Lysidice and the Minotaur

There are, I am sure, many IF reviewers who can cooly and dispassionately evaluate the merits of lighthearted parser romps set in Ancient Greece – but I, sadly, am not one of them. Lysidice and the Minotaur has a lot of points of difference from my first game (it’s riffing on the mythological rather than historical eras, for one thing, and it’s not written in a trying-too-hard Wodehouse-aping style), but still, this kind of thing is very much my jam – and actually, now that I think about it, my objectivity could probably be called into question for another reason, which is that I actually helped a tiny bit with this game because when a couple months ago Manon mentioned wanting to know what kinds of foods they ate in Ancient Greece, I passed along the food-y (and pottery-y – there are a lot of funny-sounding jugs) bits I’d written up as potential inspiration. All of which is to say that this is the kind of thing that I like, so it’s maybe not much surprise that I like it.

Still, I think there are defensible reasons for that! This Adventuron entry into the most recent Text Adventure Literacy Jam does a nice job running players through the basics of parser gameplay. There’s a maze (duh), albeit a rather simple one, but also a lot of object manipulation puzzles, a couple fetch-quests running between different characters, a riddle… The solid gameplay is paired with nice quality-of-life features, too; beyond the de rigueur tutorial, exits and usable objects are highlighted in each room’s header, and while the critical path to finish the game is easy enough to figure out, there are a number of satisfying optional puzzles that make the ending more satisfying and give more experienced players something to do.

The plot is similarly solid. You play as the eponymous maiden, who was brought to the Labyrinth as one of the Athenian sacrifices paid as tribute to Minos, but who’s befriended the minotaur who now serves as your protector. After the latest would-be hero grievously wounds your bovine pal, you decide it’s time for the two of you to bust out and make your own way in the world. It’s an appealing premise, and the puzzles do a good job of involving the minotaur so that it feels like he’s pulling his own weight, and the two of you are working together (you providing more of the brains, he more of the brawn, of course), which strengthens the central relationship of the game. I also enjoyed how deeply the game engaged with the myths; this is still a game aiming more for fun than verisimilitude, but it does draw in some more esoteric bits of the stories, and puts its own spin on traditional elements like the Daedalus/Icarus relationship. It’s well done, and I think would appeal even to players without a predisposition to this particular body of legends.

So the bones here are good ones, but unfortunately the flesh is not without its blemishes. The game doesn’t have quite as much polish as I generally like to see, and I think the standard for a game intended for IF newbies is generally set higher than that. While I didn’t run into any game-breaking bugs, there were definitely some instances of confusing behavior, like GIVE WAX TO MINOTAUR leading to me giving wax to Daedalus, and this disorienting output when I tried to TAKE SACK

"I don’t need to carry that old thing around.

"You can’t take it.

"You pick up the a sack of grains."

(I didn’t actually pick up the sack, at the end of all that).

The prose is also a little rough in patches, especially around more idiomatic English. Here’s a bit on your history with the minotaur, which includes a few of the relatively-common infelicities I noticed:

"The Minotaur would often come back from his strolls in the treacherous maze with drinks and food, usually in too large quantity. You never missed for a thing."

It’s nothing that sinks the game – actually the writing is breezy and engaging, for the most part – but again, for a game that’s intended to provide an on-ramp to people unfamiliar with IF, it’d be nice if things were a bit smoother.

As always, though, these are cavils. Lysidice and the Minotaur is a straightforward but effective introduction to traditional parser IF, with an appealing cast and good pacing (I haven’t mentioned that different sections of the maze are unlocked successively as you solve puzzles – it’s a good mechanic to keep the possibilities manageable, and ensure exploration is never overwhelming). It could use a little more time in the oven, but even in its current state, and even for experienced players or those who don’t find its premise immediately entertaining, it’s very much worth a play.

​​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.

