IFComp: Earl Grey
The next game on the list was Earl Grey by Rob Dubbin and Adam Parrish, which I played with Mike. He was initially underwhelmed by the title, but it was next on my random list.

If he was underwhelmed by the title, he was even more underwhelmed when a "monastic man named Eaves" informed us that "your task is to go from house to house, knocking on doors and gathering as many different kinds of tea as possible." Frankly, I felt a bit underwhelmed, too, and you know I'm a complete tea fanatic. I have, at last count, between 60 and 70 kinds of tea myself. But collection quests are dull.

Fortunately, that quest was a red herring. Things quickly got much more interesting. The game had a novel, magical wordplay mechanic. By using an object dubbed a "runebag", the player could "knock" an object's name, removing a letter from it. For example, a chain could be knocked to a chin, or a dessert to a desert. The extra letters could then be "cast into" other words, transforming a fir tree to a fair tree or a steady beat to a steady beast. We discovered some instances when we couldn't knock or cast something that we should have been able to (why can't we make people roam the streets in error instead of in terror?), and once or twice (especially as I grew increasingly tired) we consulted the walkthrough to discover what to transform. At times, things grew downright surreal. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this mechanic.

I also enjoyed the italic text that appeared in a separate part of the window upon almost every move, a sort of internal monologue that frequently made us giggle. This game had a good sense of humor.

There was only minor bugginess - sometimes what seemed like obvious commands were missing - "kick [something]", "open [something]", and "show [something to someone]" all resulted in "That's not a verb I recognize." A bit more time tweaking the game could eliminate those issues; even if kicking the monastic man was not allowed, the resulting text could tell you something like "That's probably not a good idea." A bit more time to make more things knockable and castable would add a great deal to the game, too. If the writers took the time to craft multiple endings, this could be a truly excellent game.

As it is, I enjoyed Earl Grey a great deal, and will probably replay it sometime even though I've solved all the puzzles, just to enjoy the writing again.


Note: game list and download links here. Some games can be played online while others need to be downloaded. For the downloaded games, you will also need an interpreter (more information about that here).