The Cursèd Pickle of Shireton

So, Hanon Ondricek has a long history of making very unusual and experimental games. I first came into contact with his work in the 2015 IFComp, which we both entered. He had a game called the Baker of Shireton, an unusual game which was a baking simulator with some MMORPG-style elements. One especially odd feature was that it modeled abstract objects as inventory items, like your name, job, and quest. It later turned out (spoilers for this game) (Spoiler - click to show)that you were an NPC in an MMORPG and could hack the game to get out and go on a short quest.

I found that idea fascinating, and I ended up using it in several of my games. So that made the Baker of Shireton get stuck in my brain.

This game is a successor to that one. In this game, you get to play an upgraded version of the fake MMO that the first game was set in. This is a choice-based system instead of parser, and it has great art by Marco Innocenti and music from a variety of sources. The music was catchy; I left it on for much of the day as I played, and my son liked it too.

The bulk of this game is getting and fulfilling quests from different NPCs. There is a complex combat system (I especially enjoyed the 'magic' mechanics which require you to quickly spell some words during combat. There is also an option to slow down combat significantly for people who have trouble with quick time events). While rich and actually pretty fun, combat isn't completely necessary. In a way, it reminds me quite a bit of Porpentine's various comabt systems, and various bee-related events in the game also bear some resemblance to her.

Speaking of bearing resemblance, there are references to a lot of games in here, including many of Hanon's older games as well as Cragne Manor, the SCP foundation and others.

Solving this game was challenging. I frequently had to think outside of the box. Hanon is one of the pioneers (along with people like Agniezska Trzaska) in choice-based puzzle mechanics and boy does this game have a lot of them. I definitely wouldn't feel bad asking for hints (and, in fact, I didn't feel bad; I asked for quite a few).

This is also a very large game. I spent around 5-6 hours beating it.

My overall evaluation:
+Polish: Absolutely polished. About the most polished a game can get. I don't mean bug-free, I mean that every aspect of the user experience has been accounted for and acted on.
+Interactivity: Loved the RPG events, the weird shortcuts you get later on, and the ease of use of the AXMA system.
+Descriptiveness: I especially appreciated the details in Luneybin.
+Emotional impact: The horror-lite sections near the end worked well for me.
+Would I play again?: Definitely plan to revisit this just for fun in the future.