Ratings and Reviews by Simon Deimel

Having heard so much about it I had to give it a try.

The setting and atmosphere are very deep and compelling. The reader/player can easily immerse in the events that take place and thus is motivated to explore the mystery. Elements of conspiracy and kabbalah are integrated; the authors obviously did some research on that.

The appearance of various machinery is intriguing. The personal assistant (a gadget called Triage) is cleverly integrated as a device to help the player. The function of the fantastic contraptions is explained in manuals that can be found, so there is not much guesswork to be done.

The narrative is remarkable, but the authors deliberately use some archaic expressions, which made it a bit difficult for me; nevertheless it contributes to the atmosphere of the Victorian age. The prose is extremely rich, has literary quality; sometimes it is almost too rich, so objects mentioned in the room descriptions are not implemented, resulting in contradictory messages, which were a bit confusing sometimes. On the other hand, deceisive objects are implemented with thorough descriptions and proper names that prevent ambiguities.

Furthermore the game is quite player-friendly; an elaborate menu of hints is contained. There are different endings, so it has replay value.
It is clearly recommendable for both beginners and veterans who like a steampunk setting.

This is a nice story, a very brief speed IF. It is principally not too difficult, but the solution requires knowledge beyond the game -- surely common knowledge in the US, but for me it was not so common(Spoiler - click to show) and resulted in an annoying guess-the-verb moment: 'man, how am I supposed to warm up?' I knew the story which the game is based on, but unfortunately I did not know the original line (by now I checked it, and okay, the order of unusual verbs makes sense as soon as you know the line; probably every kid in the US knows it by heart, but they told me different tales here when I was young), so in the end I had to read the code, which luckily was available.
Anyway, a cute story and in the end a new lesson for me.