Viktor Sobol
Played 2024-09-25, IFComp 2024

Certainly something.

Spoilery thoughts follow - no really, this one spoils easy.

One small puzzle, toying with the idea of not knowing the names of things. I like little experiments like this. I have one! Although mine unfairly gates its ending behind a guessed nonstandard action. Viktor's work here is more fair, and doesn't suffer from my poor poetry.

The timed *cat* reveal was nicely done, though in the moment I wasn't sure what this information would unlock for me. I suppose it would be an important clue that the other thing could also be an animal, though I'd worked that out a turn earlier in my run.

And then, I landed on a critical discovery quite by mistake.

> sit
(on the other thing)
You get onto the other thing.

Oops! I definitely *intended* to sit on the ground and see if either thing reacted. The auto-correction is probably fine - might even be by design? - though in general I think implementation of mounting and dismounting the horse could be just a little more robust to help the player through the last step.

> take something
It's difficult to do while sitting on the other thing.

> up
You can't fly.

> off
Unintelligible.

> get up
You climb down.

I also tried this *specifically* hoping it would spur the other thing to move while I was sitting atop it. The response is fair though.

> kick other thing

You can't bring yourself to hurt it.

I think I forgot that going a direction on a “rideable” thing is a normal interaction, I figured I'd have to convince the thing to go rather than going that way myself while riding it.

Altogether a tidy little puzzle. Nice work!