IF Comp '08 Review - Geoff Fortytwo's Magic!
Geoff Fortytwo is, of course, a pseudonym* referencing the number of penises Kevin Smith can suck while flying from west to east across the Soviet Union, fnord fnord. That sentence you just read was itself a reference to three other references to I don’t know how many things. It is very referential in here tonight. I blame Andrew Plotkin.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, Geoff Fortytwo’s Magic!
[spoilers begin here and don’t forget to vote, fellow Americans, unless your vote is going to cancel my own, in which case elections are next January]
This is a nightmare. Their eyes, one dozen pairs of malevolent evil staring at you with loathing and hatred.
Oh no, loathing and hatred? Both of those things? At the same time? IS TERRIBLE!
A deft flick of the wrists and three solid rings are now joined like an aborted Olympics logo.
I’m not sure he really meant “aborted,” but hot damn is that a great mental image. Doctor with the pliers… okay, that’s probably just me. Sorry Mom.
I like this introduction. How dare that kid prefer clowns? Clowns are horrid!
The alley behind the magic shop is where you go when there is nowhere else that you can go.
Like, what, when the magic shop’s closed? And, um, my apartment is closed? And the streets are closed? When is that?
I am a filthy mail-stealing bastard. It’s awesome.
Oooh, this meta trick looks neat. I compare two things and am then able to swap them out for each other, I think? Lemme read that a few times.
Okay, sort of get it. The instructions assure me that this trick is plot-driven and I should be able to figure it out. The instructions do not know me very well.
Advice in general: it is more writerly-looking when you try as hard as you can to keep from repeating the same word, unless you’re Going For Something With It. If this means ripping apart one or more of your sentences and changing verb tenses, screwing with adverbs, yanking the legs off pronouns and throwing them out of a window, do it. It’ll be worth it in the long run. (Very common words, of course, excluded; also someone needs to come up with about four more synonyms for “movie” so those poor bastards who take film classes aren’t left alternating “movie, film, motion picture, work, masterpiece, triumphant return to the cinema, magnum opus, thingy, stuff, absolute piece of shit.”)
“Bob Hopeless” is exactly the sort of joke my dad would find very funny. He would laugh and laugh at that. “Bob Hopeless,” he’d say. “That’s very good. Very funny. See, it’s like Bob Hope. Remember Bob Hope? Only instead of Bob Hope, it’s Bob Hopeless. That’s very funny.”
OH SHIT DUDE ATTACKED BY A RABBIT I MEAN DUDE COMMA I WAS JUST ATTACKED BY A RABBIT NOT THAT SOME DUDE WAS JUST ATTACKED BY A RABBIT I UNDERSTAND HOW THAT MIGHT BE CONFUSING
Oooh, I am a mail-stealer and a housebreaker! And, I hope, a burglar! Also I am presumably bleeding all over the carpet! I am awesome!
Well, I have their mothballs. That’s a start, I guess. If I want to feel superior to these people I can put their mothballs up my ass and then back in the closet and then the mothballs in their closet will have been up my ass. Isn’t that fantastic? Huh? Well? Isn’t it?
…does nothing for the bleeding in any case. Also I doubt the parser will support it.
>put mothballs up ass
The word “ass” is not necessary in this story.
(If this was an accidental misspelling, you can correct it by typing OOPS followed by the corrected word now. Any time the story points out an unknown word, you can correct a misspelling using OOPS as your next command.)
Neat feature!
“You were attacked by a Holy Coney? I’m sorry, but I should not have interfered. You will have to leave now.”
…huh. This game is odd a little.
I am not quite sure what I am supposed to be doing. There are bits all around that look like puzzle pieces, but without any idea of what my ultimate objective might be, I’m at a loss. We shall investigate the hint system.
…hmm. I seem to have fucked myself by going to the chapel to get healed instead of knocking on the door of the closed magic shop? I don’t even seem to be able to be bitten again by anything, despite the fact that there are bunnies in the pet store who hate my guts. I suppose I owe the game a restart for, I dunno, the spirit of good sportsmanship coursing through my primarily-English veins, or some shit like that.
Well, that went better. Rabbits still hate me, though. I suppose that’s going to be a plot point… hmm, we are in Lapinsburg. Lapin meaning “rabbit.” What does any of this have to do with the devil children? More importantly, how long can my attention span I wish I had some butterscotch pancakes. Okay, focus focus focus game with the rabbits we are playing it, right. Okay.
Away from shelter the wind picks up and exacerbates the misery of the rain.
The rain is unhappy because the wind is unsheltered. In other news, they’re having a twofer on vaguely-directed modifiers down at the Vaguely-Directed Modifier Shack.
Okay, is there any indication besides the hints that I am supposed to compare this drainpipe to this bean? Is this something I would have figured out without the adventure-game standby of comparing everything to everything else? I am sort of thinking not.
Oh shit, the guard’s dead. Betcha it was the rabbits.
No, hints, I didn’t see Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, and I’m pretty sure the reason I didn’t see it was because it isn’t actually a movie. Oh, okay, that’s what he and Sean Connery were after in the Last Crusade? That is the one Indiana Jones movie I haven’t seen.
Tighten the brass screw with the delicious screwdriver. [31/35]
Ha ha. Now compare it to the screw. [32/35]
Oh, I’ll give you a delicious screwdriver, hints. You better believe it.
Gonna call time on this one. Rundown: A few punctuation errors and things, nothing horrible; no bugs encountered; ratzerfratzing puns (and I’m not sure that screwdriver one is legal); puzzles that someone more inclined in that direction might’ve enjoyed solving; and writing that gets the job done but not very much more than that. Let’s, oh, how about six.
* No, turns out I am wrong here. Geoff Fortytwo is, according to Newlin, Geoff Fortytwo’s bona fide legal-type name, and more power to him, I guess.
1 year ago