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Review
Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review
The term Interactive Fiction, just the term now, implies technology but leans heavily into literary tradition. But we call them GAMES more often than not. Does that seem right to you? I get it, its the ‘Interactive’ part. It creates a deep intersection with the game experience. Sure, and it’s also the march of history - the early ouvre’ was decidedly game based not narrative based. And who am I to snippily try to draw a line between two things that have lived together in one big muddy swamp for decades anyway?
So Vambrace is a game. A full on ascii-map, fight-the-monsters game. On firing it up I felt I had its measure instantly: Rogue-ish RPG-lite dungeon crawl. It wasn’t stunning insight on my part, the blurb told me that right up front. I settled in for what I knee-jerkingly presumed would be a Mechanical experience because knee-jerks are the province of REAL jerks. I further dug a hole for myself when I looked up vambrace (and I do like learning new words) to find it is forearm armor. That you put power gems in. Yeah, I’m Thanos now.
What a dickish way to engage a game, right? Thankfully, early on a single detail threw my preconception baggage out the window and forced me to engage it with unbiased eyes. That detail? One command was named INVESTIGRAB. I can’t stop smiling at that goofy portmanteau. I wish I had come up with it. The syllables sing with sincere, silly poetry. When I used that command (the single letter ‘I’) I consistently proclaimed in dramatic timbre INVESTIGRAB!. Mostly in my head, but occasionally out loud to the deep consternation of my family. Hey, IF like no one’s watching, right?
[Time to queue up this review’s soundtrack!]
That single ridiculous, wonderful word temporarily flushed the self-satisfied a@%hole out of my system and let me meet the game on its own terms. It is an ascii map, navigated and interacted with in single letter commands. This UI choice pops ya’ll. There is almost no friction between you and game progress. Pop! Pop! Pop! While you were reading this, I just ran end to end and killed two monsters! This super-fleet implementation choice, along with tight humor and legit puzzles delivered on the frothy good-time promise made by INVESTIGRAB.
As the game progresses, your suite of frustratingly mild-effect spells grows organically so as not to overload your progress with ‘what all can I do now?’ The Ascii map is similarly poppy and crisp - exactly the details needed to zip around. And it builds its puzzle space as well. You start with ‘hey I know this spell, use it and win!’ to ‘Yikes, none of these spells are Aces, I need to start building combos.’ It ends up being way more puzzle than RPG, to its extreme benefit.
Now, some of the puzzles didn’t click for me - they required using spells in ways that are counter-intuitive, (Spoiler - click to show)like using GUST to also mean PRESS OR SELECT. I think I consulted the walkthrough twice and was glad I did. But others were EXACTLY right, and still others challenging, but delivering that sweet sweet endorphin rush of ‘hey that’s a clever puzzle AND I SOLVED IT!!!’ I think maybe I am slower than average, I did not finish in two hours. Two hours in, the thing pops with Sparks of Joy. A little too light and a shade too ‘need the walkthrough’ to be truly Engaging, but peppy fun for sure. Notwithstanding puzzle design that sometimes was not quite there, a Seamless experience with a great, simple, transparent UI design.
PostScript: As I was playing, I kept comparing it mentally to last year’s Trouble in Sector 471. Turns out there’s a good reason for that! For me, this one (wait for it…) popped just a little bit more.
Played: 10/13/23
Playtime: 2hrs, not finished
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy, Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: I mean, yeah, I’m gonna finish this. It is light, friendly, amusing and more fun than frustrating.
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
[You can kill the soundtrack now. You probably got the gist.]
