Dash Slapney and the Calamitous Candy Corn Cornucopia

by Andrew Schultz profile

Episode 1 of Dash Slapney Speed-IF Gallimaufry
2011
Seasonal
Inform 7

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Review

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Concerned Citizens Against Citizen Concern, November 13, 2011
by Sam Kabo Ashwell (Seattle)
Related reviews: speedIF, comedy

At first glance, this looks like a big pile of crap-IF tropes: a squalid apartment, a detective-type PC, and a narrative voice that lampshades crap-IF tropes and the game's own half-assedness. On closer inspection, the writing turns out to be actually funny a reasonable proportion of the time.

As the titular slob hero, you're tasked with uncovering a busybody conspiracy against Halloween chocolate in a small American town. Sometimes you encourage delinquency and attack fun-hating prigs, but as often you disrupt The Kids instead: the general tone is one of sociopathy born of slacker incompetence. The design approach aims for scale at the expense of detail and smooth play: characters are thrown in and out with wild abandon, a classic adventure-game jump-between-different-areas map is delivered as a high-speed sketch. The gleefully irresponsible action is sort of charming, although it doesn't quite overcome the game's overstretched design.

The main problem with the thing is gameplay, which is at the lower end of speedIF quality. Crucial exits are never mentioned, read-author's-mind abounds, and there's nothing really resembling direction. At times play flows very fast, at others it flounders. There's an in-game walkthrough, however, and not all of the evidence-gathering seems to be strictly necessary.

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