The Rat

The Rat

This game isn't really what I'm expecting. Which can be a danger with these 'writing a sequel game as a prize' games! One of the 2-star ratings I got for Magpie Takes the Train was by someone who gave 5 stars to the original Alias: The Magpie game just a few days earlier. I can only imagine they loved the first game, an expansive puzzler, and, looking for more, was disappointed by my one-room game.

This game is an authorized sequel to The Bat by Chandler Groover, a game where you play as a butler to a deranged version of Bruce Wayne. In the course of that game, you gain and lose varying amounts, direct other people using a compass, and manage guests. You can only ATTEND to things. Its mostly a dark comedy, setting up goofy situations that you participate in as the butler.

This game is a combination of multi-character optimization puzzles plus a stream of dialogue in the background, almost like a mixture of Suspended and Violet (which reminds me, I should replay Suspended, I've never tried it without the walkthrough). As in Suspended, you control a variety of characters that each have their own attributes and qualities. Here, we have one person whose role is movement and sabotage, one that acts independently to steal things, and one who narrates and waits and moves the plot forward. More join later, with the capability to walk the mansion openly.

The stream of dialogue includes banter between our characters and rich people smoozing, one of whom runs an AI company and uses AI-based language.

I'll admit that I didn't always catch what was going on in the dialogue. While in Violet, the constant stream of background action took place as the backdrop of a one-room game, this game is mostly movement-based, almost like Arthur DiBianca's games. There is a great deal of experimentation, repetition, and retreading the same paths. This felt almost counter to or at odds to with the stream of text, as I just wanted to type N, W, W, W, Sabotage, etc. but had to be careful to try and tell what was new background text and what was not. The leads me to suspect I didn't piece together the secret identities of all the characters, especially Rat.

As an optimization puzzle, it was enjoyable, a nice balance between difficulty and progression.

A couple of times I felt befuddled, both when starting (trying to understand how Jackdaw works) and with final act (due to not noticing the map change). I solved the first by experiment and the second by hints.

Overall, I fell like this game is a lot like Boruto. I don't think Boruto really works as a spiritual sequel to Naruto, even though it's a literal sequel; the themes and drawing style are just so different. But I think Boruto is a good manga, better than most. Similarly, I don't think this game will be what people are looking for as a sequel to the Bat, despite the recurrence of people, themes, and mechanics; however, I do believe it is a good game, and better than most.