One King to Loot them All

This parser game sees you as a barbarian king, try to avenge the loss of a friend, and defeat an evil enemy.

This was really something special. The implementation isn’t flawless, but the way that it uses a special gameplay command to change the narrative - without going into spoilers any more about this! - is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a piece of IF before. Initially I was a bit puzzled about what to do at a certain point, then went “aha!” and carried on. And it was enormous fun. I played right through to the end, in about an hour.

Because you are a barbarian you have special commands like SMITE and LOOT. That reduced verb set worked well. But I was most wowed with the world building, the playing with the narrative (which I want to talk so much about, but am trying to stay spoiler free), the use of locations, and the writing of various NPCs.

There’s no detailed walkthrough included with the game itself, but if you get stuck HINT will be a big help. Though at a key point you still have to figure out what to do for yourself.

Yup, that was good! Oh and there’s a story mode you can turn on to step through the game at any point if you get very stuck. I didn’t turn it on though, and enjoyed solving for myself.