Reg and the Kidnapped Fairy

This is a parser game written for the Petite Mort version of Ectocomp 2022, written in 4 hours or less.

The game is intentionally silly; a fairy begs you to help her against a bad fairy, but you have to eat a taco and taco medicine first and punch an undead gorilla.

It's short, with three main scenes. Punching is the main action, and always works, which reminds me of One Punch Man (although this would be multiple punch man). Examining yourself shows an image of a werewolf.

I teach creative writing to high schoolers, and I have a couple that likes to write stream-of-consciousness meme stories about Tyler Blevins and people in the school and random whacky fights, and this story reminds me of that style of writing.

It's quite descriptive, but unpolished. The interactivity surprisingly works well, since there's only one important verb. It was funny, but I wouldn't play again.

I’m really not sure what to make of this one. My first thought was that it was a parody, but now I think it’s deeply, purely sincere. And I mean that in a good way.

This feels like a kid’s first experiment with Inform 7, and it has a certain charm to it. You are Reg, the Good Werewolf, and you need to punch 100-foot-tall undead gorillas and dancing skeletons into space on your way to free the good fairies from the bad fairy. It even has a handful of AI-generated illustrations!

Looking at others’ reviews, Encorm mentions “this was at least partially written by a seven-year-old”, which explains a lot. It definitely reminds me of my first attempts to make an Inform 7 game, and honestly, ECTOCOMP does seem like a good way to get outside eyes on a first experiment like this.

I wouldn’t call this a good game, necessarily, but it has a very distinct charm and soul to it. I hope the authors continue to play around with Inform and look forward to seeing what else they create.