Inventory

This game mimics the parser format, with green-on-black text and parser-like writing.

It was part of the 300-word-limit Twiny Jam.

The twist makes this a worthwhile game. Most of the gameplay (in fact, all of it) consists of choosing from a large list the one item that will solve the current obstacle.

You start out trapped in a dungeon - not an unfamiliar scenario - with a long list of possessions. Not all of them are tangible.

The basic idea behind this is simple enough: choose the right belonging, and you'll move on. The right object is not always obvious, however, and the error messages are unhelpful (probably due to the word count). The landscapes that this game traverses are often surreal non-sequiturs, leaving me to suspect that the inventory objects might have come before the story.

Inventory uses the aesthetic of old-school parser - monospace font, green words on black background, even a command prompt - but I think making it choice-based streamlined the actual process of using the objects.

(Spoiler - click to show)The heart of this game is escape, and it is elegantly brought out - yes, even in such a brief game as this. Escape is always in service of a goal, marks the start of a journey. But escape, here, demands a price: every time you escape from something new, you must give something up. (In this aspect it is tangentially reminiscent of Cat Manning's Invasion.) For what end? Is it worth it? For me, this made Inventory feel much more substantial than a 300-word game should be.

It gradually won me over with its minimalist charms. It successfully carries the style of many of the older dungeoncrawlers filled with thematic discontinuities (i.e. a mismash of whatever thing the developer thought of next), and so I was initially unimpressed but the stinger at the end made the journey worthwhile.