Bobby and Bonnie

Bobby and Bonnie was more challenging than I expected, but never frustrating. You play a rabbit in a magical setting which although sparsely implemented more than made up for it in imagination. An intersting narration device: the narrator is your sibling, so they speak in the second person, like most parser games, but they are also right there next to you.

This game would be great for older kids but they might need some help with a few of the puzzles. The built in hints but they are not that helpful. There are a few stumper moments but the solutions are logical and can be derived from experimentation and exploration. Also required is some familiarity with Peter Paul and Mary.

This is a cute little puzzle game. You play a bunny, and the narrator is your sibling.

There is a cool graphical map, unusual for a glulx game. You have to clean your house before going to market, and collect food, etc. It reminds me of a Peter Rabbit book.

The puzzles were clever, but could be clued better. A lot of the 'corners' of the game feel empty, with conversations especially feeling like they should be more developed or be clearly limited.

This game is very sweet, very cute, and it's a breath of fresh air to play. The map is more than a nice added aid, it's part of its visual identity. Sometimes you just want to play a game that's unironically wholesome, just because. It helps if it doesn't talk down to you, which I don't think this one does.

Just has one big problem for me. One of the final puzzles, though it makes sense, requires you to experiment a bit to find a hidden property of an inventory item. It's a perfectly logical property. But... the game isn't built to encourage experimentation. It's rather bare-bones. You aren't really encouraged to interact with stuff; even if, say, the game has a history of very bare descriptions that only really tell you about the one or two things in the room you can interact with, and then one room has a very interesting-looking item. Let's say, a log with moss very proeminently described. Not only do all the interactions with this interesting item fall flat, the game says it "can't see any moss".

This is a design problem because it doesn't encourage experimentation. And one of the puzzles requires experimentation.

This is compounded by the characters, with whom you can talk about basically nothing. This is usually a clear sign to me that a game doesn't expect me to try and explore and experiment. It just wants me to follow the prompts. I'm fine with obliging, but then I'm not in the mindset to colour outside the lines to see what happens. Why should I? The game taught me it's pointless.

The hint system also failed me here. It basically told me I had everything I needed to solve the puzzle, but not in any way that actually helped me solve it.

So it was a nice experience while it lasted, but it either needed a) more clueing, or b) much more detailed worldbuilding, to encourage experimentation.

Conversely, I really enjoyed the puzzles around the "Peter Paul and Mary reference" (no spoilers), which included even identifying it. Those were nice. Those were about connecting some dots in your head.