Burglar!

You, a master thief, have just broken into a house owned by Jefferson Smith, the fifteenth wealthiest person in England. You have 2 hours to gather valuables and make your escape.

Despite being billed as a coding exercise, Burglar! is fairly enjoyable. Much like Hollywood Hijinx, Burglar! is a treasure hunt game that must be completed in a limited number of turns. However, unlike Hollywood Hijinx, Burglar! does not automatically end when you run out of turns. You can still complete the game, as long as you manage to avoid the homeowner while they search for you.

I found the gameplay to be moderately difficult. While some of the valuables are easy to find, others require the manipulation of hidden buttons and levers. The author also has a penchant for hiding objects inside other objects. To complicate matters, some objects exist only to serve as red herrings, a design choice that I have always had mixed feelings about. I was not able to get the full score without the help of a walkthrough.

I didn’t encounter any bugs, but some of the writing is awkward, with descriptions such as “an item of junk mail” and “there's a fridge is whirring away to itself in the corner.”

Burglar! does not excel in any one area, but the overall package is enjoyable enough. Fans of treasure hunt games might want to give it a try.

Burglar! is a simple treasure hunt. You're a burglar invading someone's wealthy estate, and you have two hours to explore and rob it until they get home.

There are a lot of items to find: some important, some treasures (helpfully marked in bold), and some red herrings. The latter were definitely disruptive, but I can't say I wished they weren't there. They both fueled and foiled some of my crazier plans: for instance, I was trying to catch the cat in my bag and sic it against the dog, or put butter on the legs of a desk so I could move it downstairs. Neither worked, but I had fun trying.

Verb choice was a bit weird here. You can't use "search", but you can "look in" and "look under" items. I wasn't really sure what I could do at first, so some more points in the right direction would have helped. Similarly, I wasn't able to get all the points without a walkthrough. Every playthrough I'd find something new and figure out what to do with it, but there's definitely one or two things I wouldn't have found myself. Thankfully, you can leave the house at any time if you're happy with the treasures you've looted. I was also glad that the optimal solution isn't too time-crunched, so you can still mess up or lose track of a few things and make it out with all the valuables in time.

Still, this is a pretty good game for something made as a coding exercise. It's fun as a small game to play a few times, maybe take notes on, and see how much you can get.