Bob The Barbarian

This game by improvmonster is a good game but suffers a bit by competition. Slappy the Squirrel by the same author is genuinely one of the funniest games I've played (not just recently, but ever) for my sense of humor. This game doesn't reach that level, but it's not bad; in fact, I think the overall trend line is still pointing up, with games getting more fun over time.

I think it just needed a bit more time to cook. With a postcomp update (or during-Comp update) adding a few more synonyms and tweaking a couple puzzles, I think it would be a very good game.

You play as a classic dumb but noble barbarian on a quest to defeat a wizard and rescue a princess. Along the way, you'll encounter ogres, trolls, pirates, and more.

The game is humourously crude, like Shrek, with fart- and belch-based puzzles and slapstick combat. I liked a lot of the jokes, such as the different penny interactions (getting it in the first place, giving it to people before they offer anything, etc).

The puzzles as intended are a combination of classics (find a shovel, dig a suspiciously shovel-ready spot) and slapstick (like the singing puzzles or the grate puzzle). I enjoy the participatory comedy.

Three things stuck out to me as things I struggled with.

First, the help system is a clever new feature, but can be difficult to use. It requires you to type HELP WITH followed by something in scope. However, several puzzles have timers that kill you in the presence of the thing you need help with, so it's easy to die while fumbling around trying to find the right thing to ask for help with.

Second, there was a bit of an issue with scope and synonyms. For instance, when ASKing people about things, if I ASK ABOUT the sorceror, it asks if I mean 'sorceror' or 'the sorceror'. Same with the castle, I think (I put my transcript in the hints thread). This made asking a bit hard. Other times I struggled to find the correct words, for instance, when solving the puzzle of the barber's chair.

Finally, some of the puzzles allow you to lock yourself out of victory with them without clear warning, such as the beans. Once you know the game has consumable resources that cannot be renewed, it's easy to know when to UNDO (just undo whenever you use up something without advancing the game). But that's not very common gameplay structure these days, so it may be worth giving a heads up about it.

That's a lot of space dedicated to criticism, but it's precisely because the game has great potential that I put it. If there's ever enough time to work on those things, I think this is a funny game that many would enjoy. Even without them, I suspect people will like this (especially if someone puts together a walkthrough.)

Sparse (but evocative) descriptions, irreversable situations (which are easily identifiable so you're unlikely to be unfairly put in a walking dead situation), characters which are implemented just enough, a parser that sometimes is a bit too stubborn in asking you "What with?" in situations where modern players will facepalm and respond "What do you think with?" (disambiguation is a blessing for some and a curse for others), lots of randomised combat with lots of undo ("attack enemy" will attack with your fists. You need to type "attack enemy with weapon" every time. It gets old. Not every interpreter has an "up arrow to scrollback" feature, and the game shouldn't rely on it)... this feels like an oldschool game, but without falling into the worst of the oldschool design that I would unashamedly call "bad".

You'll find the logic in this quest starring the none-too-bright titular character is mostly cartoonish. And it works. I mean, the important thing is for the tone to be consistent, right? If one is taught to expect cartoon logic, then one can roll with it. And the game is consistent. I was enjoying it until the pirate mob scene, which gave me a two-move limit to do something. Spoilers follow: the stuff I tried.

Eventually, having gotten exhausted, being directionless, and operating on a very tight limit (and reasonably sure I wasn't in a walking dead, but knowing that the game had taught me I migt well be - and indeed I wasn't, but indeed it is possible to be in a walking dead here if you don't have a certain item), I turned to the hint system, HELP WITH. Which spectacularly failed to recognise anything I threw at it and gave me no help at all.

At this point I decided enough was enough. The randomised combat was the worst; the puzzles, so far, were the best of the experience (a good thing, that!), but it wasn't worth the stress of this tight-move-limit situation in a game that felt so barely implemented it couldn't properly respond to my attempts at solving the puzzle.

When I checked out the actual solution, I went...

So overall, to me, the game crossed a certain line I personally don't like to see cross. But I gotta say, the oldschool-but-not-too-much and the puzzles that I did get to see and solve were kinda a treat.

I didn’t make it very far through this game in the one and a half hours I played it, even relying on hints.

Past the first five minutes, it really wasn’t clear what my goal was or why I was doing anything. I was just wandering around solving puzzles because they were there, and the map wasn’t particularly interesting to wander around in as it was very lightly implemented.

Given the lack of direction, it wasn’t clear where I needed to go next or which puzzles were solvable, and the hint system was very unhelpful for this, as a hint for any given puzzle usually referred to an object that I didn’t have and couldn’t get hints on because I didn’t have it.

There were also some grammatical issues and implementation bumps, like “give rum” (for a corked bottle of rum) resulting in “you can’t reach the rum.” In general, it felt a bit unpolished.

I did make it through a good portion of the puzzles that were available to me, but based on references in some of the hints, I think there was a decent portion of the game that I didn’t see. I ended up getting stuck on a puzzle that I couldn’t get hints for and giving up.

All that being said, the game did have some funny lines and gags here and there.