La Noche del Ensayo

I began playing this much acclaimed (see caad.es) game a couple of years ago, and I come back to it from time to time when new inspiration dawns on me. I'm now in act three, and the end still seems far away. Unprepared to write a full review, I gave this master work a brief compliment on another website. To my surprise and delight, Guillermo Crespi responded with a gracious and humbling letter of thanks! So I must at least make the beginning of a review in English. He and this work deserve as much recognition as I can attract.

This novel-length work is written in Argentine dialect. It's suspenseful and difficult. It's also superbly implemented and delightful to read. The NPCS, props, streamlined movement system (i.e. "ir a galería") all demonstrate how much effort the author put into making this work user-friendly and deeply immersive. It includes an in-game hint system. However, 'Undo' is disabled, so save often.

I've needed to resort to the hints more than I've wanted to, and this is probably because I'm not a native Spanish speaker. Perhaps larger breadcrumbs in the story itself would ruin the puzzles for smarter readers than me. Nevertheless, this is one of those games where you can have a lot of fun toying with the puzzles before finally admitting defeat. For example, (Spoiler - click to show)I had a lot of fun figuring out how to interact with the dog. Still, I needed the hints to tell me what I actually needed to do with him.