IFComp08 Review: LAIR of the CyberCow
This game takes itself exactly as seriously as you would expect a game called LAIR of the CyberCow to take itself.
It is also not a particularly good game, but after the cavalcade of horror I've walked through, it's also not a particularly bad one. There's a plot, of sorts. There are puzzles. Many of them are even clued. I only had to fail over to the walkthrough once, and that was because I was an idiot and didn't read the room description carefully.
ADRIFT games often have horrible parser failures, but I never really ran into any more serious than getting a default message instead of the intended custom one depending on phrasing. Either this was a well-specified game or I'm getting better at dodging ADRIFT's infelicities.
Specific bad things: There's totally no excuse for not letting me UNFOLD THE PACKAGE in the location I find it. Timed pauses in the output are likewise unforgivably obnoxious. Even [press a key] pauses grate if they're too common. I'm literate; I'm totally happy with reading at my own pace. Give me all the text to read at once, please.
I also got the general impression that there was a lot more backstory involving the fairies that I never reached and that was never explained. It could have been there; the CyberCow's definitely was. But you had to examine just the right objects during a brutally timed sequence to get it. Both could be mainstreamed more.
In conclusion, this is about the minimum amount of work you can do and not be a waste of time... but it wasn't a waste of time.