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Release 2
post-comp release. The game expanded from z-machine to glulx.
Requires a Glulx interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.

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Very Vile Fairy File

by Andrew Schultz (as Billy Boling) profile

Episode 1 of Prime Pro-Rhyme Row
Fantasy , Wordplay
2019

(based on 12 ratings)
4 reviews

About the Story

Well, your name is Kerry Kyle, so you can't be the worst person to destroy the Very Vile Fairy File.


Game Details


Awards

21st Place - 25th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2019)


News

The dropbox link should work for now, but I want to put it on my itch.io site as well.

I wasn't able to get in as much as I hoped post-comp, and the solution is still the same as it was for the comp.

But I did include enough to tip the game from Z-Machine to Glulx. Changes include:

--100 more good guesses
--another Last Lousy Point
--better cluing for the start (to get you that first point) and the tricky Ditch room
--more silly fake-death rooms
--many bug fixes, mostly because I wrote more detailed test scripts which helped me find some interesting stuff
--more lenient recharges for the lurking lump (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, then 10 further out)

The full list of fixed things is here.

Release 3 is due 12/12. I have ideas to speed the parser up if you make a bad guess, and I also didn't get to put in the narrative that accompanied scoring points. But I have a lot of technical fixes in, and I've filled in details after a successful action.
Reported by Andrew Schultz | History | Edit | Delete
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Member Reviews

5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
(2)
2 star:
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Number of Reviews: 4
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Most Helpful Member Reviews


3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Deal's done, feels fun, December 31, 2022
by Lance Cirone (Backwater, Vermont)

Very Vile Fairy File has you as Kerry Kyle, transported into a strange world consisting of rhyming couplets. The titular Fairy File will repeatedly show up to insult you until you can put a stop to it.

The game revolves around rhymes: you have to turn Soft Sand into a Loft Land, a Coral Cage into a Moral Mage, a Stark Store into a Dark Door or you can Mark More. Seeing how many puns the writing can string together is part of the fun, especially when you run into a dead-end room.

The game encourages guesses, since ones that might not exactly help will still feed your Lurking Lump, allowing you to use a Jerking Jump to bypass puzzles you're stuck on. It's a fun trade-off, but I did find myself devolving into just going down a list of syllables or letters during particularly frustrating areas. You can also use your Leet Learner to get an idea of whether or not you have to subtract or add letters from a term.

There's a good amount of context clues you can work out from examining objects, and only once did it use a word I didn't know. There's also a flat-out hint feature, but most of the time it wasn't that helpful. Either way, there's plenty of anti-frustration features, and multiple areas will always be open at once, so you can just do something else to clear your head until you want to return.

Very Vile Fairy File is strong and funny, and definitely worth a try if it seems interesting to you.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
An enjoyable rhyming-based game, November 10, 2019
by MathBrush
Related reviews: about 2 hours

Andrew Schultz makes games by taking a wordplay idea and finding as many examples of it as possible, then building a game around that list.

Sometimes, it feels a little forced. Some times, it feels great. This is one of those great times, at least for me.

I'm not coming in looking for a cohesive narrative. I'm coming in to have pure puzzling fun that hurts your brain.

I would rank this game up around with Shuffling Around, one of my favorites, but a little below Threediopolis, my absolute favorite.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Good fun!, October 15, 2019
by IngridWolf
Related reviews: IF Comp 2019

This game is the first parser I’ve ever played, so it felt rather different, but engaging instantly.

You proceed by picking and typing in a rhyme to something on the passage. I’m glad I had a walkthrough, otherwise I’d have found this game extremely difficult to play, considering that English is not my first language. But, having it, I could simply enjoy the smoothly-flowing and humorous narrative.

The multiple locations and characters are depicted with great imagination. The slightly absurd nature of this world, and its reliance on word play, is reminding of Alice in Wonderland.

At times I laughed out loud, but there also was a serious message hidden between the lines that I liked just as much. A top rating well-deserved!

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Works of Wordplay by Walter Sandsquish
Text-adventure games consist of little more than words, so some of them concern themselves with little more than wordplay. Here are a dozen of the better ones.

Polls

The following polls include votes for Very Vile Fairy File:

Best IF Titles by Fredrik
No doubt you have played some great games with great titles, or been disappointed to find games with great titles that did not hold up to expectations. What are the best titles of IF? They can be funny, elegant, evocative, or whatever...

Games with unique hint systems by delano
I'm looking for games that offer hints in any way, except for printing them in sequence on the screen. For example: characters that offer hints; objects that, when examined or used in a certain way, suggest actions to the player; etc.




This is version 6 of this page, edited by JTN on 5 July 2023 at 2:37pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page