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3 people found the following review helpful:
Go Game, So Same, January 20, 2023I played this one a bit after Very Vile Fairy File, and it's clear they're cut from the same cloth. That doesn't bother me, though, because I really enjoyed Fairy File, and the game has a bit to differentiate itself. For one, the leet learner works differently, and figuring that out again was fun. I just wish the new notes returned, because I liked looking over those as a recap of what I had done. I think it was easier to figure out this time around, but I had to manually track down my reads as I went through the game until I understood it. I also noticed that you get a few more items that you carry with you and have to wordplay with to get out of difficult situations, like the light lute and the red rose.
I'm split over how I feel about the Spurning Sprite as an antagonist over the Fairy File. Whenever the Fairy File spoke, you got some kind of humorous insult and then the player character's introspection. Plus, the showdown against it was fun and climactic. The Spurning Sprite's dialogue is more intelligible and has personality, and I thought its battle was clever, but overall it didn't lead to the same deep thoughts and doubt that the Fairy File gave us.
Overall, both games are pretty fun, but I think Fairy File slightly wins out over Jokey Journey for me. If you liked Fairy File or Quite Queer Night Near, you'll get a lot out of this one.
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1 people found the following review helpful:
Wonderful wordplay, January 5, 2023(This is a lightly-edited version of a review I posted to the IntFiction forums during 2022's IFComp).
There’s a lot that’s distinctive about the way Andrew Schultz makes games, but one thing that sets him out from other authors is the way he makes families or clusters of games rather than one-offs. He’s recently created a series of chess games, for example (in fact there’s another one coming up at the very end of my queue for the Comp), and his Spring Thing entry this year was a shorter iteration of an anagram-themed mechanic he’d explored twice before. You could think of this approach as being like a AAA game maker who releases DLC extending the base game with small tweaks to the basic concept, but for whatever reason, the metaphor my brain goes to is a musical one, like a band developing a particular sound to make an album, then putting out a short EP or sticking with it for another full release, before reinventing themselves and moving on.
Sticking with that metaphor, Low-Key Learny Jokey Journey is like a rarities and B-sides collection that closes out (at least for now) Schultz’s sequence of rhyming games, which started with 2020’s Very Vile Fairy File. Once again, the fundamental interaction involves reading the name of a room or object, then coming up with an appropriate rhyming couplet to move the plot forward. Confronted with a Mad Monk blocking your progress, for example, you might write DAD DUNK – which fits the rhyme scheme, but doesn’t solve the puzzle:
Alas, no middle-aged man soars into the air, basketball in hand, to posterize the mad monk.
Characteristically for Schultz, this basic dynamic is supported with a range of introductory material, helper gadgets, and shortcut verbs that do a lot to support the player without undercutting the often-challenging nature of the puzzles. The thoughtful design means, for example, that when you come up with near-miss rhymes like DAD DUNK, you’re rewarded with a little gag acknowledging that you came close (some of which are quite funny, especially when the game is gently chiding you for following the rhyme scheme into a juvenile or scatological place – call me immature, but POTTY PAIL made me giggle), as well as charging up an item that lets you skip puzzles that aren’t clicking for you. There’s also a fully implemented hints system, as well as a SOUNDS command that lists common English phonemes in case you want to trial-and-error your way through a particularly sticky wicket.
I found the game quite addictive to play; at any given time, you have a couple of locations open to you, and it’s fun to wander around worrying away at different puzzles and checking out the dynamic, loopily-surreal landscape, always knowing you have a safety net if the going gets too tough. What makes it more Odds & Sods than Live at Leeds, though, is that I didn’t feel like there was an especially strong throughline connecting the different pieces. In my memory at least, Very Vile Fairy File had a reasonably-consistent fairy tale vibe, and a plot that, while serving primarily as a justification for the puzzles, seemed to present a coherent antagonist and set of goals to accomplish. Here, I didn’t feel like the frame story doesn’t establish the Burning Bright Spurning Sprite as especially threatening, and the different locations and happenings felt essentially random – again, quite enjoyable in themselves, but very much a grab bag.
I also get the feeling that the game hasn’t (yet) gotten the full studio treatment. While the game’s overall stable and I didn’t run into too many full-fledged bugs, there is a slight lack of polish that hopefully can be cleaned up. There are some rhymes that seem obvious but aren’t implemented – I know being completely exhaustive would be very, very challenging to design, but I was disappointed all the same that, when I was told I had to create a “spark of nature” in the Sore Souls’ Gore Goals, HOAR HOLES didn’t create frosty receptacles (more forgivably, WHORE WHOLES similarly languished unimplemented). More annoyingly, the SOUNDS command seems to have some omissions (it includes a redundant X sound, despite a disclaimer saying that it isn’t listed, while there’s no Y – seems like a typo. And SH isn’t there at all, despite that sound being the solution to a couple of puzzles), and there are some solutions that lean so far into colloquialism that they feel like bugs (slight spoiler, but you’re probably going to need a spoiler to solve this puzzle: (Spoiler - click to show)if you think “flain” is an acceptable way to create the past participle of “flayed”, I’m pretty sure you were born before the 19th Century).
