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Review
I beta tested Why Pout? in an almost-finished state.
Like a good portion of of Andrew Schultz’s catalogue, this is a wordplay game. Here, you’re manipulating homophones to transform objects.
Decent Plot Beats
I think I’ve played four of Andrew’s games over the last decade, most recently Tours Roust Torus in 2022. I get the sense that he constructed the world for Why Pout? a little more thoroughly than he did for his other games.
Why Pout? relies a bit on fantasy tropes, but never to the point of cliché, and it has some decent plot beats built around identity and comradery.
I don’t agree with BJ Best's criticism that the gameplay suffers from ludonarrative dissonance simply because the puzzles use arbitrary objects.
Looking to other games for precedent … one title that set a high standard in this regard is Counterfeit Monkey, which touched on themes of separation and unity both in its puzzle design and its plot/characters. It also featured an endless variety of shapeshiftable objects that were often out of place or inappropriate, sometimes to humorous effect.
Why Pout? doesn’t attempt anything as ambitious as Counterfeit Monkey. Still, I think that puzzles, wordplay-based or not, necessarily provide enough of a basis for any sort of plot about overcoming challenges. The specifics don’t always matter.
(I also think that no matter how well a wordplay game connects story and gameplay, it’s always going to feel a bit weird to play. That’s not a bad thing.)
Challenging Wordplay Puzzles
I also wanted to comment on difficulty. After reading a few other reviews, I think I can safely say that Why Pout? is a challenging game at times.
Most puzzles are mandatory. Critically, BJ Best had trouble with some of the same homophones that I did, particularly (Spoiler - click to show)MENSCH ELF and MANNA CURB (Mike Russo also had trouble with the second one. According to Tabitha it’s not mandatory, though? I thought it was.)
There were a few other ones I had trouble with. Part of the problem might be this: I believe Andrew was going for perfect or near-perfect homophones. I think that matches that don’t sound so perfect might be more intuitive. I think players would be more likely to try commonplace words even if those words are not perfect homophones — though I can’t prove it.
To be clear: even though I found the game hard, it wasn’t always hard. I got through a good chunk of the middle game without hints, and I enjoyed the parts I did solve on my own.
