Wait-Our-Way Tower

Last year I admitted that I was aware of Andrew Schultz's oeuvre, but hadn't played any. Us Too was a neat introduction to his kind of wordplay puzzles.

Wait-Our-Way Tower is a continuation or refinement of the same sort of game. This time it comes to us in a bold 320x200 pixel art retro style. I really dug this style even if it was pretty raw.

I happily played with all the hint settings on. I quickly had the walkthrough with me, but I used it as a rough hint reference rather than following it in any way. The story is functional and leans a lot on the straining wordplay, although the straight-faced absurdity reminded me of Kingdom of Loathing. I was happy to lawmower through the game, expanding the map available to me and then later closing it all down. Even though it abstracted the game a little bit, I appreciated the colour text hints and variety of ways to get hints.

I managed to get through the first part without too much trouble. Some of the wordplay was a bit strained and I wish there was a stronger constraint on the answers. Using the parser interface makes me wish that every answer had to be VERB NOUN. The very first puzzle discards that sort of constraint, so it does become pure wordplay. Even if it was ADJECTIVE NOUN or straight two-word NOUN, that'd be good. But I wonder if the wordplay well is getting dry by now.

I got stuck at the Thug Room. The walkthrough suggests something that doesn't work. The Cragne-Manor-coffee-cup-style tattoos suggest "maybe later" and nothing triggers anything. Elsewhere in the game sufficient prodding would yield hints. No luck here.

I thought the presentation and hint mechanics were greatly improved here. I loved how the world could fold back down once you had completed enough. The variety of coloured text was a good way to reduce friction, but I felt there were some extra interactions and puzzles that weren't essential but also hid in the text for eager players.

I'm not sure how to refine this approach any more, but it remains a fun little headscratcher.