High Jinnks reminds me a lot of Jonathan Stroud’s Amulet of Samarkand. You play as a powerful and wisecracking jinn, scornful of the Scrawny Kid he’s thrown in with. The kid (actually a young man) seems easy to manipulate at first, but before long you may find yourself the one being manipulated.
High Jinnks‘s strength is the degree to which the characters grow to care about each other over the game. Sure, the jinn and the Scrawny Kid need each other in a transactional way at first, but the Scrawny Kid eventually becomes Ali, with a past and loves — in short, a person, not a thing to be manipulated. Ali comes to appreciate the jinn as well, and by the end they both find that their relationship matters more than what each had originally hoped to gain from the other. A well-plotted story plus the banter between the jinn and Ali keeps all this from becoming maudlin — just as with The Amulet of Samarkand.
There are some scene transitions in High Jinnks that I didn’t quite follow, in the sense of “Why exactly am I going here now?” I especially remember these near the end, but there were a couple early on as well. In addition, I’m pretty sure I clicked on going to the library versus the park at one point, but the game took me to the park anyway. The motivations for specific character actions aren’t always clear, either — even in retrospect, once you understand everyone better. In general, I think the game could do a tighter job knitting its interesting story and characters together.
Overall, though, High Jinnks provides an enjoyable choice-based experience, with witty banter and characters that you come to care about more as the game progresses.
An Exercise for the Reader 