12:54 to Asgard

A game about fixing a leaky roof.  Or maybe not.  By J. Robinson Wheeler
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The first time I played through this game I got stuck at an interactive bottleneck, a place where few actions were available to me and I wasn’t even sure if I was still alive.  I quit, prepared to give the game a mediocre score, thinking that it was a joke entry but happy with what I had seen so far.

But the game was nagging me to come back.  When I played a second time, I discovered several new areas for exploration both before and after the aforementioned bottleneck.  By the time I reached the two hour time limit, I felt like I had just barely scratched the surface of a massive game.  This game is fantastic.  Vast world, richly detailed, expertly coded, comically written.

This was the first game I’ve played in this year’s competition and I worry that it may set the bar too high for the other entries.  But also it gave me a good feeling about this year’s competition.

Criticisms:  I was disappointed with the initial lack of motivation.  I explored the studio for several minutes before deciding my goal was to fix the roof.  Even then, I wasn’t sure if that was primary goal.  I also encountered some minor programming error.  I’m scoring this game a nine, and I expect it to finish in the top three.  (or else win the golden banana of discord if too many others get stuck at the bottleneck.)