Crocodracula: What Happened to Calvin

It's hard to conceive of a game that is more Ryan Veeder-y than this one. This is most likely due to the support from his Patreon, which was started (according to its home page) because he wanted more reasons to include complex irrelevant subsystems in this game.

And this game has them. There's not that much you have to do in this game, but a lot you can do. Random mini quests and red herrings abound. I spent around 2 hours on this game, but the main pathway can be finished in 20 minutes or less.

There are two characters to pick from, but the choice is inconsequential...sort of. And sort of not. I felt rewarded for playing through with both.

I read a paper on humor theory once that talked about the 'incongruity-resolution' theory, which is that we laugh when we experience something out of the ordinary, that doesn't make sense, and then have it resolved suddenly. This game is built on nothing but incongruity-resolution. Everything in the game is a mix of useless and semi-useful.

I liked this a lot more than the Roscovian Palladium, or any other of the short random games that he makes every few months. A nice game to play if you just want to burn time and fiddle around with stuff.

Crocodracula supposedly recreates the feel of American TV shows for kids from the '90s; having little familiarity with those, I was instead reminded of the recent hit series, Gravity Falls. There are similarities: two young protagonists in a small town full of various supernatural stuff, a creepy swamp, a climbable water tower, a helpful book about magic and dark secrets, a cryptogram... There was a cute plot and some good kid-friendly spooky moments.

Games by Ryan Veeder generally feature lots of optional details, glimpses of a backstory, digressions (like, for example, the tale of Homeschooled Gwen in Robin & Orchid) which add to the atmosphere and give you the feeling of inhabiting a rich world. In a game like this, which encourages you to look everywhere, search for hidden content and don't do what the NPCs tell you to do, these many optional details turn into red herrings. After helping the sheriff and playing through three different endings I'm still not sure I've seen it all. Is there a way to open that door with a Latin inscription? What is the significance of the Old Tree? Or the verb "ululate"?.. Perhaps some mysteries of Opasassa are never to be unveiled.

This was a fun little game, but I felt like I might have been missing some of the puzzles (other than the sheriff's crossword). I don't know if I'm just not able to figure it out, or if the puzzles aren't there in the first place. I thought the idea was cool, I mean, a game about a monster called Crocodracula? What's not to love? I did kind of wish the playable characters had a little more variation between them, but I can see why that would be a huge amount of work.