Ratings and Reviews by Denk

The Fortress of Fear (FoF) is the 4th episode of The Adventures of Alaric Blacmoon. On the other hand, it was the first Alaric Blackmoon game to be written with ADRIFT, so I was quite curious if it had the same quality as the previous episodes. I think it has and overall FoF is a very fine game. 

Without going into too much detail, Alaric must get to the bell tower of a big fortress, which is under siege of an evil sorcerer. The sorcerer has slaughtered most of the good staff of the fortress so there are ghosts everywhere requiring objects to let you pass. In addition, they might help you, if you help them. You will also meet a few people who are still alive, and in the end, you will of course face the evil sorcerer. 

The game has the same appearance and feel as previous episodes, which is good. As usual, it is necessary to search, look under and look behind objects whenever it makes sense, to ensure you do not miss an object. The puzzles range from easy to difficult but always logical. 

The player should be aware of the command "timeoff" though. This is a command used to turn off real time elements. I don't like real time elements in IF-games but since they can be turned off it is not a problem at all.

If you become stuck, the first place to look for inspiration is the VOCAB command, which gives you a list of verbs understood by the game. Typing help gives you the e-mail address of the author, which I did use more than once since the game is very big and I believe most people will become stuck at some point. I encourage everyone playing Larry Horsfield's games to ask for help in this way instead of just giving up, since his games have a lot to offer. This game is no exception.

It has been 5 years since David Whyld last made an ADRIFT game. But it was worth the wait. Trick or Treat was made with ADRIFT 4, which means that it is playable with Fabularium, Gargoyle etc. It starts out with you and your friends trying to "trick or treat" at an old man's house. Unfortunately the old man is crazy, lopping off your friend's head and capturing you and your other friend Emmie.

The game is filled with crazy humor and puzzles as you try to rescue yourself and Emmie and there are more than one ending, depending on how well you do inside the crazy old man's house.

The initial puzzles are quite easy but the game gradually gets harder.

Fun – try it out!

In this game you play the role as Loralang, a famed knight, which has to travel back in time and retrieve the golden sceptre and kill the undead lord, Morac.

(EDIT: It could be interesting with a quick fix to disable the random deaths to see if there are some great puzzles or a nice story line further inside the game.)

So much for the story. The game is oldschool and is a combination of puzzles, a bit of random combat and unfortunately also random deaths. I haven't completed the game, but from what I have seen so far, there are some decent puzzles. The random combat I have seen so far was too easy but not a problem either.

Even though I like oldschool games, random combat and don't care too much about the Player's Bill of Rights, I feel this game could have been a lot better if it weren't for the very common random deaths caused by the dragon. It seems(?) impossible to avoid it for long and according to the built-in hints, the only thing you can do is to avoid the dragon. So even though I came across some decent puzzles, I find the random deaths too frustrating to keep on trying. EDIT: A quick modification, i.e disable random deaths, to this game would probably improve this game a lot.