Bad Beer

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

Talk about a masterclass in establishing stakes. The beer has GONE BAD. FIX IT, STAT!!! My GOD game, say less, I’m on it! Ethan Hunt, I CHOOSE TO ACCEPT THIS MISSION!!!

This is a parser game, set in an Old World pub and your mission could not be more vital. It could be more… responsive? or challenging? though. There is some rudimentary early exploration, talking to NPCs, comfortably deep scenery implementation, all of which smooth enough but not so long on clues and leads to pursue. Until you encounter an NPC that can help. If I did anything to spur this development, I am at a loss to describe what it was. It rather felt like HE found ME.

Thanks to this helpful NPC you learn some more, then are ushered to the source of the contamination and presented with one puzzle to try and resolve the issue. Ok, step back everyone. Yeah, we spun our wheels for a while but now Impossible Mission Force is on the job. Cue some disguises and stunts (and that PEERLESS theme song) and let’s wrangle this into shape! NOW the Beer Hero can kick into gear and… wait, its done? And I failed to solve the puzzle? (Spoiler - click to show)But the beer is saved ANYWAY??? Let me go back and try again. Hah! This time I did solve it! (Spoiler - click to show)And yeah, side mission victory, but beer’s fate is unchanged?!? Maybe IMF was a bit overkill on this one? Feels like the mystery was very capably solving itself?

It really felt like the story was playing out, just steaming right along, and not only did it not need me to advance it, it kind of didn’t care what I did between beats. It was odd to feel this outside-looking-in in INTERACTIVE fiction. Which is a wild takeaway, on reflection. There are plenty of choice-select IF that are really short stories whose main interaction is turning pages. (I’ve got to figure out a better way to say that because it always sounds like I’m talking down and I don’t mean to be.) BB was not objectively less interactive or player-focused than those works. Might I be holding Parser IF to a different standard? Might Parser IF, by explicitly making the player the protag and ceding control on every single move, might that imply an unspoken promise of a deeper interactivity, even if that is only “suss out how to use weird thing A in location B?” What if this was more of a short story-like IF, where my one job was to hit return to keep going? Maybe it was toying with my expectations to deliver something else entirely? Maybe it was SHAMING me that I was so into a trivial puzzle problem, when making a small but real difference was a possibility for me. All that is conceivable I suppose, but even the difference I could make was pretty muted, in terms of dramatic impact. Maybe it was a comment on the shallowness of NEEDING high levels of difficulty and dramatic resolution when true, meaningful accomplishment should be enough?

That I can be shallow cannot be a shock to anyone at this point. I’m not sure I need a game to thematically highlight that. Look, it was a very well-crafted, modest parser where story-wise I just didn’t matter much. Yeah, I’m disappointed I couldn’t really be the Beer Hero of my fantasies but it did enough right to keep the sparks going. Granted, the biggest spark was the unfulfilled promise of BEING a Beer Hero, but there were still plenty of sparks to be had.

Turns out it was my self-importance that was destined to self-destruct in five seconds.

Played: 9/8/24
Playtime: 30m, 1 fail, 1 succeed
Artistic/Technical ratings: Sparks of Joy/Mostly Seamless)
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless

I had mixed feelings seeing this game's blurb and name. On the one hand, I've enjoyed all of Vivienne's games, which tend to focus on historical settings and have excellent implementation. On the other hand, I've played many games that start in pubs that weren't very good (I think there was a pub-based jam once that may account for some of those memories?).

Fortunately, this was a well-made, charming, short game that has a tight focus and a nice message. You are at a bar, but all the beer has gone bad. You're asked to investigate, and soon you find out more about the bar and its history.

This game has one puzzle that I struggled with for a bit, but once I realized the solution it was actually quite elegant. I found two different endings. While short, I liked the characters in it, who seemed so believable that I could easily imagine them being real.

Has a high content-to-length ratio, so I definitely think people should check it out.

I’ve said before that I like the aesthetics of horror, but can sometimes be put off by the gore, suffering, bad actions, and trauma that true afficionados of the genre enjoy. So while “investigate spooky goings-on at an old British pub” is sufficiently tame of a premise that the hardcore fans would sniff at it, it’s very much up my alley. The vibe is sufficiently cozy that it took me a while to realize that the setting was contemporary, since the sixty-something landlord has old-fashioned patterns of speech, the bar fittings are timeless, and the names of the beers could go either way – Stinky Ferret is either the brand of some terminally-ironic hipsters, or a Victorian concern proudly upholding a local tradition about the time a sick mustelid crawled into one of the fermentation vats and died.

Apparently said beer is supposed to be good, though, so the fact that it’s gone sour is the low-key inciting incident for this decidedly low-key adventure. After confirming that the barman’s taste buds aren’t misfiring, you can poke around through the pub and come across a bit more evidence of strange goings-on – I won’t spoil them since they’re one of the main pleasures of a short game, but it’s all stuff that would be right at home in a self-published book of local legends you pick up at a small town’s visitor’s center. The implementation in this section is very solid: there aren’t a lot of different scenery items described, but those that are there are nicely detailed, and I never wrong-footed the parser by trying to look under the bed or open the windows. Similarly, there’s a fair bit of social interaction with Jack, the landlord, as well as his wife, the barmaid, and eventually (inevitably) the vicar. Conversations are conducted via the sometimes-tricky ASK/TELL system, but between a handy TOPIC command that orients you to potential avenues to pursue without simply spelling out the options, and the characteristically-thoughtful anticipation of questions the player might ask, it all felt quite smooth.

There’s eventually a shift to a shorter, more dramatic section, which involves the game’s one true puzzle; this has at least two solutions, though I hit a small snag that meant I missed one of them when first playing the game (Spoiler - click to show)(I tried to X STAIRS from the bottom, not the top, since I’d missed the subtlety that Will tripped before actually starting to climb down). Still, the alternate solution is logical enough, and Bad Beer is forgiving here too – should you fail to solve the puzzle and get the worse ending, the post-game options let you rewind and try again even if you didn’t think to make a save.

So Bad Beer is an efficient game that sets a pleasantly chilling mood, elaborates on its premise, throws in a small twist, and then wraps up while leaving the audience wanting more. I think there would have been room to lean in to the drama a little more while still maintaining its family-friendly vibe, and possibly provide a bit more of a rationale for some of the game’s events (Spoiler - click to show)(in particular, I’m still confused about why the player character is able to change the past, rather than just witnessing it, and how the paradox of preventing the haunting that instigated the time-travel in the first place is meant to be resolved). But sometimes a short game that doesn’t belabor itself is just the palette-cleanser one is after; this late in the Comp especially, I can’t complain on that score.