Number of Reviews: 5
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Will pinch your heart..., November 22, 2023Hand Me Down is a choice-based/parser mix game in three parts, with the middle one being the parser. You play as Ruby, who is visiting her father in the hospital (the Twine bits), during which she is prompted to play a project (the TADS bit) her father made. The parser bit includes an external walkthrough. While there are multiple ways to solve the parser, the story is linear, and with four ending.
I'm always interested in non-traditional IF, the projects that mix and match elements of different gameplays, and blur the lines of the parser/choice-based divide. I was especially intrigued with this entry how the parser bit was implemented into Twine, especially with code from another parser language (separate files, it turns out).
And the game introduces the inclusion of a parser bit inside the game, and why you play it, quite smartly. Out of all three acts, I felt like the opening of the game was the strongest, introducing the characters and their wants and fears, and the relations between them. It was very touching, and also heartbreaking, to see Ruby and her father interact with one another, as he wants to avoid any negative conversation with her and to focus on showing her his project, while she wants to know what's going on with his health.
The weakest, to me, was the last bit. While the storylet mechanic was pretty well done (really worked with pushing your father to talk things out), there were some issues with that part not taking into account the actions of the previous acts or within that bit itself. For example, when calling the mother for advice, it did not take into account that I lied to her in the opening; or when she calls, disrupting the conversation, she doesn't acknowledge you called her moments ago; or when discussing the game with your dad, you have options to pick invitations or outfits you might not have found in the game (that one felt a bit cheating).
Since it's hard to implement different programs into one game, it made sense that the bits didn't "talk" to each other. But it also made it noticeable when things were not fully coherent. I wonder if creating codes for actions in the previous act, to input in the last one could have helped track some choices?
I think I missed quite a bit from the parser bit itself. That part of the game seemed to be quite large (you have essentially 5 solutions for each box to tick), with apparently Easter eggs hidden throughout (notes of the father - I found one). Each item to get come with its personal puzzle, over 15 of them, each of varying length.
But if you don't try to find every invitations, or costumes, or gift, or if you used the walkthrough to go through the parser, it's fairly easy to miss the seemingly gargantuan work the father had done over the past 20 years. I shared Ruby's sentiment of "uh... that's it?" when I moved on to the last act, and felt bad for the father for having put so much work into something that seemed so small...
I would have loved a map to be included in the walkthrough, some of the directions were confusing...
This was a neat experiment, with a touching story. A real tearjerker.