The Woodcutter's Quest

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Parser issues, July 4, 2026

by Dan Fabulich

We played this game (Release 1, 260628) at the SF Bay IF Meetup; we had to consult the walkthrough to win, due to parser issues.

Except for the parser issues, the puzzles were decent, and the game has its charms.

(Spoiler - click to show)

Rope: If you try to climb the rope, it says, "You awkwardly start to climb the rope, but it swings about like a pendulum and you start to feel giddy, so you jump back down." This sounds like you're supposed to secure the bottom, loose end of the rope, e.g. with the anchor you find in the same room, but if you try to "tie anchor to rope" when the rope is still attached to the mast, it says, "If you want to tie the rope to anything, you’ll have to untie it from the top of the mast first." But, that's not how ropes should work… you can tie two different ends to things. We did eventually figure out to chop the mast with the axe, but it was a frustrating experience. I think it should let you tie the rope to the anchor before detaching it from the mast, and even let you climb the rope, but it should say that there's nothing at the top of the rope. Describing the rope + anchor as a grappling hook will make it clear that you need to take the rope away.
Bees: You're supposed to smoke the bees out, but if you bring wood to the bees and light it with the candle, the game says, "Fortunately for the bees, the wood is dry and there’s no smoke." (It says this even for rotten wood found in a boat covered with moss, which seems implausible.) You can bring water to the beehive in a jug, but if you try to "put water on wood" before lighting the fire, it will say "You can't put things on top of that"; if you "pour water on wood" it will say "When you turn the jug upside down, the water soaks into the ground." You're supposed to use water only after the fire is lit, with "put/pour water on fire", but we had to reach for the walkthrough to solve this; it seems like that should extinguish the flames, rather than creating smoky fire.
Goat: The goat refuses to eat the honeycomb with the message, "They say that a goat will eat anything, but it won’t eat a chunk of honeycomb." Goats absolutely will eat honeycomb. The game really wants you to give grass to the goat, but I think there should be a better excuse not to give honeycomb to the goat, even just "Honeycomb is too precious to give to a goat" or something like that.
Grass: You can only get grass in the goat path, but there's nothing special about grass; you can't cut the bushes or other plants that a goat might reasonably munch on anywhere else.
Books: You can't read the books, but one book "seems out of place." But there's no way to directly refer to that book, pick it up, or do anything with it. "get book" always just says "You pick a book at random and it somehow slides back onto the shelf," as if to say "you didn't specify the specific book that matters" but, in fact, no book matters, and there's nothing to do here at all. It would be clearer if the game didn't mention a "random book", and if books and scrolls did the same "tingle" effect.
Doors: The game never auto-opens doors, like the back/front door of your shack, which is annoying.

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