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To fry or not...the choice is yours!, October 18, 2023I like ChoiceScript games a lot, though they can often be significant time commitments, containing a novel's length of text and many possible story paths to explore. This game, in contrast, is a quick romp centering around a pretty unusual food frying competition...These authors have also released, The Bread Must Rise, a full-length Choice of Games title set in this same universe that I'm eager to try, but I felt that One Does Not Simply Fry was a fun -- though far from perfect -- introduction to this world.
The setup of the game is certainly intriguing and quite different from a lot of other ChoiceScript games that I've played. The game bills itself as a humorous send-up of fantasy novels (Lord of the Rings in particular) and reality TV baking competitions -- not your typical mashup! The first part of the game does a good bit of world building to introduce the player to the overall domain of the game world, the Twelve Mostly Civilized Realms, and to the city of Godstone in particular, a baking-obsessed city that happens to be situated at the base of an apocalypse-inspiring active volcano.
While presenting a genuinely interesting and weird fantasy world, the first part of the game was also very information-dense, with exceedingly long passages that often lacked meaningful choices. Instead, I would have appreciated shorter descriptive passages of particular parts of Godstone that the player moves through as they are given options to interact with other citizens, make preparations for the competition, or undertake other activities that exposed them to details about the world.
The second part of the game, which centers around the actual fry-off competition, was totally driven by player choices and was quite inventive. The player essentially engages in a series of choice-based mini games: purchasing ingredients to make the perfect onion ring, setting up your kitchen, and then actually putting the ingredients together to make your onion ring. I haven't really played a ChoiceScript game that involves this sort of immediate, task-based string of choices. Typically, games will have you make a single choice at some important point and then, based on your stats or previous choices, determine an outcome that may lead to success, failure, or something else. This game design, where the player makes a string of task-based choices that accumulate and compound in real time (or in the time it takes for the player to read the passages) was very fitting for the fry-off competition.
I found parts of the game to be pretty funny and the satire often worked for me. There's an interesting underlying commentary here about people who put their heads in the sand and distract themselves with escapist entertainment while a black magic-powered volcano threatens eternal doom. I found the running gag of (Spoiler - click to show)the stadium seating built up over the caldera of the volcano, with fans of the baking competition continually falling into the molten lava, to be darkly funny. However, other jokes and aspects of the satire just did not work for me. Much of the game's humor relies on pretty obvious and groan-worthy jokey references to LotR, like the villain of the baking competition being named 'Sour Ron' (get it?!!). The LotR-specific references typically felt very forced and not really in service of the game's bigger satirical project. The points when the game successfully blends fantasy and reality TV tropes felt fresh and fun, and I wish those had been the main focus of the game's humor.
While this game was pretty inconsistent, it's compact enough to weather the not-so-good parts and get to the engaging and funny parts. I wonder if there was some rush to get this into the IF Comp that contributed to the inconsistencies in the writing and design. The good parts of this game have got me interested in the authors' full-length ChoiceScript game set in this universe. I'm eager to see how the satire and baking competitions work in what's likely a more polished game.