Desrosier's Discovery

In other recent reviews, I’ve banged on about one of the more interesting trends in contemporary IF, which is a breakdown in the previously-sharp boundaries between choice-based and parser games. Sometimes this takes the form of choice-based games with a world model and verb-object interfaces; sometimes it’s story-based parser games that eschew puzzles or offer a limited parser; and sometimes you see straight hybrids where parser sections alternate with scenes that require choice-based navigation. There are a variety of effects and affordances provided by these varying approaches, and it’s a neat feature of the current scene that this wider palette is currently available to authors. In this case, the authors of Desrosier’s Discovery have opted for the third option, with laser-eyed clarity on what this structure buys them: an effective delivery mechanism for really dumb jokes.

You don’t start out expecting that, mind. The game opens with old-school green text on a black background, with an even older-school premise: yes, it’s generic Lovecraftian plot #3, your old friend Professor Redshirt sending you a letter telling you to join him at the site of his latest dig (entertainingly, you’re told that “you recognize the handwriting immediately as belonging to Professor Desrosier, an old colleague, and an old friend.” ALL THREE HAVE THE SAME HANDWRITING??? The record will show I am ride or die for the Oxford comma, but probably should have fixed that in post).

Anyway, one ferry ride later you’re picking your way through the abandoned dig site. The custom parser’s no great shakes – it doesn’t recognize L as a synonym for look, and in my browser at least (I think it’s web-only) it didn’t deal well with text that spans more than one screen – but it does the job well enough as you notice the nicely-rendered runic carving on the not-at-all-ominous stone door at the base of the dig. So far so Lovecraftian, especially once you enter the small expedition log and read the last entries in your missing friend’s diary (found in a desk which isn’t described as having a drawer; the game also hanged on me the first time I tried to read it, though thankfully I didn’t encounter that bug on a replay).

Then you solve generic adventure game puzzle #1 (I’m not gonna spell it out, but you’ll definitely know it when you get there) and find a table with half a dozen different objects, ranging from the useful – a gun – to the incongruous – a box of dog treats – to the notionally comedic – a big box o’ phylacteries. And here the structure shifts, because depending on which one you pick, you get shunted into one of several different mutually-exclusive choice-based vignettes – and so too does the mood, which takes a turn for the zany. There are still some stakes, as the wrong choices can lead to bad ends, but they’re all played for laughs so the gameplay is less about picking the right options to get the intended result and more about lawnmowering through to see all the jokes.

The jokes are dumb, but to my mind that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s one that made me laugh – you’re given the choice whether to participate in a particular rite, or to do so with gusto, which get you the same ending but picking the more stylish choice gets you an additional five points in the totally-meaningless score you get as the game wraps up. And I defy even the starchiest sophisticate not to snigger at least a little at the ending involving Father Angus.

I found the fun wore off before I’d completed my replays, though. Partially this is on me – but for my completionist streak, I could have quit any time – but of course I’d still have had to hit a bum ending or two to decide to put a stop to things. There’s a Scooby Doo parody that goes on way too long to justify the limp twist of a joke at the end, and a digging-to-China gag that’s fine enough so far as it goes, but lost me with a throwaway reference to 7th-century explorers finding an “antique opium pipe from the opium wars” in their antipodeal adventures (the opium wars were in the 19th Century! There was no opium in China until the British forcibly introduced it to prevent their trade deficit from draining the national silver reserves!) It isn’t just the staleness of some of the gags, though – while a straight choice-based game could probably have been set up to facilitate easy replays, here you have to go through the whole opening then type in the half-dozen commands to get to the item choices, all the while dealing with that page-scrolling interface annoyance, all of which makes redoing the first half of the game a chore.

Indeed, while I’m usually all for experiments that break down the boundaries between parser and choice games, here I think it might have been a mistake. There’s one ending branch that doesn’t shunt you off into a series of choices, and sticks with the parser interface throughout. This is one of the few where you actually encounter the eponymous Professor, and it has what I thought was the best gag, where the game throws a head fake at you, but if you type in a counterintuitive command, you’re rewarded with what I think is the best ending. It’s a sequence that shows that there’s yet fun to be had with an old-style parser, and I think the game might have been better for it if the authors had stuck to their guns, rather than slap on a bunch of choice-based sequences that fit awkwardly into their custom engine.