Reviews by Rovarsson

"Miss Duckworthy’s School for Magic-Infested Young People"

Read that title.
Not “magically gifted” or the more neutral “with magic abilities”. Not “magic-afflicted” or “magic-infected”, which might be appropriate if the children were in some way endangered by their powers, as is often the case with the newly-magical.
No.
“Magic-infested”. Like pestilence-spreading vermin.

Indeed, in the world of Miss Duckworthy’s School for Magic-Infested Young People, those who show any signs of supernatural powers are to be eradicated, or in those more lenient countries who have subscribed to the MagiCore Accords, picked up at gunpoint and isolated in a special school.

This setting, introduced in a mere handful of screens during the prologue, is impressive and wide enough to accomodate a whole series of games and stories, and I hope the author delves deeper in its history and culture in future works.

This particular game plays out in the school from the title where magic children and young people are isolated, yes, but also allowed to develop their talents. That means magic lessons, yeah!

And yes, there’s a bit of that, partly depending on the choices of the player. At the heart of the game, however, are dangerous intrigue and a high-stakes power-struggle.

I really liked the personal development of the protagonist. In the character-creation screens, I coblled together my main girl Jacky, a purple-haired Canadian car thief who is “gay as a bucket of rainbow glitter”. That made me laugh really loud. She quickly made a few friends, and the conversations and banter between them flowed very naturally. There was one low-key opportunity for romance, which I bypassed it at the time thinking it was a bit too soon. It never came up again, but I was just as happy being just friends.

There is ample room for the player to steer the direction of the narrative and, with the choices taken, the sort of person their protagonist is. The further the story progressed, the more I felt the weight of the responsibilty and danger in my choices. Not only was I genuinely concerned about Jacky, I also felt I had to protect her friends. This made me weigh my options carefully, trying to judge if the “heroic” choice that I was sure Jacky could handle, would inadvertently harm her friends. Very engaging.

The introduction felt a bit rushed to me, like I was plunged in without having a chance to dip my pinky toe in to test the waters. One second I’m joyriding with my buddy, the next I’m jumping off a bridge and I’m a troll. Just like that. No glowing aura of transformation, nor a bonecrunching metamorphosis. No vague premonition or sense of apprehension that Jacky might be on the verge of changing, and that this stressful action might push her over the edge.
It could of course be that in my specific sequence of choices, I missed a bit of exposition.

The writing’s very good. Good and clear descriptions of the school and its wildly differing levels. Intuitive and natural conversations. Shocking and/or exciting action scenes (which is hard when the player is allowed choices while the action plays out.)
And most importantly: an beautifully sketched main character, an organic blend of the outlines provided by the author and the colour added by my choices. I felt intimately connected to Jacky, like I could grasp her anxiety or joy or anger all through the game.

I enjoyed this very much, and I’ll probably replay with a different protagonist ((Spoiler - click to show)I hear there's a cat companion in there somewhere...)
If Jacky will let me, that is…

Another entry for my ever-growing list of Mansion-games! (I promise, I’ll get round to putting an actual list on IFDB one of these days. I swear…) The fact that I even seriously entertain the idea for such a list shows that dropping your protagonist in a mansion without much of a preamble or explanation and basically saying: “Now off you go! Just poke around and figure out what goes on here,” is a premise that a) is done a lot, and b) has proven its worth.

It’s a set-up, a frame for the author to let loose their imagination within known boundaries, and to play with the expectations that pop up in the player’s brain as soon as they notice it’s a Mansion-game.

In other words, it’s all about the filling.

And hoooo-boy does Mandy Benavav deliver on the filling!

From the get-go, the description the Mansion sets the tone:

—“The house is a small two story Victorian, remarkably well kept, with dark siding and darker trim. It stretches toward the sky unevenly, like a cat arching its shoulders - cordial, but cautious.”

An unsettling scene, leaning towards the dark and the Gothic, with an unusual and evocative image, a simile both vivid and slightly droll.

The writing continues in this vein, delicately walking the tightrope between earnest gloom and frivolous spark.

Not too far along in the game, the source of this consistent tone makes itself known: the narrator peeks from behind the curtain and directs some remarks straight at you, the player. One would expect this breaking of the fourth wall to also shatter the carefully woven moody atmosphere, but it doesn’t.

—“The foyer stands ready, awaiting your eye. Let’s not pretend we’re above snooping - after all, who doesn’t love a good snoop? You’re among friends - I won’t tell if you care to poke about the room. A narrator’s job is not to judge; merely recount.”

Instead, by revealing himself, the narrator re-affirms the unity of tone. The deep tone of his (I imagined an Ian McKellen reciting the story in a grave note, unable to keep himself from interjecting his own comments on the state of affairs every once in a while) voice suffuses the Mansion and lends character to it, and reassures the player that they’re in good hands.

Indeed, instead of concealing the directional and inventory options under functional clicks so bland as to be almost unnoticeable, here the narrator generously sets forth our options in elaborate and (jokingly?) empathic propositions:

Has the scent of pulp overpowered your senses? The ticking of the clock quickening your pulse? Then perhaps you should return to the foyer.
Or perhaps you wish to take stock of your possessions.

----looks over his shoulder at the wall of text rising above him----

Ahem! Well. I really like the narrator. That’s probably clear by now.

But…

Of course this disembodied narrative voice, regardless of setting-infusing gravitas or witty side-remarks, must perform the job set before him: recount the text the author has written.

And it’s good text.

