Reflections

The danger of relying on the old fairy tales is that you don't wind up saying or doing anything new, or you wind up getting too wild and rattling on. Reflections does neither. It gives you a cell phone to navigate certain puzzles, and it keeps familiar fantasy elements without cliche. All this makes it a good fit for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam as well as a good short game.

The goal is to find five different ways to see your reflection. And yes, the cell phone plays an integral part in a few of them. The best part is, you can't and don't have to call anyone, or find any numbers, or anything like that, though one common side-feature of cell phones is necessary to use and ewll-clued.

Positive interaction with animals is most important, and it's never twee. The puzzles and setting avoid the cliches of fantasy as well as gross anachronisms. They're also comfortable enough that you shouldn't struggle with the parser. And while Sentient Beings, the other game the author entered in this comp, is more ambitious and memorable, Reflections really takes the tutorial requirements for the jam and makes them come alive. So the author should be proud of writing either of these games, much less both.

This game also circumvents a potential pet peeve: you have some baking to do, which normally isn’t my thing, because bigger games may get into details too quickly. Here, it doesn’t feel forced on me. I’m the sort of person who is relieved when a recipe isn’t very complex, so the game’s courtesy was appreciated her, and I think in general any game that takes on something you aren't usually interested in and keeps you interested has clearly done something right.

Because the final point of the game is for (Spoiler - click to show)looking through the mirror in your house after traveling to a cave, it has a there-and-back feel to it. And just knowing what the final point should be certainly left me feeling competent when I needed to think about a puzzle near the end. Overall the game does a lot and avoids overdoing anything or trying too hard to get me to like it, which is a very real risk when writing fantasy stuff, so I do recommend it.

An entry in the Text Adventure Literacy Jam, a competition for entry-level parser games for kids. Reflections goes out of its way to hold a first-timers hand: simple, bold and colourful images for each location, short MIDI-musical ditties at appropriate moments, a helpful tutorial mode, and a map on-screen at all times (alongside the competition-mandated two word parser).

You're a kid wandering around the house and the back-garden looking for the titular reflections of yourself. A light sprinkling of magical realism adds talking cats and magic mirrors to the mix. Puzzles are suitably basic: mix a recipe, find out a dog's name, distract a rat, play with coloured crystals. All well-clued in the environment if you explore thoroughly.

Would feel perfectly at home on a 1983 primary school's BBC microcomputer, alongside Granny's Garden and Devil's Causeway.

This game is part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

You are tasked with finding 5 reflections of yourself. There is a helpful tutorial that's optional.

There are about 10 locations, and the game has some graphics that add quite a bit to the charm of the game, and to its utility, with the map.

The puzzles are fairly simple but hard enough to be rewarding.

I had a few hiccups here and there. The game wouldn't recognize commands like X RED, only X RED CRYSTAL. Overall, I found the game charming and with a few fun surprises.