Schultz has a track record of making many in-Comp and post-Comp improvements, though, so I’m sure these will be addressed in time, which is why I’ve taken the liberty of flagging them (along with several others in the attached transcript). And the bottom line is that this is a lot of fun as a well-designed puzzle collection – gloriously, instead of relying on deep pondering of abstract mechanics, progress here often requires you to chant rhyming nonsense words one after another until you either hit upon the solution or burst out laughing. You can levy aesthetic complaints at a grab-bag of novelty singles, I suppose, but you can’t say they’re not a good time – and it’s just the same here.
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2 people found the following review helpful:
Smokey Burny OH MY GOD I'M NO GOOD AT WORDPLAY, November 27, 2022Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review
Wordplay games are so cool. They marry the math and lateral logic of abstract puzzles with the messiness and context of human language. But they also have a slightly uphill climb, in that they explicitly ask the player to break the mimesis of language and consider problem solving at more of a remove. LKLJJ crucially engages this problem the best way possible, playfully and winkingly. The setup is absurdist beat poetry in the best possible way that just catapults you into an extended, lightly-geographic wordplay puzzle.
From there it is all about rhyming placenames with mostly clever cause and effect phrases. The Sparks of Joy were flying so fast and furious it was like a metal grinder, or a daycare class dancing with sparklers. The game is quite generous with problem solving helpers, from a codebreaker feedback item, a limited use “auto solve” item you can earn, a log of useful-just-not-now solutions, options to close off branches when exhausted, and hints. Most of them tunable to personal challenge/handholding preferences. Its a quite impressive array of tools that shows an understanding of the possible sticking points in its loose tale.
The absurdist milieu is a two edged sword. On the one hand it would be almost impossible to facilitate this kind of rhyming wordplay without it. Conversely, it sets up a universe where words and actions may not behave the way you expect them to, or even think of. The tools above crucially help close that potential gap. As does the author’s completely winning use of language. I can’t even imagine the claustrophobic development garret, overrun with yellow-sticky rhymes, linked with yarn like a Qanon war room. The effort to create puzzles, solutions, and locations that all alliteratively rhyme, AND to accommodate snarky responses to guesses that don’t solve the puzzle. Respect.
Its not completely seamless. The game sets a very high standard on good rhymes so you are trained to ignore imperfect rhymes and when they show up, it jars. There are also one or two prompts that don’t adhere to the two-word descriptions standardized everywhere else. Its not unfair, in that you can deduce the two-word pair from context. The problem is, its not obvious you need to do that, given the standard set throughout the game. Yeah, I’m reporting a puzzle that flummoxed me. Those all feel like quibbles though, especially as the helper tools readily power you past them.
LKLJJ is a winning, extended puzzle set in a hilariously Dada world of clever wordplay. So many Sparks I might ignite. Why not engaging? I think the arbitrariness that is part of its joy has a side effect: there is no continuity thread that pulls you back for “oh I gotta know what happens next.” It kinda doesn’t matter what happens next. Its going to be fun and amusing, no doubt, but I could pick it up tomorrow or next month, whenever I want my next fix. This is not a lick on the game - it does exactly what it wants really, really well. It’s like a book of crossword puzzles - not a page turner you can’t put down, but ready to pick up anytime you want a dose of joy in your life. Assuming you can support a metaphor where crossword puzzles are joyful.
Played: 10/13/22
Playtime: 2hrs, incomplete, score 29
Artistic/Technical rankings: Sparks of Joy/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again? Will be unable not to
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
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1 people found the following review helpful:
IFComp 2022: Low-Key Learny Jokey Journey, November 14, 2022Andrew Schultz has a nervy knack for swervy snacks that train take you to a brain break, and if all the play’s pain slays sane, then at least your frenzied frolic matches the envied aeolic! The antagonist, the Burning Bright Spurning Sprite, is “hoping for SOMEONE, ANYONE who might understand the slightest bit what’s in this” game, and while we might have to tie a little tightest to slightest, why not be fit for the bit?
