“Lovely Assistant” by Bitter Karella is parser driven interactive fiction. Karella has written many past IF comp games set in Tim Burton like settings of dark whimsy. This game shares that familiar style. The PC is a magician’s assistant (Trixie) whose magician (Mugwort) has been kidnapped by a devious rival. Trixie explores Mugwort’s mansion, collecting various magical props and using them to open up new locations for exploration. The map is fairly sprawling, about twenty five rooms arranged in a highly branched pattern making it easy to overlook exits.
The writing and puzzle design are as delightful as past
works by this author, but the implementation and parser are still rough around
the edges. There is wine that can’t be drunk and a clown that isn’t parsed with
the word “clown”. There is a good in-game hint mechanism, but the fussy parser
renders some puzzles frustrating even when the player knows what to do. Many of
the author’s past works have been written in Quest, so I imagine that the
switch to Inform has come with a learning curve. This will be an excellent game
after additional testing.
This game has been entered in the 26th annual interactive fiction competition. More interactive fiction can be found at the interactive fiction database.
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