Janitor

This game is really cute. You're a janitor behind the scenes in a Zork-like adventure game, and you need to put everything back so the next guy can play.

First of all, this game was written very well, better than I expected. You get a hold-all right away, so you can carry all the treasures back, and you get a talking mop who can help you with some tasks (though he's not particularly helpful).

The game can be very funny (particularly when you find out what happened to your predecesor). It's also well-planned, because as you walk around you do get the feeling like someone has been there before you- muddy footprints on the carpet from outside, fingerprints on the mirror, just the little things that give you the feeling of a "used" world.

It is cute how your score goes down rather than up, indicating putting things back to the original position, and discovering where the adventurer picked things up (you missed training so you have to discover the initial placement of things yourself). Luckily, the score indicates when something is where it should be.

Zork-style comedy is there (such as a comfy chair that "traps" you), and discovering how cheap some of the "treasures" actually are. If you were a big fan of Zork (like I am) you will love this game. It's all puzzles.

If you're a bigger fan of the plot or conversation oriented games... well, you probably won't like this game. But to the rest of us, it's great fun.

This game intimidated me. You are a janitor whose job is to clean up after adventurers (i.e. reset the game world after each player). This is an idea that was present in Adventure, the original text adventure, but it has been taken to a fun level here.

The problem is that setup is hard. There are two sets of doorways, one natural (leading about the game world), and one in a grid system (backstage) that is very confusing. Also, it's hard to know how to start using your mimesis disrupting mop.

Once you get into it, this game is fun. You have to use clues to guess how things used to be, and reset them to that state.

A very fun Zorkian game. Unfortunately, it contains ASCII art of a nude woman, but its completely avoidable.

Elizabeth Sweeney and I discuss Janitor at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o98QKRf1iM#t=17m52s