Hildy

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

As sometimes happens when I review things, my brain decides on a reductive label that becomes the lens I view the work through. I actually try NOT to do this, but my ass of a brain often as not has its own ideas. Hildy elicited this: “Magically Blonde.” Now because it is MY brain, I didn’t need explaining that this was an objectively weak reference to Legally Blonde, the Reese Witherspoon comedy vehicle. I fully recognize anyone outside my brain pan would need hand holding. It’s just not my brain’s best effort.

But that reference, reductive though it was, was reflective of the bubbly, reclaiming-stereotypes, confident optimism that was so infectious in the 2001 movie. An IF work could do FAR worse than echoing that inspiration in a Hogwarts-like setting. Like Reese’ Elle Woods character, the titular protagonist is her own thing, seemingly underestimated and dismissed as trivial and out of place in magic study. While Hildy is a little less assured of her path forward, she nevertheless attacks it from her own plucky perspective with no apologies. She is delightful and we are on her side immediately. Early on she is reprimanded with:

“We can’t go around granting the gift of speech to people’s sandwiches, giving every storm cloud a smiley face or exploding monsters from the inside out. It upsets people!”

I mean, those first two are not the same as the last and WHY NOT??? Stop harshing her mellow. From there, a sympathetic professor sets her on a find-yourself quest that sets her into the not-quite-extinct ruins of a fantasy mall. Not sure what else you expected. Follows an intricate series of Zorkian parser puzzles to manipulate objects, learn and use spells, trick NPCs and generally explore the space. This is as competent a puzzly parser as I’ve seen, though it is MUCH bigger than the 2hrs I devoted to it. I was truly engaged throughout its runtime, encountering minimal technical frictions, unique and difficult but tractable puzzles, discoverable lore that seems equal parts color and foreshadowing, and a setting geography ably painted in the players mind to make mapping minimally necessary. The puzzles themselves sparked with odd setups and clever payoffs that are steps above ‘give item X to NPC Y’ shuttling. That is a really long-winded way of saying ‘Engaging.’ It hooked me with its adorable premise, then segued confidently to an old school parser that was, 2hrs in, free of any asterisks, qualifiers and caveats.

So here’s one. If I had a wish it would be that we got to hear/see Hildy’s personality and voice MORE. Once the preamble is over, we leave an NPC-stocked setting of humorous interactions to a relatively barren, lonely one where Hildy goes quiet. When that happens, we lose a bit of the animating personality that was such an effective hook for the first few scenes of the game. The protagonist settles into the more generic ‘faceless player avatar’ of old school parsers. It’s of a piece with its classic vibe and doesn’t jar because of that. But it does downplay its strongest asset. DON’T PUT HILDY IN A BOX! Let her speak!

Anyway, you know me, I always want more. This was still a truly Engaging, Mostly Seamless work of IF, notably polished despite its size. The highest praise I can bestow is that assuming there is no 2hr quality cliff, I will absolutely play to completion after COMP. (Why would I even say that ‘cliff’ thing? I have no reason to doubt it’s gonna be great.)

Hildy quote, at least in spirit: “This is gonna be just like senior year, except for funner!”

Played: 9/10/24
Playtime: 2hr, unfinished, 35/75 points
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging/Mostly Seamless
Would Play After Comp?: Yes, will def finish

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless