To Sea in a Sieve

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!