To Sea in a Sieve

(This is a lightly-edited version of a review I posted to the IntFiction forums during 2023's IFComp).

I don’t know where a two-year-old picks up these things, but my son has learned that pirates say “yarr!” The other night we were reading a book about animals dressing up for Halloween, and when he saw the chicken with a peg-leg, he swung his arm in a little Pirates-of-the-Caribbean move and said “yarr!” I can’t think of any other book or show he’s seen that involves pirates, so like I said, I’m somewhat at a loss – is there some kid at day care who pontificates about this stuff during outdoor play period, confidently explaining in a toddler’s burble how you pretend to be a pirate? – but I guess the cultural knowledge that this is how pirates talk is just that strong.

The kicker, of course, is that so far as I understand pirates didn’t talk like that; your stereotypical Golden Age of Piracy buccaneers probably spoke like the 18th Century Englishmen they were, albeit with more lexical flights of fancy than would be typical given their outré experiences and dearth of formal education. They likely sounded, in other words, like Captain Booby, the deuteragonist and comic centerpiece of To Sea in a Sieve:

“That’s it, boy — bail, an’ lively ho!” says the Captain. “’Twill all ha’ been worthwhile when we’m rescued, ye’ll see!”

“Not me snuffbox too,” wails the Captain. “Well, here’s lubberly manners! That snuffbox was o’ great sentimental value to me, I’ll have ’ee know. The man I killed fer it were a dear an’ loyal friend!”

“Arr, not me pineapple!” says the Captain, woefully. “I had me a fancy to make a lovely canapé — pineapple and hunks o’ cheese, served up on the spines of a porpentine. Ye’ve set haute cuisine back centuries, damn ye!”

(Okay, maybe that last one undermines my point, but technically it’s an arr, not a yarr).

There have been some very funny games so far in the Comp, and I know there are more ahead, but I have rarely laughed so hard at anything as I did at Captain Booby. This is fortunate because for the game to work, he has to work, since he’s the only thing standing in the way of this being the shortest parser puzzler ever: you play the cabin-boy he’s dragooned into helping him flee with his ill-gotten plunder when the authorities put an end to his piratical career. But since an errant cannonball has holed the lifeboat, you need to dump the loot before you sink. If the good Captain were capable of balancing risk and reward, he’d obviously stand aside and let you do it – but if he were capable of that, presumably he wouldn’t have gone into piracy, and so he opposes you at every turn, so that you need to outwit, outmaneuver, and outsnuff him in order to commit his treasures to the briny deep.

As a result, in less skillful hands Booby could have become a deeply annoying character, continually frustrating the player and providing handy, punchable characterization for the frustration of failing to solve puzzles in a parser game. But this hardly ever happens, as Booby is as pathetic as he is bombastic: I mean, if you can read the line “’Od’s blood, fire and thunder, my sinuses!” without a) feeling a little bad for the fellow, and b) giggling so hard you almost go into a fit, you are made of sterner stuff than I. Even when I was stymied on a particular challenge, sharing a lifeboat with Booby was never anything less than delightful.

Not that I was stymied that often or that long, since this is a well-designed set of puzzles. A few of the Captain’s treasures can simply be heaved over the side, but most require some work to obtain and drown, and all the while water is seeping into the boat, lending an air of farce to proceedings as you pause in your efforts to desperately bail. To make progress you’ll need to relieve the Captain of some of his effects, match wits with a carnivorous plant, and prevent an overzealous beaver from sending you to Davy Jones’s Locker. Even as the boat’s load lessens, the comedic frenzy heightens, with new complications lending increased energy to the situation and preventing it from getting dull over the game’s one-hour running time.

While many of the puzzles do require relatively specific syntax, I found for the most part that To Sea in a Sieve did an excellent job cueing the appropriate action, which made me feel very clever indeed but is actually just good game design. There were a few challenges towards the end of the game where it felt like this broke down somewhat and some additional clues might not have gone amiss (Spoiler - click to show)(I’m thinking of looking at the tea caddy through the quizzing-glass, and the precise language required to use the brocade), but it’s got a well-implemented hint system so I can’t complain too much (and I have to admit that I was having so much fun that I stayed up way past my bedtime playing this one, so my brain probably wasn’t working so well by the end).

The only thing better than finishing To Sea in a Sieve was seeing in the ending text that it’s part of a planned trilogy – the middle part, To Hell in a Hamper, was released 20 years ago so this technically checks both the “boaty” and “sequel/prequel” boxes for Comp ’23 bingo – so there’ll be another iteration of the concept to look forward to. And even if it takes another 20 years to get the final instalment, based on the success of To Sea in a Sieve it’ll be worth the wait.

To sea in a sieve is brilliant! It’s yet another parser game I’ve been able to solve with little help, and the help I needed was due to obvious parser-challenged mistakes on my part, rather than bad design of the game. It’s a perfect example of the classic absurd puzzlefest + comic narrative style, perfect because none of the two elements interfere with the other. The situation, the characters’ language and the colour provided by the descriptions make the puzzling meaningful, and the puzzles are perfectly embedded in the narration. And the puzzling is narratively interesting, at least comically interesting with the unexpected results of your actions.

A fun sea adventure indeed, even for a landlubber like me! Very good title too. I love a solid puzzler, and this one had me feeling very clever, only needing hints at the very end. I was very relieved that only Captain Booby (I snickered at this a few times) spoke in piratey pidgin, because if the entire narration was written i’ th’ way tha’ pirates be speakin’, I’d get very irritated. Luckily the author must have foreseen this potential problem so made Peter and the prose itself sound relatively normal.

The prose itself was fine in the same way that puzzle parsers often are—descriptive enough that you know what’s happening enough to solve the puzzle. The characterization and implementation of Booby was strong (although the emphasis on his foppish idiocy made me slightly uncomfortable as a queer person…), enough so that I could predict his reactions in an appropriately puzzley way. Even though I desperately wanted to throw him overboard and solve that weight problem handily! I empathized with Peter’s plight of trying to navigate around Booby’s…boobery while also finding it entertaining to work around.

This is a very kind puzzler on the scale of Zarfian cruelty, having multiple different failsafes and accessibility features: an octopus will return items you still need if you mistakenly threw them overboard, and `> hint about [item]` will let you know if an item has exhausted its use in the puzzles so you don’t have to hold onto it (a feature I also had in Erstwhile, though not as nicely implemented). I kept hoarding all the items (even the obviously useless ones) until I realized this, but that’s on me!

I did encounter a bug with the sack of cayenne where I used it for its intended purpose (making the Captain sneeze) and the octopus kept giving it back to me, with the hints not seeming to realize that I’d solved it either.

I had a great time and recommend this game, especially if you’re wary of parsers this IFComp. If you’re afraid of parsers, this one will help you get your sea-legs!