IFCOMP 2006 - Delightful Wallpaper

     XYZZY Response:
     That's not a verb I recognize.

     Despite my prediction in this year’s introduction, most of my reviews prior to Delightful Wallpaper have been written after hours or days of reflection (unlike prior years, when I almost always did write immediately). I have conflicting thoughts about this game, and I figured it would be best to get it all down now, rather than slowly sort it out over the next few days.

     Word might spread, prior to the voting deadline, about who probably wrote Delightful Wallpaper (Andrew Plotkin, if Stephen Bond’s guess is right). Going on the assumption that he is this game’s author (Edgar O. Weyrd is a pseudonym of the most obvious kind), I don’t think he intended to win the competition. I think he intended to write a game that is initially dismissed, then builds a buzz after the mask comes off, leading to more post-comp chatter than most other games (save perhaps Legion, for similar reasons) is likely to get. This will lead to debate, which leads to enlightenment, which leads to many XYZZY award nominations (which it wins), and ultimately to a slot among the works of IF most frequently referenced and revered in future years.

     This will be quite an achievement for a game that essentially deconstructs the standards of “physical” access to the game world, removing the need to implement anything that involves the direct manipulation of objects. What I mean is, in Delightful Wallpaper you have no need to move things, talk to people, get things (until later, and then they’re not exactly “things”), etc.

     This isn’t a complaint. If anything, it’s shockingly clever. The first part of the game (I’ll talk about the second part in a bit – it’s almost like two separate games are stacked one on the other so that they occupy the same area) can be completed just by moving around from room to room. This sounds easy; it’s anything but. The Weyrd house is filled with one-way doors, doors and panels that are opened or closed depending on where you came from (and from which direction), platforms that raise or lower to access new rooms (again, depending on your prior movements), and a tower that turns after similar movements.

     I’m far more conflicted on the first part than the second. The first part seemed too hard. I solved some of it (half – maybe a bit more) without the walkthrough, but after a while I had to concede defeat. I made a map (with little arrows to show movements and little notes to show results), but it just wasn’t enough.

     The PC in Delightful Wallpaper carries a notepad. This is the game’s way of helping sort it all out. It works pretty well, although a couple times the notes showed an observation made by the PC which I had neglected to notice myself. Even with my map and the automatic notepad, I just reached a point where I realized the entire system was too complicated for me to solve in anything near to a reasonable manner. I became more worried that missteps would seal off avenues that would then require repeated “do-over” moves, making it impossible to know if I had originally been on the right course or not.

     I could have been seeing it as more difficult than it actually was, but this first part seemed too complex for my poor little brain. At one point early on, “a rattle and clank, somewhere to the southeast” helped me figure out which piece of the puzzle had changed. After that, though, I couldn’t figure out what was happening where. Maybe the source was too far from the destination, making it impossible for the PC to detect. Regardless, I became confused enough that what had started out as incredibly interesting began to lose all appeal. When I realized frustration had won out over fascination, I went to the walkthrough.

     The walkthrough for the first part (I didn’t use it for the second part) was hard to follow. Hints instead of a per-command list might have helped. It’s probably because I stopped to read the descriptions of rooms I hadn’t quite reached on my own, thereby losing my place in the walkthrough. Finally, after some restarts, I did make it to what the walkthrough identified as the second section of the game.

     This is where my internal wow-o-meter gradually spiked. The second part of Delightful Wallpaper takes a different approach to building one large puzzle from the indirect manipulation of the game world (although, I suppose in a way the things you do in the second section are just a different kind of direct manipulation). The first part did it with an elaborate house-turned-puzzle-box, but the second part... I don’t even know how to describe the second part. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

     Like in the first part, it took a while for me to figure out what was going on, and longer still to start making things happen. Some of it is written in future tense. Characters are in multiple locations, seemingly frozen in a single task that seems contradictory between their various appearances. When it clicked for me, though, it was really cool. What I’ve realized is that this game is memorable. This game does something that seems so completely original, it will leave a lasting impression.

     The notepad then takes on the task of helping to sort out the fates of these seven characters. Partial clues become clever rhymes one by one. It seems as though there may be alternate solutions here, but I tried to stick with the ones that kept each outcome most similar to the original clue.

     In retrospect, I’m not sure how I figured it all out without using the walkthrough in the second part. It seemed hard, but just within the boundaries of what my poor little brain could manage. When the last of them were finished, I felt satisfied in a morbid sort of way.

     And so, I’m left to reconcile what seems like an overly complicated first part that is as frustrating as it is clever, with an amazing second part that is enviably unique and entirely worthwhile. Not just that; I’m also left with something a little like a Schrodinger’s cat dilemma, where I can’t be sure I’d have had the same experience if I had believed Delightful Wallpaper to be written by a newbie. I hope my conclusions would have been the same. It’s clear that this game was written by an experienced IF author, and by this point very few should be that familiar with Inform 7. It succeeds not with a twist ending or the use of a gimmick, but by being unique in its entirety.

     I have to go with my gut, and rank Delightful Wallpaper a “10”. It’s a game I’ll remember well after this and future competitions have ended. Its funny title belies the experience it provides, but it may be remembered as one of the surprise gems of IFComp 2006. Oh – and I’m adding a “minus” to the score, as a dent against the frustration it forced upon me in that first part. Otherwise, it’s an excellent game.