Ratings and Reviews by Lance Cirone
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It's textadventures.co.uk, December 18, 2023This game is supposed to teach you about trumpets, but it's so vaguely described that I don't feel like I got anything out of it. You start off in a Swiss Celtic village and then take a time portal through periods of history to steal trumpets until you return to your own time. This sounds like an interesting premise, but there's barely anything to do or look at in each room. You can die in a few ways, though: one puzzle kills you for not knowing which keys 17th century trumpets can play in, before it teaches you. You can also die if you drop the sword (it lands on your foot) but you can eat it just fine.
After you get all the trumpets and return home, it says "You can tell this time portal will get you to your own time but reflecting on your journey you know so much about the Trumpet you may get you A+ in music history!" It's a nice sentiment, at least.
Man Tries to Sell Insurance to Baroness, You Won't Believe What Happens Next!, December 18, 2023I admit to being a bit turned away by the word "erotic" in this game's summary. Thankfully, the other reviews convinced me to give it a try. The most suggestive parts of the game just come from the character's imagination and the blurry, out-of-focus images of the Baroness in the magazine -- nothing outright graphic or sexual is shown or described.
You're in the waiting room of Baroness Valerie and preparing to sell her insurance. But your eye is drawn to a crooked painting hanging on the wall above the couch, and that bothers you. Fixing this will launch you into a chain reaction of other things going wrong around the house. It's easy to follow and the parser is responsive.
One detail I really liked is that you can get the best ending without needing to earn every point available. I finished with around 47 and still got it. Replaying the game to look for things you've missed is fun, and there are a few obscure ones I stumbled into (such as (Spoiler - click to show)kissing the magazine or (Spoiler - click to show)feeding the fish twice). I do wonder if there's a 100% guide for this game anywhere, though.
Like a few others, I was confused by the lead-in to the ending. I thought it would be a separate puzzle, and there's an aquarium full of water, so I was trying to use that to extinguish the fire. But the best ending is a nice note to go off on.
This is a short puzzler that isn't hard and I definitely enjoyed playing.
I'd build it up just to burn it down, October 6, 2023I beta tested Assembly. In the process, I ran into many wardrobe-related mishaps, proving that "HINDER" was more than living up to its name. But now that everything's ironed out, I'd definitely recommend the game. It takes a mundane setting like an IKEA and manages to make it surprisingly off-putting. The core mechanic is being able to use instruction booklets and furniture parts to build and disassemble pieces of furniture. It's responsive and makes you think about what items you can make to solve certain puzzles. The two ending puzzles are definitely the highlight; it's so exciting when you finally realize "wait, I get to do ''that''"? Ultimately, I had a lot of fun with this one.
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, October 3, 2023I got to be a beta tester for Honk!, and the game blew me away.
The game takes place in and around a circus, where the performances are being sabotaged by a mysterious Phantom. You, Lola the Clown, must use your skills (mostly pie-throwing and nose-honking) to put a stop to it. The main portion of the gameplay is figuring out how to work through your circus mates' performances by using the tools you find around the carnival in creative ways. The performances can be solved in any order you want, and each has an engaging and fast-paced puzzle to go with it. You're also given as many chances as you need to get through one, and the respective performers have plenty of hints to offer, so it never feels like you're out of options.
Each of the characters are full of personality. The game shows this through letting you talk to them before, during, and after the performances, explore the inside of their campers, and giving each one unique speaking styles and idle actions. The first puzzle I chose to solve was with Freda the strongwoman, who happens to be your girlfriend. During her final show, lifting up an audience member, the Phantom shows up and turns out to be too heavy even for her. While the solution is inventive and one of the easier segments here, there's also a lot of ways for this to go wrong -- some of them involve hurting Freda, which made me feel guilty and forced me to go back, a testament to just how well this came sold me on its characters.
Ken Lawn's show was easily one of the funniest parts of the game for me, which is saying a lot. Lawn is a goose tamer who tries to have his goose tell a story for the audience (titled The Goose Who Ran Into Traffic And Got Hit By A Car) through hand motions -- but when the Phantom blindfolds the goose before the show, Lola has to use noises to get it to follow along. Lawn's oddly serious, no-nonsense personality contrasted with him desperately gesturing at a blindfolded goose had me laughing even when I was still figuring out the puzzle.
Adagio the magician also has her magic show sabotaged. The Phantom steals her method of escape when she ties herself up and lowers herself into a tank of water, forcing you to think fast and come up with an alternate solution to cut the rope. I liked the solution here a lot: (Spoiler - click to show)it makes use of a lot of small parts you'll probably have noticed, but not known how to put together yet.
This game's jokes also bring it up a lot: multiple lines had me laughing out loud. One highlight would have to be the dialogue when Adagio is about to tell you how her magic trick works. Rather than keep it a secret, you can ask if you can tell Freda. Then Ken, then your boss, then your brothers, then the guy who runs the Monster Manor, then the goose... she says yes to that last one, at least. There's also plenty of fun to be had in throwing pies at whatever you can imagine. Default responses are practically nowhere, as the game responded accordingly to whatever I tried to do during my playthrough -- everything has a bit of extra flavor to it from Lola's perspective.
I don't want to go into the endgame portion too much, but I found it satisfying and everything comes together in the end. The one flaw I had was a janky mechanic involving the circus ring and how hard it was to get back up once you left -- but I hear that this has been addressed since I played it. With all this said, Honk! is a masterclass in working humor, puzzles, and characters I care about all in one easily-accessible package. There's no objectionable content here and nothing is scary, it's very kid-friendly! I'd recommend it to anyone.
Digging deep, July 29, 2023This story relies on the "nothing is scarier" school of thought, and it pulls it off really well. You play the story as an outsider, not knowing your Father's intent for the digging he's been doing for years on end. But you do know the feelings of unease it's caused you, the fact that it made him drift away your mother, and your brother's sentimentality. It's an intriguing story where you do always feel compelled to learn what's going on, and every few scenes introduces a new bit of information that makes you think. I'm not entirely sure what the whole thing was about, but it left me feeling legitimately shaken by the end of it. Definitely worth the hype.
Memorable simulation, July 18, 2023I came across The Evolution of Trust a few years back, and the game's always stuck in my mind since then. It's an interesting little experiment. It uses simple diagrams and characters to illustrate its point, and raises some important questions. How do we learn to trust people, and when does this cycle break? How does miscommunication, people who are inherently dishonest, or copycat behavior change this? It's something that's worth a play for not only the freedom of being able to use all kinds of sliders in the sandbox mode to run simulations, but how you can interpret its message.
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