The Baker of Shireton

Imagine my surprise when I found, in my inventory, "a quest to give". Apparently we're an NPC in an MMORPG, here, and the apparent premise is a sort of resource/time management thing. It appears at first glance that we're supposed to maximise our profits from baking and selling bread, while fielding commands from the actual player characters at the same time. This was fun enough, if a little hectic. I restarted a couple of times when it looked as though my timing was getting completely out-of-whack.

But, as it turns out, there's a lot more to this. I took a peek into the walkthrough, and there's an enormous amount of stuff to do, beyond the resource management aspect. The mind just reels in shock. It's kind of like sitting back after a good breakfast and discovering that you still have pancakes.

I didn't see all of the bigger story, unfortunately. I get the sense that it involves breaking the game-within-the-game and taking advantage of "bugs".

With everything going on at once -- as I said, the nominal resource-management part of the game can get pretty hectic -- it should be no surprise if the code trips over itself now and again. The version I played, downloaded at the beginning of the competition, had a couple of instances where things didn't quite work out the way they should: dough mysteriously not getting put in pans, that sort of thing. There are/were still a few things to iron out, but I have to say I'm already impressed by the scope of the game.

Breakfast ... what was breakfast? Sweet cinnamon rolls and a rich French vanilla blend of coffee with two creams, two sugars. Oh, and a side of ham. And a pair of very buttery croissants. And toast. Did I mention the pancakes, and would you like to check out the buffet selection afterwards?