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Review
"Elf helping Santa" seems like a good idea for a Christmas theme in text adventures. Being Santa would require the sort of big-picture administrative commands or tasks we may be putting off with our latest game. And between A Christmas Quest and Santa's Trainee Elf, the results are intriguing. There's probably a limit to stories that keep things fresh, but these have enough differences.
The big one is this: STE is full of NPCs, but you have been left behind after an elves' party, and you have one more package to help deliver. There are some optional cleaning tasks and a small bit of gross-out humor (avoidable, I'm pretty sure, and not VERY gross) but the heart of the story is very neat indeed. The present is not too bad to find. The transport is trickier! Christmas games are best when they riff on something you thought was completely played-out, and ACQ definitely does so with a heart-warming way of finding transport.
The main puzzle is actually cooking something up, which sounds potentially really tedious, except once you know what to cook, the why is really persuasive. There is, in fact, a lot of fiddling, but with the imaginary ingredient involved, why you're doing it feels as real-lifey as an imaginary trip to the North Pole can.
The graphics are also neat--they go heavy on the green and red in many right ways, and I enjoyed wandering around once more before calling it a day. On winning, the game also suggests some actions that are the sort of thing a young elf would enjoy. I get the feeling more were implemented, but they might've been hidden.
There are some fiddly bits, such as needing to TAKE something to READ it. But the in-game hints do the job, along with David Welbourn's walkthrough in case I tripped up. So I was able to forgive any parser hacking, or perhaps the latest version fixed some things post-comp. And maybe ACQ could have benefited from keeping score or having a brief list. But then again, if you forgive any game, a holiday game has to be at the top of the list. And it feels like something I could come back to next Christmas and enjoy working through now that I get it in the big picture.
