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Review
Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review
Played: 4/9/26
Playtime: 30min, no progress without walkthrough
What is a form of a thing, without the heart of the thing? Kind of a homunculus of sorts - carrying its shape but missing the animating elements that give it true life. This feels like an unkind opening to a review, especially for a new author, but cannot instead this observation serve as a tribute to the learning process? The Mona Lisa could not exist, were not Da Vinci a master of his medium. The Craft is what enables the Art. For Frankenstein to rise, stitching the body was a crucial first step.
Parser IF, from its dawning, encapsulated the promise of author-player engagement through the vast medium of language. Constrained in syntax, perhaps, but as wide as the dictionary. Of course this audience knows this to be an illusion (for now! AI may one day deliver on that promise, the clearest possible example of ‘be careful what you wish for’). Illusion is not a pejorative here - all Art has illusory components. That brunette is not entrancing with an enigmatic smile - she’s only two dimensional! That marble shepherd is not poised between action and indecision, he’s a rock shaped like a naked dude! Parsers don’t actually understand all of your native language!
MCC (hey! that acronym seems familiar!) is a fully functional parser game, in the sense that it plays to completion with no blocking bugs. It decidedly is NOT an effective illusion of open world gameplay. The key to effective parser illusion is for the author to anticipate, as much as possible, how a player might engage the world being presented. An author need not provision every possible engagement, so long as they successfully steer the player to satisfactory engagement. Take the simple case of a closed door. If attempting to open it yields:
> open office door
It's locked.
> unlock office door with key
You can't unlock that.
The simple declarative response carries the weight of Reality: this door is an impenetrable barrier. The universe told me so. What should be soft cued here is an alternate entry method. If that method is:
> push office door
The door gives out a faint click.
the overarching question is, "How would the player know to try that after the universe’s unambiguous ‘YOU JUST CAN’T’. This is a soft cue in the text - it DISCOURAGES further attempts. Instead of ‘can’t’ if the message was You don't have a key that works on this door. that would cue a player ‘ok, I need to find a different key!’ If the message was along the lines of There isn't a keyhole on this door. that would cue the player ‘ah, I need to try non-key methods.’ Soft cuing is both the problem and the solution! This is not a new parser dynamic, it is in fact a hallmark of mature parser construction.
Such contradictory or opaque cuing is pervasive in this work. If I can’t LOOK UNDER a mat, how would I know to MOVE it? How would I think to HIT a solid clump of candy? If I can’t PUT CUP UNDER DRIP, how would I think that PUT CUP IN PUDDLE would accomplish this? Practically every step of the way, these artifacts blocked me. For me, the work was unplayable without the walkthrough. Good call providing one though!
“Ok, smug reviewer, how can an author possibly anticipate what all might need cuing?” The useless answer is “think about it.” Sure, as an author becomes more familiar with their craft, SOME opportunities will start to come naturally. But what a dick move it is to advise “Just think of those things you are not thinking of.” Parser tradition does provide a more useful answer though: Alpha/Beta play testing! What better way to suss out how players behave than watch player behavior? This is a work that SCREAMS for play test. It has the hallmarks of a prototype where the ‘success path’ was engineered and implemented, probably tested by author, but none of the gameplay grease needed by an actual player was added.
This textual inadequacy extends to scenario-setting and motivations as well. The piece introduces itself with "A perfectly normal mystery." Hey, I’m always on board for wry understated humor, but from there we are navigating and interacting with objects without motivation or sense of goals. If you did not read the blurb on the comp site, you would have no idea what you were expected to accomplish here! Now, parser expectations do some of this lifting: a locked door almost always means ‘find key’ in parser-ville. Guards almost always mean ‘circumvent.’ It’s not a functional gap per se, but it is a very big narrative one. Without an overarching goal though, it becomes an exercise of outlasting obstacles.
But! As a first effort, just assembling that working prototype is an accomplishment worth celebrating! Its core multi-step puzzle is an amusingly complicated one: (Spoiler - click to show)create tainted tea to send the guards rushing to the toilet. It is pretty funny with a satisfying variety of steps. Maybe my initial take is exactly backwards. Maybe the heart of the parser is in tact, infused with a budding love of the medium. Perhaps it is the body whose stitching needs a bit more work. If one were to recast its current state as Alpha, then solicit some testers…
…like those you might find in the audience of a comp…
…ready to play and provide feedb… Oh, Clever Girl
Spaceship: Heart of Gold
Vibe: First Draft
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would undergo a round of Beta testing to see how players are engaging the world, and diligently provision everything they tried. Most especially including all the missing nouns!
Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.
