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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Controlling two PCs (dogs), January 27, 2023
by Denk
Related reviews: Adventuron

This is the sort of game that Spring Thing was originally intended for: A large puzzly parser game that takes a lot more than 2 hours to complete (unless you follow the walkthrough from start to end).

In this Adventuron game you control two dogs in their search for adventure. The genre is comedy and it is well written with lots of good puzzles. Except for the beginning you can change between the two dogs whenever you want. The story is good, the puzzles are good, the writing is good and the implementation is good in most cases. The game contains adaptive hints and a walkthrough. I only have minor things to criticise and overall I enjoyed it a lot.

However, this is a difficult game, at least some of the puzzles are difficult but also fair. Difficulty is a very subjective thing but I liked the challenge.

Parser:
The parser is mostly a two word parser, or at least, often no more than two words are required. The game tells you upfront that you don't need to TALK TO anybody, just BARK and the game will take care of the rest. Stuff like that. The author has made more than two words required in a few logical places. However, as Adventuron started out as a verb noun parser (at least most Adventuron games were written like that) it seems that the parser can be a little misleading once in a while when more words are required. For instance, the game might tell you that something is not a container but if you put the right object on it, it might work anyway. But mostly a very helpful parser. I only encountered one serious guess-the-verb situation which isn't much in a long game like this.

Atmosphere:
The writing is very good and suits the game very well. The story also makes good sense. The writing is usually funny without being "too much".

Cruelty rating: Polite
I don't think this game can become unwinnable.

Puzzles:
There were a lot of good, meaningful puzzles. Again, this is a long game with lots of puzzles so I could give a few of them a bit of constructive criticism but overall, pretty good. However, some of them are difficult which may not be everyone's cup of tea.

Overall:
A very good game, quite polished with very few rough edges which may be addressed in a post-comp version(?). As it is, it is still worth playing.

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