A Smörgåsbord of Pain

[Full disclosure: I know the author of this work personally, and I helped with beta testing for this game.]

I have to admit that I find the yin-yang of seriousness and silliness at the heart of Anastasia the Power Pony very endearing, and I've been a fan since the debut of the first installment, A Matter of Heist Urgency, in 2022. Sequels are dangerous territory for any series; with players seeking both familiarity and novelty at the same time, the challenge to the author's creativity rises exponentially with each installment.

In the case of Anastasia, with its implicit Land of Make Believe setting, that burden is lessened somewhat. Author FLACRabbit has cleverly reserved the right to change things up at will, following whichever flight of fancy seems the most fun at the time. As with the first episode, there is an offbeat blend of tropes, though this time the main style being presented is noir. The impact of this is limited, though -- there are still many tropes from other styles tossed in, as befits the playful tone that infuses the series.

Anyone who enjoyed the original will certainly have fun with this one, which continues its experimentation in creating compelling combat scenes. Here I must salute the author for making each fight in the series a novelty that feels very different to play. However -- as fun as the combat scenes are -- the aspect of this work that most commands my attention is the music.

FLACRabbit is a musican at heart, with a strong talent for composing. A Matter of Heist Urgency incorporates music successfully, using it to set the mood for each scene and as accent to the highlights of in-game action, and also as the backbone of a cinematic flashback sequence that was added to the post-competition version. In A Smörgåsbord of Pain, the development of craft with respect to music continues, and the author finds ways to use it that I've never seen before in interactive fiction.

There are two scenes in particular for which the musical accompaniment is worth calling out. The first is a one-versus-two fight sequence near the start of the game. (Spoiler - click to show)As the fight begins, so does a dynamic soundtrack that loops, but with variants that keep it from sounding repetitive. Surprisingly, as the fight progresses, the music changes in response to the game state, an effect that keeps the music fresh throughout and undergirds the player's mood. The second is the game's climax battle. (Spoiler - click to show)In the food fight sequence, each zone's cuisine gets a background track that's complementary to the culinary style, and there's a Muzak-style tune for the central aisle -- the first one that you hear when the fight begins -- that cracks me up. Since the most effective fighting style involves moving around a lot, this helps to keep the player grounded in the imaginary space while also amplifying the general chaos of the scene a la Looney Tunes. Both scenes are written in a fast-paced style that makes it difficult to remember that you can spend as long as you like between commands.

Outside of those scenes, music is still effectively used in the same manner as the first episode, both to set the mood for each part and to act as stings for certain beats. The quality of the music has jumped significantly, however -- while the first episode largely stuck to simple 8-bit style tunes (excepting the new scenes added for the post-comp version), the tracks composed for this episode are much more sophisticated. (Spoiler - click to show)(The introduction to the scene with the Old Camel, who is probably my favorite character, really stands out here.) The overall effect of these various approaches is to create the impression of a true soundtrack for the game, not just as companion sound but at a level of genuine integration comparable to that seen in cinema.

Not content for innovation to be limited to music alone, FLACRabbit also added an eyebrow-raising multimedia effect (Spoiler - click to show)(the animated news broadcast seen in Anastasia's apartment) that almost seems impossible. Although Erik Temple's Glimmr extension demos showed similar savvy at exploiting Glulx's graphical capabilities, the code driving this effect is an independent innovation.

Pioneering works that hit their targets get special attention in my worldview, as they tend to open up new vistas of exploration that inject new vitality into the art form. It's great to see the latent capabilities of the Glulx virtual machine pushed to their limits as this work does. My hat is off to FLACRabbit for what's been accomplished here. Keep up the amazing work!

This game does a lot of unusual things that I'm not even sure how to react to. I can't tell yet if I love this game or hate it, only time will see. But I'll describe my experience.

This is the second Anastasia the Power Pony game. I liked the earlier one; I went into it expecting a My Little Pony story (which I would have loved) but instead found an original pony-based setting. This time around there are even more differences that show how the two series aren't really connected (for one thing, in the naming of the characters). I did forget some aspects of the setting which made it very funny when the game completely condoned all manner of violence against llamas but urged you to not injure ponies at all, giving the impression of pony ultra-racism (I think the first game had a reason, I just can't remember it, so it's not actually pony racism I believe).

The game itself has several acts, and here's where the new style of stuff comes up.

In the first act, we are in a restaurant with some snobby coworkers. There's menu-based conversation but we can also examine the area around us. Suddenly, we are recognized, and we must escape subterfuge and/or fighting, all while our dreary coworkers drone on in the background, commenting on our actions. To my surprise, the space is huge; I strongly strongly strongly recommend reading all feelies before playing the game. I imagined this huge space was to have a complex combinatorial puzzle of evasion, but I just used brute force (this map will return later).

Afterwards, there was a fight scene in an alley. You can't save or undo during it, but you can retry or continue. Having not read the feelie that specifically describes combat, I floundered at first, trying stuff like 'jump back' (which worked I think, or maybe step back), and HIT PONY (frowned on due to probably-not-pony-ultra-racism). I took the trash can lid at one point and it let me defend.

Rather than give up, I wanted to keep trying. It's clear the author was hoping that they could implement enough actions that someone could intuitively type whatever they want and have it work, usually a laughable idea in a parser game (there are just so many things to account for) but I wanted to make the author's vision work. As you fight, you get more commands suggested, and COMMANDS gave some more. There are several ways the fight can end. I ended up thinking that I needed to use the same three moves over and over (Spoiler - click to show)(sidestep, duck, and jump) but once they started double-teaming me that didn't work anymore, so I tried using (Spoiler - click to show)THROW and TRIP but it kept saying it did or didn't work for what seemed to me arbitrary reasons. I finally followed the signs more carefully and was able to win. It felt rewarding, but part of that rewarding feeling was wrangling an unruly combat system. So, again, I couldn't decide if I loved it for getting it to work or hated it for being hard to figure out.

A couple acts later we return to the restaurant and have a big all-out brawl, just like the pirate ship in the last game. And the purpose of the 20-something room buffet is revealed: we have to attack making puns!

Now, this just seemed to me like a really bad idea from the other. You have to do stuff like 'RAMMING NOODLES' or something with the ramen noodles. I was deeply skeptical because so many things don't have obvious puns (like lutefisk). And some early things I tried didn't work at all (SAVAGE someone with a SAUSAGE, MASH them with MASH, etc.). How could the author possibly include all possible puns? It seemed like a lost cause and I died a lot.

Then I saw everyone chucking stuff at me, so I chucked stuff back, and it seemed to do something. Regular attacks worked a bit as well.

Spoilers for next bit.

Again, I can't tell if it's genius or horrible. What to do wasn't clearly communicated, but that made figuring it out more rewarding. It reminds me a bit of the draw of older games like the one Garry Francis loves on CASA, where the parser is terrible and getting around that is half the fun. This parser is not terrible, but the many activities with wide-open state spaces makes trying to understand the game as much of a puzzle as the game itself.

Story-wise, the game is a classic street-level superhero story, done well in the classic style. Rather than innovating with big plot twists, the author has instead added lots of jokes and characterization.

Overall, I had fun. I think experimentation like this is what drives the community forward in the long run; someone has to take the gamble on something new. So, bravo. The music worked well for me, too.