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Nominee, Best Individual Puzzle - 2014 XYZZY Awards
Commended - ShuffleComp 2014
| Average Rating: based on 12 ratings Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 5 |
This Shufflecomp game has essentially one real puzzle but has another meta puzzle.
You explore a junkyard, thinking about your significant other. You are looking for something; this is the 'real' puzzle. But you, the reader, are trying to understand the relationship of the narrator with their significant other, and that, I feel, is a better puzzle.
Very short, but very good. Like all shufflecomp games, it was inspired by a song or songs randomly selected from a list, in this case, eight different songs! Finding out how each song is incorporated (in the author's notes) is as fun as the rest of the game.
I really enjoyed this short work of IF. The story is set in a very small world, yet the narrative manages to build-up into the player's mind as he explores the environment. Usually I find frustrating IF games horrible to play, but in this specific case frustration and challenge go hand in hand.
After a few moves you realize that you've explored all there is to explore in the story game, and you realize that there are few items to interact with. At all times you know that the solution is right in front of you, but you just can't work out how to unravel the puzzle.
There is a beauty to its prose, it manages to be simple but evocative, and the player straight away realizes that clues are hidden in plain sight as far as descriptions go.
It'a a kind of all-or-nothing situation--you either solved the puzzle or you are still stuck with it. The solution naturally builds in the player's mind as he keeps attempting various actions and starts to tune-in with the story and it's peculiar use of language.
Well worth playing it, and not giving up to it! Avarage player should solve it within half an hour. Keep re-reading descriptions and weigh every word in the text. Nothing is marginal.
This feels like it might be a mood piece at first. You wade through a few rooms of dead household appliances, repeating a story about a heist you performed with a friend. Eventually this story trails off, and your inner monologue stops. There's nothing to do but find the treasure.
You have a shovel and a napkin, and on that napkin is written a clue where you should dig. There are a few approaches to finding the right place to dig. One I tried that failed was to (Spoiler - click to show)turn the flashlight off and look again, which didn't work. Depending on how observant and/or lucky you are, it should turn up. There's no super-hidden item, but on the other hand, you can't just go spamming words you see in the description. DIGging in the wrong place just seems too much.
The household appliances are an interesting choice of scenery. They are useless now, a perfect place to hide a stash, yet at the same time appliances could be a great target for burglars. They're also a sort of crime against the environment, whether from individual homeowners, or from corporation or governments who don't put enough money and effort into the science of recycling. Or perhaps the appliances are a symbol of a stable home that non-criminals take for granted but criminals never can, especially the air conditioner in the final room to the south. One suspects the narrator would do anything, with all their money, to have air conditioner repair bills to pay. They also reminded me of game shows where I never understood people were so happy to win a new dishwasher.
Or, you know, it's just amusing descriptions of a forbidding surreal landscape as a sad story unfolds, even if the main actors are criminals.
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