Lysidice and the Minotaur

This game was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, which requires a tutorial and asks authors to make games appropriate for newcomers.

The tutorial in this game was, I thought, as long as the whole game, as it was very complex, involving following a complex recipe. I was surprised to find out there was more after, and quite a bit!

This is one of the longer Adventuron games I've seen in a while, not as big as Faeries of Haelstowne, for instance, but it took me around an hour or more.

You play as an Athenian maiden trapped in the labyrinth with the minotaur. But...he's actually a very nice minotaur. And he needs your help!

The gameplay and story reminded me of Bronze by Emily Short in a way, with an injured beast man that you have to care for. But this is a more positive game, and contains many references to Greek Mythology.

One thing I liked about this game was that it has a lot of optional side quests, meaning that if you are having trouble you can just leave, but if you're enjoying yourself and want more of a challenge you can attempt the other quests.

There are a lot of hints and things.

I had several parser frustrations, many of which were just due to having a complex project in Adventuron, in my opinion (I had a big Adventuron project that had similar issues). I passed on everything I found to the author, though, and I didn't have much trouble completing the game in the end.

I liked the storyline overall, and felt it was a good spin on mythology and I loved the synergy between me and the minotaur. Glad I played.

This Adventuron game is based on Greek mythology - and set in a maze! But it’s a fun maze. Trust me.

The gameplay is nice and simple for beginners while still providing a fun challenge due to the maze, which is very satisfying to map. The game is well documented for anyone who gets stuck, with a walkthrough and map available on the Itch page.

There are a few points with confusing wording or clunky responses, but on the whole the implementation is solid.

I really felt the kind nature of the Minotaur and his lovely relationship with the player character; this is very nicely done for a mute character. It’s also great that there are optional subplot puzzles that you can do to get slightly different endings (though I think it would have been good to make at least one of them mandatory, as it’s a shame for players to miss out).

A really lovely and fun game!

​​I didn't want to publicly rate this while the TALJ was ongoing as I'm an organizer of the Comp, but now that it's been over for a hot minute, I feel comfortable circling back.

This is my single favorite parser from this author. They started as primarily a Twine author and have rather rapidly expanded into other authoring systems over the last two years. I don't know if it's from trial and error or simply from playing and reviewing so many different types of games, but this game shows an implicit understanding of the typical tropes and design shorthand that has risen up around the hobbyist parser scene over the last three decades.

As for the game itself, I really enjoyed the tone and especially the relationship with the Minotaur. It made me think of Emily Short's *Bronze*, but nowhere near as dark. The game is also a bit longer than you might assume; my playthrough was over 90 minutes. The built-in tutorial is robust and shows alot of consideration, and I would really be interested to know how people new to parsers interact with this game in particular. Something else to note is the design of the game is more open than one might assume. There are a number of optional side-quests than can be pursued at any time, as opposed to a system of rigid gating. My only friction with the game was some disambiguation issues, but that isn't anything that wouldn't improve with either more testing and/or more experience writing parsers.

I really hope this author continues writing in a variety of gaming engines.