The Nemean Lion is a super-tiny, super-easy interactive fiction. It's a comment on the form, in particular the relationship between player and game -- in its own way and medium not much different from You Have to Burn The Rope. You're Heracles, and you need to kill and skin the lion of the title and bring him back to king Eurystheus.
As with 9:05, it would be spoiled by too much advance explanation, so I urge you to play now, which will take about two minutes, and then read the rest of my comments.
(Notice that typing VERBS at any prompt will give you the complete list of commands you can use.)
Spoilers after this point.
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This game arose out of a discussion about how different people perceive the concept of "intention": do you consciously mean to do something, if that act is a necessary preliminary to some other act that you do consciously intend to do?
What I like about it is the way the parser fills in for Heracles' (somewhat twisted) supernatural skill and psychopathic tendencies. The player is only responsible for one level of Heracles' mind, in other words; which is true in every game to some extent, but it's a point we rarely think about.
Besides, despite the parodic nature of the piece, it demonstrates something I wish we saw more of: a situation in which the player is allowed to specify his actions at any of several levels of detail. You can do as much or as little of the lion-skinning by hand as you like.
Obviously in most games you don't want the parser actually solving puzzles for the player, but this kind of multi-level implementation can produce the sense of an experienced protagonist moving easily through a world that is nonetheless deep enough to allow experimentation. The effect reminds me particularly of some of Eric Eve's work -- for instance, the record player in Shelter from the Storm that can be operated in great detail or simply operated with a more generic command to play records, or several of the devices in Eric's Nightfall.
A somewhat jaded part of me
A somewhat jaded part of me thinks it's another way for explorative/simulationist gameplay to expunge any potentially gamist element of play out, in favour of pure exploration. Not that that's a bad thing for exploration/sim - I'm just jaded. I guess the key part is that the king asks you to describe it all and you don't have much to say if you just left it to the character.
Or I dunno - I didn't want to kill the lion and didn't see any hint of a gamist congratulations for beating it or anything, so after waiting and looking at inventory, I quit.
Jars
There's a fair amount of things you can examine in the king's room, if you don't choose the obvious option.
Clever idea
Well I certainly liked the counterpoint between the first part and the second part, taking the logical outcome of how you handle the lion and applying it in a totally inappropriate fashion later, whilst still being consistent.
But I did find there was a little element of frustration when I realised that the game was going to tell me how I did something, thus removing all need to actually do it, whilst still clearly containing all the tools necessary to do it step-by-step assuming you could find the right words.
Then again, it might be a useful tool, perhaps in conjunction with, say, the way Blue Lacuna tracks your progress or otherwise?