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Review
This game is described as being by 'Rybread', and ABOUT text starts with: "Rybread returns. Funemployment has let me tackle Inform 7 or at least try."
That suggests to me that this is Rybread Celsius, who was a well-known author many years ago and contributed to the IF theory reader. The previous Rybread Celsius games that I played were often buggy but had a creativity and a surreal quality that was enjoyable, like in Acid Whiplash.
Writing for Sub-Q magazine, Anya DeNiro wrote:
When I first became involved in the interactive fiction community online, back in 2001, my head was blown open by the possibilities afforded by parser-based games. I dutifully tracked down a copy of Lost Treasures of Infocom to find my footing with the "canon" that most others were building from. But there was someone else who seemed to be working on the fringes of the community, who some people considered an Ed Wood-type figure making monumentally bad game after game. Many considered him the worst writer of interactive fiction on the contemporary scene. Still others, fewer in number, considered him one of the experimental geniuses of interactive fiction. His name is Ryan Stevens, but he wrote under the name Rybread Celsius.
This game is both similar and dissimilar to those older games. It contains a giant carpet you can search/enter for candy, like his game Candy. Room directions often don't match what's actually available. There are numerous bugs; for instance, there's a coin in a well that you can't pick up unless you are in the well. So if you drop it anywhere else or put it on a supporter, you can never pick it up again (unless you can put the supporter in the wall). There is a dead adventurer that you cannot refer to by that name. I got around this by using 'it' immediately after entering a room, but found later on it responds to 'corpse'.
Dissimilar is the tone. His earlier games were somehow more frightening and unsettling to me, almost as if designed to subtly corrupt the human soul. This game feels more gentle and fun, almost whimsical, and is inspired by counterfeit monkey.
With the walkthrough, decompiling, and an eternal wellspring of hope, I got to 13 points. One point can only be obtained by taking a certain action on turn 127, so missing that locks you out, but I swear the turn counter jumps around from time to time. I never solved the grue puzzle, found the clock room, or the false coin.
Overall, I found it fun. While it's not polished, there's always something to do, and it's nice to see a long-retired author come out again to surprise the world. I liked the use of glulx's text styling, and the counterfeit monkey-inspired machine puzzle was cool.
