The Song of the Mockingbird

This game is a nice entry in a very under-represented niche of parser games: Westerns. While there have been some entries in this genre before (a Scott Adams Game, the puzzle game Hoosegow, etc.), it hasn't really attracted a lot of attention.

In this game, you play as a sort of singing cowboy, but your gun has been taken. You're on a quest to save a woman named Rosa from a band of bandits. All you have is your wits and your trusty guitar.

Along the way, you'll solve a lot of tricky puzzles. This game had some of the harder puzzles in the comp (from my point of view). There are complex mechanisms whose purpose you have to unravel as well as many physics-based puzzles involving (mild spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)heat, leverage, etc.

The story was pretty good. Like others have noted, it lacks the sense of urgency a drawn-out gun standoff tends to have in films once you start tooling around for the hundredth time. I'd prefer that over a turn limit, though! Second, there are some reasonable solutions that weren't implemented, particular when facing Whitey (I particularly would have appreciated responses saying I was on the right track for (Spoiler - click to show)putting hay in the barn and setting it on fire.).

The game has a lot of ties to real-life history with detailed notes at the end. The songs in-game include a lot of old classics that remind me of my grandfather who recently passed, and who loved singing cowboy songs. I think the game in general reminded me of him.

While the game did have minor flaws in the puzzles and story, I was overall impressed with it. Definitely would rank it at a higher difficulty rating than most games in the comp. I ended up using hints on only one of the puzzles, but the other two took me several days of on-and-off playing.

Well, then this game would not have a reason to exist, which would be a shame.

You've fallen head over heels in love with the sensuous dancer Rosa. A gang of hoodlums stole her away from your embrace.

They took your pistol for good measure. This leaves you no choice but to rescue your damsel in distress with nothing but your brain and whatever you find lying around.

This setup clears the way for a collection of great puzzles. All of them require a good deal of common sense, and when you notice that your sense might be too common, the ability to think around the corner. Many times the use of the objects is not straightforward, leading to some very nice "Aha!"-moments.

This uncommon-sense feeling is reinforced by the map. It's quite small and contained. There are a bunch of locations to explore and a few cleverly placed bottlenecks. At almost every point in the game, you can be sure that you have seen every accessible inch of your surroundings and found every object there is to find. The challenge then becomes straightforward and deceptively simple: "Here is your inventory. What to do with it?"

I liked the writing a lot. The style of puzzles requires a clear visualization of the locations, but the author manages to throw in enough small surprises and unexpected details to keep the descriptions from becoming a list of notable features.

The overall tone of the piece caught me off-guard. From the intro and the characterization of the protagonist as a singing cowboy, I expected a lighthearted parody of western-tropes. In many places, this is true. Until you get to the more serious and sometimes downright brutal bits. It's not easy to blend these together, but The Song of the Mockingbird doesn't feel disjointed because of it. It serves rather well to highlight different aspects of the protagonist's character.

The song-lyrics throughout the story and especially the historical notes at the end tied this game together and showed just how much this game was lovingly polished.

Very good game.

Don't worry if you don't like Westerns. I don't, and I quickly stopped caring that SotM was one. The emphasis here isn't on Western flavor or what-have-you, though there is plenty of it. Like the previous author's Dynamite Powers vs. the Ray of Night!, it's more about MacGuyvering things, though it's a good deal more serious. I have to admit I remembered the silly fun more than the MacGuyvering, so I hoped the second bit held up, and it does. I also felt the path and plot were a bit clearer, which I think is a combination of both experience as a designer and programmer and the more realistic setting. So I was pleased and unsurprised to see it do so well in the Comp.

Things start out pretty badly for you, Boots Taylor. The Black Blade has kidnapped Rosa, whom you think you've connected with nicely, and you go chasing the gang by yourself. Unsurprisingly, you're ambushed, and while you're hiding, a thug named Ace is throwing canisters at you in order to kill you. The higher-up gang members have business back at the ranch, and you're unarmed, so how hard can it be? While ducking, you sort of wonder how they explode, but more importantly, you're wondering how to disrupt him. That's your first puzzle. Once he's gone, you find a small gold casket you find on his person. Operating it is the first real puzzle, and the game is quite kind saying "okay, next time just use (command)!" Earning points is always nice, but earning a shortcut is an extra bonus!

The casket(Spoiler - click to show), which is really a lighter, helps you kill three more enemies: the gang members who left Ace to kill you. They're all hiding so as not to give anyone a clear shot. But that means if you sneak around right, they don't have one, either. Podge sneaks around the corral, Whitey is on the roof of the barn, and Felipe is on a windmill. These locations, along with a stable where you make friends with a horse (a Western trope, but definitely worthy of a Senor Chang "I'll allow it") hold clues how to kill enemies you can barely see.

All three of these puzzles feel to me very smart, yet not obscure. Upon killing each person, you note they didn't deserve quite a gruesome death (I suppose safety ladders weren't invented back then, leaving Whitey and Felipe having to jump,) but you still find a letter and a key in a pocket on each corpse. Each is used to open a triple-lock (spare a thought for poor Ace, who didn't own one) that leads to the Real Mystery.

Given the time frame (just after the Civil War) there are some call-backs to invoking the Confederacy that feel relevant today. Other reviewers pointed them out a bit better. It's all quite a dirty business aside from that. I may be walking a tightrope avoiding what the Real Mystery is, as I'd like to, but I just want to add, I found the annotations at the end interesting. Some stuff, like the safety powder, I knew, and some I did not. I feel like this is a game I could revisit in a year or so, having forgotten a lot of details, and I would recall enough of it to enjoy it unfolding in a slightly different way. Maybe as a boost before any of 2022's longer IFComp games that might seem intimidating. However, if I had to use a walkthrough, I'd be glad to read the one included with the game. It's a story by itself and manages to avoid the mechanical "move here then here" or even the stronger narration/command back-and-forth. I don't think it would've worked nearly as well if it weren't walking you through such a good story. It asks questions about what you may've noticed, then tells you, and it has a few red herrings worth trying. It's great fun, with a lot of care put in.

Oh, one thing: once you finish, the opening scene makes a bit more sense. You'll probably have forgotten it when you've been engaged in the story.