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!

As I was playing this game, I thought, "This is exactly the kind of game I enjoy most easily: a polished kind-of-puzzly parser game with fun dialogue." It's amazing the reach that Charm Cochran has, from the gritty choice-based game We the Remainder that I first got interested in, to short story-focused games like 1 4 the $, to meditative and poignant games like Sundown and Gestures towards Divinity, to this game.

You play as a spy who has access to word-reversing technology. With it, you can reverse words you can see. Like Counterfeit Monkey, there is some thought put into world-building; people's perception of words (including your own perception) affects whether you can reverse something or not.

I enjoyed the riff on Spider and Web at the beginning with the lockpick, that was genuinely amusing.

The game isn't too long; there's really 3-4 sets of puzzles (the initial rooms, dealing with an NPC, a locked room, and the endgame).

It's an interesting balance of open-endedness and hand-holding. On one hand, conversations can branch a lot--but it often requires you to go through every topic. Puzzles have many potential solutions--but you're often given explicit hints about it and can ask for more in-game. This balance worked really well for me for 90% of the game. It broke down when it came to the puzzle with the (Spoiler - click to show)hammer. There were a ton of items that could potentially serve as a (Spoiler - click to show)handle in my mind: (Spoiler - click to show)the lockpick, a spare part, a branch of the retem shrub, maybe even the yam. But it's probably because I didn't know what a (Spoiler - click to show)spanner is and I dropped it early on as I didn't see a use. The hints didn't get explicit enough for me to know what to do and there was no walkthrough, so I looked for other reviews and saw what to do here as well as the next step which also seemed pretty unintuitive (but for which there is a hint). Now, this doesn't mean it's a bad puzzle; I barely struggled for 10 minutes before getting help. Someone patient and methodical could easily have solved it. It just stuck out when compared to the other puzzles.

Overall this was a good experience. I spent a long time griping above, but that was a minor divot in a good game.