The Master's Lair

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

CONTINUING (*cough*cough*) my review sub-series “Second Breakfast,” wherein I examine IFCOMP24 works of light fantasy and heavy puzzle play, we land on ML.

Usually my review sub-series are a humorous jab at categorizations - superficially grouping works together because I find that amusing but ultimately still treating works as unique things. With this grouping though I kind of outfoxed myself. By defining the category so broadly, I have kind of engaged those categorizations in other reviews and said pretty much what I needed to there. Quick recap: “Second Breakfast” games admirably echo early IF preoccupations and genre conceits. While that echo is at least partially the point of these works, for those of us who have consumed a LOT of these, they will live and die on how they distinguish themselves from the others in this category - usually via engaging puzzle play or narrative singularity.

Puzzle play can be undone by insufficient new puzzle mechanics and/or suffering technical implementation issues; narrative can be undone by lack of defining hook. Let me just say the ML narrative did not do it for me. Yes, there is always some fun in a venal protagonist (here opposing a skeevy antagonist(!)), and the prose was certainly bubbly. Acknowledging all that, the core story just didn’t extend beyond its clear function, setup for the deep puzzle play.

There was an interesting new puzzle mechanic introduced in ML, one I am going to keep in shadow in interest of spoilers. I WILL say it requires a singular, chokepoint object where most of the game is locked out of reach until it is secured. Unfortunately, if the importance and abilities of this object are clued, they are under-clued. Given the narrative setup, I talked myself into leaving it be while I tried to resolve the rest of the problem set. I figured it was going to be fine to get it at the end. It took some extended flailing, then consulting of hints to disabuse myself of that notion. I have in the past advocated for stronger cluing of objects that represent narrative chokepoints, and that applies here for sure.

But, once the hint system informed me of my misapprehension, the gameplay did take an interesting turn, with a new-feeling mechanism to add to the search-find-use staples. This MIGHT have pushed things up a bit, had there not been so many implementation issues. The game was rife with missing nouns, key items missing from room desciptions, plural nouns not responding to singulars, even some text translation misses in the hint system. These glitches were pretty common and frequent.

So let’s talk UI, the place where this game really comes into its own. The game implements a multi-tier parser->link select hybrid system. I chose to play on ‘full parser’ mode, though two other settings let players dial it harder to the hypertext side. That’s kinda cool. It also has a LOT of customizable gameplay hooks, MOST of which are adequately described at the beginning of the game. Those that aren’t become clearer as the game goes on.

What really tickled me about it though, was how the hybrid clicking was not DISABLED during parser play, it was just deemphasized. This choice acted as a first-level safety net for its own parser limitations. Any time I started to struggle with missing nouns, weird syntax gaps or picky command constructs, I could rely on the available links to provide the ‘right’ command. This UI fortified itself against its own parser bugs! This simple mechanism did SO much to smooth over the rough spots in gameplay that it kept me cooking along where other games might have increasingly infuriated me. It’s not that the UI was revolutionary, you’ve seen most of these hooks before, it was just how well integrated those hooks were and how well they played off each other. It was truly a “greater than sum of parts” situation and created a unique-feeling player experience, explicitly reducing internal frictions.

This story was more functional than engaging, an excuse for old-school puzzle play. It had some amount of verve and humor to its prose, but all fairly low key. The new puzzle mechanism was fun, though parser implementation issues eroded a lot of that away. If I’m honest, it was still a mostly Mechanical experience with lots of Notable implementation gaps. I definitely owe it a bonus point for the weird, pleasant alchemy of its UI though. I do look forward to future works with this engine!

Played: 10/11/24
Playtime: 2hr, score 610/2000, -1000 for leaving fridge open, lol
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/notable implementation gaps, bonus for friction-reducing parser/click hybrid
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

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