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Review
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.
