The Stack

Spoilers follow the break.

The high concept this time is that you’re a pixy in a garden full of various sorts of fairy folk. The PC’s tiny size serves to recast the world in a new perspective and transform the familiar into the novel: tulips tower overhead like trees, a ceramic garden gnome takes on the aspect of monumental statuary.

I don’t have a lot to say about this game. It’s puzzle-based, it’s on the short side, the implementation is competent but doesn’t go the extra distance that a few of this year’s games do. It uses ask/tell dialogue, and I had some difficulty at the beginning guessing a topic to start a crucial conversation. Other than that, my biggest complaint is that the game text sometimes makes unwarranted assumptions: when I found my way across an invisible bridge by sprinkling pollen on it, the game described how I took my inspiration from the clump of dirt I had seen floating in the distance — something that I hadn’t actually observed yet. The solution was guessable without that clue.

Rating: 4