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IFComp 2018 Game File
Requires a Glulx interpreter. Visit IFWiki for download links.
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by David Welbourn

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Junior Arithmancer

by Mike Spivey profile

2018

(based on 49 ratings)
5 reviews

About the Story

A one-to-many-room puzzler.


Game Details


Awards

Winner, Best Puzzles; Nominee, Best Implementation - 2018 XYZZY Awards

7th Place overall; 2nd Place, Miss Congeniality - 24th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (2018)

46th Place - Interactive Fiction Top 50 of All Time (2019 edition)

Editorial Reviews

The Breakfast Review
On the whole, a lot of fun for anyone who's into purely cerebral manipulation puzzles.
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McT's Interactive Fiction Reviews

It is one of those games that if you like this sort of thing, then this is a thing you will really like. The puzzle mechanism is exceptionally well implemented, the narrative might be thin, but it does succeed in adding character to the game. To me, the puzzles felt hard but fair.
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The Good Old Days

Anyone who has done some serious maths will tell you that it can be quite magical. Even with the most basic of operations you can do some impressive tricks with astonishing results. It is that feeling of wonder you get, when you finish a long set of calculations that end up with surprising – simple but true – answers which makes people love mathematics. Just think of the flow of solving a problem, that single moment when everything fits together and you see all the connections, and you might know what I mean. And this magic moments is exactly what Junior Arithmancer is all about.
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These Heterogenous Tasks
This is a game for people who like to do maths puzzles for fun, with a thin veneer of Zorkian narrative. The presentation is clean and clear – the narrative veneer does a good job of explaining how the puzzle format works in-game and the mechanical progression eases you into it... But it’s very clearly a game where the principal reward for solving a maths puzzle is another, harder maths puzzle, and I only really enjoy puzzles when they have substantially more narrative integration than this.
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IFComprehensive

The game is really about abstract number puzzles, or even computer science and programming puzzles, rather than mathematics per se. Despite its similarities to ABCA, it reminds me of programming games like “Robot Odyssey.” It’s also one that rewards creativity in thinking about and exploiting its mechanics, which is a great feature in a puzzle game.
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Portage Magazine
Junior Arithmancer gracefully combines storytelling and puzzle-solving in a way that few other games manage to. At the same time, you’ll feel both like a novice student and a master mathematician. All this is achieved through innovative puzzle-solving that requires you to look at the solution from a different angle. Sometimes the solution may be right in front of your face, and other times you may have to come back later once you have the correct spell, but any way you go about it, the solution will always be immensely satisfying.
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Member Reviews

5 star:
(31)
4 star:
(15)
3 star:
(3)
2 star:
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Number of Reviews: 5
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Most Helpful Member Reviews


9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Original math puzzle game, November 16, 2018
by Denk
Related reviews: Inform

This was my favorite 2018 Ifcomp game. I can imagine that this game is not for everyone, since it is basically a logic/math game. However, it does not require a lot of mathematical knowledge. I would say that you can complete the game using basic math, though to get a perfect score, you should have heard about complex numbers.

In this game you are given the role of a candidate in something called Arithmancy, which is some sort of magic concerning numbers. You need to pass the exam in Arithmancy. To do this, you have to cast spells in the right order, to produce the digits of pi, e, etc. I don't know if this sound like a lot of fun, but it is, if you like logic and math puzzles. In addition, you can get extra points. Some points require that you produce the digits with very few spells, while other points can be gained by finding the numbers with a given color. Yes, in this game all the numbers have a color, though some numbers have the same color. Figuring out the color system, at least to some extent, is needed to obtain a perfect score. I didn't understand the color system completely, but still I managed to get a perfect score, though not within the two hour limit of IFcomp. Thus there are several hours of entertainment in this game.

The game starts out easy but slowly gets harder. Whenever you achieve something in the game, you overhear conversations from the examining committee, which are quite fun. The real fun for me was however figuring out the puzzles.

So if you are into logic puzzles involving math, I can highly recommend this game.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Super fun math puzzler, January 3, 2023
by Lance Cirone (Backwater, Vermont)

(Adapted from an intfiction.org review)

You are the first ever candidate in Arithmancy – a field of magic involving manipulating numbers. You are judged by the fair and impartial Morkan, the more emotive and reactive Berzia, and, most importantly, the rude and irritable Teraboz. Armed with your spell book, sheet of numbers, and list of tasks, it's up to you to win over your superiors by scoring as many points as you can.

While traditional IF can be fun, I really enjoy more experimental games as well: there's an unusual core mechanic that you have to work with, and its execution can make or break the game. Junior Arithmancer in particular reminded me of another game I really liked, Threediopolis.

