Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles!

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	Story File An expanded version of the game written with Inform 7. Release 3 removes the boxed quotation to allow the game to be played in Parchment. Requires a Z-Code interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
	Story File Contains yak_shaving.taf The original Odd Comp entry, written with Adrift 4. Requires an ADRIFT version 4 interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
	Walkthroughs and maps For both versions 1 and 2. By David Welbourn.
	ClubFloyd transcript

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Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles!
by J. J. Guest profile

Humor
2008

Web Site

(based on 3 ratings)
1 review

About the Story

You are Steve Goodwin. You're a regular guy, young, successful, dynamic.

But a nagging question gnaws at your soul, undermines your joy at your success and interferes with the very business of living. For this is not an answer you can find in the pages of any book. What you yearn to know is — the meaning of life itself!

But then you learned about a man, a guru of great wisdom, endowed with the miraculous 'supreme realization', who could teach you the secrets of the universe! A six-hundred-year-old hermit, living at the top of a mountain in a kingdom most right-thinking people assume to be a myth. A man known as — the Dada Lama!

And this is why we find you now, after many months of journeying, of fruitless searching, beaten and battered by the uncaring elements, in this mysterious valley hidden deep within the mountains...

...the mystical valley of Shangri-La!

Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles! is a humorous quest for spiritual enlightenment involving a yak, a disposable razor, a jar of pickled eggs and the abominable snowman.

Game Details

Language: English (en)
First Publication Date: September 27, 2008
Current Version: 1
License: Freeware
Development System: ADRIFT, Inform 7
IFID: ADRIFT-400-D34D767147A6695D1B5F6A2335DC13E7
TUID: zorhryuoy2iuafem

Awards

3rd Place - The Odd Competition

Member Reviews

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Number of Reviews: 1
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Amusing parody of a quest for enlightenment, December 18, 2018

by Spike

Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles! is a short, light-hearted parody of a quest for spiritual enlightenment, complete with Dada Lama and 1970s-style aesthetics. Once I realized what the plot was I immediately thought of the Animaniacs episode where Yakko, Wakko, and Dot meet the Wally Llama. There are some similarities in tone - for example, the solution to one of the puzzles would fit right into an Animaniacs episode - but for the most part Yak Shaving's humor isn't quite so physical.

And there are a handful of puzzles to solve. I found some of the solutions to be a bit on the absurd side, but this is in keeping with the game's sense of humor. Plus the puzzles are always well-clued, and so the offbeat solutions come across as fair rather than frustrating.

There's even a meta-joke going on here, although I didn't catch it until I did some searching after finishing the game. Wikipedia defines "yak shaving" as "Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem." Which, of course, is a good description of a lot of puzzle-heavy IF games. So Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles! ends up being a joke on multiple levels: As a traditional IF puzzle game in terms of structure, most of Yak Shaving is "yak shaving" - and it features yak shaving as well.

Personally, I prefer the author's games Alias 'The Magpie' and To Hell in a Hamper, but I did enjoy Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles!, and it elicited several chuckles from me as well. If you like the sense of humor present in J. J. Guest's other work, you should try this one.

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Links

Yak Shaving for Kicks and Giggles! Web Site

This is version 18 of this page, edited by J. J. Guest on 10 February 2022 at 11:57am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item