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Short, fun and polished, August 16, 2016Taco Fiction is a short (shorter than I expected) little crime story with a very polished environment. I was impressed with how well developed the setting was, with very few issues and most of the obvious things implemented. There were very few "guess the noun/verb" issues and most things were clear, straightforward and got out of the way of immersion in the story.
The writing is definitely one of the high points of the game, drawing the player in to the state of mind of the desperate, morally-challenged and generally incompetent protagonist. There are few other characters to talk to but those that you do encounter are very well drawn with quick, broad brush-strokes. The ice-cream cashier is sweet and willing to pass the time chatting to a weird stranger, the paco's cashier is a near zombie (chat to him, his response to "what do you do for fun" is chuckle-worthy) and the cops in the diner are amusing to talk to.
The puzzles in the game were all in keeping with the story and the solutions for all of them both made sense in the context of the game, and were fairly easy to determine, thus leading to a story-focused game where the puzzles smoothly propel rather than requiring you to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the solution. There were no instances of crazy logic or "guess what the author was thinking here", it's all straightforward.
The downside of this polish is that those errors that do pop up tend to stand out. There were a few parser noun issues, such as not recognising "girl" when referring to the ice-cream cashier. Not a huge issue and possibly a rebuke at my sexist word usage, but one I noticed. A bigger issue was that it appears possible to get into a state where you are locked off from some dialog choices despite meeting the pre-requisites for them. I notice this during a repeat run-through after realising that there was an additional ending to the game involving the ice-cream cashier. I ran through the game quickly, as I knew the puzzles by this point and without the need to examine and read everything it's possible to run through the whole game very quickly, but found when I spoke to the cashier after completing most of the puzzles in the game (and in possession of the item that would lead to the alternate ending), that some discussion topics that I had seen on my previous run-through weren't available.
It might be this was intentional, a sort of punishment for not speaking to her earlier about the topics, but it was disappointing and felt more like a bug.
One thing that struck as more of an issue was the fact that the pivotal item of the final puzzle, the cashbox, isn't referred to in the room description at all that I could see. In my initial play through, I didn't (Spoiler - click to show)enter the back office until the argument started, figuring I could creep in unnoticed in the commotion. I completely missed the box and thus ended up with a quite mediocre ending. When I replayed, knowing the box was going to be there, I was able to examine it (x box) but I'm not sure how I would have thought to do that if I wasn't fore-warned. It feels as though this was intentional, rather than an accidental oversight, and it's possible I simply missed examining something, but given the openness of all the rest of the game it also seems like a misstep, and one I found quite annoying.
On the whole, a quick fun if-comp style game. I prefer longer, deeper games in general, but this hit most of the marks of what I look for in a short game. It was almost a four star, but the few issues irritated and I didn't feel engaged enough to be able to overlook them.
Still, recommended for any fan of good writing, and short IF.