Ratings and Reviews by Denk

I liked the beginning of this game a lot. The story is on rails with a puzzle here and there, which increases immersion. After 1-2 hours (depends on how fast you are), the game turns into a puzzlefest very similar to the Bullhockey games. I have played both Bullhockey games for a while, but they couldn't hold my interest, in the long run, so I never finished those.

I think I played for four hours and got 155 points out of 400 while I tried not to peek too much on the walkthrough. So the game is definitely huge. I do like a good long puzzlefest, but for some reason, this part of the game is not for me.

Perhaps because too many similar standard objects (chairs, tables etc in most rooms) must be searched and examined, too many locked doors must be attempted to be unlocked with each key (confusing, as the game, in the beginning, can figure out which key to use) and there are too many keys to keep track of. All this becomes rather tedious with only a few clever puzzles (maybe there are some deeper into the game). Perhaps just a combination of all these things.

I think the game would be more fun if the tedious puzzles were removed and only the good ones were kept. A lot of locations could also be removed, as they seem to be there mainly for realism, which isn't necessary.

Still, the beginning is truly excellent and I wanted to see the end, so I copied the very long walkthrough into the command line (had to cut it into 25 pieces) to see the ending, as I didn't feel like playing through the whole game to see the ending.

If BF Lindsay ever makes a game with the same gameplay style throughout as the beginning of this game, I would love to play it. Also, if he is able to improve his puzzlefests, I would like to play those too. Still, if you liked the Bullhockey games, you will probably like the entire game.

This is a very well implemented game, old-school in the sense that you need to examine and search a lot. But modern when it comes to the number of endings and how much you actually can ask the NPCs about.

In this game you get to talk to a lot of people and you can ask them about lots of stuff. You might get some proposals on what to ask about if you TALK TO the NPCs, though these proposals are not exhaustive. When I first finished the game, it was without hints, and I got 35 out of 50 possible points. The ending tells you a lot about the fate of the many NPCs, so you might want ot play again to get all the 50 points. I tried to replay it once. This time I understood much more, but didn't get any more points. Then I decided to stop.

For what it is trying to be, I think this game succeeds. If you don't mind examining and searching a lot in addition to "standard puzzles" I think you will like this one.

This game is a pretty good puzzlefest, where you have to escape from the Duke's castle, otherwise, something terrible will happen to you. The author warns you that the Duke wants to rape you, in case you find that too disturbing to carry on. I did carry on. After all, this will only happen if you don't manage to escape.

So besides the above terrible act, which isn't supposed to happen, the writing is good and whimsical in a standard fantasy setting. The puzzles were quite good too and not too difficult. I needed to peek at the walkthrough twice:

1. First, because of an uncritical but confusing bug(Spoiler - click to show) - After following Ulia to the Chapel I couldn't leave but had to follow her back and forth from the chapel until she finally settled in the chapel (at least this seems like a bug to me...)

2. The second time I needed to peek at the walkthrough was because something I wanted to do in a logical place apparently didn't work, so I was thinking that might be one more implementation bug, but it wasn't: (Spoiler - click to show)I thought I could burn the spell ingredients in the fireplace but that wasn't possible. It had to be done in the brazier. At least an explanation of why it couldn't be done in the fireplace would have been good.

Perhaps these things might be fixed in a post-comp release. Anyway, they did not affect my rating. It was certainly a good, fun game, which took me a little more than two hours to complete. Recommended.

This game seems to be a test game for someone who is just starting to learn Inform. It doesn't appear very bugged, but there is almost no story, a few puzzles and then a huge maze. I mapped more than 60 rooms in the maze before I gave up. What there is before the maze isn't horrible, but nothing special either. Feels like someone just wanted to create a game real quick though.

The maze is not a classical IF maze (no need to drop objects to distinguish the locations) but it is more logical, i.e. if you go east you can get back by going west etc. Still, the location descriptions are identical so it may make it slightly easier if you drop objects at certain locations. However, the real problem with the maze is, that it does not mention which directions you can go, so you have to try by trial and error to figure out which directions you can go in each location. And I wasn't sure if it is only N/S/E/W in all locations or if I should also try NW/NE/SE/SW and up/down. It appears as if N/S/E/W is sufficient though.

If you like mapping big mazes, you might like this one.

This time travel puzzle game has some original mechanics and nice puzzles. You have to save the world from the Order of the Fiery Doom. There are several endings, though some of them are not accessible depending on what you did earlier in the game. Most puzzles were good, some easy, some a bit tricky. Except for a few uncritical bugs, the implementation was good. The writing was good too, though some of the comedic solutions did not fit so well with the writing which didn't feel like it was supposed to be funny. Still, a good atmospheric puzzle parser game.