Portugues
The Problems Compound
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About the game
Alec Smart is in advanced classes, hates small talk, and has just finished yet another re-reading of The Phantom Tollbooth that did not cheer him up the way it used to. Then he finds a bookmark in it he does not remember leaving, and the evening goes somewhere else entirely.
The place he ends up runs on reversed phrases. Peer pressure is a pier, the people you meet are named after expressions flipped around, and almost every room and character hides a familiar saying turned the wrong way. On the way through the Problems Compound Alec meets a long line of smooth talkers, jerks and know-it-alls, and has to work out how to get past them without becoming one of them.
Andrew Schultz entered it in IFComp 2015 and kept improving it afterwards; this is Release 2, from 2016, with extra endings and many fixes.
Playing it here
Click Play now. Before the story starts the game asks two questions: whether
mild profanity is fine (answer no for cleaner text) and whether you are using
a screen reader. Then everything is typed: write a command after the > prompt
and press Enter. The game is in English. Type verbs for the commands it
needs and about for the author's notes.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
n, s, e, w, in, out |
walk; exits shows where the exits lead |
gt room (go to) |
go straight back to a room you have already visited |
look (l), examine (x) something |
look around, or look closer |
open, give ... to, put ... on |
the few object verbs the game relies on |
talk (t), talk to someone |
start a conversation, then pick a numbered option |
recap |
show the conversation options again |
verbs / meta |
the useful commands, and the extra ones |
score |
your progress, with broad hints |
about / credits |
the author's notes and thanks |
save / restore |
keep your progress in this browser and load it back |
A few things worth knowing
Say the names backwards. When a place or a person seems odd, flip the two halves of the name. That is the joke, and very often the clue.
Finish a conversation before you act. Talks use numbered options, and you usually need to end them before ordinary commands work again.
There is no hint command here. In-game, hint points to files that came
with the original download; score still gives broad hints, and the author's
walkthrough and InvisiClues-style hints are in the
game's repository.
It is meant to be forgiving. The author wrote it to be less puzzle-heavy than his other games, so exploring and talking to everyone goes a long way.
Credits and licence
The Problems Compound was written by Andrew Schultz and dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. The cover art is not included here. The dedication text is linked from this page.