Anyway, I enjoyed the hell out of last year’s Death off the Cuff, which was a spot-on Poirot parody, so I am looking forward to PataNoir as another example of Simon Christiansen doing genre well.  If he disappoints me I’m eating his half of the muffin.

[spoilers begin here]

>x butt
An old cigarette that you couldn’t bother to finish.
Wow.  That’s… as an ex-smoker, lemme just assure the never-smokeders that this is symptomatic of major problems.  I smoked some of my cigarettes twice even.

Ah, my trusty revolver, in the single desk drawer.  I wonder, if you examined all the desks in every IF game, what percentage of them would have one lone drawer?

“PataNoir” is a surreal noir game, which differs from an ordinary noir story in ways that should become clear early on. Make sure you try to examine and interact with everything in your surroundings, including things that are not literally there. Especially those. Every time something is “like” something else, you can try to interact with both things. Once you have some things, try giving them to people or putting them on other things.
Oh!  That’s fucking sweet!

He raises an eyebrow. “I haven’t selected anyone Mr. Reilly. Perhaps you could tell me why you would be the right man for the job?”
Because I’m batshit insane.

>take marble
Taken.
Found my marble!  Oh!  Oh ho ho ho!  A ha ha hee hee hee hoo hee ha ho ho ho hyeeeee-ah!

I like that you’re kept in your office until you’re able to demonstrate that you grok the game’s weird mechanics.

“Of course. My daughter’s name is Lisa von Bülow” – he shows you a photograph – “she is 22 years old, way too old for this rebellious nonsense in my opinion.”
22 seems like a perfect age for rebellious nonsense!

The air is cold and clear, like the justice we all seek, but never find.
>x justice
You can’t find it.
Fair enough!

Man, I dunno what I’d do without my trusty revolver Smith Wesson to give me hints.

All this dude has in his kitchen cabinet is a bowie knife?  He must be a serious badass.  Like, instead of making a can of beans or something, he stabs himself until the pain overshadows the hunger, or maybe just eats the knife.

Wait, this rust on my office chair is actually blood?  How would I have known that if Smith hadn’t pointed it out?

Hey, where’d my knife go?  I wanted to use it to cut some fog!  Oh, I guess they confiscated my weapons when I entered the bar.  Damn.

>cut fog with knife
The knife is real. The fog is not.
Aw, man, and here I thought I was being so clever making my knife all tiny like a tiny needle.

Wait, shit, I hope I didn’t fuck myself using the record on the Baron.  Can I get that back?  Yes.  Phew.  I can.

Thanks for getting me fucking killed, Smith!

So, I really like the game’s concept, but I feel like its internal logic is lacking a sort of consistency, or I’m missing things.  Well, I know I’m missing things:  Smith will often say “Hey, this [item you didn't notice and have no idea where it came from] might be helpful in this situation!”  Also I’m not sure what’s changed after this scene at the police station, or what I’m supposed to be looking for.

Oh!  I needed to talk to the detective one more time for him to unlock a new location.  That could have been clearer really.

The living room is littered with expensive furniture – the kind that exists that exists solely to show that the resident can afford it.
Man, now I’m trying to imagine what completely functionless furniture would consist of.  I guess you could have just the frame of a couch made out of diamond-studded platinum.

The Doctor shines a flashlight in your eyes. “The patient does not respond to visual stimuli.”
He sighs. “And I genuinely thought he was getting better. I guess you can’t save everyone.”
The orderly wheels you back to your room. The white walls are like nothing in particular. It is quiet here.
    *** You have lost your mind ***
…oh.  Well then.  Actually, technically, I think I lost my mind before this game even started.

Yeah, I’ve kind of run out of steam on this game.  Again, awesome concept, just could have used better cluing, for me at least.

[spoilers begin here]

As near as I can make out, I’m a rather immoral doctor being resuscattempted by some paramedics.  Neat!  (Yes, “resuscattempted.”  Look, I could have come up with a better way to say “being tried to brought back to lifed by some paramedics,” but I don’t have that kind of time.)

Nice and atmospheric, this game is.  I think I’m supposed to find some dude’s hat.

About a half-dozen plaques of various sizes, all engraved with some version of the Hippocratic Oath. They have all been tarnished.
I’m getting the sense I was a very bad doctor.
He holds up the book and peers at it. “An interesting individual, this Doctor M, someone who was either a mercy killer or a murderer, depending on your point of view. Euthanized more than one-hundred patients within ten years, all of whom are mentioned in here.”
Oh.  Yeah, that’d do it!

Hmm, are these my own personal shoulder angel and devil?  I’m not sure why else they’d be assigned to work together, although I admit to not knowing very much about these things.  Oh, no, I guess they work at the inn as representatives for their respective afterlife retirement communities.

Huh, if I knew someone’s name, I could look them up in the stacks.  But I don’t, so I can’t.  Also I’m not sure how to get to the cellar and fix these taps.

I wish the game automatically assumed I was trying to look up a drug in the pharmaceutical guide instead of the burnt scrapbook.

