Beat Me Up Scotty

This is a wordplay game centered on the phrase 'Beam me up Scotty'.

You play as Captain Kirk, and gameplay consists of the presentation of some silly scenario involving you, Bones, and/or Spock, as well as Scotty. To get out of the situation you have to type 'B____ me up scotty', where the blank is some word starting with B.

So it's all riddles/wordplay, and mostly centers on finding synonyms for words in the text. You either get it or you don't; if you just can't get it you pass. I got 70.86%, so I had to pass a few times.

At a basic level it's pretty funny, but I kind of found the hints and pass system abrasive. They're basically 'ha you loser you're dumb and didn't get it'. But why would I like that? It's just a made up game and I'm playing it for fun. The author doesn't even know I'm playing it. I'm just deciding of my own free will to have a computer say I'm dumb. I'm not really into that.

The humor is the best part of this.

It's a game of essentially one riddle riffed on for a while. Not all of the solutions seemed to land for me, but I still enjoyed thinking over each one, and it seems like a game you could play in a group setting, especially if you enjoy the Star Trek references.

This is a fun spoof version of - no it isn’t, yeah right! - Star Trek The Original Series, where you are presented with a series of mini puzzles, and have to figure out the right word to use to solve the situation each time. Or you can type “pass”. I laughed so much throughout this, but I think it would work best for any fan of the series it obviously isn’t (yeah right!) based on. The characterisations of Scotty, Bones and Spock are nicely captured by the author. And there is a tongue in cheek humour throughout.

I did have a few problems with the interface. On Safari on my Mac it wouldn’t initially play the opening sound. I switched to Chrome, but after the first puzzle that no longer left the current puzzle paragraph clear to read. But that aside it was fun. Recommended, though especially if you’re a fan of Star Trek. I especially liked how it let you type “pass” if you got stuck, and that isn’t a game killer. And you can view the surprisingly readable source code to see how it works. An interesting system. Thanks to the author!

A lighthearted word-oriented game where you, a captain of a starship and dressed in “wussy yellow,” find yourself in vaguely uncomfortable situations you must extricate yourself from by uttering an iconic sci-fi TV catchphrase.

Although it presents itself like a parser game, this effort really doesn’t have much in the way of parser mechanics. The solution for each situation is merely to type in the iconic catchphrase but replacing its first word with another that starts with the letter ‘B’.

Although I’m a diehard fan of the TV franchise the game’s opening claims it has no connection to, Beat Me Up Scotty isn’t my cup of raktajino. The humor is light; the pace is brisk; the sound effects are used sparingly, mostly as correct/wrong buzzers, much like a game show. Those elements keep it amusing, but it’s pretty lightweight otherwise. The solutions range from fairly obvious to at least one word I never heard of before (I only found it by checking a thesaurus). That’s a plus, I suppose.

In fact, the best hint I can offer anyone who plays this (and is more or less suggested by the in-game HINT command) is to have a thesaurus handy.

Adapted from a SpringThing23 Review

Played: 4/5/23
Playtime: 20 min, finished 76%

Off to the races! Using a personal randomizer for Spring Thing, and it did right by me. Great game to launch the Thing with. BMUS is a wryly funny word game. It’s what happens at a pitch meeting when 8 people are brainstorming, and seven say “Whatever we do, we have to avoid Guess-the-Verb. People hate that.” Then the eighth says, “Team, I got it! The game IS Guess the Verb!” I am just giddy at the subversive audacity.

Ultimately it is a word game/vocabulary test. But if a spoonful of sugar famously helps the medicine go down, what does a cascading deluge of sugar do? Makes you cackle like a rooster in a madhouse is what. You launch from one terse absurdist scenario to another with the perfect amount of lubricating text: almost none. And you guess the verb. All you know is, it starts with B.

The tone is just perfect for this game. It opens with over-the-top exaggerated denial of the obvious that builds on itself recklessly. I am a sucker for blithe denial of the obvious when it’s not being used to corrode democracy. Then it smoothly shifts gears to serially casting NOT familiar characters into absurd scenarios, all to wring that B-verb out of you. I wasn’t counting, but you get 10-15 of these and you’re done!

This game knows exactly what it is, clicks along crisply, delivers the chuckles, and finishes without overstaying. Like an appetizer at a 5 star restaurant - it’s gone in a moment, but lovely while it lasts.

Only a few notes on polish: I found early inclusion of images set a graphical expectation the rest of the game did not deliver on. Would strive for a more consistent application: more or none. Really dug the combination of hyper links and parser input. Also liked the text color fading for older input and bright for new, though in a few instances the new text faded with the old. Would have gone with icons instead of loose “I” (inventory) “L” (look) and “U” (undo) letters in the corner. Nits really, a really smooth presentation.

Spice Girl: Baby Spice
Vibe: Playful.
Polish: Smooth.
Is this TADS? No.
Gimme the Wheel! I would focus on making failure more fun. The PASS capability is nice, keeps things from dragging which would be death for this thing. In one instance, I failed to guess, hit pass, and the transition text obliquely let me know what it was I failed to guess. It brought a knowing laugh at myself - of course that was the word, dummy! It seemed very much in the spirit of the game but I did not see that again. (Yes, I PASSed more than once.) I would do that every time. Alternately or additionally, I might add some code to detect multiple failed guesses (say, 3) then have one of the NOT Enterprise crew chime in with a hint. Both seem in the light spirit of the game, and would smooth out the drag of “I just can’t think of it!”

Spice Girl Ratings: Scary(Horror), Sporty (Gamey), Baby (Light-Hearted), Ginger (non-CWM/political), Posh (Meaningful)
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.