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Emily Short is a great treasure in games-writing and in writing games, and if interactive fiction was still something Average People did, she would be mentioned in the same breath as Infocom for her achievements in parser-based fiction and puzzlework.
Counterfeit Monkey is the story of a international spy investigating a new advance in linguistic technology. There are a few Big Interesting Things about this game, and one of them is a spoiler you learn moments after the title screen. The first, however, is your starting toolkit: You come equipped with a letter removing device. It is all the tool you need, since you're very good at using it.
When I say letter-removing device, I mean a device that actively modifies a word. Take a card, for example. Remove the d, you have a car. Take an x from 'box' and you have a handy combat staff. And so on. Depending on the quality of the starting material you'll get better results.
That's your STARTING tool. By the end of the game you have an array of them accessible and a world of interesting new possibilities is open to you.
It is here I will pause and offer a link to the game: here. You'll want to download glulxe to run it with. Don't be scared of the name, it's programmerese.
Now, the second thing:
( Is a spoiler. )
I don't play many games like this anymore, not out of disinterest but because I have so many bought, paid-for games that I feel awkward detouring into free stuff. Like, if I start counting "games people have released onto the internet" as part of my backlog, I am going to think for a minute about what I have left to play and then I am going to die screaming and my head will explode.
This was worth the detour, though.
Counterfeit Monkey is the story of a international spy investigating a new advance in linguistic technology. There are a few Big Interesting Things about this game, and one of them is a spoiler you learn moments after the title screen. The first, however, is your starting toolkit: You come equipped with a letter removing device. It is all the tool you need, since you're very good at using it.
When I say letter-removing device, I mean a device that actively modifies a word. Take a card, for example. Remove the d, you have a car. Take an x from 'box' and you have a handy combat staff. And so on. Depending on the quality of the starting material you'll get better results.
That's your STARTING tool. By the end of the game you have an array of them accessible and a world of interesting new possibilities is open to you.
It is here I will pause and offer a link to the game: here. You'll want to download glulxe to run it with. Don't be scared of the name, it's programmerese.
Now, the second thing:
( Is a spoiler. )
I don't play many games like this anymore, not out of disinterest but because I have so many bought, paid-for games that I feel awkward detouring into free stuff. Like, if I start counting "games people have released onto the internet" as part of my backlog, I am going to think for a minute about what I have left to play and then I am going to die screaming and my head will explode.
This was worth the detour, though.
