Latinorum

Adapted from a SpringThing26 Review

Played: 4/18/26
Playtime: 45min

I don’t have the unbroken runway with this hobby to know if “pull-forward” games (the opposite-yet-not of “throwback”, where ancient implementations are dragged kicking and screaming into today’s IF scene) are a recent phenomenon, or a low-key throughline throughout IF’s history. Aaron Reed, you have left me unprepared here! Certainly in my 4 years of engagement I have seen enough of them to recognize the category. This iteration is a reimplementation of the author’s unpublished Commodore 64 work, complete with online C64 emulator.

These implementations have a specific aura to them: they simultaneously harken to a day when computer capabilities were more tantalizing promise than reality, and invoke a youthful creative impulse, getting its hands around virgin technology and bending it, however imperfectly, to its will. You get both of those in spades here - a very small, very tight geography of locked doors to navigate around, littered with sometimes useful, sometimes red herring objects.

I found it to be reasonably smooth (with two exceptions), especially notable given its Italian-language authorship to this English reader. A key design choice, which I question whether was present in the original, was to highlight interactable nouns in the text. This compromise runs the risk of leeching away some of the promise of parser play, but in exchange bypasses the ‘flounder for implemented noun’ pockets that can occur. Especially for a work (at least initially) created by a new-to-form author, this tradeoff is WELL worth it and made the experience pretty robust.

The story this is in service of is hilariously of-its-(original)-authors-age: you must cheat your way to passing a test! No moral judgement, no exploration of transgression, just a very pragmatic this-must-be-done task. The completely un-self-conscious tone of the protagonist’s execution of this mission is a subversively funny baseline that sturdily supports the whole thing. The puzzles themselves are pretty uncomplicated affairs: finding keys, tools, or other artifacts to unblock obstacles until the test key is finally yours. For its age, I found it amazingly friction-free, much more so than games I played back in the day.

There were two aspects that did grate at me over time. The first was its emulator performance. Either through code complexity or as a deliberate design choice, the emulator seemed to recreate the key lag of 80’s hardware, so much so my 2026 fingers routinely outpaced the UI, skipping letters I for sure typed. This happened a lot. This is a piece of the experience that does not weather the intervening years well. Like watching 1970s cinema, the PACING is the ‘of its time’ artifact that holds up the least. Our contemporary expectations are just too far removed to see it as other than intrusive.

The second artifact seems pretty specific as well. You can >TAKE objects, but not >GET them. Now, this is petty for sure, but as a parser fan those neurons are burned pretty deep. My fingers stretch for the ‘G’ key before I know what I’m doing. By FAR the most repeated sequence of the game was:

>GET [something]
%@#$($#
>TAKE [something]

So, so many reps. There was a flash of red in my vision every time it happened, but honestly both those artifacts were also kind of endearing? They served as omnipresent reminders of WHAT I was engaging with, which, given the modest nature of the narrative, deserved its place at the table. It is telling to me that even its most dated gameplay paradigm - inventory management - did not spark my ire. It felt fully of a piece to the rest of the work and I (acharacteristically) just rolled with it.

This was a slight, sly, simultaneously smooth and chunky experience that evoked its provenance quite well, and unlike others of this pedigree never wore out its welcome.

(I should note the 'GET' shortcoming seems to be subsequently updated, so future players be comforted!)

Spaceship: Hermes
Vibe: Too Cool for (Old) School
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, I would have to engage Vax/VMS instead. Is there an emulator for that? Y’know what, don’t bother looking it up. OF COURSE THERE IS.