The Golden French Fry

Baf's Guide

Another of Paul Allen Panks' mini-RPGs in the style of Scott Adams. Fight a werewolf, a troll, and a dragon. This is not a spectacular game, and has some glaring flaws. It's trivially easy to win the game without seeing more than 10% of what there is to see (even though the author says that the endgame is supposed to be "pretty tough").

On the other hand, this game is better tested than Panks' other games, and it has a better parser. And it comes with a really excellent walkthrough, commenting on all the game's locations and secrets. If you're looking to play one of Panks' games (and you're not willing to put in the weeks and months to play Westfront PC or HLA Adventure), this is probably as good a choice as any.

-- Greg Boettcher

SPAG
All bugs and parsing restrictions aside (the game is playable -- just not as easily as typical "standard" works), I'm disappointed in the story and the consistency. Paul did add more to the intro, referencing the PC's state of inebriation as a clue to why nothing really seems to make sense. Still, it just isn't enough. If I'm going to see dragons and trolls and werewolves, a nice twist would have been to reveal what these things really are at some point, a la Don Quixote -- not just what the PC believes them to be. As it is, I can't tell if much thought went into the story. It seems that Paul decided to make a short puzzle game with various random elements, connected only by the fact that they seem to reside in the same pseudo-fantasy world. With more thought given to the story, it might have worked. Instead, "The Golden French Fry" offers very little to make it memorable, or to separate it from other similar games.
-- Mike Snyder
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