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Review
Good Grub embraces its limitations as a no-frills Twine game enthusiastically, and I think it does so without going overboard. Teaching facts without coming off as pompous is tough. And with GG, the idea is that bugs are good to eat. We've heard it, but unfortunately, the people loudest about this are the least likely to listen. GG takes a fake on-the-nose tone through it all, though there's not a ton. It reminds me of that clip in Wayne's World where Alice Cooper and Pete Friesen, his guitarist, educate Wayne in semi-stilted voices about the history of Milwaukee. I still remember these facts, and the presentation to this day! And I enjoy it when I find it elsewhere.
GG can't master Alice and Pete's voice inflections, being text and all, but the script is decidedly snarkier, and it works well for the time it takes. It's about starting a restaurant. It pokes you if you try to guess something wrong, but often in random ways. For instance, choosing the worst possible name for your restaurant gets a "Stop that. Try again." But other things that seem less fatal do, in fact, ruin your budding business. This sort of randomness has been done before in Twine games, but it's not purely zany here. The choices are always fresh. With easy UNDO, it's fun to see which actually matter, too, because GG is short enough you can do that without getting exhausted.
It's hard not to sound a bit moralistic or preachy when talking about subjects such as sustainability, and GG's tone works throughout. You take transport to your interview, where the reporter tries your fare. Your restaurant's success is at stake! It's a surprisingly dramatic moment.
GG is a good blend of entertainment and teaching--nothing too deep, but there can be a thin line between preaching and giving people a boost and encouragement for open-mindedness. Lots of people still don't like the thought of eating bugs--they prefer to eat smarter, more sentient animals. So it's a good tongue-in-cheek advertisement for that sort of thing, as well as the author's other games.
