The Bibliophile

I've been playing all past Spring Thing games. Many of them are long parser games, longer than would be entered into IFComp, and this one is no exception.

It's a Lovecraftian game where you run a bookstore and need to stop someone from collecting an evil music libretto that would end the world.

The map is really large. Much of the game consists in walking across town, like from your house to your friend's house and back. It gives the city a bit more of a real feel. There are a lot of NPCs, too.

In the game you can read a book to learn spells, and randomized combat features in a couple of segments.

The storyline adheres closely to Lovecraftian ideas, incorporating things like ancient evil gods, cults, and mysteries from Africa, adhering to Lovecraft's idea of foreigners being creepy.

The game is quite long, with the walkthrough split into 9 chapters.

If there's one big deficiency, it's in providing more synonyms and descriptions. With a game this big it makes sense that things would fall through the cracks, and they do. In the last area I found people with descriptions like 'you don't see anything interesting about _____' and various items were the same. Some verbs don't have synonyms, so for a bottle of liquid SQUEEZE BOTTLE ONTO _____ works but PUT BOTTLE ON ______ doesn't.

Right away I thought, this game is for me. The bookstore, the proprieter, the cat. I felt like I was really the protagonist. Yes, a nice big, juicy, literary game. I walked all over the store getting ready to dive into something big, exploring everything, looking for stuff to pick up, petting the cat, trying to read books, or anticipate the direction the game would take.

However, none of this yielded any result (except petting the cat.) It turns out that almost none of the locations or objects in the game are necessary. I got tired walking through the unimplemented rooms, and felt frustrated by the feeling of constantly following a red herring. All that the player must do is following directions given you by an NPC (go upstairs and look for this, go downstairs and bring me that.)

Conclusion: Great setting, no puzzles. For a game called Bibliophile, there is astonishingly little to do with anything literary. On the contrary, as another reviewer mentioned, I was truly thrown off by the bad language of the librarian - not only unwelcome but contextually inappropriate. For me this game was exhausting but not rewarding. As it turns out, the best part happened in the first two minutes: naming the cat.

Ready for another Lovecraftian tale?
As the author says, this one is set in Baltimore. He created an explorable environment, including some monuments and academic places; I am not familiar with real Baltimore, so can't judge how faithful such reconstruction is, although some places, like (Spoiler - click to show)the African bazaar, feel added for plot reasons.

Speaking of the plot, the main character is a librarian who finds a mysterious book in his shop; such book is needed for a rite which, unsurprisingly, would bring Really Ugly things on Earth.
It would be too easy to ignore everything, or better yet to just destroy the book, right? The author knows better, and soon we are forced to try and fight someone powerful who is looking for the book. It is not a hopeless battle, though: during our investigations we will slowly acquire some magic spells, which will prove to be really useful. Just to give an idea, the first spell we will learn may mend any wounds we will receive.
The plot may be simplified in a series of fights intermixed with investigations; the latter are not just a filler, tough: thanks to them we will not just acquire our spells, as said, but also do something even more interesting: (Spoiler - click to show)rescue a few students who have been kidnapped by the Bad Guy, who needs them for the cited rite.

The battle system is "punch/kick/attack foe"-like. Every time a blow is successful, one hit point (HP) will be deducted from the initial amount (two) of the target. When HP reaches zero, death comes. Luckily, any spell may be used in battle.

There are some puzzles; they are not hard, except, maybe, one or two near the end.

Overall, this IF is a typical Lovecraftian tale of a man who fights overwhelming forces who want to destroy humanity and/or Earth; the accent is more on plot and fights, as opposed to puzzles; the execution is good: I found no bugs in the released version, and the spell system gives an interesting twist.

Disclaimer: I betatested the game.