IFComp 2023

What a fabulous balancing act this is! In the difficult tradition of new-old-adventure-games like *Thimbleweed Park* and *Return to Monkey Island*, this *Milliways* has to feel like “more of the same” while contending with nearly 40 years of game design innovation and audience expectations. To be honest, I've always found the H2G2 game to be a punishing, unfair, un-fun experience, and have not made it much farther than acquiring a tea substitute (though I've read a walkthrough). So if *Milliways* is even a smidge friendlier, that feels like a victory.

And it is! The built-in invisiclues system goes a long way towards making the game bearable, as do the early warnings that this is a “cruel” game prompting me to hoover items and save frequently. While the initial puzzles are pretty obtuse (I can't picture any version of Marvin successfully climbing down into a crater) it's a small space so the possibilities run out fairly quick. Then the mice were well-clued enough, and I made it through the maze on luck and the first part of Milliways (the restaurant) was well-clued and logical.

Unfortunately I hit the same game-breaking bug in the kitchen that a couple other reviewers have mentioned. I actually think I sorted out what's going wrong and reloaded my save several times trying to work around it, but this ended up being my brick wall - I couldn't get everything.

There seems to be a problem with the “taking” rule where the target item will be permanently removed from the cupboard's rotation even if “taking” fails (in my case because I'd hit my inventory limit), effectively destroying critical-path items. I mean, this is a *harsh* puzzle already since you could give away important items, but that part seems appropriate for an H2G2 sequel. What's more frustrating is that everyone seems likely to hit this bug because we're all grabbing as many items as we can, because the game hinted that we should at the start, and especially because we need an inventory of junk items to trade to the cupboards! This combined with the random nature of the cupboard and what seems like another bug where waiting makes the cupboard take two turns made even working around the bug difficult.

I also thought there was a painful red herring in the same puzzle: Once I had the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in the wine glass, and it's clear that we need to conceal the type of drink, examining the drink says that it's identifiable by its *smell*. But the solution has nothing to do with masking the smell - it's to add food dye, changing its color. Maybe the food dye was supposed to affect the smell too? I wouldn't know, I never managed to get it out of the cupboard.

For what's there, I did enjoy the writing. Bits of it have the dry apathy characteristic of Hitchhiker's Guide - I thought the various descriptions of the whale remains hit the right note. Other places it felt like the implementation was a bit thin, especially the NPCs. Since we know these characters, I expect ASK FORD ABOUT TOWEL or ASK ZAPHOD ABOUT DRINK to produce bespoke reactions, or at least a custom rejection making it clear that they're too drunk to be useful. In Milliways the description of third-class mentions there are no windows from which to observe the end of the universe… but conspicuously, second class and first class have no mention of windows either! Nor is there an ongoing stage show, or waiters milling about, or a talking cow - the whole thing's a little too wireframe. Obviously that would risk an already-tricky puzzle sequence, but I kind of love the idea of being stuck in a bustling Milliways floating back and forth over the heat-death of the universe trying to find the *right* NPC I can scam to get into the car park.

Anyway that's wishlist stuff. I like this, and admire the ambition, and would have happily struggled through on hints if I hadn't gotten stuck on the one bug. I'll watch for an update so I can try again!