Caduceus

This game took first place in Event One of the Second Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction.

Entries in Event One of the Second Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction were written over the course of one weekend. The challenge of Event One was to create a game in Inform 7 with beautiful source code text.

The trouble is, all of the top-ranked games are unplayable without the source, and Caduceus is no exception. It has two "guess the verb" puzzles, whose solutions make no sense, even in hindsight. (Spoiler - click to show)The gangplank is "fixed in place." Despite that, you have to "push" it. Why? Why do I have to "wave" the caduceus? None of this is explained, even in the source. (Why not "reclaim" the caduceus?)

So how did an unplayable game get four stars from me? Well, the source code is very, very good.