Ratings and Reviews by Wanderlust

In Chronicles of the Moorwalker, you play as a budding witch investigating the mysteries surrounding your birth and your mother's murder, while evading the grasp of the Inquisition. As you hone your skill in blood magic, you'll discover relics and talismans, collect potions and trinkets, and improve your relationship with your familiars.

I floundered on my first few attempts, since I struggled with the combat mechanics. There's a quick tutorial for your first fight, but to fully understand the stats involved, I highly recommend reading the rules in the Settings page. I played on the medium difficulty level, and found the encounters to be tough, but fair with a good dose of strategy and some chance. I ran into some difficulty trying to replenish my Vitality outside of encounters, though maybe that's because I couldn't figure out how to develop my alchemy skills. Towards the end, I started avoiding and outright skipping encounters, because I couldn't get my hands on healing potions until I was quite literally at the Big Bad's doorstep. Even so, the fights were rewarding to play through, with the generous use of the save/reload save button.

While the plot was a little predictable, I really enjoyed exploring the map and learning about the magic system. Alternate 13th-century Germany felt rich and full, no doubt enhanced by the sound effects, music, and illustrations. I especially appreciate the detailed accessibility settings for screen readers and touchscreens.

Finally, a little bug catching: A few times during the game, I couldn't return to the main story after opening the Journal, Inventory, or Settings page. Sometimes, there would be a pop-up that would give me the option to go back to the previous passage or completely restart the game, but more often than not, I would be stuck on a blank page. There's also some small typos here and there (E.g. "lose" >> "loose," "through" >> "trough"), but for a game of this size, I'd still consider it pretty polished.

Litrouke excels at creating horror scenarios from mundane situations. As with Please Answer Carefully, the game makes use of environmental audio cues and glitches to build suspense. Whereas PAC’s survey provides a linear progression with no wrong answers, A Man Outside increases the difficulty with multiple choice vocab drills, while a man stares outside your window. The three different endings encourage replayability, though I was satisfied with the ending I received.

Please Answer Carefully is an effective, realistic horror piece. A seemingly innocuous survey about Internet habits turns into an obsessive interrogation. The smooth interface does a really good job of emulating actual research surveys, and increases the dissonance of the increasingly intrusive questions. As someone who used to volunteer to complete research surveys and is wary of digital privacy, the slow, creeping dread stayed with me long after the game ended.

I was quite charmed by the first installment of Dungeon Detective and was a little worried this second game would disappoint. I needn't've worried; our intrepid clue-sniffing hero returns with his laconic humor, memorable side characters, and a character portrait to boot! I thought the idle animation of Sniff chewing his paw was very cute, and I really enjoyed the little glimpses into our protagonist's backstory, especially (Spoiler - click to show)meeting our old packmate Smash and (Spoiler - click to show)the will o' wisp's imitation of Spotmother.

The introduction of multiple possible suspects, red herrings, death, and the explicit demonstration of fantasy policing and racial bias really amped up the stakes for me, and felt like a natural progression of the themes introduced in the first game. I thought the currency system was a nice touch for the more urban setting, and was pleasantly surprised when it also tied into the larger themes at play. I was initially anxious that the day-night cycle would mean a time limit to solve the case, but my fears were unfounded. With a few exceptions, you can repeat previous dialogue, and the inventory system also stores clues.

Despite the additional content in this sequel, I did find myself frustrated by a few bugs. Namely, (Spoiler - click to show)the game freezing on the three balls during the juggling mini-game, despite having "caught" all three successfully. I had completed the mini-game the day before, and returned on the second day in hopes of earning a little more money through juggling. The bug persisted even after resetting the encounter. At another point, when speaking to Marathonis, I accessed an item in my inventory, and upon closing it, was greeted with a blank textbox--- no narration, no dialogue choices, just the option to save/load save. And finally, while this isn't strictly game breaking, I thought it a bit odd that (Spoiler - click to show)Marathonis can still ask Sniff to find his pet chest mimic, if you return the mimic to him before he makes his request. Out of curiosity, I returned to the dungeon, and lo and behold, the mimic was still there, as if I never gave up the emergency dagger to retrieve it.

Regardless, I'm quite pleased with this sequel and would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the first game and was sad there wasn't more. My advice? Use one save slot as a quick save, and one for larger plot beats. I think a more accurate rating from me would be 4.5 of 5 stars, but I'm not one to be stingy.