External Links

puddles.acd
original competion entry, also need puddles.​dat
Requires an Alan interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
puddles.dat
original competition entry, also need puddles.​acd
Requires an AdvSys interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
Walkthrough and map
by David Welbourn

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Puddles on the Path

by Anssi Räisänen

Wordplay, Cave crawl
2003

(based on 3 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

In this game where proverbs are magical spells, you play as an apprentice to Larumis the Sorcerer. After two years in his service, you're on the road home for a well-earned summer vacation when, through an iron gate in a stately stone wall, you see a mysterious garden. You forgot all about curiosity killing the cat.


Game Details


Awards

Honorable Mention - Spring Thing 2003

Editorial Reviews

Baf's Guide


A brief, straightforward, charming game about a world in which proverbs have magical efficacy. Neither setting nor story is especially noteworthy, but the puzzles are entertaining and on a couple of occasions quite satisfying to solve. There are a handful of minor rough spots, but this is generally a friendly and solid piece of snack-sized IF.

-- Emily Short

IF-Review
Splish Splash
There are a handful of rough spots -- some phrasings (not of proverbs) that weren't immediately obvious to me and could have used more synonyms, a few places where the spelling or word use was a little off -- but not too many. It does seem to be possible to render the game unwinnable, though I am not sure whether or not this was the author's intention. There was one item that I wouldn't have thought to look for without the walkthrough, and one thing that might have been a bug.

On the other hand, it is such a friendly and generally solid piece that I had a hard time holding these minor flaws against it. Emily Short
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It's the journey that matters. Are we on the same page?, September 5, 2023
by Andrew Schultz (Chicago)
Related reviews: Spring Thing

Anssi Räisänen's games together really mark out a lot of territory. No one is particularly big, but they range from fantasy to realism, and they all have that very classic feel to them without flaunting their old-school credentials too intimidatingly. Puddles on the Path is distinctive among his works for the mechanic to solve major puzzles: many powerful spells are, in fact, common sayings. It's always good to breathe new life (ahem) into cliches, and this brief romp does that.

It's just good fun, as Anssi's works tend to be. You're a wizard's apprentice who can't help but be curious--you find a golden egg and try to get it, guards capture you, and then you must escape. Even though it's a null-sum game in this respect it's a lot of fun to find a magic sword and so forth and actually use the spells. Yes, I enjoy the odd syntax of ancient tongues, but it's also nice to breathe life into more well-worn words.

The game ended a bit soon for me, as I'd sort of hoped to use more than half of the proverbs you had in your spellbook to start. That would leave the door open for a sequel, much like Anssi wrote Ted Strikes Back in 2017 to extend his Ted Paladin game from IFComp 2011, which was the first of his works I tried. I remember hoping for a sequel to the original Ted Paladin game, but I didn't realize Anssi had sort of written one. Given it's 2023 and there was, alas, no Ted Paladin sequel within six years this time, it was neat to uncover Puddles on the Path.

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Puddles on the Path on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Puddles on the Path appears in the following Recommended Lists:

Word-play games by Emily Short
Games where the text of the game is part of the puzzle.

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My new walkthroughs for March 2019 by David Welbourn
On Monday, March 26, 2019, I published new walkthroughs for the games listed below! Some of these were paid for by my wonderful patrons at Patreon. Please consider supporting me to make even more new walkthroughs for works of interactive...




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