Roads of Liches

This game was entered into Ectocomp 2023, in the Grand Guignol division.

It is a wordplay game, centered on the idea of rhyming pairs where you swap the first consonants.

I always enjoy this author's wordplay gameplay, but I often find the words used too abstract or obscure to fully enjoy, or have difficulty knowing what to do.

This game is much more concrete than usual, with vivid imagery: animals, mountains, machinery, buildings, ravines, etc. This made me more invested in the game.

I also liked the symmetrical structure, with a neat trick where paths diverge and converge and you have to approach each problem from both sides.

I got stuck on a few of the parts where you had to use an item elsewhere, and I think I ran into a bug where someone will pursue you once but seemingly (?) won't pursue you after that. But it was only a slight thing in an overall nice game.

The difficulty level was just right for me, with many easy things to do, some pretty easy things, and only a few really challenging problems (I used the treat chunk a couple of times and peeked at the walkthrough for one ending thing).