By the Lake

In my original review, I complained about parser problems, especially for a particular puzzle. Two people disagreed with my review, so I wondered if I was just being dumb and not understanding. I went back and tried again, and I found the correct solution, which was imaginative, so I have to give the author credit for that. The game is very short. Perhaps others may find the game more fun than I did; in the end, it seems a bit like the one-puzzle game "More", which similarly involves a relationship, crime, rooms with little interaction, and a single puzzle requiring a leap of intuition.

Original review: I'll begin by saying I haven't finished the game for reasons that will soon be apparent. This game starts out with a very graphic scene of violence, after which you are able to take a little more action. I found it hard to find anything to do at all, but once I discovered where to go and what to do, I started enjoying things more.

But then I was plagued by parser issues. It was just one guess-the-verb game after another, with no implementation of common synonyms and no suggestions for verbs that are close (something like, "the pen can't be clicked, but it can be opened" for that type of situation would be nice). There were other similar problems; repeatedly searching an area kept giving me the same message about discovering an item, and there was one item where it was clear what needed to be done with it, but the parser gave the same response every time with no hint of if I wasn't ready yet or if I hadn't guessed the verb. (Spoiler - click to show)Specifically, the lighter. I pushed in the nest and squeezed the bottle, but I cannot light, flick, open or burn the lighter, and cannot burn, ignite, or light the nest, pit or fluid. In fact, I cannot refer to the fluid in the pit at all. I know I may not have solved the puzzle, but it would make much more sense to say, "not yet", or, "we need to ... first" if that were the case.

Finally, the About command gave no help, and included a boilerplate intro to IF section that mentioned several things that were completely irrelevant in this game.