HEN AP PRAT GETS SMACKED IN THE TWAT

There are apparently two versions of this game, an interactive version and a completely linear version that shows up 1/15th of the time. Like the original DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS, the version you get is randomly decided at the start and locked in forever (or until you clear your cookies). I got the interactive version first, so here are my thoughts:

For better or worse, I have played the previous two games this is based on, DICK MCBUTTS and ROD MCSCHLONG GETS PUNCHED IN THE DONG. I thought this might be more of the same: absurdism with a juvenile and somewhat vulgar sense of humor. But it's much less absurd and much more pointed, drawing directly from real life events and politics. Juvenile humor is still present, but heavily toned down. I'm pretty sure it's not by the same guy who wrote the other games. The structure is also more complex, and winning is very different from the previous games' "reset until you find the winning path" gauntlet. I liked it a lot more than the first two games.

The protagonist is a trans woman in the UK, a noted difference from the protagonists of the previous two games who are cis guys and hastily sketched out ones at that. Hen's story is more grounded in reality and her character feels more grounded as a result. It's a stronger story when the absurdities of her existence are exaggerations of what many real people go through. As the story begins, Hen is found holed up in her flat, fearful of venturing outside and anxiously attempting to predict the future, something I'm sure people can sympathize with.

The story references current censorship and the wave of anti-trans legislation and political messaging in the UK and elsewhere. Wikipedia is banned; the receptionist at a government building demands a genital inspection; the prime minister locks Hen up in an eternal torture basement for liking a social media post that criticizes him. But all this is laid out in quite funny fashion. The tone knows when to whiplash from torture hellscape to absurd comedy, with both ends driving each other to strange new heights. There are general jokes as well, so it's not all pure misery.

The game mechanics are opaque on first playthrough but make themselves clearer as you progress. You can draw three tarot cards at a time, and select one of the three. Selecting a tarot card leads to a zany escapade, where much like in the first two games, you repeatedly choose from a list of options and try to avoid getting "smacked in the twat". The game resembles a roguelike in certain ways: random progression mediated by player choice, with win/loss conditions that become clearer as you go, and multiple runs required for the best ending. Fail, retry, repeat. Initially, I thought you could draw only one tarot card at a time and it was random which card you had to do next; then I realized you can actually draw three cards at a time and choose between them, which makes it much easier to steer the story.

General mechanics, as far as I can decipher: (Spoiler - click to show)Each card event you survive without getting smacked adds the card to your list of already drawn cards, and it won't get drawn again. Choices you make during the card event can also permanently affect your character/the world as a whole, carrying on to additional card events. But if you get smacked, your state and all your cards reset, and you have to restart from scratch. There's also one card that instantly loses you the game, (Spoiler - click to show)The Devil, which leads to an endless torture loop. I found that one disturbing, moreso when I realized the only way to escape it is to refresh and start over completely, but realizing I could draw three cards instead of one made it easy to avoid.

Progression protip: (Spoiler - click to show)Choosing "wands" in The Magician gives you access to a metapermanent marker, which survives resets; this makes it so getting smacked no longer resets your card progress, which I found helpful for testing out routes in each card selection.

Ending and mechanistic spoilers: (Spoiler - click to show)In the Strength card, you can get a magic sword useful for avoiding smacks in future card encounters; your choices during that event also affect which endings you get in the Tower card. If you count (Spoiler - click to show)The Devil's loop as an ending, then I got three endings in whole, across almost two hours, though I was doing something else at the same time so this time is longer than it would be. The thirty-minute categorization for this game on IFComp is misleading, since it took me much longer to puzzle out the mechanics and finish the game.

The downside of the structure is that you end up skimming text you've already read, and scenes that are funny at first become less so when you've already had to scroll past them five times. This is my biggest criticism. Figuring out how the game worked and getting a satisfying ending was fun in its own right, but towards the end it did feel like I was lawnmowering. The original games had this issue as well, but in lesser spades since you could undo. In this game, save/load has been disabled, so you need to restart pretty much every time.

Walkthrough for the good ending I got ("The Star"): (Spoiler - click to show)Select The Magician as soon as possible and get the metapermanent marker by choosing 'wands' so you can survive a smack in the twat. Get Strength, accept the sword, and fight back. Get The Empress and "get the hell out of there", "get into the bookstore", and "ask for more information" to acquire the Queen Elizabeth II transformation. Don't select The Tower before getting the sword and Queen Elizabeth II, and never select The Devil. Select the tower after getting the sword, choose to fight, use your Queen Elizabeth II transformation, get to the top of The Tower and create your ideal world. Might have missed some required steps here, since it's hard to tell what is required and what isn't.

As a side note, this game is similar to 3XXX: NAKED HUMAN BOMBS in some interesting ways: both IFComp 2025 games feature trans protagonists in dystopian futures and absurdist black humor riffing on modern-day transphobic legislation and censorship. And antagonistic confrontations with the Prime Minister.

Quotes:

She has one of those special TVs from the movies with the button which automatically changes channel to the news after hopping past a few excerpts of royalty-free cartoons and soap operas, then instantly rewinds to the important part.

"Your Prime Minister, speaking," whines the voice on the other end.

Hen winds her finger around the telephone wire something furious. "What is this about, 'Prime Minister'?"

"Did you like a post last month on the social networking service Tumblr that said THE PRIME MINISTER IS A TWAT."

"What's it to you?"

"That wasn't very nice, Ms. ap Prat. It really hurt my feelings."

She quickly grabs a stick of gum so she can chew it impatiently. "And?"

"I'd like to offer you a deal, Ms. ap Prat. That post was really mean, but there's a way you can make it up to me. I'm offering you the opportunity to become the Party's inaugural Spokestransperson. You'll be invited to all the official events so that you can stand there and we can point at you and say look, we're helping the likes of you really, look we've got one there, would you like to give us a cheque? It's either that or I can put you in my special basement where all our most very special citizens go to be out of the way of the country."

"I come from a terrible, terrible future," old man Dick says, "I've travelled back in time to avert it before it's too late. This has all spilled so far out of hand! It was only supposed to be me. There weren't meant to be others... I could just about accept the existence of Fanny MacTits, but then Rod Mac-Bloody-Schlong had to come along and prove that this thing had legs, and not only legs, but sequels and spinoffs and merchandise galore sprouting from between those legs! First these stories took over the competition, then they took over the world. My MacBots are reclaimed story generators. If it wasn't for my ingenius intervention, they'd just be spitting out more of this MacSlop. In my time, if you walk into a bookshop, all you'll find is Coochie McClit this and Pecker O'Tool that. It's swallowed every genre. Sci-fi, romance, horror, literature... No-one will buy it unless it's got a main character with a stupid name and an even stupider fate. Even the classics shelf is just Moby Dick Gets Harpooned In The Prick. It's got to stop, Hen! I have to prove, for all time's sake, that Hen ap Prat Gets Smacked In The Twat just isn't that funny!!!!!!"