Retool Looter

This game is pretty clever, and I enjoyed the majority of it. If you enjoyed Counterfeit Monkey, I think you'll enjoy this, too.

The game gives you a portable "reverser" gun, allowing you to reverse words. (You can do this in Counterfeit Monkey, too, but only in one particular location. Here, you can do it anywhere.)

The puzzles are fun and zany, as Counterfeit Monkey's puzzles often are.

I had three areas where I think the game would benefit from improvement.

First, this game is much more like Counterfeit Monkey than it is like Spider and Web, the other game that's it's listed as being "inspired by." I think alluding to Spider and Web is probably unwise, because it sets players up (it set me up) to expect a game like Spider and Web, and that's just not what this is.

I'll make some remarks about this here that are not spoilery for Retool Looter, but are mildly spoilery for Spider and Web. (Spoiler - click to show)Spider and Web is a game fundamentally about lies and lying, reconstructing what "really" happened. Also, Spider and Web has "The Puzzle," the puzzle right before the beginning of the final act. Retool Looter has nothing like that. It starts with a metal plate next to a door, much as Spider and Web does, but you can't pick the lock using your lockpick the way you do in Spider and Web; if anything, the allusions to Spider and Web are more of a funny "gotcha! this isn't Spider and Web!!" And once you get past the first door, the game is absolutely nothing at all like Spider and Web. I think Retool Looter would be better without the metal plate next to the starting door.

Second, the game doesn't allow you to unreverse the other agents, but it really doesn't make sense why. (Spoiler - click to show)For example, consider the limes. "You have no idea which of these limes is Emil, and you're forbidden from reversing anything to create new life. You'll need to take all of them with you so that each can be analyzed with equipment that can determine which has been reversed before." But… I do have equipment that can analyze which lime has been reversed. The reverser gun itself includes a little sensor light that will tell me if there's something in the room that's been reversed. There's no in-game reason I couldn't/shouldn't just pick up the limes one at a time until the sensor light goes out. Instead, the game just doesn't let you "get lime" when you have limes, even though it does support "get part" from a pile of parts. I suggest that Kay should just say that it's dangerous to unreverse people without specialized medical or mental-health treatment.

Third, the final puzzle really needs more hinting, and perhaps some bug fixing. We played it at the IF Meetup with half a dozen people actively banging our heads on it, and we eventually just gave up. I was only able to solve it by reading wolfbiter's gameplay tips. I wish the THINK command would have helped us more at that point. (Spoiler - click to show)Specifically, you really can't make progress on the puzzle unless you think of the word "sloop," but THINK stops short of mentioning that word. And it's still not clear to me what you do and don't actually have to do to begin piloting the sloop. Is it enough to just make a sloop? Do we have to make ports? (Why?) Do we have to make pools as well as ports?

Despite all this, I did really enjoy this game. But as it stands, it's almost one of the classics… but not quite.

After playing (and loving) another of Charm Cochran's games last year, I became really excited to see Retool Looter, and I wasn't disappointed. Counterfeit Monkey is an absolute classic in the genre, and this scratches that same itch. Without spoiling too much, the main idea in the game is that you use a word reverser to rescue your colleagues who have been disguised as objects. The built-in hint system (your person in the van, Kay, who had been turned into a yak) feels organic and helpful without being too much. I also love Val's commentary. The writing is really fun, and Kay's quirks never felt tired. I was extremely impressed with how smooth, seamless, and logical most of the puzzles were. There were many small details that show a level of polish I was delighted to discover and reward exploring and playing with the world. (For instance, *every object* has a texture. Love it!)

However, there were a few moments that I felt could have been addressed better. In a couple instances of conversation where you're given a numbered list with selectable prompts, after giving me the response, it would produce an error. Also, in a game where the puzzling was so intuitive -- impressive in a genre famous for needing to read the author's mind -- there were a few towards the end that really stumped me and I had to turn to a guide to solve. (For instance, I knew I had to (Spoiler - click to show)create a hammer with some of our collected materials, especially since the ATTACH verb was cued earlier, but even after I did so, it was unclear what to do with it. I don't believe making LOOTS was possible before, so I had to turn to a walkthrough for it. These are really minor criticisms here, though, notable only because the rest of it was so polished and intuitive. Another fantastic piece from Cochran, and I'm excited to see what'll come next!

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/3/25
Playtime: 3hr, finished

It seems every comp/thing/thon I wade into, there is a game or two that bears two distinct hallmarks: 1) Its conceits, prose, wit and composition seem engineered to trigger every pleasure center in my brain; but 2) for reasons I have yet to convincingly diagnose, familiar gameplay somehow suddenly baffles me. I have in the past inaugurated review sub-series to club works with common elements together. This particular combo has never merited one, as they are pretty rare within the confines of a single comp. Across multiple comps though, I could indeed create a meta-sub-series, probably titled “It’s not you, it’s me.”

