JG Heithcock. 43rd place, IFComp 2022.

Jeepers I want to like this more than I do.

The Last Christmas Present is a parser adaptation of an IRL Harry-Potter-themed Christmas scavenger hunt in and around the author’s home. If you scan the readme included in the download you can find an online version of the custom Marauder’s Map they put together! It’s extraordinarily cute, and the particular house is well-suited to it with secret doors and such. This might be the strongest possible conceit for the “game about my house” genre with a reason to explore, a healthy dose of make-believe, and Papa following along providing hints.

I was especially grateful for those hints, because more than a few hiding spots weren’t especially well hinted in the main text. Many small implementation gaps added up to a bumpy search for clues.

• Right at the start, I dug through the layers of the map, but I was unfortunately stymied for a long time trying open flap / open top flap / open bottom flap / open hogwarts. I eventually reached for a hint and finally tried open flaps which worked. This bit of guess-the-noun before reaching the poem that is really the hook for the game was a sour first impression.
• I had a little trouble orienteering - and this might be my fault, I didn’t have pen-and-paper at hand to draw a map. Room descriptions don’t consistently list all exits, and there’s no EXITS command, so I’d often find myself mashing directions and hoping the exits hint would come up. On the other hand, there’s a quite good GO TO that not only worked fine but feels more natural to how my ten-year-old self would engage with a scavenger hunt.
• Bits of scenery were usually implemented, but often described as uninteresting, which took a little flavor out of the hunt.
• I thought the bookshelf was a secret door but push bookshelf said it doesn’t budge. It wouldn’t have been nice if both worked (it does rotate!) or if there’d be a small hint that pull might work.
• The dark stairwell in the potions room is “north” in the room description, but is only implemented as “down.”
• The pots in the south alcove don’t seem to be hinted at in the room description or any chain of examinations that I could find, so the “cauldron” references weren’t helpful. Of course, they would be IRL! Maybe something that got missed in the transition to a parser game.

So I found myself fighting with the game more than it probably intended, and that took a bit of the fun out of it. All that said, the bones of the thing are great. I especially liked the ending: Finding the phone number, remembering exactly where I found a phone I could use, and then following the ring through the house. And I have to credit the hint system, which is not only adorably in-world, but was very granular and totally got me through the game despite the above issues - I never turned to the walkthrough. There are already five credited playtesters, and I feel like with a few more rounds of testing and editing it will really shine.