cobaltnine | IFComp 2008

I ended up resorting to the walkthrough after creating the screwdriver and, well, bleeding out for a second time. I'm not too coordinated tonight to do a long review - my queue still has too many games on it, and I have to get through another one tonight - so let's just go through points.

The Meta trick feels like a rip-off of 'linking' from Savoir-Faire. It's cute, but I can't get past this.
Bean vs pipe? Really? Also, if pipe to bean works, bean to pipe should (with hilarious results, like a tiny metal pipe.)
Why rabbits? And really, wouldn't something like 'Lapinville is a goddamn death trap, don't go there' get around in the magician community?
Lapinville is a bit Wolfy McWolferson and that grates on me.
I feel like I'm supposed to know something about magic tricks to figure some of this stuff out, like the flaming card in the box thing.

Regarding that last point, IF shouldn't rely too much on specialized knowledge. It is possible that at this point I was not looking around and exploring as much as I could have been.

I thought this had potential, but it just didn't catch me. The jarring elements never made me really sit back and enjoy it. The bleeding, while it didn't seem to slow me down, had me worried I'd screw up if I kept bleeding, and not in a nervous way - just in a 'oh no, not again' sort of way. One wound is fine, two is just annoying.

To be fair, though, and to justify the score, I did like the idea behind it, although I feel it's slightly tenuous - if I were being attacked so often, screw it, I'd go find a job with health insurance and less rabbits. But I liked the town. I don't know why; maybe letting the descriptive parts sit overnight (I started it last night and finished it tonight) helped. The creepy abandoned building worked for me, damned if I know why. Maybe it was the mime.

Final score: 5 or 6, depending on how I feel in the morning.