Portugues
Midnight at Al's
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About the game
Its full title is Midnight at Al's Self Storage, Truck Rentals, and Discount Psychic Readings, and that is the whole problem. It was supposed to be an easy summer job before college. Joe, the owner, handles the truck rentals himself, nobody knows who Al is, and you are not at all sure what goes on with the psychic readings. All you know is that every evening Joe hands you a list of chores and leaves in a hurry.
Tonight the list looks simple: three boxes, one purple, one green and one red, to be carried to the loading dock from the basement, the attic and wherever the third one is. Finish, and you can sneak a nap in the comfortable armchair in the break room. Of course, a building with a door labelled Seance Room is rarely as simple as its chore list.
Thomas Insel, who also wrote Red, made the game for ParserComp 2022. It is a compact puzzle game with a sense of humour, and can be finished in one sitting.
Playing it here
Click Play now and the story starts in the player. Everything is typed: write a
command after the > prompt and press Enter. The game is in English and
understands short sentences such as take the green box or open the hatch.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
north, south, east, west, up, down (or n, s, e, w, u, d) |
walk |
look (l), examine (x) something |
look around, or look closer |
read list |
check Joe's list of tonight's chores |
inventory (i) |
list what you are carrying |
take, drop, open, close, put ... in |
the usual ways to handle things |
hint |
a nudge about what to do next |
about |
the author's notes and the credits |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
A few things worth knowing
The list is your guide. read list whenever you are unsure what you are
supposed to be doing; the game may add to it as the night goes on.
You cannot ruin your night. The author promises that nothing you do early on will keep you from the best ending, so experiment freely.
Check the counter. The things lying around the break room are there for a reason, and so is your backpack.
Ask for a hint. hint points you back to the job without spoiling the
puzzles.
Credits and licence
Midnight at Al's was written by Thomas Insel in June 2022 for ParserComp 2022. It may be shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, as the game says in its ABOUT text. The story file served here is the Glulx game from the author's itch.io page; the cover and other pictures in that file are not covered by the notice and are not distributed here. The licence text is linked from this page.