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Review
This game has two purposes: to show off the new Quest 6 engine, and to be a great IFComp game.
For the first, it definitely makes Quest look good. I thought this was Dialog when I first started playing; the parser was easy to work with and the execution was lightning fast, something I didn't associate with the Quest of old. There have been tons of fun Quest games before, but to me the parser always felt slow and prone to errors. This new version seems great.
As a game, it falls into the 'weird house of an eccentric old man with arbitrary puzzles' genre, which is a genre I enjoy in general (Curses! is my favorite game, and Mulldoon Legacy was pretty fun). You're trying to deliver a letter to a mysterious old man while exploring a house that has large variations in size as well as many bizarre creatures walking through.
I solved about half of the puzzles on my own before turning to the walkthrough.
Many of the puzzles have a strange quality where the solution is something that only really makes sense in hindsight. Like other reviewers have noted, there are many possible solutions to most problems but only one or two are implemented (for instance, you can't (Spoiler - click to show)LOOK IN or SEARCH or SHAKE the boots when trying to find what's in them).
Similarly the setting has a lot of non sequiturs. From the author's notes, it seems it was developed from a series of forum posts years ago, which I read. Those forum posts helped a lot of things make more sense. I think the game could have benefitted from putting more of those explanatory details into the game itself.
There is some strong profanity. For me, I would have preferred not to have it, but some reviewers enjoyed the characterization it brought.
Here's my breakdown:
-Polish. Quest 6 is great, but the implementation of this particular game could use some work. For instance, it's possible to put the (Spoiler - click to show)boots right next to the (Spoiler - click to show)crack in the wall, making it impossible to solve the puzzle as intended since you are supposed to (Spoiler - click to show)type ENTER or IN but that puts you in the crack instead of the boots, even if you specify ENTER BOOTS. Similarly, (Spoiler - click to show)GET SAND doesn't work even if you have the pot, but FILL POT does.
+Descriptiveness: There were a lot of details flying around.
+Interactivity: The puzzles were often weird moon logic but it was fun.
+Emotional impact: Some parts of the game worked well for me, like the opening sequence and the exploration.
-Would I play again? The game is large and kind of intimidating and fussy.
