Black Thumb

So, just previously I was talking about minimalistic games with a linear storyline/puzzle sequence, and explaining that the rest of the game still needs to be implemented to a sufficient level, in a way that guides the player through. That is exactly what Black Thumb does.

Sure, call me exaggerating: the game in question is very short and doesn’t do anything super innovative or excitingly different. However, what it does do is implement the entirety of the room in detail that allows the player to feel immersed in the simulation. The different parts of the descriptions are given their own responses, and there is subtle guiding through reliance on assumptions the player makes, and then it soon uses these to make the player do things that you never would have imagined yourself enacting, much like the meat puzzle in Coloratura, but on a smaller scale.

The parts about implementation may seem like a bare minimum, and in a way it is, but on the other hand many games that do similarly tend to be puzzle heavy games, and they like to create descriptions that often imply “that isn’t important” or “you don’t need that yet but keep an eye on it”; this game creates descriptions that do exactly that, but without being dimsmissive. I don’t know how to explain it. The descriptions are fairly poetic as well, which helped create this cozy atmosphere about it.

I know that others will likely give this a 3-star or 4-star, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Now we're talking relatable. I left a pot (teacup) of succulents unattended during the recent heatwave and have managed to kill one despite being told all my life that they're indestructible. Oh, they very much are not.

black thumb uses the time-honoured trope of "everyman protagonist wakes up in their own bedroom", which is a throwback to many a parser game circa 2000-2010. Like many of the classics, it takes a quick turn into the downright surreal. A tasty morsel, simply set up.

Black Thumb

This is a brief parser game that reminded me in positive ways of Baby Tree or Out, parser games that are short and symbolic and which may be a bit buggy (although this game is more optimistic than Baby Tree and Out was better coded). It also reminds me of Map with its direct metaphors (an empty house with a big growing plant in it).

Your parents are gone and your house is empty and lonely, so you stay in your room with your succulent and your dust-covered desk. I almost wonder if we're a ghost or dead or something.

Anyway, your instructions to care for the succulent quickly become unhinged, and we enact great symbolic events.

There is friction here because the parser is underimplemented and trying to figure out the author's intended solution is often puzzling, especially for the final action. But this story 'clicked' in my mind.