Wry

First off: while the game description does contain the word "erotic", it's not actually particularly explicit or anything; while the protagonist certainly has a vivid and prurient imagination, nothing is spelled out in uncomfortable detail, and the humour is more in the bashfulness of the character than the raunchiness of the jokes.

This is a short and quite funny game. One gets points for poking around the room and unlocking amusing little bits of text, or making progress through a rube-goldbergian comedy of errors. Aside from some lingering default messages, the protagonist's voice suffuses the game, keeping things appropriately humorous and light throughout; there was some occasional awkwardness in the language, but this didn't feel out of place given the general awkwardness of the protagonist.

Like other reviewers, I found the final ending a little abrupt. It comes by surprise; doesn't clearly connect to anything the protagonist was up to, and feels more like a puzzle to be solved than a satisfying conclusion to the story. (And since there's no walkthrough from the author, I'm still not certain of this!) In any case, playing around and trying to ramp up your score seems to be enough to get you the three distinct endings mentioned in the blurb, and is certainly a nice way to spend the 15-30 minutes you're likely to need to get there.

Mild content warning: This game insinuates some adult situations.

This game is a one-room comedy parser game with a limited number of moves, multiple endings and you don't need maximum points to get a good ending. I managed to get 45/60 points before I gave up after starting over many, many times. Later I came back and reached 54/60 so the game is quite addictive.

Parser:
This is more or less the standard Inform parser which is always good unless the author by mistake ruins it. In this case it is good too. Also, there were no apparent ambiguity problems which can easily occur in a one-room game with many objects. The parser is as good as needed.

Atmosphere:
The writing is successfully humorous and gives the intended atmosphere I would expect.

Cruelty rating: Cruel
This type of game must be cruel. This is a game with a limited number of moves and you must learn from your mistakes by starting over and over again.

Puzzles:
There were nice, well-clued puzzles. If I had managed to solve all of them I would probably have given an even higher puzzle score. But as I don't know the unsolved solutions I can only evaluate the ones I solved.

Overall:
Everything in this game plays well together, resulting in a higher total score than each of the individual categories above. It is a well implemented, fun one-room comedy puzzle game where the goal is to get as many points as you can. Unless you get very stubborn and want to reach maximum points, there are not countless of hours in this game. But asking for more content is never a valid criticism but a compliment. However, in a competition like Spring Thing I think the longer game should win if I am equally entertained as long as it lasts. But rated as a short game, this was my favourite game in Spring Thing 2022.

Wry is a delightfully chaotic, farcical comedy that can easily be played through in a single sitting. This was a playthrough that I had a lot of fun with, sort of like visiting an interactive comedy sketch where things just keep going wrong in a Rube Goldberg domino-like setup, but one that will keep its player going, "Ah, hm, okay... I can deal with this..." (and where it's intuitive enough that I didn't run into any "guess the verb" issues) until the scene escalates from minor infractions of etiquette into real ridiculousness. Although I never did find out (Spoiler - click to show)what was causing the curtains to burn or how to stop it (if that's even possible), at some point in a good comedy these things like cause-and-effect or rationality go out the window for the laugh. Or, if you prefer, the cause is: because it's funny.

The highest rank I've been able to achieve after a few playthroughs is Shy Guy, which is only a little over half of the highest possible score, and wanting to see how to get more has kept me coming back. So far I've only seen a win ((Spoiler - click to show)you sell the insurance) and loss ((Spoiler - click to show)you are sent on your way with no sale), though the game's description does mention that there are three possible endings. I might even have to come back to revise this review if I manage to find it. So far I've kept coming back with little ideas and have managed to progress to (Spoiler - click to show)throwing water on the curtain from the coffee cup (although also the response to (Spoiler - click to show)trying to throw coffee was funny too), but that didn't seem to affect much. I'm 95% certain of a couple things about the game's structure: 1) (Spoiler - click to show)it will generally last 30 turns and 2) (Spoiler - click to show)the game will always end a couple turns after the curtains catch fire. Even if my brain is working at solutions in the background, I have reached what to me is a satisfying and funny ending, so I'm going to move on to some other Spring Thing entries for now.

If there's one thing I would say is missing here it's not the hint system, but an >AMUSING command at the end, if it wouldn't be too spoilery. There's plenty to laugh at in Wry.