Although it’s more restrained than its title would imply, “Girth Loinhammer” is a broad, Dungeons-and-Dragons style farce running with the light conceit of being a single-player, pen-and-paper role-playing game.

Gameplay: The game is a simple, choice-based one, with the addition that the player is expected to update a short character sheet and make some die rolls. It’s more of a gimmick than something substantial; most of the gameplay just exists to move between comedic scenes. 4/10.

Mechanics: The game does have state, but its mechanics are there only to divide up the scenes. The player is expected to keep track of all the data by themselves, via the character sheet. While doing so reinforces the pen-and-paper style the game is going for, it would be more convenient to provide an automatically updated sheet in the game itself. (In contrast, I found making the die rolls myself to be a better balance between fiddliness for the player and retro charm. 4/10.

Presentation: Although the game wasn’t as lowbrow as I expected from the title, its humor is based too much on wackiness and nonsequiturs for my personal taste. Of course, humor is subjective, but it should be clear from the first few scenes of the game whether or not it matches your own sense of humor. 4/10.

You might be interested in this game if: You read, or wanted to read, the old Zork Choose-Your-Own-Adventure gamebooks.

Score: 4