Wrenlaw

With Nautilisia, Ryan Veeder sent up the surreal dreamworlds of so much bad IF. With Wrenlaw, he takes up another disgraced subgenre: the epiphany quest, where you wander through a usually real-world environment, solving mechanical puzzles for emotional rewards. Geocaching's a fitting conceit, so you're given coordinates and set down in a secluded park. What you're not given is the stage-managing narrator of Veeder's other games, someone to arrange pratfalls for your hapless protagonist. Here the spills have occurred already, off-stage, and it's up to you to move forward -- by triggering flashbacks.