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Review
Adapted from an IFCOMP25 Review
Games about games. Is there anything more inbred navel-gazing? (JOKE SETUP: this will pay off in 2027/28. Oh you will laugh so hard when it does!) It’s not really surprising why these show up here is it? IF was arguably among the FIRST of computer games. Anyone conversant with IF, especially golden age IF, has a good chance of having affinity for early computer gaming as they all evolved simultaneously. Small wonder a healthy subgenre of game/gaming reflection has sprouted in IF. Have we been treated to one this playful yet? I don’t know that I have.
You are a co-conspirator in a PS1-era industrial espionage/heist of real-life maverick developer Kenji Eno. Its structure is reminiscent of this spring’s Elaine Marley and the Ghost Ship - bouncing back and forth between link select gameplay and historical explorations. I don’t mean to lessen either game by comparing them - both are fully their own thing that just seem to bear similar structure and resonant preoccupations. This is pure surface level. The playing of KOATGD (cottage?) is light, breezy, and fun. Its link-select architecture provides soft guidance into puzzle play that is just short of lawn mowering. It is not insanely difficult, but neither is it trivial, and requires some engagement with its parser-IF informed puzzles. These puzzles? Wrangling a turtle of inconceivable dexterity as it wanders about the place, distracting Eno from giving you the McGuffin you need.
A framework like this can be sturdy when in strong hands, which it very much is here. The back and forth saves the historical explorations from wall-of-text belaboring. The imaginative and playful gameplay is dispensed in tight little bursts of lateral thinking, energizing the player for the next cycle. The fact that the two do not (really) inform or enhance each other in any meaningful way does not mean they don’t PACE the story very well. It never drags or confounds, the back and forth makes for some steady momentum.
It helps that Eno is a very compelling historical figure, the legend of him as interesting as the facts. It also helps that the more IF-y gameplay skews from wryly humorous to laugh-out-loud fun. Not least of which as the nature of the protagonist and his partner become increasingly clear, then doubled- and tripled-down upon. This is not a case of a sucker punch plot twist so much as an increasingly urgent “This is what this is, right?” “This has GOT to be what this is.” “OMG IT TOTALLY IS!!”
This is a colloidal suspension of a work: two incompatible substances entwined and swirled with each other but never actually mixing together or transforming. Yet that combination is STILL compelling for all its disuniformity! In the end, it leans increasingly on its humorous conceits through a final climax and plot twist. At the very end we get a convergence of sorts, the climax drawing from both elements. This was an expertly paced combination of light, fun gameplay shot through with sly humor, and deeply interesting gaming history. Paying off interest in both, even though most of its runtime was a pendulum swing from one side to the other.
I should mention that there is an extended denouement, which brings in even MORE left field tangential references, completely justified by its setup, but every bit as unrelated as the two major parts that preceded it. Look, KOATGD is not a tight thematic weaving of disparate parts informing each other. It’s an unapologetic amalgam of disparate elements whose main interplay is pacing and cheap laughs. And it is a BLAST to play.
Played: 11/7/25
Playtime: 45m
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging/Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete
Artistic/Technical ratings:
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
