A Cup of Tea

I'm a puzzle IF-er, so I happily clicked on this game's 'play online' link. At the outset, it seems straightforward - it's a one-room puzzle; you're in your kitchen, and you should have everything you need to make yourself a nice cup of tea before bed. The game's listing warns you that it probably won't be easy; 'try not to die' indeed! I looked forward to interesting blocks in my path.

Unfortunately, I didn't get them. Instead, I found myself frustrated by the actual implementation. Being unable to find a verb for actions that seem to be completely natural parts of this process put me off. (Spoiler - click to show)For example, you have a teabag, a teapot and a teacup. You'd think you'd be able to put the teabag into one of those two, right? Nope; 'you can't do that.' I'd be fine with this if there was an interesting *reason* I couldn't do that, but getting what felt like a generic 'this verb isn't implemented' message for such a basic action essentially tossed me out of the game. If you're only going to give me a very narrow set of items and locations, telling me I can't do basic things with them is a problem.

Once I managed to take what felt like a first step, I ran into another block that also felt implementation-related. (Spoiler - click to show)Having boiled my water in the teapot, I tried to get the water into the cup even though I hadn't been able to determine what to do with the teabag - maybe the game wanted me to put the teabag in *after* the water. But I couldn't. 'pour water into cup' - 'You can't see that (water into cup).' POUR WATER - 'You can't see that (water).' POUR - 'I don't understand your command.' POUR TEAPOT - progress; it pops up a dialog box asking 'with which object? I select TEACUP. It says 'You pour the' and gives me the command line. Um. Maybe that worked but had a bad message? No, examining the teacup says nothing about anything in it.

Also, the descriptions themselves are a bit odd. For example, the stove has burners on it. If I put the teapot on the stove, it says the stove has burners and a teapot on it. But if I try to put the teapot on the burners, it says 'You can't do that.'

In sum, I didn't finish. This is because I gave up; but I gave up because the blocks placed in my path weren't interesting and felt like game implementation limitations rather than puzzle steps.