The Wand

This was my favorite 2017 Ifcomp game. I don't see how to make a meaningful review of this one, without touching on the hidden content, which is more than half the game. If you cannot find the hidden content, check out David Welbourn's excellent walkthrough.

The Wand is a very polished puzzle-based text adventure, where the player seeks out a challenge at Bartholloco's secluded castle. The player is not allowed to touch anything in the castle, except from the wand, he/she is given at the beginning of the game. Luckily the wand is magical and can be set to 1000 different color combinations. The wand has different abilities depending on the chosen color combination. Unfortunately you do not know which combinations are useful, but clues to this are placed around the castle.

The apparent challenge of the game has a very nice level of difficulty and can be completed in approximately 2 hours. However, (Spoiler - click to show)if you restart and approach the game with your knowledge from your first play-through, you may find a much deeper and more involved challenge.

It is during this deeper challenge you will come to realize how well thought out the magic system actually is. Also, the ending of this deeper challenge is much better than that of the first challenge.

I don't think a pure puzzle game comes much better than this.

It's become something of an IFComp tradition: the rock-solid puzzlefest by Arthur DiBianca, with a cleverly stripped-down parser and only the barest veneer of a story. Art's first entry was the unique but tepidly received Excelsior, followed by Grandma Bethlinda's Variety Box, which earned positive reviews and attracted so much traffic it nearly crashed the IFComp server. 2016's entry, Inside the Facility, was a novel movement-only game that won the Miss Congeniality award and received two XYZZY nods (Best Puzzles and Best Individual Puzzle).

So what did Arthur DiBianca put forward in 2017? The Wand, and it's pretty good. The Wand revisits Excelsior's seemingly bland milieu - "a wizard sets up puzzles in a tower" - but this time with far better results.

One of Excelsior's problems was that it wasn't always clear what the "use" verb would actually do. ("use statue"?) The Wand adopts the Enchanter mechanic, where you progressively learn spells that interact in interesting ways, but strips it down to *just* the spells with no other verbs except for movement. This creates a very effective experience where it's always clear what you're attempting to do, but the consequences of your actions can be unexpected.

Another of Excelsior's problems was the lack of a story or any real context for the puzzles; I kept wondering "why is this here?", and the ending felt like a disappointing afterthought. The Wand avoids this by being entirely upfront about its concept. I'm reminded of Emily Short's "Action and Interaction": "I’ve come to think that one of the jobs of a work of IF is to teach its player - constantly, in every kind of feedback - what sorts of interactions are appropriate to the game." This idea permeates The Wand, from how the concept is presented to how puzzles are hinted. The game continually and progressively teaches you what to expect, while offering some little surprises along the way. (Case in point: the brilliant way the game handles the "use" verb.)

In many ways this is the driving idea of the limited-parser movement, of which DiBianca is a vanguard: people are quite happy to play by the rules of the game you establish, but when there's a mismatch between their own idea of the rules and the game's idea of the rules, they can be disappointed. Thus, stripping down the parser and saying upfront "yeah, don't expect a story" can actually increase immersion. (Indeed, going into the game with no expectation of context or story made those elements pleasantly surprise me where they did appear.)

I must admit I am not a full convert to the minimalist school. The call of the verb is strong. But there is much of value in this way of thinking, and The Wand does it well.

Other strengths: DiBianca's writing is terse, but whimsical and evocative. (What is a baltavakia, and how do you slice one? I'm still not really sure I know, but the mental images that section conjured were fantastic.) Puzzle design is strong, mostly of the satisfying "oh! now I can do *that*!" variety. Puzzles are often "themed" and make sense within the context of their environment, which is small enough to keep everything nearby but large enough to offer a few different avenues to explore if you get stuck. Hinting is strong, with a mix of obvious solutions and head-scratchers - although I did have to check the walkthrough to realize I could (Spoiler - click to show)just walk past the dragon. The adorable, adorable dragon.

I do have a few minor critiques, e.g. I'm not sure about the wand mechanic. Spells take two turns to input, and wand settings are hard to remember without writing them down, especially since the color abbreviations can be unexpected. I do wonder if Enchanter-style magic words would work better, but as a mental concept, "one wand and two verbs" has its perks.

IMHO, what would have made this game even better is 1) deeper spell interaction, and 2) deeper worldbuilding. You can levitate rocks; what if you could levitate *anything*? The wizard has a pet kimpert; why? But I acknowledge that these thoughts are driven more by my personal affinity for games like Counterfeit Monkey than by any practical considerations.

Note: This game has hidden content that is not mentioned in the walkthrough.

The Wand revolves around a single core mechanic that the game never runs out of creative ways to use. You have a wand with three colored sections you can set to different combinations. Each combination has a different effect, like one puts out fires while another acts as a magnifying glass. You have to find these different combinations and use them to solve puzzles and reach the castle's tower. Not all of the combinations are spelled out for you: some require piecing together multiple clues. Figuring out one and seeing what it did always feels rewarding, especially when you know exactly what you can use it on.

Another important aspect of the game is that you can't touch anything in the rooms, so the wand is the only item you're allowed to handle. It helps streamline the game and makes your thought process always involve figuring out what to do with the spells you have, or figuring out where to find new ones. The final puzzle really brings everything together.

You might have picked up on there being more to this game than it seems. (Spoiler - click to show)Replaying it and using one of the endgame skills opens up a much more difficult extra quest, which is awesome, since it pushes the wand mechanic even further while letting you use all the knowledge you gained on your first run. The game deserves all of its praise, and if you want a fair puzzler to sit down with and take notes on, this is a great choice.