Over the weekend I played two menu driven adventure games that are somewhat similar to one another.
The first was _Producer 2021_. The game is really unique looking, to me. It resembles how you make ocean waves for a cheap theatre production. Your job in the game is to produce. Specifically, get three scientists to produce prototypes. The game seems to be roughly split between a path where you care about being a Producer, and one where you could not care less. I did the enthusiastic one. I got all the prototypes (and also did something unspeakably terrible) and my boss was very pleased. One thing I like about this game a whole lot is that before you start the game, there's an option for it to tell you how long it is.
The other menu-driven adventure game I played was _Critters for Sale_. This is a good one, y'all. Completely bizarre narrative delivered with lots of style and a blistering soundtrack. You're given five scenarios to get through and there are a handful of endings for most of them. It's one of those narratives where you're given pieces of it here and there and then it all comes together at the end, except the end it comes together to show makes sense but is utterly strange.
I mostly expected cool vibes from _Critters for Sale_, and it certainly delivers on that, but what I wasn't expecting was how puzzle-y it gets at times. I want to compare the final sequence (as final as five scenarios on a menu can be) to Myst by way of golden age Twine games. There's one particular puzzle that tests your relative pitch that took me so many attempts.