Cubes and Ladders

Played: 7/10/24
Playtime: 1/2 hr, 86 pts, fired; additional 1hr “won” with walkthrough goose
CW: AI art

CnL has a lot going for it, I wish so much of it was not qualified. This is a pretty classic parser experience, wrapped in an attractive package and oozing with wit.

The wit is the least qualified success in the work. It is suffused with pre-cancellation Scott Adams’ Dilbert vibes, which, death of the artist, when at its best was crushingly on point in its lampooning of empty business jargon. Most NPCs are endless fonts of vacuous business platitudes, and the game’s unbending commitment to the bit sells it terrifically. The game ups its ante by building these farcical lampoonings into its puzzles and plot beats. Occasionally laugh out loud, it is always wryly amusing and keeps things bubbling along. As a player you can decide whether this train of humor is still fresh, but for me, the work’s total investment just sold it.

The game’s presentation is crisp and clean - the vertical illustrations siding the clean font text panel establishes a graphic identity that is pleasing and engaging. The illustrations themselves flex between functional and part of the gag, and often work pretty well. There are some stylistic hints and non-uniformities that clue their AI authorship. For me, I concede that the artwork works with the vibe pretty well, introducing a 1950’s Man in Grey Suit overlay to 90s-00s corporate cult culture. It is not unsuccessful. The ambivalence you are detecting is that even when AI art is successful, and I have played other works where it was as successful as here, I inevitably struggle with its larger implications. “Death of the Artist” only makes sense to me when the artist was at least once alive. If this aspect of AI art does not bedevil you, you will doubtless find this less ambiguously successful.

The gameplay experience was more traditionally asterisk’d. There were many design and bug artifacts that I understand may now be addressed: weird state glitches, cross-room disambiguations, missing synonyms, moon logic puzzles and lack of reasonable alternate solutions.

These were not everywhere, by the way. There are plenty of lateral thinking, assemble the clues, and search for item puzzles that land squarely in parser tradition, often with humorous twists and satisfying clicks.

This review sounds kind of whiny and mopey doesn’t it? I actually enjoyed the experience a lot more than this review might be conveying. I think I got into that weird space where I enjoyed it enough to want to enjoy it even more, and felt those frictions more keenly. It is a worthwhile play - wryly amusing on several levels. Pretty fair, fun endstates even in failure. Its puzzles as often parser classics as glitchy-but-still-pretty-fun. I wouldn’t let my moping hold you back. Death of the Reviewer! (Especially as the updated version is probably even better)