The Richard Mines

This game has you exploring a fairly minimalist underground factory. Each room has one thing in it (except for a complicated office with several things), and most things are undescribed.

There are 3 or 4 puzzles, which are pretty good, but could use significantly more synonyms programmed in.

I liked it in general, but found it frustrating. The release notes were good.

The blurb tells us that this is ostensibly about one or more abandoned German mines in Czechoslovakia, circa 1949. If I had been playing without that knowledge, I would never have known that.

Despite it being about discovery and exploration, the narration is devoid of excitement. The PC betrays no emotion or indeed reaction to anything. Because of that, it was hard for me to find in-game motivation to keep exploring. Most of the context comes from the blurb, in fact.

While this game could do with a little proofreading and beta-testing for functionality expected of most parser games (the game doesn't end properly, for instance), this game was not submitted without thought: relatively straightforward puzzles whose presentations suggest their solutions, and an object-based hint system. A decent entry, though using the exploration to frame a story would have given it more depth.