Thingimijig

This is my idea of what a short game should be. Amusing, if clichéd, NPCs; simple, if dated, puzzles; and an environment in which even the Inform default responses seem amusing.

Coming from the PC of this game, "As good-looking as ever" actually sounded suitably self-aware and cocky. Of course, I could be reading a lot into it, but I don't think so. The humour is innocent and subtle. The parser makes fun of the player on at least one occasion. Personally I find this amusing, but I am aware some dislike it. Generally, the writing was snappy and funny, reasonably well-crafted. NPCs were stock-clichés with no irrelevant conversation topics, but in this setting it was fine.

The puzzles were fairly dated (searching, get-X-give-X etc) but that is not surprising considering the vintage of the game. I solved most of them by myself; going to the source code for two. I probably would have solved them myself eventually, but I felt impatient. There were no guess-the-verb problems or tricky syntax.

Most scenery is unimplemented; attempts to manipulate most objects in the room descriptions will result in "That's not something you need to refer to". This is fine by me, as what is irrelevant is clearly marked as irrelevant. However, it sometimes got confusing trying to decide what was unimplemented scenery and what wasn't. (Spoiler - click to show)I resorted to typing "take all" in each room to find important objects.

Overall, a quick, child-friendly diversion. I'm giving it three stars on the grounds of under-implementation and lack of length, but I still recommend it.