Man, I am hitting the hints so hard.  It’s a combination of not being clever enough for some puzzles (spigot huh?  what wheel?) and others requiring you to do things like ask the devil about the inn so he will tell you about one particular stone in the fireplace.  You won’t notice this stone yourself unless you have ASK DEVIL ABOUT INNed.  Therefore, the answer to “How do I get into the cellar?” is “Ask the devil about the inn,” which is not really a thing it would occur to you to try.  (Asking him or the angel about the cellar seems more reasonable, but yields nothing.)

Gaaaah all this loosening and tightening couplings would be annoying even if I remembered to disambiguate between the steel and copper ones ever.

Also these biographies would be more helpful if there weren’t two thirty-year gaps in them.

Look, game, I’m enjoying you.  You’re pretty intriguing, even if you seem to want me to clarify my position on assisted suicide a whole hell of a lot.  I just wish I knew what you wanted me to do, is all.

Oh!  I can move the ladder?  Man.  Also, how would I know Janet Evans’ name if asking someone about “heiress” hadn’t redirected to asking them about Janet Evans?  Oh, it’s in the ledger?  Well okay then!

What am I supposed to do with this homeless man in the alley, game?  Yes, I know I killed him already, I meant more specifically.  Oh, get the Deliverance Device working and use it on him?  Man, that sounds complicated.

Yes, I know my patient has arrived and is waiting to see me.  What is the syntax to have you send him into my office already?

Man, I really don’t want to euthanize this kid, but I guess I did already.
>thomas, go home
There is no reply.
Damn.

Oh shit, twist ending!  Remind me to be wary of people whose biographies trail off into ellipses in future.

Well, huh, am I really supposed to make a black-and-white morality call on this guy?  I don’t actually feel very comfortable doing that.  Guess I’ll see what’s been written for both.

Hell, it turns out?  Is nasty.  Worse than baseball even.  I’ll tell you that one for free.

Oh, these guys were my shoulder angel and devil!  I guess your shoulder angel and devil are paired up for eternity and someone else gets them when you die, like buddy cops.  (You know how someone else gets your buddy cops when you die.)

So, yeah, hmm, I am not sure how I felt about that.  In the heaven ending, you are the greatest guy, and everyone is so happy that you’ve cured them, which reads to me like heaven is a place of blissful denial.  In the hell ending, well, hell sucks.  Your patients are miserable and they take turns tormenting you endlessly, which is the flip side of the heaven coin.  Neither of those seem like just rewards for a guy who (per my interpretation of his actions) justified morally questionable decisions by genuinely believing, as is the human wont, that he was doing the right thing.  So I’m left kinda unsure what the point of the exercise was.

I enjoyed it while it was going on, though.  Except the puzzles were too hard for me and I think I broke a nail.

Oh, and the NPCs could have known about more topics, really.  And um what is another thing I should complain about, while I am complaining?  I’m hungry.  Grrr.

close pissy horse sex
peanuts marbles banjo
what if vampires got herpes
how chocolate powder can reveal intriguing clues
how did hipsters ruin macrame owls
setting shit on fire and unlockable hats
little pink jeeps to look attractive
swedish man people
present your compliments to the melancholy curate
smoothfaced on a beach
milk in my pissy

Man.  Now I really want to know how chocolate powder can reveal intriguing clues.  (Perhaps Swedish man people know!)  Some of my recent searches, for fairness:

handy french sex phrases
fluffy baby duck videos
accomplishment of six sigma process for folder review
flail snail
woman’s place is in the ford
tell how big a lake is by tasting the water
my new pink button
the history of dentistry
boring bisexual
teasing your poultry
best crappy jobs
“tony baseball”

Hey, speaking of baseball, shall we play a game?

[spoilers begin here]

Full disclosure:  I have a really hard time getting it up for baseball.  (No, not you, Tony, you’re great.  I’m a huge fan.)  This is probably actually a benefit where this game is concerned, because I’m from southeastern Wisconsin, and I think my people are supposed to hate the Cubs.  Yes.  The internet says this is correct.

[Note: this game, being about baseball, contains baseball-specific terminology and references to people. If you have a question, WHAT IS and WHO IS should answer it.]
Oh thank God.

For baseball terms like bunt, home run, etc., you can WHATIS BUNT or WHAT IS BUNT. For players, you can WHOIS or WHO IS.
WHAT IS BUNT
HOW ARE BABBE RUTH FORMED

>what is bunt
Where a batter doesn’t try to swing at the ball but hopes to touch it lightly with his bat. Often, weaker hitters use this to sacrifice a baserunner ahead, but fast runners can get an infield single if the defense is caught off guard. A bunt foul on the third strike is an out, as the batter is deemed not to have properly swung at the ball.
I know what all these words mean individually, but I keep reading this as “blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah you know jack shit about baseball.”

So… this game starts with me in a room more or less unable to do anything besides watch a baseball game?  This is more hellish than the last game I played, in which I literally went to hell.

