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Sidekick

by Charles Moore

2024
Western
Dialog

(based on 2 ratings)
1 review3 members have played this game.

About the Story

It's the Old West and Buck Swagger is the man of the hour and his feats of derring-do are known all across the western territories. You, however, are Buck's long-suffering sidekick and know all too well that those feats are actually your feats and that Buck is, in reality, a vain dimwit with great teeth and good press.

Now, Buck's been summoned to Mercury Springs, a small town under the heel of a ruthless gang of villains. His assignment? To rid the town of evil. Your assignment? To complete Buck's assignment for him and to keep him from getting himself killed in the process. If successful, you'll receive none of the accolades. But such is the life of the sidekick.

Awards

Ratings and Reviews

5 star:
(1)
4 star:
(1)
3 star:
(0)
2 star:
(0)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating: based on 2 ratings
Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 1
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A wild western comedy where you, the sidekick, are really the hero!, September 23, 2024
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 2-10 hours

Now, this is another game I tested, but, sad to say, I didn’t finish testing it at the time, because it’s actually pretty hard! I have finished it now, though.

This is a long, difficult Dialog parser game that uses Dialog’s hyperlink system to turn itself into a parser-choice hybrid.

In it, you play as a sidekick to a cowboy hero who is famous for saving people from villains. The secret is, though, that you are the one who is actually saving everyone!

The game is expansive, and largely revolves around getting Buck out of trouble, defeating henchmen, and investigating the outskirts of town.

Gameplay is very hard. You can lock yourself out of victory; to avoid that, you can set ‘winnable on’. If it’s in ‘easy’ mode, you’ll know right away that you messed up. If it’s in ‘hard’ mode, you’ll only find out a few turns later.

The solutions to all puzzles revolve around objects that are far away and that usually aren’t labelled or associated in any way with the area you need them in. Given that this is a big game, that means that the best way to progress is likely carefully mapping out the world and taking every object you can find, looking at what verbs it’s capable of, then trying out obstacles one at a time.

Alas, there is an inventory limit that comes into play fairly often. I think you might be able to carry some things in the knapsack, but I forgot to try that this playthrough.

As a side note, multiple puzzles require you to throw an object into an adjoining room, which isn’t standard in most Inform/Dialog games, so keep an eye out for that!

Overall, I think this game deserves a long, careful playtime that will likely exceed the two hour IFComp limit. So I recommend trying it out, and coming back to it after the comp if you like it!

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Game Details

Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: September 1, 2024
Current Version: Unknown
Development System: Dialog
IFID: 7C6F34FA-0DEB-46C1-A656-E5293903C9BD
TUID: fnwsam8nuzalnym0

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This is version 5 of this page, edited by Dan Fabulich on 29 September 2024 at 12:12am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page