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Shopping is Hard, December 5, 2022Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review
Aaaah, TADS. Like slipping my feet into a warm bath. This is the parser-based IF experience I look for. Amazing, goofy premise and quest, large map, many puzzles from lever-and-button to locked-door to coerce-NPCs to (probably) wildly inappropriate and satisfying uses of everyday objects. The narration is capable and fun, integrating game-facilitating pointers and sly humor in equal measure. It’s not perfect: one NPC seems to attach to you without much lubricating text; a few incidents of can’t-do-that would benefit from a variable list; dense place descriptions without subsequent shorter summaries and/or bolded direction cues.
But really, those feels nit-picky. Especially in the face of a tremendous effort to flesh out nearly every noun with flavor text that makes poking around rewarding in the best traditions of early IF. Even the relatively limited NPCs which won’t make you fear the singularity, they are imbued with enough personality to remind you of NPCs of days gone by. Yes, they are code constructs, but they are amusing and welcome ones.
And that map! A gloriously dense and elaborate multi-level map to explore. Daunting even. Many locations have 4 or more cardinal exits and maybe some ups and downs too. Navigating the map was a treat - most locations have personality too, unique and idiosyncratic: weaving flavor and nav puzzles all over the place.
And here’s where my unfortunate game experience intrudes. For the first hour I wandered around mapless. I was so caught up in the delightful spell the place descriptions were putting on me I darted from one shiny exit to another without much rhyme or reason. And boy did I get lost. Over and over again. It was fun doing it! But eventually I realized I was never getting the dress this way. So I saved my game at one hour, determined to pick up next day with graph paper in hand.
Next day I went to restore my save… and couldn’t. It turned out to be an artifact of my own inexperience, exacerbated by some unfortunate HELP text (subsequently clarified to prevent others following my misguided path). It ended up being a happy accident though, as my flailing for solution showed me that there were maps (and walkthrough) available! Armed with those maps, I decided efficiency would make up the difference.
At the second one-hour mark I had fully recon’d the mall (locked doors notwithstanding) and a bit of its grounds, but only really ‘solved’ two puzzles. Plenty more were tantalizingly laid out before me. The narrative tone is friendly and fun, details plentiful and unique, and puzzles littering the joint. I found myself typing faster and faster as I noticed the clock running out, trying to eke out just one more location, conversation or search. If that's not the textbook definition of Engaged, I don't know what is!
This thing hums with love for the traditional IF form, and is a wonderfully capable pastiche in the best possible sense of that word. It stands fully on its own with wit and verve, and echoes all the best traditions of IF.
Played: 10/6/22
Playtime: 2hrs, incomplete
Artistic/Technical rankings: Engaging/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again? Of course. Calls to me like a Siren from the 80's.
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless