Grue Eater

In this year’s Spring Thing, the next game I played was Hinterlands: Marooned! It turns out that this is a one-move game, but I had no idea going into it.

The game has you stranded on a very small island, standing next to a Q’udzlth. And almost everything you do will kill you. There are a lot of death sequences in this game, and they’re all very polished, like the author had a lot of fun killing the player. The only thing is, it’s not very fun to be killed repeatedly with no clue in the final text that could advance the story.

Hinterlands: Marooned! is a hard game with not a single clue that could get the player to the end. I can see why the author might not want a walkthrough with only one move, but hints need to be woven into something like this – to keep the player with the game, not laughing at them. After 40 minutes of dying, I gave up. I decided not to rate this one.

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The next game I played in Spring Thing 2022 was Fairest. This is the latest game from Amanda Walker, an author that took 4th place in last year’s competition. This game came with a walkthrough, the reason I played it next, but it’s the only one in the competition to have one.

In this game, you play as yourself and Prince Conrad. Well, the person you call yourself at the beginning of the game. This is the only real gripe I have with the game, but we can return to that later. The prince is the firstborn of an aligning King, so the crown should go to him. But due to a scheming stepmother, his two brothers challenge him for the throne. It is decided that you, Conrad, will go out on a quest to prove your worth as King.

The game unfolds naturally. With a guiding feather that takes you to the areas you need to be. No wandering around the map, wondering what to do. I never felt lost. The areas are big enough for the player to move around freely. They’re easy to keep track of and not so large that you need a map. There are three main puzzles that interconnect nicely, like a Tarantino film, minus everyone dying at the end.

The game’s dark, and the ending a little chilling, with a long list of choices at the end. I don’t know how well this works in a parser game, but I don’t see how you could do it differently. It also made for some interesting conclusions before the final scene.

This game was polished, with a lot of love put into it. I only got hung up once, and the mirror was no help where it could’ve been, but there was a walkthrough that got me out of that early part of the game. I’m glad, or I would’ve missed a beautiful game.

What I was saying before, it did feel weird having the game address me directly. It felt confusing when it was over because it felt like that person was still talking to me and not Conrad. The transition back was strange. It really broke the 4th wall. Also, I think there was a missed opportunity with the horse. You should be able to talk to the head after you free the girl. I just thought that something extra could’ve been thrown in there.

This game really blew me out of the water. I didn’t know what to think going in, but it turned out to be a dark game with easy puzzles that I enjoyed immensely. I hope it does well in the competition. But there’s only first place. This one is a strong contender for Best In Show for me. I can’t recommend it enough.

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The second game I played for Spring Thing 2022 was The Legend of Horse Girl by Bitter Karella. I like the artwork, and I thought the setting was neat, but I didn’t know there was no walkthrough when I started.

The game starts off in the plaza of Santa Diablo, Texas. A small western town controlled by a land baron, Judge Lazarus Dives. This first room is loaded with eight exits, and it’s the hub for the game. But with so many exits, I think the town could’ve been spread out a little, with a long road and connecting rooms. One room with a ton of text to parse can be hard.

I liked that I felt I could still complete the puzzles when I was stuck. I played for a while because I felt I knew what to do. I just need to find the right item. But I never did find the correct item and got stuck after exploring the entire game.

And I hate to say. The game is flawed with bugs. The most glaring one is when you try taking things. If the player takes an item already held, the game doesn’t say, “You already have that.” It retriggers the event that took the item. So, if there’s a conversation attached to taking the item, you get that conversation anywhere in-game when you retake it. This is an odd bug. The game could also use a lot more synonyms like bartender for La Muerte, shoe for the horseshoe, or sheet for the broadsheet. Smell and listen are missing default responses and return a blank line if the environment isn’t echoing out something.

I played the game for a while but didn’t get that far. I explored all there was and picked everything up. I tried to give that stuff away, but this provoked no reaction. I could talk to people. This was good. They all had opinions about the Judge but couldn’t help me with much more. I made it into the church but couldn’t ring the bell. I looked for rope, or sheets, or something, but in the end, I gave up. There were no hints to point me in the right direction or a walkthrough I could have skimmed.

It’s hard to know how to score this game without completing it. There’s the set-up that I played for over two hours, but I can’t get to the payoff. I want to see the Judge get his, get up to his Villa and take him out. But I’m dead in the water with the second game I’ve tried so far durning this competition.

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I started the 2022 Spring Thing Festival with Bigfoot Bluff by P.B. Parjeter. It looked like a light-hearted, easy to play through game, but I got stuck, and without a walkthrough, I couldn’t finish it.

You start the game as Bigfoot Jr. trying to photograph the cryptid creatures in the park. The game comes with a beautiful pdf map to help orientate you. In this game, you’re part of the paparazzi but don’t have your own camera. Getting one is the first puzzle, blocking off the parking area and wetting the player’s appetite for more.

After the first puzzle, the game opens up. It’s billed as a sandbox game, and you have access to most of the areas. It looks like you need to get 60 points before finding Bigfoot Senior. You gain points in the game, but you can also lose points. Undo has been removed, so the author wants the player to take the point loss and keep plodding on.

I went everywhere I could, and I picked up a lot of objects, following the adage that the adventure takes everything not nailed down. This included the Park Ranger. The game wanted me to lose him, so I dropped him in a dark room and never saw him again. I don’t know if this broke the game or not. Unfortunately, there was no walkthrough provided.

As I started to push harder on the game because I wasn’t making any progress, more of the thin implementation started to show. Like, if you’re going to ask players to put something on a chain, implement the other objects that the player will try, even the ones during a brute force. I also think this is a good place to interject some comedy into any game. I also found some objects with default descriptions. Why is it there? Is it that much of a red herring?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed this game quite a bit. I like its minimalistic nature, where I should be able to find everything quickly. And I found a lot. However, the game just needs to be implemented a little deeper. It looks like this is the author’s first parser game, it’s a great attempt, but it lacks a bit of direction (I know it’s a sandbox, but it’s also a parser game), and the objects need a bit more work. If they’re red herrings, you might want to remove them. If they work together to form something new, I think they need to be better clued.

This game gets 7 out of 10 stars. It still needs work, but what’s there is very enjoyable. If it had a walkthrough, that would go a long way.

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