Oh, good, Bobby Brown’s in it, at least.  I understand the concept of Bobby Brown.  Maybe Whitney will show up later and we can watch them be on drugs.

Hmm, as far as I can tell, none of these conversation options will convince your mom to let you stay and watch the game.  I rather like that.  It’s realistic.

Didn’t I lose my wallet or something the last time I played a baseball game?  Oh, it was just in my blazer.  Cool.  I’m buying a t-shirt.

There’s nothing especially weird about him. He could probably fit in comfortably at a weirdo convention.
Huh?

Hmm, the weird-looking (but not especially weird-looking) man gave me a ticket, and told me I had to use it to help the Cubs win the pennant by, I assume, performing various text-adventure protagonist functions.  That’s sort of awesome.  I’m in.

“Well? Get going! Weird people have a right to feel awkward around normal people, too!”
Out of my sight, corporate skinbag!  Vamos!  Vamos al basebaria!  (I also feel awkward around normal people.  I worry they’re suddenly going to have two point five kids at me.)

I’m wondering if this is the sort of game I will have to replay until I get it right.  Boy, have I ever lost patience for those sorts of games.  Can’t decide whether to be sad about that or not.

You see turnstiles into Wrigley Field to the northeast. A chunk of the huge bar district is south, you hear a scratchy old recording above the crowd to the east, and the media lot is to the north.
Hey, isn’t the Metro near Wrigley?  Yeah, two blocks north.  I could skip this baseball game and… let’s see, this game took place on October 14th, 2003, I could go to the Metro and see… oh.  Nobody.  Peaches is playing in three days, though.  Aw, man, I missed Polyphonic Spree.

A bottle of ritzy antacid lies here.
Ritzy antacid?
CONSUMER NOTE: This product probably cures a lot more than those fascist repressazoids at the FDA will let us claim.
RETAILER NOTE: Do not sell for below $14.99 under penalty of law.
Hee hee!

The drunk guy to pretty women ratio is probably too high for you to have a chance.
I dunno, there’s only one drunk guy, and multiple pretty women.  Hot Christ I’m being pedantic.  Ignore that!  Ignore this!

Wait, I went and bought the Sux shirt, and then went back to Addison East to buy the cassette tape, but the guy selling it was gone, so I tried just taking it and got the “It’s the last one.  The snotty Cubs fan would notice” failure message.  This is definitely looking like the kind of game you need to replay or cling to the hints for.  And it’s about baseball.  Fuck.

Hmm, assuming I don’t need the Sux shirt for anything else, it’s actually cheaper for me to wear the Cubs shirt and spend forty goddamn dollars on a cassette tape.  If I didn’t know this was gonna be a puzzle solution, buddy…

There’re enough support beams and such that you could change shirts in a pinch, if you need to.
Oh, good, because the faster I change shirts, the more support beams I require.  Wait, what?

>take glowsticks
Which do you mean, the blue glowstick or the red glowstick?
>both
blue glowstick: Taken.
red glowstick: Taken.
I… was not expecting that to work!  Let me wipe a single tear from my eye while we appreciate the beauty of this moment.

Protip: you can X ALCS or X NLCS in the future for the AL or NL series.
I told you the future was a cool place.

Oh God there is baseball happening.  Protect me.

Do I have to give this game a fair shake, or can I plead excused on account of being bored to tears by baseball?  Can I present a note from my basebologist?*  It’s a perfectly cromulent game, as far as I can tell, but man is it ever not my thing.  Sorry, Andrew Schultz.  Sorry, Tony Baseball.

* I am my own basebologist.  This may lead to complications later in life.

What have we got left?  Oh, hey, there’s that Beet the Devil game by one-half of the people who wrote one-half of last year’s zombie hospital games, unless I’m forgetting one or more zombie hospital games.  (It is bizarre how comp games come in thematic clusters.  Know how many Australian hide-and-seek games there were the past three years?  None Australian hide-and-seek games, that is how many.  A ha ha ha!)

* A ha ha ha!

(Future Jenni says:  I totally typed that first sentence and then played a ton more Binding of Isaac, because I am a terrible person and Binding of Isaac is a really good game.  Then I went and opened the door to my flying car several times just to hear it go whoosh.  Seriously.  The future is great and you should move here.)

[spoilers begin here]

The dog on this game’s cover is friggin’ adorable.  Look at those eyebrows!  Awww.

Now I’m trying to remember if I’ve judged a competition with no dog games in it.  2008 had that one where you were the dog, 2009 had Rover’s Day Out… was there a dog last year?  Oh, there was a super cute hamster.  Yes, reading through last year’s blog posts to determine whether or not there was a dog game is totally an effective use of my time, why do you ask?

Oh, man, do you want to see an example of a thing I love in a game?
>take underwear
You collect your clothes.
>wear clothes
You pull on your underclothes and pants and shirt and socks and boots, and then you’re all dressed.
Ahh.  Efficiency.  Maybe there’s a compelling reason to make players type the commands to take and don each individual item of clothing, but I sure can’t think of one.  Oh, wait, yes I can:  you hate your players.

