzle really brings everything together.

You might have picked up on there being more to this game than it seems. (Spoiler - click to show)Replaying it and using one of the endgame skills opens up a much more difficult extra quest, which is awesome, since it pushes the wand mechanic even further while letting you use all the knowledge you gained on your first run. The game deserves all of its praise, and if you want a fair puzzler to sit down with and take notes on, this is a great choice.

Transporter has flown under the radar, with basically no documentation or acknowledgement of its existence until Garry Francis beat it and wrote up a walkthrough in May of 2024. It's nothing super unique, but it's a solid game that perfectly represents the prototypical idea of what a text adventure is like.

The premise involves you being warped from your living room to a wizard's place, and you have to explore to find an artifact to power it back up. The gameplay involves lock-and-key puzzles, timing puzzles, and it's possible to accidentally lock yourself out of victory (this is a cruel game). Most of the puzzles aren't too bad if you're making frequent saves. The game also doesn't work on a few modern interpreters, since the SAY and ASK commands will make it crash on input. Overall, though, I didn't have any other complaints with the game. It's nice if you want something that feels familiar.

This game sees you invited to a party in a mysterious hotel. You travel to various floors to gather what you need to set it up, while running into other people you decide to assist, such as a socialite woman and a lost little girl.

I liked the visual presentation. The hotel schedule has a stylish illustrated image of various sheets posted up, with room information, graphics, and room numbers. There's also a few times where the text changes to reflect the story, such as a text conversation and an announcement over a PA both being formatted differently. Hitting a panel causes the little box representing it to shake as a clinking sound plays. There's also a particularly clever use of timed text, when the game says "you literally have to wait for 20 seconds for all of this to be over," and the results of it appear exactly that much time later.

The game uses audio well, with brief sound effects playing as you reach a new floor. The writing throughout is pretty strong: "As the elevator descended, Lavinia launched into a hilarious, rapid-fire account of the party's ongoing drama. A missing diamond necklace, a jealous ex-boyfriend, and a celebrity chef with a burnt soufflé – it seemed chaos was the order of the night."

I only noticed a few errors, such as typos ("i very much apreacieated your concern"). On floor 26, the clickable words don't disable after you click them, meaning you can keep clicking them to spawn more text. I got a missing passage error when I tried to go to the lobby, but I was still able to get a few of the different endings. Also, the elevator numbers in the dropdown are also colored white just like the background of the selection, making them impossible to read without highlighting; maybe either part could be yellow like the noticeboard? Overall, I had fun with the game.

I'm a fan of wordplay games, so it's only natural that I'd end up liking Letters from Home. It took me a bit of time to understand what I was really supposed to do, but the catch here is that you need to collect letters around an old mansion that's being moved out. To give a few examples from the game, (Spoiler - click to show)taking the "F" that signals Fahrenheit on a thermometer, plucking one of the roman numerals out of a date, or working out homophones like "sea" vs. "C".

Once you've found all of these, you get to solve a cryptic crossword. The clues you get are things like (Spoiler - click to show)"Confused DJ was a KC; that's for the birds. (8)" and "Crystal units of volume, we hear. (6)". I was pretty confused, but the logic does make sense if you think about it in an unconventional way.

Strangely enough, the weaker parts of the game have nothing to do with the homophones or pangrams, but are the standard adventure game-type puzzles. You get an array of standard verbs like JUMP, PUSH, and SEARCH that are used sparingly but easy to forget about. One puzzle has you needing to reach something high up, and the solution is to (Spoiler - click to show)push a bicycle in from another room and stand on that, while another one involving retrieving something from a small crack on the floor involves (Spoiler - click to show)jumping to send it up, then putting a pad of paper (specifically this, nothing else) over the crack to catch it. While the game has a lot of items and rooms, things you don't need to bring elsewhere will be left behind in the rooms after you solve their puzzles, which is a nice detail.

There is one thing that you can lock yourself out of, though, and it's (Spoiler - click to show)one of the crossword clues. I was pretty discouraged to realize this, so a warning to new players: (Spoiler - click to show)don't take the yew tree until you're sure you've done everything with it.

