Play: 8/10 Finally a Lafore interactive fiction I can get into. It's still playful and experimental-ish like his other works, but more straightforward and understandable (to me). There are multiple endings, and the choice for your romantic partner is cool. Definitely more playful and fun than Lafore's other ones. Annoying he didn't allow for same-sex romance especially since you are given the choice of gender... kinda defeats the purpose of having that "choice." Still, this is the only Lafore game I played to finish, and had a decent amount of fun doing so. I like that you use info, like the password from the niece's reply to letter, in later chapters. I was worried this'd be another Lafore-style "read a bunch of paragraphs, noticing who obviously did the crime, then spend the net 30 minutes trying to communicate how you know they did the crime" but it wasn't at all like that! More like a slice of life dating sim game with some innocuous secret society hoarding money to cause inflation plotline (I love that it calls out the true source of inflation).

Feel: 7/10 Lafore's classic wit/non-linearity/unique brand of interactive fiction finally executed in a decent way. The optional/goofy stuff is actually fun: I purposefully got beaten by the bar people the first time I played, then took the game seriously lol. Also, lol, I love how the different romance interests respond differently to different ways of advancing (seduce that Daisy!) Never thought I'd like dating sims but judging by this, I maybe should add some to my backlog. The plotline about the Gregarine Society seems quite tenuous/irrelevant for most of the gameplay heh but still had fun playing it with the open-endedness. Definitely much more fun than local call for death etc. Finally a Lafore I beat--ironic it is his most derided while local call for death is his most praised. I feel the exact opposite...

Attachment: 7/10 I would definitely show this one to interested gamers, as an example beyond the treasure-collecting text adventures, but beyond that...