Number of Reviews: 4
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A funny sea-based Lovecraftian horror parser game, December 18, 2023A parser “horredy” - well that sounds fun! Note I played this offline in Lectrote with my preferred gigantic font.
It’s a Lovecraftian inspired horror, where you’re a captain of a fishing vessel, start off by just wanting something to eat, and then things get more problematic. And some very disturbing - albeit comedic - imagery kicks in in places as the game goes on!
I liked a lot about this. The writing is snappy and funny, and has the right balance between user interaction and length of text. I loved the way the player gets awarded achievements ((Spoiler - click to show)I got 8/27 of them - really curious about the other 19!), in addition to scoring points. The achievements are an extra incentive to keep playing.
I do think the game and puzzles are a bit unevenly balanced. There’s an awful lot of running around between locations and levels early on, which feels unrealistic. And then at the very end there’s a puzzle ((Spoiler - click to show)the sake / safe / combination code) which I don’t think is adequately clued at all ((Spoiler - click to show)I only found one place the code might be - far down the ladder. Where are the others?). However I was happy to go to the walkthrough for that bit. I just think the whole now do X, without any extra clueing, even chatting to the obvious NPC, needed a bit more smoothing for the player.
However that aside I liked a lot about this. It definitely lives up to the “horredy” tag. So well done to the author. Oh and thanks for some of the after game stuff. Though as a suggestion maybe list all the amusing things to try in one go, rather than individually.