Exploring the house seems to be the goal, although it’s necessary to traverse a mountain path with a steeply sloping side to get there. Suppose the player finds a large carpet, among various other items, inside a house at the top of a mountain. This would be easiest to explain by spoiling the specific instance to which I refer, but I’ll do this with a hypothetical (though similar) example. It’s not enough to just hide a puzzle behind a non-intuitive action, because a player will almost never stumble on it if unaware the puzzle even exists. The player must see a challenge, and then be able to deduce the non-intuitive action based on clues he or she has already seen or can find elsewhere.

To build a puzzle out of non-intuitive actions, the player has to be shown a problem begging for a solution. It’s the part about non-intuitive actions that seems misguided. “I’ve done my best to make it impossible for you to make the game unwinnable without knowing it, but any decent game will require a fair amount of browsing, searching, and generally non-intuitive actions, just for thoroughness.” It could be more fun, but some poorly-clued puzzles (maybe based on a faulty design philosophy) and a variety of quirks and bugs keep it from shining. I expected this year’s entry to be more fun, well-designed, and a good deal more polished. They call you Packrat, but who’re they sending to wake the Princess? Not only has the faraway Prince failed to deliver, but it’s just come out that a hefty royal loan has had twenty years to accrue in default, and the repo giants are on their way.īill Powell entered the IFComp last year with a two-part game ( MANALIVE 1 and 2) that, despite many problems, I still enjoyed. Played On: November 4th and 5th (1 hour 50 minutes) The “official” version can be found at my website:

Packrat game as seen on icarly