Us Too

I have to admit with great shame that this is my first Andrew Schulz game. I’m aware of the area of IF he had staked out, and every year I’ve intended with my whole heart to play his entry. This year I finally managed it.

Us Too’s main technique is wordplay puzzles about shifting the space in a two-word phrase and finding the right interpretation. This puzzle type took me a while to lock into by perfecting some kind of mental slurring of speech and then resolving into something new.

The whole experience was really quite unique. The wordplay melted my brain a little, having the direct analogue of A-ha moments of other puzzlers, but being something different. The writing is good but in a way not too consequential. The story and location kinda slid off my brain, and even in some way the puzzles too. But I was in a flow state looking for a unique phrase and deconstructing it. The writing doesn’t make this too obvious nor too obscure.

Some time in – after I was locked into the wordplay – I was wondering if the game could instead be a PDF of puzzles. Right then, the game started presenting more involved puzzles requiring chains of interactions.

This gave me the overall impression of Schulz’ expertise at creating puzzle games with appropriate pacing and ramp up. The writing is interesting but not an obstacle. There is significant infrastructure for hints, cheats and guides for the player. Everything is quite fair (although my play through came to an end with the puzzle which was a bit of a stretch for me). I enjoyed the game as an abstract puzzle game although it’s not presented as such. I feel wordplay puzzles have to be like this - embedded in story but slippery in the diegetics.

I enjoyed my time with Us Too. Time for me to start mining through the back catalogue!