This game presents you with cryptic rhyme puzzles, where mostly meandering mishmashes of words are thrown at you, and you’ve got to find some tangential rhyme scheme to carry on the meaning. While silly, this can be quite clever: a “freak framing” requires us to rebuke it of “chic shaming” from the “clique claiming” that makes it a rather “bleak blaming”, which helps to solve the situation. That kind of tight sequence of word association wrests wit where writ, leading sometimes to zany amusements. Presented with a mad monk: “>had hunk / You try to claim the mad monk has lost muscle, but the insult doesn’t really land, because with age comes wisdom, and stuff.” This kind of rhyming can be quite cute and inventive, with a delightful puzzle where trudging through slow sludge is solved with “>grow grudge / As your mood hardens, so does the sludge! But you don’t see that right away. You’re busy accepting you’re not perfect and realizing you don’t have to be and recognizing sometimes stewing is better than lashing out. The sludge even recedes a bit. You can go any of the four directions now.” There is a ludic fantasy of possibility implied here, a Norton Juster logicslip where you can end up anywhere just by ceasing your ascent!
Before we jump to conclusions, the game does unfortunately undermine that fantasy, because most of the play sequence consists of typing rhymes that don’t do anything until by sheer brute force you stumble onto the intended one, which often has little to recommend it over any of the unintended ones. In Roaring Rocks, for instance, you need to look for a boring box, which doesn’t really seem connected, other than that the game hints something is hidden? I tried “soaring socks” to jump over the obstacle, which seems like a more intuitive answer, but the game didn’t recognize it. Similarly, at the deep dune, I got it to seep soon, but the game complained that waiting for the seeping would take too long, so I tried a speed spoon, but got nothing. Instead, I’m supposed to leave the room and return? Which feels underdelivered for a game like this. Where the connective logic is more tightly interwoven with the rhymes, that logic can often be bewildering, as in a dizzying sequence that has you manifest a banquet, then cause a crow concert inside a shoe, which gives you a light lute, then you’re teleported? And sometimes the game’s writing makes you seasick: “A stun-steed zooms by, bellowing “None-need-done deed!” Have you lost focus on what’s really important? Or just put in a bit of extra rigor? You decide on the second, as you could also imagine a bin-bare-min mare to insult you for finding no extra neat stuff.” The game is telling me that the puzzle is solved and I can move on unless I want to find bonus points, but insists on doing it in a way that causes maximum whiplash. I suppose it’s hypocritical for me of all people to complain here. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.
Perhaps recognizing the dizziness, Schultz provides some nice features, like a series of helpful items that modulate your experience, such as a Guide Gong (keeps you on the right path), lurking lump (gives you one strong hint), and leet learner (keeps tally of the available rhyme points), all of which are nice customization tools to provide you with whatever additional mooring your mind might need to stern stay to learn lay the word way to keep bored bay. A hint system and a walkthrough add additional clarity.
These added guiderails temper any frustration to allow Low-Key Learny Jokey Journey to thrive on the chase for those sizzles of delight, when, trying to find where a locking lift could lead, you undertake a shocking shift, ending up in a Sore Soul’s Gore Goals, a rather desolate place indeed, but then you breathe life into it through shore shoals and four foals and why not more moles? If, at the end of such a wild ride, “You feel like you learned nothing, and yet, at the same time, you think back to what made you say “Wow, whoah,”” then, with the finishing bow bow, at least you’re left with a hundred percent pure sent pleasant present for constant content.
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3 people found the following review helpful:
I hope you have better luck than me, October 9, 2022I really struggled with this game. I never really got the hang of it, even though it's centered on finding rhyming words. I used the hint system and look at the walkthrough, but I still couldn't come up with a strategy for solving the puzzles. It was clear a lot of work went into this game, and it has a fun, light-hearted tone, but I just didn't connect with it.
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5 people found the following review helpful:
Double rhyming through a manageable surreal landscape, October 9, 2022This is a wordplay game by Andrew Schultz, the third in a series involving double rhymes (like the name of the game itself).
I found it more appealing than the other two. Like the other games, this is a surreal setting, with names and locations picked more for their rhyme possibilities than anything else. But somehow it felt more coherent than the others. Also, the map is more manageable in this game.
Gameplay mostly consists of taking locations or items and typing two words that rhyme with two words in the location or item. There is a help system that is carefully explained, except for its main feature consisting of two dials. I got about halfway through before I realized that it (Spoiler - click to show)was telling you how many letters to add or subtract to your first and last words, although I'm still not sure what the last two decimal places mean.
I had to go to the hints increasingly more as time went on, and there was one word that I honestly had no clue ever existed (heavy spoiler for later game) (Spoiler - click to show)FLAIN.
The main boss had what felt like consistent character development, and the storyline felt taut and trimmed of fat. Overall, I found this to be above average for a wordplay game.
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