Verb Noun Adjective

In Verb Noun Adjective, the admirably confusing Rybread has set Yet Another Meta Parody Adventure adrift in a set of sprawling optimization puzzles so haphazardly juxtantipodal that the many individually winning qualities haven’t coherently set. Perhaps this is inevitable when Counterfeit Monkey, a game that has seen numerous community bugfix patches in the decade since its release, serves as the chief inspiration for a game that does not list a single beta tester.

The trap that befalls many meta parodies is it’s a chore for the reader to take seriously what the author has not, and this game trips into this trap basically immediately with basic contradictions like “You are on a short, dusty road … The road itself extends the way the sun rises and sets.” Sometimes the slipups are deliberately jokey: “The uh…occidental road… there’s an easier word for this…ugh, I just had it. I’ve been saying it… Anyway, you are on the road, let’s cut to the chase. Exits are east and… on the latitudes.” West, you say, and the game thanks you. Lucky for you, I’ve enormous experience with people rambling incoherently about the west until they do us all a favor and forget what it is they’re trying to say.

That uncertainty of prose, amplified by typos and a tendency to vacuity of a certain “weight, mass, volume”, is rather an unfortunate accompaniment to a game that would like you to collect a coin from “SCORE”, see, as in an O, leaving the “SC RE” behind, then later give a counterfeit coin to a “Monkey” to get a “Moonkey”, as in another O, since, of course, Counterfeit Monkey. Enjoined to the closest of reading to wit upon any whit of wordplay, you end up trying to ply the r from “This is the last indulgence in the land and costs only a single coin three trimes” to fix the typo in “Seems familia, with an equally familiar and tinier mailbox next to it”. I don’t mind red herrings, but I do mind a moat “with an intense current”.

Such frustrations prove doubly frustrating when the layers that do exist can be so compelling! Who doesn’t want to give Can’t Cant to a thief to steal STEAL? In one offhand description: “A torn manuscript depicting a thief sent to Naraka, a realm of torment and suffering. His only act of charity in life was sparing a spider. One day a single silky tread of web shoots down to Naraka and he grasps it and starts climbing out.” This seemed strange to me, because like most people I was familiar with this story through Akutagawa, but the word for hell here should be jikogu, not the Sanskrit naraka. As it turns out, though, Akutagawa took the story from an anthology of early Buddhist parables, and in a Pali Canon context maybe this makes sense? Or what’s happening here. Believe it or not, this is actually a set up to a genuine dishonest-to-Satan punchline: when you, having stolen steal, steal and get sent to hell, it’s explained that hell is, with the help of its deep pool of private equity talent, performing a bit of a rollup: “We are really leaning into the whole syncretism trend this quarter. Keeping this space traditional, but trying to setup Naraka to the east of the pentagram, Tartarus, Druz Demana, Ọ̀run Àpáàdì and even Jahannam if we get the budget approved.” And you escape by having spared a spider earlier to use its silkthread to climb out. Close reading rewarded, I’d say! The best part is there’s a whole separate sequence that happens here if you purchase an indulgence. Silliness ricochet is where parody genuinely starts to create large logic jumps that recontextualize the space through humor. If that recontextualization doesn’t apply in the million more cases where it doesn’t apply, then at least it’s funny when it does: “Hell is where the heart is! Especially if it’s heavier than a feather!” For a game that spends much of its screen time on zanies that groan both where they wilt obvious as well as where they jitter unexpected, as in this one two punch, “The OSHA equivalent has hit Big Adventure, and while bureaucracy has oiled the machine, there’s still some rusty spots. So consider: you’ve had a tetanus shot… but how many years ago?” there lurks ever capable the ability to tell a genuine joke: A banker declares, “We have our own coin, and it’s done us very well for many generations!”

Ultimately, as hostilely obtuse as this game is, I think you can parse it in a single combination: “Funemployment has let me tackle Inform 7 or at least try. This adventure is really a puzzle-fest inspired by decades of ideas and a recent reread of the Renga in Blue blog. Some of those early games were brutal, but those eureka moments must have felt so sweet” meets “By the way, and unrelated, ever hear that an hour of research can yield one sentence in creative writing?” Perhaps IFComp isn’t the best venue for the resulting ramble, but then again would IFComp really represent us without grandiose mistakes?