Ad Verbum

ad verbum by nick montfort is a treasure-hunt puzzler in the retro tradition. there is a house with objects inside, and you are an adventurer. collect all the objects to win. it even has a trophy case an atrophy case to put your “treasures” in. so far so standard.

the fun comes in with the nature of the puzzles. ad verbum plays with language. the puzzles are all based around wordplay. for an example, let’s look at an early location, the Sloppy Salon:

Simple social space, sadly spoiled. Some skewed situation’s sequel, surely. Seemingly, slovenly students sojourned – scraping, scratching, scuffing surfaces.

the room contains two objects, a stapler and a sofa. you need to get these out of the salon and into the atrophy case. the command take stapler is met with:

Stop! Stop! Sinful speech. Select superior symbols.

the puzzle of this room (and in many other rooms) is to figure out how to grab the treasures within and exit while following the room’s rules. i’m not going to spoil the solution here, or the solutions to any of the other puzzles, but there’s a great deal of satisfaction in figuring out the rules and what words to use to follow them.

there’s an inherent downside to this kind of puzzle, though. if you get the rule but not the right wording, it can devolve into “guess the verb” pretty quickly. this is where the hints come in handy. the game’s hint system offers increasingly-specific clues for each of the puzzles, which is nice. i ended up needing them more than i would like, but i can’t tell if that’s a design issue or a personal failing on my part. (the worst part is when you turn to the hints to find you’ve got the right idea but the wrong phrasing. this is a common pitfall in IF that is exacerbated by the strong wordplay focus here.)

even if i was frustrated with it at times, i still think it’s worth playing through just for the joy of it. i laughed a lot playing it, partially from the fun of absurd linguistic restriction, and partially from the satisfaction of finding the right synonym contortions to use.

overall: well worth playing, even if getting the last lousy point is nonsense.