The puzzle in Byzantine Perspective — how to get at the chalice — becomes quickly subordinate to the mystery of what is going on, and once you can answer, all you have to do is reach out and take it. Embodied so perfectly that even people who don’t like puzzles should be able to admire it.
Broken Legs: in a way, the unwavering confidence of Lottie’s voice works against you; your adversaries are denigrated and your surroundings are dismissed. You can only really solve the game by tuning out that frequency and adopting the outlook of a marooned astronaut whose only chance of survival is to scour everything in sight for some shred of utility. All the same, I’ll take this any day over Grounded in Space.
The Duel in the Snow stands out for its measured writing and novel milieu, but not for its riveting gameplay. As the story plays out, you’ll recover from drinking too much brandy, drink more brandy, and become swept up in an altercation which brandy may have instigated. This mostly involves waiting. There’s a mystery to be solved, but the game buries it too well (the primary clue being at the back of a book the protagonist dismisses) and then barely acknowledges that you’ve uncovered it. Instead it courses headlong to the duel: conclusion foregone, but presented nonetheless as the central puzzle. To “solve” the duel, to figure out a way to live through it, is to abnegate the story — and yet the author has allowed for no other outlet.
Rover’s Day Out attempts to redeem the mundane by freighting each action with cosmic significance. No, it’s the other way around: it couches a far-fetched scenario in the most familiar environs; takes conventions that have been trampled to death and invents them a heaven. So relentlessly subversive it gets a bit trying, but still: try it.
Yon Astounding Castle: surprisingly good, funny in its many incongruities, language blatantly (but deftly) misused. By the end, however, it escapes its architect, as if he kept building rooms next to each other without any thought to the proportions of the castle, which ends up quite lopsided, the beginning portions well-judged but the basement unfinished.
The second half of Gator-on is unorthodox and allows for lots of fun descriptions, but it accepts so narrow a range of commands that the player barely gets to take part. I was gnashing my teeth because I couldn’t get Gator-on to gnash his — or to do much of anything else.
Interface: You’re trapped in a crude, robotic construct, with only your sense of sight and the ability to pick up and drop things. See also every other game in the comp.
Earl Grey contains “sea ions” that you have to change into sea lions who come together to howl at the moon, producing a gaseous spirit that feeds on lice and/or ice, thereby freeing your companion, who produces a sword that you change into a word, so that you can change something else into something else. Not my cut of pea.
The Totally True Story of a Real Invisible Man: If it were this frustrating handling envelopes, unlocking doors, and using computers, I’d want revenge, too. The central joke — that the protagonist’s invisibility only complicates his revenge — is belabored by puzzles so contrived that none but the saintly would want to see it through.
Eruption: If you find a spelling error, you get 100 points and win the game immediately. The series of hints about the rat puzzle was quite funny, but it only serves to underscore how small and dormant a world this is.
Spelunker’s Quest: How do I get past the rats? In Eruption, you don’t have to; they didn’t make it into the game. Here, you get to slaughter them with a machine gun. Yep, it’s just another day in the life of a spelunker.