Zozzled

Playing Zozzled was a very strange experience. Because it was an IFComp winner, my expectations of it were set relatively high. These expectations were not met. Contrary to what many people seem to have seen, my own experience of the game was that it was a rather pedestrian puzzler notably hampered by a lack of integration between its story and design.

At that time that this was written, author Steph Cherrywell had already shown that she was able to put together a very competent and engaging scenario with Chlorophyll. Zozzled starts out well enough with an inciting incident that primes the player to explore a mystery and introduces some promising-seeming NPC characters. However, placing the player in the role of Hazel ensures that the player both begins and remains fundamentally outside the presented mystery and its associated story, which exclusively concerns the introductory NPCs. The tone wobbles significantly as the action moves from introduction to mid-game; the PC will have a (Spoiler - click to show)paranormal and/or hallucinatory experience in the men's changing room that introduces a brief horror feel, but this is quickly left behind (and in all likelihood forgotten by the player) as exploration continues in a light-hearted and jokey mood.

It's certainly OK for a work of interactive fiction to feature a PC with whom the player does not fundamentally identify. Still, the player is expected to adopt the role presented, and to work in good faith toward helping the work's protagonist reach his, her or its goals. I was prepared to do this for Hazel, the game's PC, whose main motivation seems to be to as quickly as possible recover the state of inebriation with which she began the game, but Hazel's "progress" is played as neither pathos nor comedy -- indeed, other than occasional asides concerning her satisfaction at having obtained another dose, it feels more like checking the boxes of a scorecard than anything else.

Checking off each box requires solving a small set piece puzzle of a form generally familiar to experienced players. These puzzles are decently designed and implemented, and my complaint does not lie with the puzzles themselves. Neither is my complaint with the story; it's a bit melodramatic but in a manner that's stylistically consistent and engaging enough to hold the player's interest. Where this game falls short is that the puzzles do nothing to synergize with the main story, leaving the game and story feeling only incidentally and artificially connected.

What is the story? (Spoiler - click to show)[No, seriously, these are major spoilers, so turn back if you plan to play the game.] (Spoiler - click to show)A married teetotaler falls in love with a young thug in training. She has what is secretly his daughter. Fifteen years later, in a moment of celebration as the thug decides to go legit and be a family with her and their child, the teetotaler agrees to a celebratory drink of champagne but ends up poisoned because it is adulterated with denatured alcohol. The thug turns out to be the owner of the speakeasy in which the game takes place. The daughter, unaware of her paternal parentage but believing that the thug intentionally killed her mother, grows up to be the Prohibition agent raiding the speakeasy. The mother, unaware that the poisoning was accidental, remains in residence as a spirit at the hotel, attempting to get her apparently long-delayed revenge. The protagonist can collect enough "ghosts" -- really pieces of the essence of the poisoned teetotaler -- to restore rationality to the vengeful spirit during a final showdown. At that point, the PC learns enough to set everyone straight, which yields something akin to a happy ending. None of that intersects meaningfully with the PC's given motivations, which are solely to get drunk and get out.

I can imagine a version of this game that plays up the humor of an increasingly intoxicated PC -- perhaps with puzzles whose solutions change and become more difficult as the protagonist gets closer to her goals. That sounds like a lot of work. I can imagine a version of this game in which you play the Prohibition agent raiding the place, featuring heavy interaction with the key NPCs introduced and placing the PC near the center of the existing story. That, too, sounds like a lot of work. I can also imagine a version of the game with a different PC whose motivations better mesh with the story -- perhaps the protagonist would be a 1920s "ghostbuster" hired by the hotel, and the ghosts' backstory would be adjusted accordingly. That sounds about the same in terms of work but with a somewhat more serious tone. Any of them would be better integrated than this work.

There were a few aspects of the implementation that caught my attention. The use of room descriptions to portray a tight fit inside the (Spoiler - click to show)scale model of the hotel was interesting; the technique of using room text that portrays ongoing action is generally frowned upon but works well enough here. The ability to finish the story without locating all of the ghosts, though it leads to a less "happy" ending, is a good design choice for a comp game, allowing casual players to finish the game and be satisfied. At several key points in the plot, the game switches to a choice-based mode; at the beginning and end of the game this is effectively just a more elaborate version of "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE" since there are no choices of consequence, but in an early tutorial-like scene the choices presented are effectively parser commands. The intent seems to be to keep the player from becoming stuck while also ensuring that the essential command for progress is discovered, but the same could have been accomplished with appropriately heavy-handed hints in the text; the current formulation results in something lacking the better aspects of either parser or choice interfaces.

This is by no means a bad game, and I don't regret playing it -- it just seems like the realization of a flawed vision that could have been something more than it is. It is a fun game to play around Halloween, and the overall difficulty is slight enough that it is suitable for those new to parser games, but I would suggest Chlorophyll as an example of Cherrywell's work that offers a more coherent design. I look forward to trying Brain Guzzlers from Beyond by the same author. [EDIT: ...which turned out to be great -- Cherrywell's best work in my experience.]