The Candy Striper of St. Asterix

More than the sum of its parts. Maybe that's unfair - the parts are good - but what I particularly liked here is how the narrative development gradually builds things up from a low-key romp through expansive, nicely modeled hospital hallways into a properly suspenseful conclusion. Gathering the eight signatures gets the player to explore thoroughly and familiarize themselves with the rooms they can access at first, and there's plenty of background detail without it feeling superfluous. None of the puzzles are illogical and at their best they require some of that enterprising teen-fiction-paperback creativity.

None of the NPCs get truly deep characterization, but they don't need it at all. They fit neatly enough into well-trodden narrative tropes that the player gets a good idea of who to trust, who might be useful, and who represents a puzzle. The execution of the climax is excellent. A familiarity with the layout of the hospital and a careful eye for detail pay serious dividends.

There's no real parser fiddliness except for the service elevator, which I think I just didn't understand completely.

This is a large and complex game with several independent NPCs spread out through a large hospital. Someone has died, and you (a teen volunteer) want to both find out who and also get enough recommendations to be able to move on from the place.

I was impressed and overwhelmed with the size of the game. The hospital has four floors, each with a hallway with 3-5 spaces, with each space having doors to the north and south. In addition to that, there are a dozen or so NPCs and complex devices like elevators, safes and a walkman.

Gameplay mostly revolves around going into every area possible, identifying issues and collecting objects, then finding which objects solve which issues. There were two puzzles I couldn't figure out involving NPCs, and I ended up using invisiclues with them.

Overall, the story didn't land for me emotionally. The NPCs were varied, had interesting comments about each other, and had realistic relationships and plots, and the locations were varied, and there are some active events that are creepy or threatening, so all of those things are good. So I'm not actually sure what I felt was missing.

On the other hand, there was something about the mechanics that really appealed to me, which is hard to put into words. It was really satisfying unlocking different areas and using ideas, and there are multiple solutions.

There were a few times I was frustrated by synonyms or getting default responses (like (Spoiler - click to show)trying to push or pull the tile without the ladder). Overall, though, I think people who enjoy exploration and note-taking in parser games should like this.