The Impossible Stairs

ADRIFT forums
Reviewing ParserComp 2022 by Denk
This game is a sort of sequel/prequel to the IFComp winner "The Impossible Bottle" (TIB) by Linus Åkesson[...]Whereas TIB had some surreal mechanics with respect to space, The Impossible Stairs has some surreal mechanics with respect to time. Don't take the "science" too seriously. I don't think I have ever seen a story/movie/game about time travel where there were no plot holes, unless the past couldn't be changed. So don't expect a fully consistent time travel game (I don't think they exist) but a game with fun, semi-logical puzzles.
[...]
Don't expect it to be as good as TIB (hardly any game is) but it is still a worthy prequel/sequel with some good, original puzzles and excellent implementation. Further more, it is written in Dialog (still only a few games are written with Dialog) and if you play online, the user interface of a dialog game is really neat.
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Intfiction forums
Mike Russo’s ParserComp 2022 Reviews
Wisely, TIS mostly doesn’t try to one-up TIB; it’s a smaller game, and while it too has a gimmick (that’s actually a rather elegant complement to that of the former game, messing with time while TIB messed with space), said gimmick is comparatively straightforward, and the scope of the game, and difficulty of the puzzles, are both much more modest this time out. That’s definitely not a bad thing – there’s nothing here like that &^% dinosaur from TIB, for one thing, and this is still a satisfying slice of game, probably taking an hour or so to solve and offering at least one or two aha moments as you figure out how to use the strange properties of the titular staircase to resolve the trickier conundrums.
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groggy's interactive fiction
ParserComp 2022 Review: The Impossible Stairs
Indeed, the story is mostly a non-factor in favor of the puzzle, and it occasionally struggles with something I see in most parsers: obtuse clues. While many of the puzzles are good, some of the leaps in logic are the kind you'll only enjoy if you have a penchant for bashing your head against the wall over and over. The walkthrough was very much appreciated on the Ada part in particular, but I'd also argue that the treehouse bit could have used a few more context clues.

Still, the efficient use of objects as both environmental storytelling and pieces of a puzzle (the boombox comes to mind) was really inspired, and certainly makes me rethink how I might best make another parser game in the future. And nothing feels completely unfair. At the very least, upon reading the walkthrough for one or two moments I felt that it made general sense, even if it didn't make sense to me at the time.
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