The story: you've received a note from your husband asking you to meet him at a hot spring, and you have to get over there, first, and then assemble all the little things needed to enhance the experience. Getting there is fairly straightforward, and gathering most of the accoutrements isn't difficult, but one puzzle at the end requires considerable intuition and, even when the gap is bridged, doesn't make much sense. (It feels like the author is either trying to make the game harder or trying to come up with an excuse for the puzzle--which is, to be fair, a reasonably clever one, though the game doesn't give you much of a nudge.) Still, the idea is compelling, and the sensual delights associated with the various features of your dip in the hot spring are so vividly described that it seemed a safe bet to me that this is among the author's favorite real-life experiences.

Among the more intriguing parts of the game is only tangentially related to the plot: you encounter a fellow named Bob, who resides in a cabin in the woods and can offer insight on virtually everything in the game. Bob seems to serve as a stand-in for the author in providing useful information about the various forms of wildlife you encounter--he has a paragraph for all of them, as far as I can tell--and he'll go on about the various aspects of his little cabin and garden. (In fact, he so fits the image of the benevolent kindly old fellow that his one off-color comment, when you ask him about the spring, seems slightly out of place; dirty old man, perhaps, but it doesn't seem to fit his persona.) One gets the feeling that Bob is so happy to have someone to talk to that interaction isn't much of a problem for him; he'll often babble on whether or not you respond. If there is a side of Bob that is lacking, it is Bob himself--we get something about his wife Sally, dead of breast cancer, but virtually nothing else. (Moreover, you are told repeatedly that you remind Bob of Sally, certainly effective in painting Bob as a slightly forgetful old coot, if that was the intention, but it breaks the spell more than anything else. Even a forgetful old coot doesn't word it the same way every time.) If you stay by Bob's side, you can watch him picking strawberries, fixing a rocking chair, fixing the porch, making lunch, making a strawberry shortcake, painting the forest (no, silly, on canvas)--and though all this takes hundreds of moves, the passage of time is slowed while you're with Bob (a comment on the stimulating nature of his company?) so that you don't forfeit the main story by hanging out around the cabin. The main problem with all this is that, apart from a few things right at the beginning, you're largely confined to typing Z endlessly--there are undoubtedly a wide variety of things to ask Bob about, but they slow down his various chores, and even those run out after a while. There doesn't, sadly, seem to be any way to participate in Bob's actions, and watching Bob put together the batter for the shortcake, ingredient by ingredient, loses its fascination after a bit. And if you're an IF player conditioned to expect that something elaborately coded will be relevant, well, you'll be wrong, because you only need about five moves' worth of interaction with Bob to finish the game.

Bob is worth noting because he's the rare example of an NPC who is much more developed than he needs to be; in fact, he's a relatively ordinary character with an ordinary life which you can even witness in all its glory. The failure to really fill out Bob's background is a weakness, yes, but even so, he does such a remarkable amount of things and reacts to such a remarkable amount of stimuli that one can only wonder at the amount of code that went into him. It isn't, of course, unprecedented to have an NPC who plays encyclopedia for the game, but to have one who does that but also carries on complicated time-sensitive tasks of his own (which speed up dramatically when you walk away from him) is more unusual. And I don't recall ever encountering an NPC who did such a variety of, well, mundane tasks, described in such detail; it reinforces the idea that living in the wild and carrying out these chores is something that Mr. van Fossen enjoys, or at least thinks more people should know about. Bob is noteworthy, in short, because he's one of very few NPCs that can't be reduced to an obstacle; more often than not, characters represent puzzles, locked doors upon which you need to use the right key to get the needed object or bit of information. There is much more to this one--the mundanity of it all makes him feel more real--and if for nothing else, She's Got a Thing deserves recognition for the inclusion of Bob. (He's a close second to Maurice as best NPC of the competition, I think.)

There are several puzzles, as mentioned, one slightly unfair but most reasonably straightforward. One requires observation, as it happens, to figure out a pattern, irritating to the impatient IF player but consistent with the feel of the game (as in, nature is there to be observed, not simply co-opted to the player's ends). The gameplay is likewise strong; most verbs and nouns have several synonyms, and there are multiple substitute syntaxes for most important actions. One puzzle is a mite peculiar--you dodge an adversary simply by moving away, and the adversary disappears and doesn't return--and the solution to another is not obvious to those of us who aren't familiar with hot springs--but most of the puzzles are passable. As suggested, though, the appeal of this one lies less in the puzzles than in the scene as a whole, and though a few elements of it do break the spell--two elk lock antlers and stay that way for the _entire game_, several birds are largely untroubled by your presence--the game is well-written enough to make those minor flaws. The descriptions are effective...

The canyon rim trail descends, clinging tightly to the stone wall, then 
disappears entirely as the rocks converge.  You have no choice but to wade, 
the current swift and powerful. Overhead, a small slice of the sky is visible 
between the two cliff faces, covered with ferns that thrive in the dark moist 
environment here. The crevice runs northwest to south.

On the whole, then, though She's Got a Thing... might not be the entry whose playing experience stays with you the longest, it's a polished work that's consistently enjoyable to play. Though sticking with Bob is only for the extra-patient, there is much to do in the game environment, and I gave it an 8 in the competition.