itch.io

You can use <<cycle>> to make cycling links. See: https://www.motoslave.net/sugarcube/2/docs/#macros-macro-cycle

Brilliant artwork. I have a cat doorstop that looks exactly like this cat :D

I hope you’ll forgive me for moving its feelers. I know they should be below the eyes, but it just made it look like it had a flamboyant moustache.

Have you checked out the first two games in the series? I’ve reorganised my account page to make them easier to find

At this rate I’m likely to end up with a special “Mouse Train” universe, if I keep on making these games. I’m somewhat tempted to do a larger Mouse Train game, but I suspect I’d spoil the sense of whimsy if I did.

Great! I found them all. Particularly happy to find a roly-poly, or as I would call it, a woodlouse, or slater. :)

How many bugs are there to find in total?

I’m surprised you are storing information like that on setup at all, given that it is wiped any time the window is refreshed :)

Thank you!

After defeating the Mist Spirit, you get the following error

The actual error text is:

Error: <<run>>: bad evaluation: can't access property "delete", setup.uniquetravelevents is undefined

<<run setup.uniquetravelevents.delete("mistspirit")>>

Error: <<run>>: bad evaluation: can't access property "delete", setup.exploreunique is undefined

<<run setup.exploreunique.delete("mistspiritinfo")>>

Error: <<set>>: bad evaluation: can't access property "push", setup.greatdeeds is undefined

<<set setup.greatdeeds.push(setup.defeatmistspirit)>>

Error: <<set>>: bad evaluation: can't access property "push", setup.greatdeedsrewards is undefined

<<set setup.greatdeedsrewards.push(setup.defeatmistspirit)>>

In the Dragon Island, there’s a room with a Stone Eel which you can allow to escape, but the “fight” option calls it a serpent instead.

Thank you so much! I definitely wanted it to be :D

I realise I never posted to say thank you! You were the only person to move comments over from the contest page to the actual game :D

As a mouse, this fills me with fear :D

Some of the endings are easy (the ones where you reach breaking point) but a few require some very sub-optimal choices :D

Let me preface this review by noting that I am parser noob — or worse, parser-challenged. Solving parser games is not my forte, though I have managed to stumble through a fair number this contest.

That said, my review is:

This would accomplish nothing.
The story doesn’t understand that command.
You cannot attack that.
The word “X” is not necessary in this story.
You cannot attach those to anything.
You see no reason to do that whatsoever.

The only valid command I managed to enter (without hints from someone else) made me lose the game immediately :D

On the one hand, I loved the introduction, the concept, the writing, the creepy/icky insectness of it all.

On the other hand, I suffered the usual parser friction of guess-the-word, without any really clever solutions that made it feel worth the effort of having to do so. The game has pleasant hinting, but that just underlines the fact that there’s a lot of guesswork in pulling the right verb from the sumptuous text. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better just as kinetic fiction?

Very much noted about the music. I’m not a musician, and I tend to turn the music off when I play games, but I know how much people appreciate it, so my next game I will try!

(I did do one game with music, but no one ever commented on it, so I don’t know if that’s a bad sign).

I had gone behind the TV and removed the panel, but the game kept telling me it was my chance to go behind the TV and remove the panel. Also I got told the panel was there after it was removed, and ended up going back and forth behind the TV for a while until I got out.

I am not sure why this is a parser game, per say. Maybe there are deep and meaningful parodies of existing parser games that I am not well-played enough to understand?

I’m going to assume that’s it :D

I very much enjoyed the mechanic, and also the feel and sound effects. It felt surprisingly short, even after a couple of playthroughs, but I don’t know if I just missed a lot of options.

I enjoyed this a lot, even as a parser (or parser-like) newb. I did struggle with a couple of the puzzles, and I also got stuck in a loop at the end, where the game kept telling me to do something I’d already done, but I enjoyed it, and loved the quirky worldbuilding.

I definitely liked this the most of the student games. Like the rest it could really have used a spell check (more than the others, maybe), but anyone using the Twine app doesn’t actually have one at their disposal, so that’s forgiveable. I liked the dreamlike atmosphere and the multiple good and bad endings.

I got lost. Then I got the boring ending. It might have been nice to tell the player what their goal was at the start.

I suspect this game is doing lots of very clever parser things that I am too much of a parser noob to understand :D

I’m glad you are enjoying the game!

There’s an element of gating going on. Like the game doesn’t want you to go upstairs before you’ve been to the office, you can’t go to the courtyard before going upstairs, and so on. The items you are looking for tend to be in another area (with one obvious exception), so if you can’t find something, check another area, and if you can’t find it there look to see if you’ve unlocked the next area.

I am invested in the world you are revealing here. Who’s in the right, who’s in the wrong (is anyone either)? I’ve swung back and forth between rooting for both sides.

It is :) Attempt at spoilers below:

I don’t have it open any more. But after speaking to another player, I don’t think I actually missed anything. It was more that I was expecting something that I then didn’t see, which is again, on me :D

I not really a parser player, so I don’t know if I had a transcript from either of the times I played, sorry!

I did indeed mean “after a wait”, sorry about that

Charming rather than horrifying, but still very enjoyable for all that. I wouldn’t have minded another couple of encounters, but given the short timescale this is still pretty impressive.

Wikipedia suggests the idea that the cap has feathers is a mis-reading. I have no idea :D

I have a distinct feeling that I am missing the twist …

I liked the way that each poem’s end began the next, but I loathed the colour, so much that I was distracted at the start of each poem turning it off in the stylesheet :D

I’m not a fan of timed text at any time, even in the service of kinetic poetry, but I confess I was really confused by the places where clicking a link displayed a whole stanza, but only after a link. The first time, I thought the game had stopped working.

I really liked the way that your room grows more and more dystopian (or at least more and more diverged from reality) as the game goes on. Whether that’s just the consequence of lack of sleep, or of the internet, or of an actual change in circumstance, I wasn’t sure.

I have to admit that I haven’t managed a proper play-through. I read quickly, and try to fit playing games in lulls at work, and so I was expecting (from the other comments) the delayed text to be infuriating, but it was much worse than I expected, and I just had to give up.

I suspect there’s a brilliant game here. The writing is snappy, the art is evocative, and the minigames are very well realised (though I note that on the first one I spent ages memorising the letter combinations, only to actually need the grid coordinates, which I couldn’t then remember).

I look forward to playing the post-contest version.

Thank you very much!

Yay!

I watched this show.

I feel like I’m always watching this show. It’s not my favourite, but it’s on anyway. Sometimes it’s about houses, sometimes it’s not.

Side note: the game just stops right … or did it break on me? I’m not sure if I’d know.

I enjoyed this greatly. It’s gorgeous, which never hurts, with a very muted yet vivid colour palette, and the yellow brick road makes a great mechanism for indicating exits (though a few of them didn’t quite line up as well they could have). I really felt for the poor Munchkins, pity I couldn’t do more for them!