Loom

You can imagine the theoretical version of this game per the emergent, systemic gameplay I discussed in my recent interactive fiction article. Without the need to create unique assets for everything, it would be easier to apply many more of the draft (in this game, a spell using notes plucked on strings wound to a distaff) effects to each object, and universal actions could have been integrated in to allow more freeform puzzle solutions. Indeed, the manual here says “There is more than one way to solve many of the puzzles.” but then immediately hedges: “In fact some of the activities… [are] simply experiences for you to enjoy.” And yes, many, many of the things you can do in this game are one-off hardcoded interactions to reward you for sketching out a puzzle solution that might have made sense in a game that had the resources to make it feasible. The only puzzle with multiple solutions (blunting or twisting the sword in the forge) is a binary-choice fail-safe in case you missed the sharpening draft from earlier, less of an expression of the malleability of the object and more of a shrug to let the player carry on.

Still, said sword puzzle has a wrinkle to it: the banging of the hammer makes playing your draft impossible, so you have to time it during an interruption when the blacksmith’s client requests an update on the progress. In another case, an invisibility draft that must be cast on two glass sharpeners can only done when you’re outside of their presence, leaving the only solution to be that one must find their way to a spot where they can see the two workers through a window and cast it from there. These succeed because they presuppose that one understands the draft that must be used and instead form the puzzle around determining how to make it usable. This gives a great first impression, which distracts from the latter half of the game lapsing into simpler puzzles more often than not, as it tumbles into a series of room-long segments with small puzzles the player can intuit based on the limited application space of each draft. It’s a far cry from the start of the game, which leaves your home village desolate and open, filled with mini-puzzles that teach your initial catalog of drafts and get you comfortable with the game’s internal logic. This is excepting when they get too overeager and get hairy with said logic, such as by breaking the “objects with the trait teach you the associated draft” rule by letting a set of seagulls remind you of the opening¹ draft that came pre-written in your instruction manual.

Using the terror draft on these shepherds blocking your progress gets them to flee, letting you progress into their guild’s area. What’s interesting is that when you initially meet them, they decloak an invisibility draft using the same notes you do, and use it in the reverse order to hide themselves again, giving you the key to a different puzzle needed to get the terror draft in the first place. This would be a great time for the game to clue you in that using drafts backwards provides the inverse effect, although to get to this area in the first place you must intuit that on your own for a separate puzzle. [src]

The primary culprit behind this tightening of the progression comes from the narrative, which opens the game with the elders of your village leaving you for dead in the looming apocalypse due to the nature of your birth, having arrived whole cloth from the titular loom that sits in their temple. You and they are Weavers, both traditional clothmakers and known mystical hermits who reside in shabby tents. With them having ascended into swan forms, you uselessly chase them across the main continent and through each of the other guilds, each of which has their own societal model and relationship status with their fellow guilds, and all preparing in some fashion for an unraveling of the universe. What becomes uncomfortably apparent, as you stumble from puzzle to puzzle, is that your elders seem to have been correct: you are the naive bearer of the end-times, destroying just as much as you repair in your wake, and eventually bumbling right into the arms of he who unleashes hell on earth with your powers.

Once you get off the initial island, the streetwise guild members you meet throughout the middle third each offer that classic LucasArts snark, cutting you in on the inner workings of each organization without becoming didactic or dry. It’s in that final third that the tone begins to change, with the catastrophic consequences of the end exacting itself in detail on every bit character you’ve interacted with throughout the game. How it handles this depends on the moment: an earlier case of mistaken identity in an appearance-swap puzzle results in a nervous off-screen death for someone who certainly didn’t deserve it, while the antagonist who starts said apocalypse has his head gleefully exploded in loving detail by Steve Purcell.² Yet as the fabric of reality tears open and you have your final moments to make last-minute amends, healing a select few characters present near the graveyards present near every guild,³ it’s an uneasy goodbye, guessing that your character will get off at the end scot-free as he has all throughout the game. Joining up with the elders at very last after the final fight makes it clear that their goal in leaving you behind was not to stop the apocalypse but to provoke fate after they had already made their escape, knowing full well that bringing you along would upset some unsaid balance. Regardless of sequels that may have answered the stories of those left behind, knowing that there’s nothing to be done to avert the scenario makes the steady hand of the progression more understandable: the closer you approached that event horizon, the stronger the invisible hand would be that pushed you into its maw. As much as it pushes some of the wonder of discovery to the side, it simultaneously reveals the other side of the coming-of-age journey you’ve embarked on, having never figured out what it all means or where your place is in a world you’re left to abandon.