Grue.

The lurking grue has been a staple of interactive fiction since the grand old days of Zork. Well, I guess very few games actually use it, but if you know about Zork and its related games, you know about the lurking grue: the beast of the darkness with its slavering fangs, waiting to devour unwary adventurers who fail to solve their lightsource puzzles.

Here, we are the grue, and our objective is to devour the unwary adventurer who has wandered into our caverns without a lightsource.

This is a fairly simple game, with only a handful of possible actions. Without sight, we're restricted to our other senses to get a handle of where we are and what's going on. And as a beast, there's not much object manipulation we can get up to. We lurk. We eat. Occasionally we spook adventurers enough that they move on to another location.

I suspect I got stuck largely because I overcomplicated a very simple situation in my head.

There was some weirdness with the line spacing, which marred the experience a little. Slight as the game was, it still had a bug or two. Still, some of the parser responses were amusing. I also liked the idea of trying to navigate the game world without using sight.

In the end, though, it's only a moment's amusement. As a breakfast, it's peanut butter hastily smeared on dark (almost burnt) toast. Black coffee. Light and complete, and it does have its notes of flavour, but I think the author could do better.