A Princess Saves a Dragon

This is an Adventuron game entered in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

It uses some pixel art which looks very detailed. I found out later that it was AI-generated, which would explain the lack of recurring characters.

The story is interesting and fun; a dragon has helped you, a princess, throughout your life, so when a prince asks you to marry him, the dragon helps you flee away. Now, you need to help your dragon while making friends with local fairies.

The map is not tiny but is easy to navigate, and it's easy to picture the room descriptions. The main NPCs have strong personalities, so that was fun.

There were definitely several bugs, as the author stated (due to lack of time). The weirdest to me was that there are supposed to be large crystals in the mine but instead they're listed at the pool, but you can't reference them with 'large' or 'crystals', instead you call them 'pool' and the game offers a disambiguation prompt between them and the real pool.

Similarly, there are several puzzles where you have to type things just right, like using 'jump on' instead of 'enter' or 'climb' or 'get on' or 'stand on'. This definitely could have used a longer testing period!

The game is a little rough around the edges from the off, but it has a great tutorial that ticks all the boxes.

This game uses choice options for dialogue, which I’m a big fan of. However, sometimes there’s only one choice, which is unnecessary.

The game design has some similarities with Tristin Grizel Dean’s Midsummer’s Eve from 2023 - in addition to the AI-generated fantasy graphics, it uses a similar menu line at the top of the screen where you can click on inventory, map and help functions rather than typing. The map function doesn’t seem to work though!

Unfortunately there were quite a few noticeable bugs the first time I played, and I eventually ran into a gamebreaking bug so couldn't finish.

A few weeks later I played again – there had been some bugfixes (though I still encountered occasional bugs) and I was able to finish it this time. The story has a nice satisfying end and a well-placed cue to save before the final puzzle!

Some really nice music has also been added (in fact I liked it so much that I left the game open and let it keep playing while I was trying other games). This contributes to the lovely atmosphere of the game in general.

PSaD does a lot of things right without being spectacular. The author mentioned they were rushing at the end just to have something presentable, and indeed they got that. Apparently a few bugs made it into the comp, but even with them, the mid-pack placing seems fair. It's a relatively tidy game with fairy elements that shouldn't be too overwhelming, barring a few minor parser fights. It's pretty clear what to do, but the parser doesn't always cooperate. Fortunately there are only so many things to guess, so it isn't too bad.

And the tutorial is very good to start. It leans nicely into the story. While many tutorials do the job, telling you to X THIS or TAKE THAT, this focuses on you, the princess, working with your friend the dragon who helped you escape the castle and the prince you don't want to marry, to get something you can eat. It needs to be cooked. As you'd guess, the dragon plays a role. It's not clear how you are saving the dragon later, but a cut-scene reveals this.

In the meantime you go about kissing a frog and finding fairy dust and building a golem. The game pushes a lot of buttons of a classic fairy story, but they're mixed up quite well, and it definitely keeps the map (which you can refer to at any time by clicking MAP in the header -- a nice touch) manageable at just ten rooms.

There's enough to do there, with pedestals and crystals and fairy dust and so forth, and it's pretty clear what to insert into what. There's a cut-scene and then a final fight, which you can win one of two ways, which I liked.

From the author's comments in the feedback section, it looks like the graphics are AI generated pixel art that they modified. That's all okay--the author wasn't trying to do too much with it--but often the graphic takes up too much of the screen, even if it's wider than it is tall, so you need to refresh a lot.

Overall it's a very solid game, and it has a strong sense of economy that leaves it feeling like time well spent despite some parser wangling. I enjoyed the NPC interactions, especially with the dragon, though there's a fairy as well. You may wonder if it is trying for any great subversion with the title, and there isn't a huge one, but it also doesn't do anything crazy or disbelievable. The character arc that develops as you find stuff and meet odd creatures works well.