Disclaimer: I playtested this game back before it was released. But today was my first time playing the published version! I love that it includes so many non-essential-but-very-nice-to-have features, like the introduction about how to play, including the command for starting a transcript—it drives me up a wall that every parser engine has a different transcript command, but the pain is much lessened when I’m told upfront what it is! Also immediately notable are the lovely stylistic flourishes, includes the meandros border (thanks to JJMcC for the new vocab word!) and the use of color to differentiate commands, clickable links (another handy feature), the PC’s thoughts, etc. Items and directions are also always listed in a status bar at the top of the screen and are clickable from there, so all in all it’s very user-friendly.

I also found the parser especially user-friendly. I often struggle with Adventuron's parser, but this game understood everything I wanted to do on my first attempt (okay, it probably helps that I tested it, meaning poor Manon received documentation of all my struggles lol). The one time I ran into an issue was when talking to Daedalus; I was writing commands like “tell him about [thing]”, but he kept replying with a custom “I didn’t understand you” message. I thus thought I was phrasing my commands wrong, or hadn’t yet done something that was necessary to unlock the next conversation, but it turns out I needed to type “ask *Daedalus* about [thing]” (which I finally discovered by turning to the walkthrough). I also think I ran into a bug with Eriboea; I thought I’d done what I needed for her to talk to me, but she still wouldn’t, so I couldn’t complete her part of the story.

A nice thing about the game, though, is that multiple aspects are extra—Eriboea and Icarus are both present as NPCs and each have their own little storylines (I remember doing Eriboea’s when testing the game), but they aren’t necessary to win. So I was able to complete Icarus’s like the completionist I am, but wasn’t stuck due to being unable to finish Eriboea’s. While walking back and forth in the maze did get a bit tedious (although I did more wandering than I needed to while trying to get un-stuck on Eriboea and Daedalus), fortunately there’s a downloadable map which I made good use of.

But now let’s talk about the story. In short: I love it. I love that it makes the monstrous minotaur into a loving friend to Lysidice, and I love that her motivation throughout the game is her love for him; she wants to escape the maze with him so that he’ll stop getting hurt protecting her. The first sequence in the game has her tending his wounds, complete with a kiss on the forehead at the end. Throughout the rest she makes valiant but fruitless efforts to push/move/lift heavy things, and the minotaur always steps in to help. It was very sweet, and a nice subversion of the myth. I also enjoyed Daedalus and Icarus’s brief roles, and the dramatic irony of their ending. While, stripped down to the basics, this is a medium-dry-goods parser puzzler, the framework around it makes it so much more.

Without a doubt, this is the best parser the author has released until now. The take on Lysidice's character on the Minotaur mythology was a unique and enjoyable one.

What I mean by "unique" take is MC's (Lysidice's) relationship with the Minotaur. In the original myth, she is one of the sacrificial victims sent to Minotaur, and interestingly enough, Theseus's aunt, the hero who killed the Minotaur. In the game though, their relationship could literally be called the "Beauty and the Beast", with the Minotaur helping and "protecting" her.

Unlike, other parsers, due to the setting being a literal maze, an escape room-like "technique" is used not only to introduce the maze puzzles (which work similarly to "The Trials and Tribulations of Edward Harcourt"), but also to introduce characters like Daedalus and Eriboa, the labyrinth's creator (Icarus's father) and the "Alôids' jealous stepmother who snitched on them about the location where they had jailed Ares".

Interestingly enough, her step-brats, Otus and Ephialtes's names are translated as "ear" and "he who jumps upon" (nightmare also), which could be linked to the whole passage on how MC struggles and solves the last obstacle to her freedom. These brats symbolize the scary surrounding of the maze which was confining Lysidice (here) similarly to how the brats tried to capture the goddesses (failed) and confined Ares in a bronze jar for thirteen months.

To be honest, the story was quite good, but I feel it was kind of a missed opportunity not introducing more characters from greek mythology, as the character explores the maze, making it kind of a "Explore the Greek Mythology" kind of maze.

Note for future players: If played on a Firefox browser on a phone, there's no problem with the UI, but on PC I recommend using Chrome or any other browser other than Firefox.

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.