IF Comp 2009: Rover’s Day Out

Just to make sure I’ve posted on all the games I have played so far.  Rover’s Day Out:

So far this is my favorite game I have played in the comp.

The morning routine part starts out a little monotonous but I think it’s important to establish this routine so you can still perform it later when there are no environmental clues.

Shamefully, I got a little hung up the first time I was told to “take care of business.”  I think the metatext threw me off, because I walked in to the bathroom, assuming (as it turns out, correctly) that this was what I was supposed to do, but my masters out of the computer then talked about how this was “the landing sequence.” The landing sequence?  I thought I was dropping the kids off at the pool! So I tried some things like ‘remember landing sequence’ which were to no avail.

Eventually I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the verb ‘piss’ was implemented.  That’s good I guess!

I got thrown off again the first time I had to navigate as the dog.  Not so bad when you get used to it but really odd to me at first.

I got a little annoyed with the implementation of the verbs to enact on the plunger. It’s like you can lean it, and then turn it, but you can’t twist it?  Something like this, and they have to be done in a certain order, or else the game will complain that it’s fixed in place.  I had no problem, however, with the ‘fix the toilet’ puzzle. Ironically my toilet broke in that exact same way just recently.

I don’t know if anyone else noticed this particular bit, but I discovered with much amusement that, when you pull the tag off of the pink pillow, the universe ends.  Normally a sudden death like that might be a little upsetting, but, hey, I did pull the tag off a pillow, so clearly I had it coming.

I’m not sure if the second half of this game is as strong as the first. I got pretty flummoxed during the boarding sequence with the robots and wasn’t sure if I was doing it right, so I finally broke down and consulted the walkthrough which only contained two solutions, one of which I’d already tried.  The only other way to kill them that I found was flashing them (heh), and every solution only worked once.  Then there is this little extra bit and it ends.

The game offered me a whole list of Amusing things I could try, but I discovered that, not only was my time up, but that I didn’t particularly feel like trying any of those amusing things. Like, I COULD go back and ‘remember’ more things about Janet’s life, but I realized I just wasn’t all that invested in that particular fiction for whatever reason.  I didn’t really end up caring about the human characters in the finale, in other words, but I was a little disappointed I never figured out how to properly ‘mount female dog.’  I must be a perv since I spent way too much time attempting this.