This was the first game I played in this TALP Jam that came with a walkthrough. This is always such a welcome bonus when playing through lots of jam games!
It’s a large, sophisticated and well-constructed game with an interesting story and an engaging objective for most of the game (find your missing cat). There’s clearly been a lot of worldbuilding and it kind of feels like there’s something much bigger going on behind the game story. A lot of the locations and scenes feel a bit disconnected, like you’re floating from dream to dream, but the plot is mostly coherent and interesting.
The tutorial is well set out - you are led around the basic environs of your own home and guided through the basic commands. Once the story starts, though, you’re very much on your own.
My feeling is that this would be a difficult game for beginners. The game uses a complex parser and sometimes the commands are a little hard to figure out - I was often reliant on the walkthrough. As someone more familiar with the tropes I could also have done with better clueing in general. At some points it’s not very clear what you need to do to progress the story.
A few slightly wonky moments with responses and implementation, but on the whole the game is really solidly coded. I really liked the ending puzzle and final scene – it was very satisfying.
It’s a big game for a TALP game. It felt nice and meaty – but I think it would need to be at a slightly easier level to be friendly to beginners.