Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg: IFcomp 2021

Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg is a parser-based marvel created by Arthur DiBianca. The egg is a marvelous toy, both as an in-game object and as an entry in IFcomp 2021.

I really enjoyed the way that this work combined strong writing with strong coding. You might think that you want to pick things up, move to different locations, or interact with a bigger world through the parser, but the story provides elegant distractions to explain why you won’t be doing any of those things.

Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg has discarded a lot of familiar parser actions in favor of custom commands. There’s supposed to be a manual that explains how everything works, but… you’ll find out for yourself in short order. Meanwhile, the new commands introduce persistent changes into the environment that interact with each other in unexpected ways.

I thought this entry hit the sweet spot between creating challenges for the programmer and delivering enjoyable experiences for the player. Other entries have fallen flat when authors experimented with technical challenges instead of making design choices that support the story, but Grandma Bethlinda's Remarkable Egg seamlessly integrates its story and its mechanics with playful explanations.

It was a lot of fun.