Last Day of Summer

Short and quick, but perhaps a little lacking in focus. It initially seems that our quest, as it were, is to reach the town and sell our basket of cranberries there. The initial text pumps the game up as one of those "eager young lad looking to prove himself" stories; I remember that part of the charm for me of "The Promise", from the Spring Thing earlier this year, was that particular aspect of proving one's sense of responsibility. We sort of lose our sense of this once we get into town, however.

I think that a major issue, for me, is that I'm pretty sure there's never any mention of the Preacher's death. Even when the greengrocer reminisces about the Preacher's stories, there's no real mention of it ... I was a little concerned about jumping to conclusions here. After all, a clergyman tends to be a very prominent character in any rural community, and it seemed highly unlikely that the death of such a person would never feature in our hero's awareness. I never got a sense of any issue more urgent than the need to earn a little money from my basket of cranberries; while the knife/hat trade is reasonable in the sense that someone else has initiated it and I might as well go along (it only costs me one action, and a knife that I found somewhere) and I can see a young boy discovering the key accidentally after playing around with the sundial (sundials are fun to play with!) I don't really see why any well-brought-up lad would invade a dead man's home for no reason other than that he has the key to it. It's one of those things that are obvious only because we are in an IF game and there's nothing else to do.

Still, the game has its charm. One is tempted to draw a parallel between the "last day of summer" and the threshold between childhood and adulthood.

I'd call this steel-cut oats and apples and wholesome whole milk.