RL is chockablock with hallmark number one. The central conceit (spycraft via a gun that transmogrifies things into their english-word reverse-order counterpart) plays into a rich IF wordplay subculture. We might call it a Schultzian-inspired game, though the conceit certainly predates our modern master. The writing here is strong in some areas. It has fun banter between the protagonist and principle NPC. The whole thing is oozing with wit, setting just the right tone to embrace its ridiculous premise and go along for the ride. There is a great detail where the companion NPC just reverses words when they talk for silly reasons. As an ongoing bit it is just fun.

It is further a competent parser implementation - spare enough in description to keep the weeds low, but with gratifyingly deep pockets of implementation. For example, despite only spare descriptions of beds that never mention subcomponents, you can nevertheless try to fiddle with pillows, mattresses and sheets. Another example: smells are frequently alluded to and never omitted if you subsequently interrogate them. Most importantly, scenery objects you might expect the magic reverser to work on almost always have wry comments on why that’s not a great idea. It’s attention to gameplay detail that both reassures the player they are in strong hands, and rewards player commitment. To a point.

Based on my intro, you know where this is going. To my ongoing shame, and in spite of its great achievements in hallmark #1, RL fell squarely into hallmark #2 during gameplay for me. It is inarguably my fault. I spent an hour spinning in the very first room because I interpreted a direction notation in a room description as color, not travel option. Later, I spun unnecessarily, convincing myself I had entered a silent no-win scenario because I simply neglected to examine an object before trying to use it. These are parser basics, something the author has every right to expect a player to be fully competent in, yet there I was, handful of thumbs, head bashing on screen. This dynamic repeated so often, it is my overriding memory of the game.

It didn’t help that the in-game hint system (conferring with your NPC-behind-the-screen) was only intermittently helpful. Like the author, that NPC likely assumed a base level of competence that I failed to supply, and so the hints and help were as often confirming directions I had already achieved as alluding to next steps without sufficient detail.

When I try to diagnose WHY some games reduce my normally suave, Bond-like mastery of my environment to Jerry Lewis level incompetence and fumbling, I generally focus on the combination of language and implementation. Spare descriptions tend to train the player that close examination is unnecessary. Clumsy disambiguation (at one point asking me “which spare part, the spare part or the spare part from freezer?” a phrase that can never resolve to the former) cast doubt on one’s ability to effectively interact with the world. Inability to consistently access information (for example, unable to >X OFFICE through an office window) implies that information is unnecessary when it very much is not. All of those phenomenon were in evidence here, but I think the central construction also impacted me. Ignoring some subtle parser conventions, like either lumping navigation directions together in text at top or bottom, having them explicitly listed in title bar or via >EXITS command, invites parser-savvy folks to miss things. The cumulative weight of these things represented a barrier between me and game.

“But reviewer, you finished the game - why are you bellyaching?” There was an additional peril in the exciting conceit of the game, perhaps more impactful than anything above. Wordplay games live and die by their cleverness and variation within their own arcane logic. The best such games provide a steady stream of laughing recognition of THIS wordplay solution. While there are some pretty great ones here ((Spoiler - click to show)drawer especially elicited a grin of delight, and the final puzzle was truly wonderful), there are many more that rely on words WAAY out of common use to the point of eliciting, “uh, ok” where the glee should have been. The work seems to acknowledge this, having our NPC guide us past those, but it has the effect of undermining the promise inherent in the conceit. Reversing words to create new objects is really only satisfying if WE ARE THE ONE DOING IT. This disconnect is further compounded by inobvious ways to USE reversed words, making deducing them that much harder. If (Spoiler - click to show)a tip is going to help me solve a puzzle, it should be obvious WHY that will help. Having to be walked through it by an NPC is not itself satisfying. I need more than hand-wavy explanations why core rules of the wordplay sometimes do and sometimes don’t apply. If not, I’m just reversing everything, hoping for a next step to materialize.

The unfortunate nature of the “It’s not You, It’s Me” hallmarks is that however accomplished and winning #1 is, #2 will nearly always trump it. It’s math. If the spinning drags a 45m game to three hours, it’s because over two hours of it is ineffectual self-recrimination. Why do I want that in IF, that is my all-day standard mode! (I should note, in fairness, that the final puzzle ALMOST rescued the whole thing for me, as a multistep variation that used normal words and was quite satisfying for it.)

Anyway game, I appreciate all the things you did right, I really do. I hope we can still be friends.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Cheeky
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I’d buff the HINT system for morons like me. I would be reluctant to damage the in-world hint conceit that makes such hinting next level enjoyable, so once I got to the limits of that, I think I would produce a walkthrough. Just in case.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.