"You're an unlikely IF hero: Wang Lo, a meek but persevering and prosperous Chinese farmer. Your adversaries: a serpent, your faithless wife, and a disloyal farm hand. Your allies: a tortoise, your strapping son, a trusting servant girl, and a ghostly ancestral apparition. Quite a story ahead of you, wouldn't you think? Would you believe that the game can be won in only thirty turns and contains only nine locations? With the economical prose characteristic of a folk tale, Whizzard drops you into the Chinese folkloric past, sketches out characters and plot, and delivers a moral, all in a very satisfying thirty minutes or so of play.

Whizzard has streamlined his game in several ways: One is to simplify interactions with NPCs; verbal interactions are limited to "talk to NPC" and giving them commands. Carryable objects are few, and ones that have served their purpose are tidily moved out of the player's reach.

Even with these simplifications, the game does not feel sparsely inhabited. The game understands most nouns that appear in room descriptions. Default responses have been nicely handled, often changed to reflect a more Confucian approach ("That action seems unlikely to save you, wise one.") than the epistemologically challenged standard TADS parser responses ("I don't know how to X the Y.").

The puzzles are sometimes a challenge, but Whizzard provides a progressively more explicit hint system. The game therefore appeals to puzzle fans and story fans both. Puzzle fans can tough it out without the hints. Story fans can breeze through the puzzles using hints, which is a nice way to allow the story to flow easily, a great pleasure in this game." Highly recommended!