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Number of Ratings: 18
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2 people found the following review helpful:
Well-crafted but hard!, April 9, 2024This game has a very fun premise and voice; unfortunately, though, I had to guess-the-verb my way through it, at one point resorting to asking someone else who’d played for a hint because I was completely stumped (and the in-game hints didn’t have anything for that particular situation). After that I made some progress on my own, but ultimately turned to the in-game hints quite a bit. In retrospect, I could see how the things I got stuck on were clued, so I think this was a case of me just not being as clever as the game required! There were a few small implementation errors that I found, but overall it's a well-done game with excellent writing, fun puzzles utilizing unique, world-appropriate objects, and a great comedic character in Captain Booby. Maybe just a liiiittle more cluing for those of us who might otherwise (Spoiler - click to show)(fail to) struggle.
- Max Fog, April 1, 2024
- pieartsy (New York), February 3, 2024
- Johnnywz00 (St. Louis, Missouri), January 13, 2024
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1 people found the following review helpful:
I Be Bailing, Matey, I Be Bailing!, January 4, 2024Adapted from an IFCOMP23 Review
One room IF has a special place in my heart. The authorial challenge of stuffing multiple arcane, challenging puzzles into a single location, and have them be thematic and natural is a kind of uniquely interesting one. Extra points if it doesn’t feel blatantly Escape-room-y. As a player it can be distracting because part of me is so busy admiring the accomplishment, the story may not get my full attention. TSIAS seems to recognize that tension and plays along with just enough story to set expectations and ground rules, then sits back and lets you flail. Adrift on a sinking boat, throw everything overboard against the wishes of your oblivious captain. GO!
Part of the scene setting, arguably its strongest facet, was the language, especially dialogue. It is all stilted early 18th century (not Victorian, no!) pirate talk, very well rendered, playful and amusing, and consistent throughout. Commitment to the bit is not a problem for TSIAS. The language peppers everything with wry humor, which is a time-tested method to generate Engagement.
The central mechanic of a sinking boat was also clever, a sink timer that requires periodic bailing to keep from going under. The counter starts at 10 turns! You have my attention, game! It was the perfect scenario spice to really put you in the story. Yes, it kind of broke the central premise, as conceivably one could bail indefinitely rather than throw anything overboard, but ooh look away! I easily forgave this with ‘need to row to shore’ head canon.
So you’ve got a great premise, some really effective mechanical chrome, terrific use of language and humor. All that’s left is puzzle play! I liked the weird mix of booty that needed manipulating, not the least of which being an aggressive carnivorous plant. I was particularly delighted by the "steampunk" (Spoiler - click to show)exploding dye pack. The game did a reasonable job of presenting different kinds of ‘get this overboard’ challenges. It just felt to me there were enough burrs in implementation and design to flicker me in and out of Puzzle Solving Flow.
For one I found the noun and verb space very fussy - unimplemented synonyms, weird verb constructs, there were enough of these that I often struggled to accomplish what I wanted, and what the game needed me to do. Not so much that I got blocked, but enough that things felt harder than they needed to be. A few times the physical descriptions let me down - one key puzzle traded on spatial knowledge that the text did not firmly establish, or if it did, did it so subtly that it escaped me and was not confirmed through repeat observation. Another traded on counter-intuitive object examination. While I certainly should be expected to eye my boat companion’s clothing, it is unclear I should be able to (Spoiler - click to show)look in his pockets from across the boat! Text could have clued me in there, but didn’t. This didn’t torpedo my Engagement in the game, but it cropped up consistently enough to call it Notable. Thankfully, both a robust progressive Hint system and Walkthrough are provided, the former well designed when I needed it to push me forward.
As good as the writing was, there was a point of friction for me there too. Through the course of the game, your relationship with the Captain gets increasingly prickly in a very amusing way. However, when bailing the incidental text quickly gets repetitious and largely reflects the relationship state at the beginning of the game, nevermind all the growing tension! Look, dialogue repetition is an unavoidable artifact of IF NPCs (I guess until AI rears its ugly head). It is easily forgiven, and can be artfully accommodated. Here though, the contradictory relationship context jarred. It was a rare narrative off note for me.
It seems I have a probably not-uncommon problem of dwelling on the negative, at least when measured in word count. Don’t make too much of it. Notwithstanding occasional frictions, this was an Engaging work, bubbling with wry humor. Full commitment to the bit, terrific use of language and a nice puzzle set spiced with prodigious small, immersive gameplay touches. I be on board Cap’n!
Played: 10/25/23
Playtime: 1.75hrs, finished after dying once
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging, Notable gameplay frictions
Would Play After Comp?: No, but will def track down other entries
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless
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2 people found the following review helpful:
Comedy one room pirate parser game, January 4, 2024Next up this parser game, which turns out to be a tight time-based puzzler about how to survive a sinking ship, and successfully throw a lot of pirate loot overboard despite the wishes of your pirate Captain and so much else.
I liked a lot about this. The writing is really funny. I also had a lot of “Aha!” moments (e.g. when I realised I could type (Spoiler - click to show)BAIL - yup a bit slow here!). For a one room game it’s remarkably full of detail and content, and so much that is amusing. I had honestly thought I might find the pirate stuff a bit much and overwhelming (!?!), but it was so amusingly written, and the balance of it all is perfect. The anguish of the Captain each time I managed to successfully throw something overboard was just a joy to read.