Still, I enjoyed my playthrough overall. While many of the puzzles can rely on esoteric knowledge, that's kind of a given if you're even interested in a game like this. There is also a very detailed hint system, with Invisiclues-style hints that get more direct as you go down the list, so don't be afraid to use it as you play.

Toonesia knows what it wants to be and isn't anything more than that. It's not a criticism with the game, it's a fun (albeit short) puzzle sequence consisting of loads of references to classic Looney Tunes. You play as hunter Elmo Fuld, hunting down Bud Bunny and running into a Tasmanian devil and a daffy duck. Even if you've only seen a few of the cartoons, there's still plenty of the classic tropes to laugh at here, with variations on all kinds of running gags. I didn't find the linear structure to be as big a problem as I was afraid it would be. The only real problem I had with the game was the described directions sometimes being reversed, which misled me a couple of times. I'd recommend it if you're looking for something light and quick, with a lot of cartoon logic.

There's a specific style to Emily Short's games that I really like, and it's inspired plenty of my own writing. Just this dry, bleak tone, how everything can pass by without being given too much notice. The descriptions that manage to say so much in just a few words. The way characters with differing outlooks to the protagonists are portrayed. Bee, a story about a homeschooled, religious girl with dreams of winning the spelling bee, is even more of the greatness I've been expecting.

Bee gives you a few stats to keep track of. Obviously, you want to study frequently and raise your spelling skills, which have the helpful effect of eliminating wrong answer choices for the player during the spelling bees later on. But you also have a motivation counter, reminding you to take a step back and ask why you're really going for this. Your parents are aware of the stigma against homeschooled children and they want you to be on the national media, showing that your family and your fellow homeschoolers are worth something. Other challenges the protagonist grapples with include games and chores with the family, trying to support her younger sister Lettice, celebrating denominational holidays, a crush on a local boy named Jerome, and meeting various neighbors whose unfamiliar lifestyles lead to dissatisfaction.

As Bee goes on, the protagonist's outlook on life changes. She's no longer dreaming of the almost superhuman feats of language mastery she's wanted. She spaces out during her lessons, pays less attention while tutoring, idly doodles on her notecard. Her daydreams consist of wondering how Cinderella ever escaped her situation, and what kind of freedom she'll have once she finally finishes the contest. In one particularly effective vignette, she forces herself to trudge back and forth through heavy snow, the cold being the only thing that can keep her awake as she finishes her word list top to bottom. She loses motivation and realizes that she's only doing what her parents want of her. By this point, she gets an English tutor who is "some form of heretic" (not atheist, but possibly agnostic) and is pursuing Jerome in private.

The overall tone just gets increasingly disinterested as the game goes on. Studying your word list in the later segments will get you this: "All those words on your lists are like tokens of a life outside, beyond these walls; of a variety and diversity of human life; and you are not allowed to know any of it. For now. You'll get out. Eventually. It has to get better." Even the final segment consists of two challenges, one of which goes by in a blur (you don't even remember what the word is), and then the next. The protagonist gets second place, but her parents are still proud of her. This hollow appreciation leaves her unfulfilled -- what was the point of all that studying if she doesn't feel any accomplishment? Will failure ever stop being okay?

I only got one of the four endings, but considering how stories like Best of Three go, I can't imagine the others being too much happier. With a simple gameplay loop, a few stats that are a nice balance to manage, and the engaging prose and meaningful decisions that direct the protagonist's attitude, this game won me over on the Choice of Games format. One of the best.

Fine-Tuned has an incredibly fun vibe to it. From the character names, to the descriptions, it feels like a classic action movie. You are adventurer Troy Sterling, driving with your inventor companion Aloysius in your awesome car. Soon after, you are harassed by anti-auto farmer MacDougal, whom you accidentally send flying into a ditch. Once you save him, he relinquishes his duty to pick up Melody Sweet from the train station.

In the second part of the game, you play as Melody, as ancient history professor Sneedlemeyer gives you an artifact, which your opera singing skills might be able to unlock the secret to. It's a bit hard to figure out what your goal is, but the puzzles do make sense and it's fun to see Melody's singing talent integrated into them.