Smoke and divots and scorching and stinky brimstone – there’s only one thing this could mean.
There has been demons in your garden.
Well, I’ll be blowed for a widder’s Sunday hat, that scaredemon di’n't work worth a painter’s toot after all.  Fixin’ to hope they hain’t been nibbling the pumpkins.  Right pesky critters, demons.  Reckon.

Alone of every vegetable in this garden, it looks untouched by demoniac wrath[.]
What a great sentence.  I’m taking that beet.  I have a strange feeling I’ll need it.
God meant you to have this beet.
See?  God meant me to have this beet.  Thanks, God!

There’s devil-taint all over that turnip bush!  It’s right unnatural, and you won’t be having a thing to do with it!
I almost shot granola out of my nose, reading that.  If your goal is to provide one sentence that makes me shoot granola out of my nose, you could do a lot worse than “There’s devil-taint all over that turnip bush!”  Although if that’s your goal it is an incredibly shitty one.

With a careful look around, though, you find one onion that might be worth something.  You pull it up, and – yup, that one’s not so bad off.  Almost makes you tear up a little.
D’oh!

The puppy bumbles out of the hay and pounces on your boot, wagging its whole rump enthusiastically.
PUPPY!  Puppy puppy puppy PUPPY!

Hmm, I wonder which of these vegetables the ferryman would like?  I sure hope he takes vegetables.  I ain’t got no damn money.

I feel as though there’s something I could do with this onion that would get me past this giant floating eyeball, but I don’t have anything sharp enough to cut it with, and I’m not sure what else to try.  Are there hints?
In your head, you speak a few hopeful words to the Lord.  The ghostly white onion shines with holy light!  You glance around real fast, but it seems like no one else saw it.
Thanks, God.  I’m trying not to say that too sarcastically because people get upset if you’re rude to God.  Like, historically, that is a thing people get upset about.

Oh!  I didn’t know there were going to be teeth in that chair.  (I am starting to think Carolyn VanEseltine has a thing for unusually-located dentata.)

Nothing cuter than artichoke demons!  But what am I supposed to do with you guys?

Y’know, I’m glad to have both hints and location-specific walkthroughs, but I wish the hints were more verb-focused than vegetable-focused.

I am not sure I ever would have thought of cooking brussels sprouts to stink out the big-schnozzed guard.  I don’t cook a lot of brussels sprouts I guess.

“That’s real hot,” the imp shrills.  “I can taste that evil all over you.  Go on in!”
I so dare you to use that line during your next sexual encounter.

>give bone to puppy
The puppy chomps joyously into the rawhide bone and promptly flops down on its tummy.  Rawhide bones are so distracting that there’s no room for anything else in the puppy brain right now.
Awww!

>give bone to demon
Crossing its wrists* gorgeously, the demon does something unprintable with the ghostly white rawhide bone!
“That was nice,” the demon purrs, discarding the ghostly white rawhide bone to the ground.
Um.  Wow.  I am shocked.  And now the puppy is chewing on it.  That’s… that’s not right.  Or sanitary. 

The demon attempts to do something unprintable with the ghostly white limp celery stalk, but the celery is so limp and floppy that it doesn’t work.
Well, that’s a puzzle solution you don’t see every day.  My goodness.

“You’ve GOT the bowl,” the demon roars.  “What are you WAITING for?”
Have I got the bowl?  I’ve got a tomato, and a little dog…

Oh, there is a bowl here.  Not sure how I was supposed to know that, since X DISHES yielded “You can’t see that here.”

Boy, it sure is easy to defeat demons with vegetables!  I am learning so much about hell.

Let’s see, demon on a couch, television on… I deduce that today’s vegetable is… the potato!

Damn.  Is today’s vegetable the potato?  Wait, I can turn off the idiot box?  Just, like, turn it off, not use a tomato on it or anything?  Wow.  I’m dumb.  I blame the American public school system.

Having trouble with these puzzles.  What is an appropriate target for my anger?  I don’t know.  I like that things in my inventory have acquired new adjectives to let me know how annoying I find them, though.

With a howl of raw frustration, the demon yanks the potato from your hands.  “No potato!  No potato!” he snarls.
Flinging the potato to the ground, the demon proceeds to jump up and down on the potato until it is thoroughly mashed.  Then, he kicks the mash to little bits, yelling, “I hate you, potato!  I hate you, potato!”
The demon pauses to catch his breath.  “There,” he says mildly.  “That’s how you should do it.”  Then, with a scream of infinite rage, he flings down his clipboard and storms out of the room.
I actually laughed out loud there.  Thanks, potato!

Oh, that’s awesome, the demon therapist wrote down all my actions on his clipboard!  Nice freaking touch.  Points for that.

“You know,” the demon says thoughtfully, “the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a bad idea for you to have any vegetables along when you go see The Man.”  The demon waves a hand at your half-stewed tomato and miracle beet.
This fucker is not getting my beet!  God gave me that beet!  The game is called Beet the Devil!  I mean, come on!