The main appeal of Junior Arithmancer is that it's about manipulating numbers in surprisingly fun ways. You are given the digits of various well-known functions, such as pi, e, and gamma, and you need to reach these numbers in sequence with your spells. You can't use a spell more than once, but you can attach prefixes to certain spells to make things easier. Your accomplishments will earn you tokens that you can trade in for more spells, unlocked linearly. Once you have all the skills at your disposal, it's up to you to finish as many tasks as you can before you submit your final score.

Junior Arithmancer is a game where it's satisfying to get something right. I was intrigued by knowing what my next spell could be, and how it could help solve my problems. By the time I got them all, I just wanted to keep optimizing my techniques and returning to old sequences with new tools. Everything feels fair; the spells work consistently, the game logic is easy to follow, and you don't have to memorize any number sequences because they're all included on the sidebar. I never felt like I was lost with how the game worked.

Besides the framing device, there's a little story running through the game. Whenever you return to your exam room to trade in tokens, you'll overhear Morkan, Berzia, and Teraboz talking about the academy. Most of the story is carried by Teraboz; she feels that the test has become too easily accommodating for new people, she starts a debate over whether the word “witch” is offensive, she gets in trouble with the fearsome vice dean Merlena. Outside the story, Teraboz reacts in exasperation at your mistakes, which I thought was a fun way to tell me when I was doing something wrong. She even (Spoiler - click to show)delivers the final line of the game, quitting the academy now that you're a part of it.. Teraboz gets way more dialogue and action than the other two characters, which is a shame, because I'd have liked for Morkan and especially Berzia to have some spotlight moments.

Despite the unbalanced character focus, I'd say I liked this story more than I didn't. It's secondary to the puzzles, and even developed in an interesting direction I didn't expect. And with that said, I'd recommend Junior Arithmancer. It's a light, fun game that's easy to grasp, but hard to perfect.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Brilliant game about integers, March 28, 2021
by Victor Gijsbers (The Netherlands)

In Junior Arithmancer, we play a prospective student of magic doing an entrance examination in arithmancy, which is more or less the magic of the integers. More or less: the range of numbers is restricted to a finite interval, with overflows wrapping around; and the laws of magic turn out to have a curious in-built preference for the decimal system. Anyway, during the examination we are supposed to learn and then cast spells that add, subtract, multiply, and so on, in order to create specific sequences of numbers. Meanwhile, three examiners comment on our progress.

It is really only that last element that turns the game into a fiction: the comments of the examiners form a satirical story about university politics and cast severe doubt on the wisdom of trying to enter this particular academy. (Unless we like indoor swimming pools.) It’s fun, but there’s not much here, and if someone were to complain that Junior Arithmancer is hardly interactive fiction at all… well, I wouldn’t have a principled counterargument, although I certainly could point at similar puzzle games that are part of the IF canon.

Because it’s all about the puzzles. And if you like puzzles about numbers, then these ones are glorious. They’re brilliant. At first, the aim is to use your limited repertoire of spells to get as far as possible in recreating the given number sequences. Then, as your repertoire grows, it’s all about completing the sequences. And once you have all the spells at your disposal, you have to try to optimise your solutions and solve an entirely independent set of puzzles that are all about getting to a specific end point. (And about factorisation.) It’s great fun, and I think the difficulty scales up nicely: most(?) players will be able to get to a winning ending, and diehards can try to achieve a perfect score.

I’m a diehard, and I did get a perfect score.

Junior Arithmancer is certainly not a game for everyone. You have to like number puzzles. (I won’t say ‘mathematics’, because the puzzles are not really mathematics. If I had been required to prove that a certain sequence is the only one you can solve in three moves, that would have been mathematics. Equally glorious, but a lot harder to turn into a game.) But if you do, well, Mike Spivey has prepared a real treat for you. Highly recommended.

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Junior Arithmancer on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Junior Arithmancer appears in the following Recommended Lists:

2023 Alternative Top 100 by Denk
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Polls

The following polls include votes for Junior Arithmancer:

Games with 'enhanced interfaces' by verityvirtue
Looking for (parser?) games which use side panels, or similar, to streamline delivery of information AND are on a platform which does not usually have such a feature (therefore, Undum, Quest, Storynexus etc. games are out.) Something...

Solved without Hints by joncgoodwin
I'm very interested in hearing truthful accounts of at least somewhat difficult games (or games that don't solve themselves at least) solved completely without recourse to hints, walkthroughs, etc.

For your consideration: XYZZY-eligible Best Overall Games of 2018 - by MathBrush
This is for suggesting games released in 2018 which you think might be worth considering for Best Game in the XYZZY awards. This is not a zeroth-round nomination.This is not an official list. The point of poll is partly to suggest games...

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This is version 13 of this page, edited by David Welbourn on 26 March 2021 at 5:55pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page