IF Comp ’10 – Ben Pennington’s The Bible Retold: The Lost Sheep!

I really want to play something that isn’t going to confuse me, and I suspect the lost sheep game is going to… what is it you do with bills, fit them or fill them?  Do you know, imaginary Walter Mondale murder puppet?  No, you don’t.  You don’t know because you aren’t real.  Back in the imaginary Walter Mondale murder puppet bucket for you, then!*

Well, whatever it is you do with bills, I am expecting this lost sheep game to go down as follows:
1)  I lose a sheep.
2)  I look for that sheep.
3)  I locate that sheep, resulting in cheers, applause, and the procurement of more tang than a space astronaut.
It is possible the game will vary significantly from these constraints, but man, I really hope not.

*  Internal dialogue had by me about this paragraph:
“Dude, you’re taking this paragraph to a weird weird place, and I’m not sure your audience will be willing to go there with you.”
“Oh, come on, man, I’m just letting off steam after playing The Blind House!  Mainly, though, I really like the sound of ‘Walter Mondale murder puppet.'”
“You have a point.  Can we put him in a Walter Mondale murder puppet bucket?”
“I believe we are obligated to, yes.”
“Hey, if two Walter Mondale puppets fight a robot in a bucket, and that robot’s made of rubber, and the bucket’s full of blubber, and the blubber’s getting sour, and the robot’s using tires, and the tires are on fire…”
“It’s a rock-’em sock-’em sour blubber bucket Walter Mondale murder puppet rubber robot dire fire tire battle.  Yes.”
“And if Frodo’s involved?”
“It’s a rock-’em sock-’em sour blubber bucket Walter Mondale murder puppet rubber robot dire fire tire battle for the fate of the Shire.  Come on, we can’t put off this Bible game forever.”

[spoilers begin here]

Oh, good, the game opens with me having lost a sheep.  We are on terra firma.

Huh, the sheep keeps running from bush to bush.  I will have to come up with some sort of brilliant maneuver.

Making incredibly liberal use of the hint system.  Oh, I have to climb the tree in order to break off a branch?  A failure message to that effect when I tried to break off a branch while on the ground would have been welcome.

You strike the gnarly stick on your crook and – as if by magic – you create fire! Fabulous!
I am pretty sure it is not that easy to make fire by rubbing two sticks together, or we as a society would not have nice things like pencil factories.

Huh, the hints are stuck on telling me to rub two sticks together.  I did that, game!  How do I keep God from putting the fire out and laughing at me like that dog in Duck Hunt?

Consulting the walkthrough, which does not actually work.  Oh, okay, the bushes just had to be on fire; I didn’t have to wait for them to burn down.  I suck at lost sheep.

Oh, good, found the sheep!  Having never been to Sunday school, I am not sure what it all means as a parable.  If someone turns away from their faith, you have to set all of their other options on fire, then get on a buffalo and chase them to their house?  Then you have a party?  I guess?

Not very much to this game, and the puzzles could have been better hinted (got a version of “Violence is not the answer” with the branch, which should have been “Violence is not the answer in this particular location.”)  Still, it did what it said on the tin, which, in my grading system that is skewing terribly high this comp for some reason, will earn it a… no, it still gets a four.  Sorry, lost sheep guy.  I mean, your walkthrough didn’t work.  It’s a neat concept, dynamic walkthrough, but it needs to be able to detect what the sheep’s doing and recalibrate accordingly.  Oh, and I only consulted the walkthrough because the hints broke.  And I was only using the hints because the failure messages failed me.  So, yeah, four.