You raise the miracle beet high overhead.  It glows in its own light, pure and beautiful.  Everything goes slow and dreamy as you bring the beet down… and then, with the righteous wrath of a gardener who wants his bird dog back real bad, you beet the Devil.  You beet that old Scratch until he is well and truly beeten.
Fuckin’ A I do!

That was a good game.  Entertaining, lots of polish, cool moments where the game referenced what you’d done and hadn’t done.  I had trouble with some of the puzzles, probably because I was looking for consistency (also, I don’t think I would have tried sitting on that uncomfortable-looking chair in the reception area), but the hints and location-specific walkthroughs meant I never quite gave up trying to solve things myself.  This one’s going near the top of the list.

*  Crossing its wrists?  I am trying to think of anything, printable or not, that I cross my wrists to do, and all I can come up with is “giving the secret hand sign to the other members of the X Blam Robo Fury Society,” which never happens because there are no other members of the X Blam Robo Fury Society.  It’s cool, though, I get to eat all the lemon bars.  I don’t really like lemon bars, truth be told.  Oh, they’re okay, but they’re nowhere near my favorite dessert.  I don’t know why I keep bringing them to meetings of the X Blam Robo Fury Society.  I also don’t know why you’d cross your wrists to fuck a rawhide bone.  That’s the unprintable thing, right?  I’m not off base here?  The succubus was fucking a rawhide bone?

The blurb on this one makes it hard to tell if it’s a thriller or a comedy.  A thrilledy.  A Phyllis Thriller.

I am ridiculously proud of that last joke.  Moving along!

[spoilers start here]

Oooh, nice campus map!  It looks real.  Is LeTourneau University an actual school?  The internet says yes.  I bet all its corridors are finite though.  (My approval rating among MIT nerds just went up 5%, although Kevin’s still pissed at me for giving him that swirly.  I still say he should not have looked at me funny during rush week.)

Uh-0h!  Something’s on fire!  I’d better examine everything in the room to see if it has an amusing description!

>x cans
Once filled with life-giving, caffeine-filled liquids, they now stand as a shining testament of your roommate’s utter disregard for the trashcan you carefully placed by his bed.
Dude, recycle that shit.  Come on.  It’s the future.

The window used to be able to open, but ever since you broke the handle off, it is only useful for looking through.
This window is made out of hard rock candy.

What the crap, school, why are all these doors locked?  What if there were a fire?

A drinking fountain is built into the south wall, beside the lobby door.
>x fountain
I don’t know the word “fountain”.
>x drinking
I don’t know the word “drinking”.
>x drinking fountain
I don’t know the word “drinking”.
>drink
What do you want to drink?
>water
I don’t know the word “water”.
>drink from fountain
I don’t know the word “fountain”.
GAAAAAAAAH

Getting the sense that this is one of those games where a real-world location was lovingly rendered in all its many-roomed glory at the expense of density, tightness, and flow.   (Setting your IF in a real place isn’t bad in itself, mind you, it can be really cool if done right.)  Man, you know what?  I’m going to institute a new rule, since I’m feeling all gubernatorial.  I’m going to call it Polodna’s Rule of You Have Too Many Freaking Rooms Already.  Here is how it works:  if you compare two rooms in your game and are unable to find three differences between them (exits don’t count!) then one of them is extraneous and you should axe the fucker.  Corollary to this rule:  if you’re reading this thinking “yes, but what about mazes, there should be an exception for those,” you should bear in mind that absolutely no one wants you to put a maze in your game and anyone who claims they do is a weirdo or lying.  We good here?

Not getting very far in this game.  All the doors are locked except the fire door, which mysteriously just won’t open, and the lobby is pitch black.  I’m calling walkthrough.  Yes.  Already.

OPEN BATHROOM DOOR WITH PAPER?  Seriously?

The homework paper smolders a little, but you succeed in opening the door before the heat becomes unbearable.
It didn’t, wait, no, hold up a minute, it didn’t tell me the bathroom door was hot, it said it was locked, and asked me what I wanted to unlock it with.

Specific failure messages for interacting with things go down a lot more smoothly than “[whatever it is] isn’t important,” for the record.

Overflowing the toilet to put out the fire is a fun solution, but it would have been nice to get more direction away from the shower, or, hey, have multiple puzzle solutions even.

I kind of like that the shampoo and the soap have narrative justification for their untakeability, instead of simply being too unimportant to bother with.

Wait.  One of the closets is missing?  How do you misplace a closet?  Did someone put it inside the other closet by mistake?  Are we in Recursive Closet Hell?

Oh!  I never tried this lobby door because I was too focused on the drinking fountain next to it that the game claimed to know nothing about.

