A Fine Day for Reaping

A Fine Day for Reaping presents the player as a semi-competent Death. The game's puzzles turn on the idea that Death doesn't really have particularly supernatural abilities: your challenge is to make sure that the people who are supposed to die do so on time. This is a somewhat embarrassing predicament for Death to be in, and the game makes the most of it; the required actions are occasionally a bit goofy and undignified. Most of the puzzles have multiple solutions, however, which keeps the game reasonably playable.

What stands out about the piece is the humor and the flashes of excellence in the writing. Sometimes reminiscent of Pratchett, the text works in a number of fine jokes, especially on the topic of what it's like to be a very tall thin skeletal man.

Parsing issues were the most common problem when I played (and these may have been addressed in post-competition releases). Nonetheless, the game as a whole is entertaining light comedy of a flavor that's not terribly common in IF. Worth a try.

This is an entertaining ADRIFT game which I played on Gargoyle on Windows. You play as the grim reaper, getting your daily list of souls to reap. You can complete your tasks in any order, and every puzzle has multiple solutions.

As you complete your tasks, you get page-long textdumps of truly entertaining material about your targets. There is a timer, but it is very generous. I usually use walkthroughs extensively, but I only required one hint in this game.

The humor is similar to Terry Pratchett or even Douglas Adams, just dry situational comedy more than slapstick. Some unusual settings for English-language IF (Himalayas, France, etc.).

I wish I could give this a proper review. It really is a cool premise. Unfortunately, trying to enter "w" or "west" or otherwise only gets me "You try the handle but the door is locked. You need a keycard to get in. People are so suspicious these days."

This applies everywhere, even Death's own house. I checked a few different places. This bug is not mentioned anywhere, but it is a result of typing in a game-specific command, more or less, so I assume it's a game issue and not a me issue.

I will check back at some point to see if it gets fixed, and update the review. Really want to complete this one, I like the idea of (Spoiler - click to show)needing items from one location to solve puzzles in another.