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MrPigletAubergine Sky is a simple, five-level sidescrolling puzzle, in which each level asks you to use different UI to solve the level. The text provides a clue as to what you need to do, though the developer also provides spoilers (in a Help link below the Flash window) if you get stuck.
It's visually pretty, though the soundscape is sparse. You don't control the character, who simply strides sidescrolling along, but use the mouse to do whatever UI trick this level requires. The text is romantically evocative in the kind of mode that makes me reflexively flinch: a Gaimanesque, wistfully Romantic tone that makes me want to shake the protagonist and say, life is harsh, life is earnest, lucky people live lives of quiet desperation while the unlucky get raped, have limbs amputated, and are herded into refugee camps controlled by resistance forces equally as brutal and nasty as their original tormentors. And you're mooning over some chick.
I suspect the developer, like Gaiman, has a lot more success with his preferred gender than I. But then, I'm a cynical bastard.
It's a quiet, pleasant, quick play game, though, and worth your while.
The use of text is actually
The use of text is actually a little inspiring in that just straight text is really effective - why faff about trying to code in every little piece to try and convey what a few lines of text would do much more simply (a word is worth a thousand lines of code? lol)?
But it's not just that here - you don't have to read through (or just click past and ignore the text) to get on with gameplay or things happening. It's delivered with the play, in parralel rather than sequentially. It's a good idea and pretty liberating for creativity that might otherwise groan at coding alot of stuff otherwise.
On the other hand - minigames? That seems to be as far as this type of game goes - at best they make the mini games goal vague and hard to grasp, but it's still just a game that you always finish in the same way. Atleast the idea of conducts in nethack could be expanded and HOW you finish, with what sort of moral conduct you decided to hold onto, then takes precedence of play. Anyway, I've yammered on about that on my blog: http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/2009/10/tiny-review-aubergine-sky.h...