>pull switch
Pulling the light switch doesn’t have any effect.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>flip switch
I don’t know how to flip the light switch.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>use switch
I don’t know the word “use”.
>switch switch
I don’t know how to switch the light switch.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>push switch
Pushing the light switch doesn’t do anything.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>turn switch
Turning the light switch doesn’t have any effect.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>screw switch
You see no way to do that.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>make switch be on instead of off
I don’t know the word “make”.
>move switch
You can’t move the light switch.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>alter binary state of switch
I don’t know the word “alter”.
>compose soothing lullaby for switch
I don’t know the word “compose”.
>eat switch
The light switch doesn’t appear appetizing.
The fire alarm beeps loudly.
>torment switch until it makes its own gravy
I don’t know the word “torment”.
>it’s okay, I don’t know the word “gravy”
I don’t know the word “it’s”.
>turn switch on
You flip the switch. A few floresent bulbs in the lobby dimly flicker to life. After a short struggle, all but one turns back off.
THANK YOU!  FINALLY!  CHRIST!
(Also?  Fluorescent.  I would have spelled it “flourescent” myself.  Gotta remember that flour is to bulb as crying is to baseball.*)

A key!  Huzzah!  I hope it’s the key to EVERY FUCKING ROOM!

…so far it’s turning out to be the key to no fucking room.

Man, I feel honor-bound to play through this thing until I’ve at least seen a convict.  I was promised a convict.  I was told there would be punch and pie.

Who keeps their flashlight in the fridge?  Well, I guess it beats keeping your weed stash in a band-aid box.  Take notes, Eyes Wide Shut!**

Following the walkthrough:
>open fire door
The door is already open.
>w
You’ll have to open the fire door first.
I don’t want to play this game anymore.  Please don’t make me.

* There’s no crying in baseball.

** I really hated Eyes Wide Shut.  Maybe instead of saying mean things about competition games this year I will rip on Eyes Wide Shut so hard that it needs to go get a band-aid but all it finds is weed.  That’ll learn it.  Fucking Eyes Wide Shut.

[spoilers begin here]

Y’know, if you’d never played an IF game before, I am not sure what you’d make of this first screen, which I’m'a reproduce here verbatim without stripping out the spaces even:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been far from home. Where I grew up, and met my love. Then came the ships, and I travelled far away.

The Guardian
An Interactive Fiction by Lutein Hawthorne
Release 1 / Serial number 110929 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N)

I’d walked long in thought, meditating on my home, my love, and wondering when we might meet once more.

Did he still think of me, and wonder where I’d gone?

It was only after I felt my legs faintly ache, that I realized I had no idea where I was.

>

I’ve played more than my fair share of IF, and I still sort of have no idea what to do with this first screen.  Oh, I’m going to LOOK, of course, maybe X ME or X LEGS, but if I were a complete text advirgin I would be totally at a loss.  Let’s roleplay for a second.
> that’s cool bro
That’s not a verb I recognize.
> help
That’s not a verb I recognize.
Man.

At least this graveyard is much better implemented than the last graveyard I was in.  (IF protagonists sure do like to hang around graveyards.)

I can see a rusty gate and a blue key here.
THERE’S THAT DAMN BLUE KEY FROM THE LAST GAME

I’m on a slowly winding path through the forest on a long gentle curve between north and west.
Everybody, look at me, ’cause I’m on a motherfucking slowly winding path through the forest on a long gentle curve between north and west!  (A weird thing about first-person narration:  I am not sure my immediate response to “You’re on a slowly winding path through the forest on a long gentle curve between north and west” would have been “Jesus Christ why are you telling me this?“

Hey, where am I going, and why am I going there?

I’m climbing a mountain for no reason!  Whee!

My score keeps going up by five points whenever I manage to enter a room without impaling myself on anything.  I’m not complaining, mind you; I think it should do so in real life as well.

You know what I like in a love interest?  Some characterization.  All I know about the dude I left behind is that he was young once and possessed the capacity to smile.  Then again, that’s more than I know about myself.

This is a perfectly cromulent fantasy world, I guess, but in the absence of any context for it I am super bored.  Going north in the hope that this will either reveal something interesting or end the game.

Wait, hang on, plot hook in the library!  I am still lacking crucial background to make sense of it, but it’s a thing that happened that wasn’t a description of a rock.

Got a stone, got a blue key, not sure where else there is to go.  Pulling the walkthrough.

Oh, okay, there are instructions and backstory in the folder.  Would be nice to have these in the game itself.

Oh.  I was supposed to drop the stone back in the tomb.  And now I have.  That’s cool.  It’s cool that this game was pretty well-implemented and had lots of descriptions and stuff.  I just found it really hard to give a shit in the face of such a generic story and sheer lack of impetus.  (At least I finally found that fucking blue key.)

You awake in a grave, with no memory of who you are or what happened to you. Using the items around you, you must escape the entity pursuing you and uncover the astounding truth of your origin.
That’ll do, peg.  That’ll do.

[spoilers begin here]

You have a peculiar stiffness in your joints, and no memory of who you are or where you came from, but you realize that you must have been ressurrected.
Ain’t no beauty queens in this locality!  I tell ya.  (The potential to make new beauty queens out of whole cloth, though, is probably higher than in most places.)

