Lysidice and the Minotaur

​​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.