There were a few things that made the game extra tricky though, trying to find the right command to make the parser understand. For those I ended up having to use the HINT command to figure out exactly what to say. There was some frustration there, including sadly at the very end of the game.
But overall it was a really strong game. I didn’t realise there was another one in the same series (a sequel to this!) written long ago. I need to check that out now too …
Also kudos to the author for including one of my favourite musical instruments in this game. One day I will own my own. Oh yes!
- TheBoxThinker, December 9, 2023
- E.K., December 3, 2023
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3 people found the following review helpful:
De-plunder , December 1, 2023(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.
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
Straight to my list of favourite parser games, November 29, 2023To 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.
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Comedic pirate game about tossing some trash, November 22, 2023I approached this game with a combination of excitement and hesitancy. To Hell in a Hamper, the previous game in the series, is one of my top 10 IF games of all time, out of around 2900 reviews. That puts To Hell in a Hamper in the top 0.4% of all games ever for me. So on the one hand, I’m sure I’d like more, while on the other the chance of any new game also being in my top 0.4% of all time would be pretty low.
Overall I liked it a lot, I can just say that. I found it more challenging than the first game and with more of a focus on adventure than comedy, though there is definitely a strong comedic slant. It was genuinely engaging and funny and, in my opinion, well written.
The idea is that the captain of your pirate vessel has fled his ship with his greatest treasures as well as you, a young cabin boy. Unfortunately, your row boat is sinking! You have to toss all of the captain’s treasures out to succeed. He’s not willing to help, though, and a dangerous Yateveo tree is out to get you, too!
I mentioned this game being harder than the other, and that’s true. I got kind of stuck 4 times.
I liked the ending puzzle, a nice contrast to the rest of the puzzle style. And the final scene had some quit nice poetry in it.
So overall, I’d rate this as pretty difficult, but at no point in the four scenarios above was I unhappy. It’s hard, but a fun hard. That’s good, and gives the game high points in my mind on the puzzle side.
On the writing and story side, well, like I said, this is different than the last game. That game’s humor depended heavily on the increasing absurdity of the objects you found. In this one, though, almost everything I found was reasonable. Instead, there was a lot more emphasis on the adventure of it all, like the helpful octopus, the dangerous tree, and above all the changing relationship of you and the captain. It was almost more like Violet than Lost Pig; each of your actions affects your relationship with the captain. So it was not as funny to me as To Hell in a Hamper, but I think it has a deeper story and a bit more substance.
Polish-wise, it was great. I found only a couple of bugs.
In conclusion, this game isn’t in my top 0.4% of all time, but it’s solidly in my top 4.0% of all time. Great work, and something I could recommend to people looking for humor, pirates, one-room games or great NPCs (maybe a nomination for Best NPC xyzzy?)
This was my favorite game of the competition!
- CMG (NYC), November 19, 2023
- Edo, November 6, 2023
- Sobol (Russia), October 29, 2023
- jaclynhyde, October 27, 2023
- Denk, October 26, 2023
- Zape, October 17, 2023
2 of
2 people found the following review helpful:
Good, but could have been more surprising, October 7, 2023*To Sea in a Sieve* is a prequel to *To Hell in a Hamper*, J. J. Guest's 2003 game where you find yourself in a hot air balloon with a crazy person who has brought way too many heavy items. That game was a sequence of puzzles about getting rid of all these objects; because if you don't, you're both going to die. The setup of *To Sea in a Sieve* is... more or less identical, except that this time you're in a boat, and your companion is a pirate captain who wants to bring all his treasures. I wonder if the character of the pirate captain was inspired by the captain from Ryan Veeder's game *Captain Verdeterre's Plunder*, or whether Veeder and Guest are just both leaning into standard pirate tropes.
I looked up my review of *To Hell in a Hamper* and found this final paragraph:
My single complaint is that the game doesn't actually contain that many *jokes*. It has a good comic setup, and some of the stuff you discover inside Booby's coat is hilarious; but there are few events or descriptions in the rest of the game that make one laugh or smile. This game would have benefited from having Admiral Jota as a co-author; his gift for stuffing a game full of funny remarks would have been very effective here.
It's fairly unlikely that J. J. Guest wrote *To Sea in a Sieve* in reaction this, but there is a sense in which he *could* have: the main difference between his 2003 game and his 2023 game is that the new one is funnier. The captain is a ridiculous guy, and the interactions between him and his cabin boy are a source of smiles. The lesser of two weevils indeed. It also helps that the implementation of the game is deep, and useless or failed actions often lead to amusing responses.
The puzzles are fairly standard, I would say, tending towards traditional object and NPC manipulation sequences that could have fitted in almost any prototypical adventure game, text or graphical. The ones I enjoyed most where those with relatively ridiculous effects, such as blowing up the barrel, simply because those effects were more particularly suited to this specific game. As a puzzle, the little physics conundrum at the very end was my favourite.
This game is very clear about what it sets out to do and it does that very well. That's good, but I was a bit surprised that everything played out *this* straightforwardly. I was hoping for some kind of plot twist, or perspective change, or something that would make the game more surprising, more memorable, and more different from its predecessor. But no, you get *exactly* what you are told to expect on the tin. Not very fair to complain about that, I suppose, but having recently played J. J. Guest's intriguing *Excalibur*, I guess I was hoping for a little bit more.
But when *To the Moon in a Minibus* arrives, hopefully before 2043, I'll play it and no doubt with a smile on my face.
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