Dust

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

I feel like the American West is an underserved sub-genre in IF. We get HIGH FANTASY and Puzzly Light Fantasy out the wazoo. We get a healthy dose of sci fi, mystery and horror. Much like modern cinema, the Old West seems novel whenever it shows up, purely as an exercise in numbers. Yeah, I’m aware this is the second this Comp, but compared to other genres, still rarified.

One aspect of the American West is its sparity. Humans imposing frail infrastructure on a hostile, dry environment where there is more nothing than something. I found the prose in Dust to reflect that vibe better than any I can think of. It is mostly spare, under-adjectived and dry. The IF convention of not listing every damn thing in the room (because, who has time for all that trivia?) here becomes a textual representation of the setting. I’m not mentioning a drawer full of paperclips and stapler refills because THIS IS A DESERT. I think the work captured a Wild West feel on the strength of its prose alone, and that is noteworthy.

This is a reasonably capable puzzle parser, its puzzles better integrated into the story and setting than a lot of them. The geography was tight, enough to keep solution space reasonably contained and tractable. Where it lost some luster for me was in its story, specifically its NPCs, and in its implementation.

Implementation first - there are a lot of missing verbs and nouns in this story, and quite a bit of either deceptive messaging, ignored alternate solutions, or mind reading puzzle solutions. I had to go to the walkthrough often, almost always because I knew what I WANTED to do, but could not figure out how to communicate that to the game. A prime example is the getting of lantern from a high place. This ‘puzzle’ that in real life would be solved in seconds took forever because: 1) feedback when I tried to climb or get chairs let me know this was fruitless so I never tried the actual (Spoiler - click to show)>push chair; and 2) it could not be reached, maneuvered or remotely manipulated despite having many long objects! Elsewhere, I used IF puzzle habits to uncover an object’s hiding place, but because I had not had the magical NPC conversation, the object was hidden from me. I could (and did) just take it though. The distract-the-guard puzzle I never had a hope of solving without walkthrough, my brain just wouldn’t have tumbled onto it.

Beyond the technical implementation, a wild west story like this, with such spartan motivations and moving parts, was always going to live and die on its NPCs. Unfortunately, the game treated them as puzzle elements, not characters. Yes, the barber was kind of a standout in weird background, but all of them had almost nothing to say except for whatever might be needed for the current puzzle. This rendered them transactional clue machines, not characters to interact with. Without a surge of interest from them, the plot itself was also just a little too mechanical to capture the imagination.

I respect its writing, and the vibe it captured, but it just needed a little more zhuzh, either technical in the puzzles, or dynamism in its plot and NPCs to push me beyond a mechanical playthrough.

Played: 10/5/24
Playtime: 1.5hr, finished with walkthrough help
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable puzzle block
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless