Manor is a Glulx game, and the start is promising enough: it looks edited and has a good list of beta testers. After playing for fifteen minutes, though, I have to wonder if the testers were too focused on form rather than content and play.
The game is a series of disjoint locations and events. Unlike Howling Dogs, where this is a strength and contributes to a surreal feel, the lack of connection between scenes gives the player nothing to stitch this game together, aside from the puns, most of which are revealed only upon death. I shouldn’t say that the locations and props are entirely unrelated, as there are several instances of acquiring a key item in one area for use in another, but these connections are very strained.
The puns are the wincing kind, rather than the clever and wincing kind. The cheeky parser voice is instantly annoying – the poke in the ribs when turning around and walking into a wall is just annoying. Getting the parser voice right is a tricky subject, and one that has been done so often that it’s a liability when the game doesn’t manage to do it deftly. The default neutral library responses have been replaced with generally more annoying version. Points, I suppose, for customizing the messages, but the replacement doesn’t make the game expereince better.
There are a lot of ways to die in this game, most ways are not sensical or forewarned, and each rewarded with a pun. I guess that is the point of this game. At least it is easy to undo from this state.
Some spoilers after this point
