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Review
(Note this is a review of the game version available part way through the competition)
This is a fantasy parser game, where you’re a court wizard, and have a number of tasks to complete. It’s an ADRIFT game, so on my Mac I ran it in FrankenDrift.
I liked a lot about this. The task list for the player was a big help, though I missed completing one ((Spoiler - click to show)watering the plant, which to be fair I hadn’t even really registered) on my play through. It’s nice to get a sense of progress as you play. The parser was solid and there were helpful in game hints available if you got stuck. Which I really appreciated when I struggled a bit with the words for one puzzle ((Spoiler - click to show)trying FILL MUG and POUR KETTLE IN MUG before the H hint command suggested POUR INFUSION INTO MUG). The world is richly described, and although you only use a small number of rooms it’s immersive, generally smoothly coded, and your interactions with the various NPCs work well.
But it was just too short for me. I wanted so much more! It felt like the opening teaser for a game, rather than the full thing. Indeed as I was rattling off tasks on the to do list I realised this wasn’t going to take me very long at all. I played well under half an hour, and apart from one lingering puzzle played it to completion and the end of the game. To be fair it’s the latest in a series of games in this world. But give us more to do! I enjoyed playing this character. And expected a much more time heavy game from the hour and a half estimated play time on the competition listing.
