Poppet

You are a doll, waking up in a long-abandoned house, and must solve the mystery of how you got there and why you’re awake when your child is nowhere around. This game harkens back more to Night House than the Guttersnipe games, with a similar theme of exploring a scary darkened home at night. You’ve still got to adjust to the unique qualities of Quest, with its give-you-some-of-the-options-through-clicking-but-not-all play format, but this feels a little more intuitive than in previous entries by this author– most of the stuff that requires typing is ‘ask’ or ‘use x with y’ and it’s pretty obvious when you need to type those commands.

The puzzles require enough thought to be satisfying (researching and putting together spells is a big part of it, and it’s a blast) but aren’t that difficult – I finished the game in a single session, and only needed to check the walkthrough once, when I was on the wrong track with a solution and needed to make sure I wasn’t just missing the right phrasing. The atmosphere is deliciously creepy – this is always one of Bitter Karella’s strengths. If you like not-too-tough puzzles and a touch of horror, don’t miss this one.

You play as a doll who was once brought to life by a child's magic, but awakes now when the child is long gone.

You explore a dark two-story house filled with death, decay, and dark magic.

I loved the cast of characters, and found many of the puzzles satisfying. I think I had more fun with this game than I did with anything else in the comp so far.

Quest is just not as powerful as Inform or Tads or Dialog, though. Quest's worst feature is synonym handling. Synonyms apparently must be typed in for each verb combination.

For instance, if something is called ADJECTIVE NOUN, then one puzzle might be solvable by typing VERB1 NOUN, but another puzzle might only except VERB2 ADJECTIVE NOUN. And due to Quest's weaker engine, it won't tell you you're close or detect if you've almost typed the right thing.

Bitter Karella usually does much better than other Quest authors in this regard, but some slipped through this time. For instance, (Spoiler - click to show)TAKE CLAWS or GET CLAWS produced no text, incorrect text, or just baffling text at different points in the game.

Overall though, I love this game. Fun!