In the third part, (Spoiler - click to show)you play as Troy again. You have to investigate Sneedlemeyer's house, plotting in advance how you're going to deal with your arch-enemy, the glass-eyed Salomonder, who has come to hold everyone hostage.

The fourth and final part has (Spoiler - click to show)you as Melody as you have to solve your way out of the hostage situation. Next, your goal is to chase the Salomonder down before he can board a train and beat you to the museum. I was totally on board for this, and then:

"Your little party is ready for the final showdown. The motors roar thrillingly... [press any key] (To Be Continued...)"

The game has no conclusion. I will admit it ended on a heartwarming final scene, (Spoiler - click to show)Melody and Aloysius together, singing along to the song that started Melody's opera career, but it does sting knowing there's no follow-up to it. Right before what would have undoubtedly been the most exciting part of the game, too!

Even if the game is cut short, I think it's a good linear story as it is. The puzzles aren't complex and the pace of everything is kept moving at a fast speed. I liked the characters a lot, and there's plenty of well-implemented sequences. The way everyone loves Troy, from the train conductor to children playing around your car and asking you to honk the horn (which you can), he's quite a defined protagonist. Melody has her own unique traits, too, such as an ear for music and a more classy approach to problem-solving. Plus, the Salomonder and his pun-based villainy were cheesy enough to be funny.

Overall, I found the game easy to play, but there were a few oversights. It said the watering trough was empty even after I filled it with water. Similarly, I was able to steal the handle to the hatch of Sneedlemeyer's roof, which I shouldn't be able to. Generally, though, the game is very polished, with the story cutscenes being hard to break the flow of, and plenty of in-character responses are present for nonessential things you might think to do. An unobtrusive scoring system also rewards exploration. There was clearly a lot of testing going into this, and the author had a clear direction of what tone and style they wanted. In conclusion, I would recommend Fine-Tuned, but don't be caught off-guard when the action ends earlier than you'd expect.

This is the other 2009 24 Hours of Inform entry. What surprised me is how comprehensive the game is, it really does have a non-default response for most things you try. Even uncommon ideas like eating, drinking, or smelling certain objects will give you specialized responses. Descriptions are particularly short and succinct, and it never feels like you're missing information you need. I thought the caveman theme of the game was a nice change of pace as well. It's impressive for a game that was made in a short span of time, and I definitely prefer it to Semi Intelligent Design.

This game was one of the two entries written for the fourth 24 Hours of Inform contest, in 2009. I'm not sure what the deal with the game is, because it seems like two totally different things in one and might not be possible to complete.

In the first half, you work as the housekeeper of a very cranky Senator and have to serve him soup for supper. The puzzle here has some pretty odd implementation: stirring the kettle gives you a message that seems like the soup is ready, but the powder remains. You actually have to pour the boiling water into the cup first, then put the powder into that and stir it. Due to an oversight, you can earn an infinite amount of points by repeating certain actions, and your score is given "out of 0." Also, it's described that a garden is to your west, so I tried to see it, but I got a "you can't go that way" error. To be fair, I did enjoy the sequence where you get bored waiting for the kettle to boil.

Once you serve the soup, the Senator gets mad due to your choice of cup and flavoring, which you presumed he liked. He goes in to attack you, and suddenly the game cuts to something completely baffling. You play a different character locked in a dark room, whose mannerisms and speech bring some kind of ogre to mind. You have to do tough labor to earn your soup. You have a cage with a lump in it that you can't drop or do anything with or else the Senator yells at you for mishandling "testing material", and on the other side of the room is some snarling beast that attacks and kills you if you open the wall. There's also a "special cage" that apparently you can put things in to change them, and the game tells you to clean it, but nothing happened when I did. The soup is stuck on the bottom of the cage, and you can't meaningfully interact with it. I also got a blank message when I tried pressing the round button in the other room. It's a frustrating experience, and it felt like I had exhausted all my options and wasn't getting anywhere.