Weekend at Ruby's

I've spent a lot of time on this game and barely scratched the surface, so my review may be a bit premature; after 2 hours of play, I've gone through 2 or 3 objectives out of (I assume) a great many, and I'm finding the game play and mimesis engrossing and believable.

The writing occasionally falters; there are more than a few cliches and overly used turns of phrase, but the experience on the whole has been fun and incredibly deep.

This game is a Spring Thing entrant for 2014; while I haven't played all of the entries for this year yet, I suspect this will be among the deepest games in the entry list.

This is a game that invites lengthy and slow exploration. There are dozens of layers, and I believe, deeper and more sophisticated problems than the initial setup of losing the phone number of your love interest.

I don't know how the game will end; I don't know if it is capable of delivering on the exceptional early promise it has shown. I expect it will; the intuitive and player-friendly 'ui' (including objectives list and excellent feedback when you're on the right track) make this one of the most easily navigated parser games I've played in a while.

I was a little put off by the initial barrage of text, but am happy I stuck with it through that; the sheer complexity and depth of this game is reminiscent of classic infocom titles, but without the convoluted verb guesses and noun mismatches that ruin many classic games. This game has a believable and well-implemented world, and I'm happy to spend hours exploring it in a leisurely fashion.