The Cursèd Pickle of Shireton is a choice-based fantasy adventure by Hanon Ondricek.
This entry is not parser-based, but its choices are intricate. You will enter text in some places, select options in other places, and open windows to click links that create additional options in menus that you might not even be aware of.
It is immense.
Cursèd Pickle of Shireton is a choice-based facsimile of an MMORPG where you can explore, take quests, build stats, and grind for experience. There is an entire adventure outside of the titular pickle's storyline, packed with outright comedy, subtle in-jokes, and external references that are serious and silly.
It's enormous, and it's amazing, but my experience felt unfocused. Compare this entry with others from the same author:
- Cannery Vale: You must finish writing a manuscript before the deadline is up.
- robotsexpartymurder: You must solve a murder before the deadline is up.
- Cursèd Pickle of Shireton: Welcome to Age of Aeons, where you can do anything!
The first two titles push readers with clear motives for investigating worlds full of immersive, engaging situations. Although Cursèd Pickle of Shireton is as carefully crafted as its predecessors, its content has to do all the work of pulling in an audience by itself.
This entry's greatest strength and biggest weakness is that it's a sprawling assortment of wonders. Without a clear motivation, it took me a long time to find the pickle — and at that point, I wasn't even sure it was a threat.
Age of Aeons, the fantasy RPG where this story takes place, is big enough and weird enough that I wonder what would happen if the pickle was left unchecked. Why not embrace the way of the brine? Would the wizards' guild steer me wrong?
Artwork from Donald Conrad:
No comments:
Post a Comment