Wait, who is this Joanna person?  Don’t tell me Josephine Wynter is a pseudonym!  (I suspected as much, but then again I straight-up know a guy named Simon Whyte.  How nom-de-plumy is that shit.)

The walls lean in, making you feel almost claustrophobic.
I am claustrophobic.  I would be freaking the fuck out right now.  Just thought you should know.

The blurb suggests to me that I should be taking the hell out of everything not nailed down, even more so than usual.  Yoink!

> x torch
It’s a two-foot long stick with one end on fire. What did you expect?
I don’t know, less in the way of overt hostility?  Too bad both ends aren’t on fire, or I could show off the snazzy moves I learned as a drum majorette.

…huh, apparently this stone altar, while closed and locked, was not nailed down.  I’m fucking taking it.  The game said I could.

Don’t give me pictograms or some other inherently interesting object and then tell me I can’t see them here!  Who does that?  (Okay, quite a lot of people, actually.  But still!)

My ability to see both an iron gates and a wooden doors is not inspiring a confidences, much.

I got a sweet sword, though!  A named blade, even!  The titular Vestiges!  I am gonna cut. shit. up.

PET CAT is not recognized.  I bet Matt was as sad as I am.

Okay, this is annoying:  how am I supposed to examine the glinting something next to the tombstone?  Hmm, maybe TAKE ALL will be friends with me.
> take all
tombstone: Taken.
…oh.

I am pulling out the walkthrough.  Look in grass?  Look in grass?  Did you even tell me there was fucking grass in this graveyard?  I’m reading up.  No.  No you didn’t.
> x tombstone
The inscription is long faded, and the stone looks ready to crumble at the slightest touch. However, you notice a glinting something next to it.
What part of that screams “look in grass” to you?  This is why people keep going on about beta testers, and how you should get some.  A good beta tester would have said “fuck you, what grass?  I’m telling Mom.”

Wait.  I can’t see the grass?  Am I in the wrong part of the walkthrough to be getting angry about grass?  Don Knotts in a carbonator, I am starting this game over, and I am clinging to the walkthrough.  Goddammit, now I want macaroons for no reason except that macaroons are awesome.

Welp, the second and third commands of the walkthrough (THROUGH DOOR and THROUGH DOORS) don’t actually work.  I have replaced them with the functionally equivalent S and E but I dunno what I’m gonna do about this GO THROUGH SIMPLE GATE business that’s coming up in a few turns here.  Oh, okay, it worked out, I guess.  This cat sure talks a lot.

You notice a tuft of grass that seems a bit more distinct than the rest.
Okay, that is fair.  That is fair and I withdraw my anger about grass, if not the entire weighty bulk of my anger, which is too large to withdraw without a hefty team of workhorses and an army of saddled warbears, riding on ponies.

Um.  So.  Remember the description of that tombstone earlier?  Scroll back up and read it, if you’ve forgotten.  The walkthrough suggests I EXAMINE TOMBSTONE, then TAKE BLUE KEY.
> take blue key
You can’t see any such thing.
Well, what the crap, game.

Note that I haven’t said a word about the story, or how it was delivered (primarily in long-ass monologues from a cat).  This is because you have to provide the player with a minimum level of not-broken before the game gets to start being about what it’s about, instead of simply how broken it is.  I did get a sweet sword, though, so points for that.

Future Jenni says:  Boy it sure is dope here in the future!  I bet you wish you lived in the future.  The cars here run on astronaut ice cream.  Also apparently LOOK NEXT TO TOMBSTONE would have gotten me a blue key, way back that time I wanted one in the past, not that that is relevant here in the future.  Whoosh.

What’s your point?

[spoilers begin here]

You were pleasantly surprised to find that it was just rum, but then you noticed a very earthy aftertaste, and everything started to fade. You felt yourself slump to the floor. You heard the others laughing, and just before everything faded completely away, one of them said in a deep voice, “Let the games begin.”
Awshit.  I suppose I should have expected this sort of thing to happen if I hung around with whist players.

I always get nervous when a game presents me with a clock, because I associate them with time limits.

The dark man stops poking around the ground for a moment and says, “Ah, that looks just like my pocketwatch, except I lost mine at noon.” He goes back to poking around the ground.
I’ve had conversations with customers that went along these lines.  My favorite was the guy who yelled at me for giving him twelve quarters in change for three dollars because he wanted a manual car wash, and those only cost $2.50.  Which, as even the dumbest dumb who ever dumbed could figure out, is only ten quarters.  (Eventually I shut up and kept his two quarters, and he left satisfied with the transaction but disgusted by my math skills.)

So, okay, if I don’t specify PUSH STEM to open the pocketwatch, I wind up clawing ineffectually at the case, but SET WATCH TO NOON works?  That seems incongruous.

Y’know, as a premise for a collection of puzzles, this one is pretty intriguing as they go.  Hope the payoff is good.

This is interesting; I’m not sure I’ve seen a puzzle like these with the board, the slot, and the malachite stones.  Essentially you’re just moving the stone around trying to find the single invisible path to its goal, so I’m not sure how much of a puzzle it is.  S’kinda fun, though.  I’ll take it.

*** You sometimes dream of a hat, but you can never describe it upon waking ***
Story of my life.

Was that it?  Should I try following the man through the bushes?  Oh, guess I can’t.  Man, that was short.  I enjoyed it while it was happening, though, even if these game-club dudes are a very strange and particular variety of asshole.

Edit from the future:  Oh!  These puzzles the likes of which I have never seen before are mazes!  Man, score a couple points for the concept of framing devices.

Maybe I can trade the gems for hats and set them on fire.  Yeah.  That’s bound to be what this game is about.

[spoilers ignite below this line]

A telephone lays dormant on the carpet.
That’s right, it’s fall, the telephones will all be hibernating.  I had expected the outskirts of a deserted town to be less… someone’s apartment.  My apartment, apparently.  Is this going to be a search for my own rare gems?

>x walls
Beige walls about eigtht feet in height.
Well, the walls have a description, which is more than one would expect.  If this were a ZZT game, I’d be standing in a room with a yellow border.  (Geek out with me, fellow aged nerds!)

Oh, man, I just… here, take this exchange verbatim.

The phone rings
>answer phone
(To communicate in Luster, TALK TO a character.)
>talk to phone
You pick up the phone.
“Hey, dude it’s Jeffrey.”
It’s Jeffrey, your friend from work.
“Remeber how you told me about your hometown?”
You do remember telling him about it, but that was seven years ago. This guy sure remembers a lot.
“Well, I heard a rumor. Treasures are there, and not just any treasures.”
He pauses dramtically before saying, “These treasures give you fame and glory.”

So, I feel like I should discuss something serious for a moment, something I’ve been thinking about lately:  to find something unintentionally funny sort of necessitates placing yourself above it.  If you didn’t value the thing below your taste level, you’d enjoy it on its own merits, right?  It is really hard to write these reviews sometimes, knowing that there is a person out there whose feelings are going to be hurt, which is why I try not to be actually cruel.  A thing I forget often is that it’s just as painful to be laughed at when you were trying to be serious.  I probably hurt people this way far more often than I realize, and I’m sorry.

One thing I want to be absolutely clear on, though, is that reading something as goofy as the exchange above fills me with pure sincere glee.  I don’t own macrame owls* because I think they are stupid and kitschy, I own them because looking at them makes me happy, and I enjoy a sentence like “Treasures are there, and not just any treasures (dramatic pause)” because for a given value of awesome it is awesome. 

The game just picked up for me, is what I’m saying.

Man, it’s kind of a bummer that this abandoned town turns out to be where I grew up.  Wonder what the story is, and if we’ll find that out.

>break door
(with Letter)
Suicide is not the answer.
bahaha what?

>take pebbles
You aren’t here to take pebbles.
That’s right, I’m here to drink and play mumblety-peg, and I’m all out of toes.

Okay, this is the part where I start to wonder if the author is trolling:
You stand at the edge of a, judging by the taste of the water, very large lake.
Is this a real thing about lakes, that you can tell how big they are by tasting the water?  I grew up on Lake Michigan, but I knew how big it was from maps.  Also I love that apparently the first thing my character does when faced with a lake is to, unprompted by me, put some of it in their mouth.

Though judging by its size, it seems more of an ocean.
Oh, that is how I can tell how big this lake is, because it tastes like an ocean!

>x lake
You can’t see any such thing.
Of course not.

There is a thing that tells me it’s a hint menu, and explains how hints work, but I can’t seem to access the actual hints.  If this is a troll game, excellent job!

>x lever
A small lever attached to the wall. A small label above it says “FAME AND GLORY”
Lever is currently switched off.
Oops, I hope I don’t get in trouble for having interrupted the fame and glory supply to this deserted town.  I’m already up shit creek for disarranging those corpses in that zombie hospital last year.

You might think that a person could enter the Sheriff Station from the Sheriff Station Entrance, but I’m not sure who’d've been feeding you such a ridiculous notion.  That Bacon boy from up the street with his rock’n'roll dancing, I suppose.  I don’t want him hanging around you.  He’s nothing but trouble.

A-ha!  A suspiciously clean rectangle of dirt that I have no idea how to interact with!  (My hands are too delicate for digging.)  Oh, maybe I need to dig with a thing?  Where in this game do I find a thing?

Man, I give up.  There doesn’t seem to be a walkthrough anywhere, which actually makes me sad, because I’m curious to see where this game was going.

Well, “best of the worst” isn’t the most prestigious position, but I can’t in good conscience place this game anywhere else.  Congratulation!

*  Okay, so I own one macrame owl, but I love them and would totally have a collection if those goddamned hipsters hadn’t ruined everything.  I know hipsters get a lot of flak for ruining everything but they really did ruin macrame owls.