I’ve already mentioned the descriptions, moody Gothic with a twist.

—“The webs occupy only a tasteful amount of ceiling space; not so much as to give the impression of homely neglect, but just enough to give the spiders their due.
You think you see your echo wiggle slightly in one of the webs. You wonder how many others are trapped up there.”

(The detail about the trapped echo made me shiver with delight and trepidation…)

What is most impressive however is the variety of unique characters that inhabit the Mansion. Each with their own little mannerisms and idiosyncratic speech, they come across as singular individuals. Grotesque, perhaps, somewhat caricatural. On the edge of becoming a menagerie of quirks and oddities, a display of curiosities, even.
But here again, the tightness and consistency of the narrative tone (----Yes, Sir Ian, take a bow, so everyone can see you…----) provides a unifying frame where all these eccentrics may perform their personal peculiarities freely and naturally to their hearts’ content.

—“In a shower of soapy water, the Octopus again raises all eight appendages, this time holding an assortment of dirty dishes, brushes, rags, and sponges. For each dish, a cleaning implement.
It begins industriously scrubbing, three dishes at a time, with one arm on drying duty. With its final arm, it holds a can of tuna, which it periodically slaps with its dish towel at rhythmic intervals.
As it scrubs, you discern a certain pattern in the noise…”

***

“You strain your ears. It could be your imagination but you could swear that the rhythm of the brushing is set to the drinking song from La Traviata, with the occasional soap bubble popping to emphasize the high notes.

Well fancy that.”

The puzzles in An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There are a combination of fetch-quest chains and social interaction with the quirky inhabitants who all seem to want something that involves getting it from someone else.

Which means you need to know where everything and everyone is. Exploration time!

The Mansion is not that big, but it sure is very full and alive. The social fetch-quests force you to repeatedly visit the same rooms, but with the prospect of a new conversation topic or even the conclusion to a puzzle and the accompanying reward, this never gets dull.
Each floor of the house is gated off, ensuring that the player has seen and adequately searched the rooms on that floor, and has been introduced to the characters residing there.

While on the topic of exploration, I have to specifically mention the bookcase in the library. That thing is a goldmine for fantasy and horror references. There had to be something of importance in there, so I started clicking a few of the books (nicely rendered in a minimalist graphic) at random, thinking I’d have to dig my way through a bunch of increasingly far-fetched made-up titles. I got a real jolt of nerdy joy when I stumbled upon (Spoiler - click to show)Gormenghast! And there were more: Wooster&Jeeves, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Tigana, Terry Pratchett,…! I jotted down a bunch of titles and authors I don’t know to look them up in the local library, although I doubt if they will have a copy of A True and Accurate Account of the Invention of Penguins by Lord Pendleton Stickwidth, Royal Explorer…
It’s a bit of a cheap trick, namedropping to remind the reader of a shared membership of the coolest club on earth, but it works. With each title I recognised, I glowed a bit more.

In a very parser-like fashion, the individual objects of importance are often buried under a few layers of clicks, going from the general description of the room to a list of items to examine closer.

And it’s here, in this hybrid parser/click gameplay, that I at last find some small naggles to complain about. Some minor annoyances to give this review at least a semblance of critical assessment and attempted objectivity.

On the parser-choice scale, the hybrid that is An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There sometimes has trouble choosing and holding its spot. While you’re meticulously searching rooms, manipulating the environment, and running around carrying objects (in a perfectly handled inventory) from one room to the next to offer them to NPCs or use them to solve puzzles, which are quintessential parser-things to do, there are also a number of times when the game carries out an action for you or automatically solves a part of the puzzle. At these moments, I felt robbed of the agency that the heavy parser-feel of the game had promised me.
Two examples, one of slight disappointed surprise, one where my parser-expectations made a solution invisible:
-(Spoiler - click to show)I would have loved to be able to TAKE the teddybear, instead of having automatically added to my inventory. Just that small moment of picking it up as a separate action, with an accompanying description of touching the soft fur, or sneezing because of the dust…
-(Spoiler - click to show)The fact that the eggs were just waiting on the kitchen counter until I had the other ingredients, that I wasn’t able to manipulate them as a separate object during my first search through the kitchen, blurred my memory of them as useful objects. I tottered up and down the stairs half a dozen times, looking in the rooms for links unclicked. When I finally turned to the walkthrough and saw “Don’t worry about them - they’re next to the stove, you’ll just grab them when you go to cook.”, I felt misled. Perhaps by my own misplaced parser-expectations (which the game had nourished all the way through), but misled nonetheless…

In short, I think An Account of Your Vist to the Enchanted House & What You Found There would benefit from a firmer stance somewhat more to the finer-grained parser side of the spectrum.

In conclusion, I loved it. Such flair and mood, such wonderful characters and conversations, such beautiful atmospheric writing!

(based on the IFComp 2024 version)


An artist’s spirit is present in their work, be it a sparkling glow or a faint after-image. When offered the chance to gather seven paintings to remember your loved one by, you must choose thoughtfully, tenderly, attentive of those moods and feelings you want to keep closest to your heart.

Thoughtful and tender is also how I would characterise the delicate writing in this piece. This being a text-game, each painting is a carefully crafted paragraph evoking colours and shapes, images and sensations, helped along by suggestive sounds and contemplative background music.

The memories associated with your chosen paintings, just as empathically written, come together in a somewhat coherent but necessarily fragmented picture of the beloved artist’s personality and history.

Both paintings and memories are gathered in two separate windows where you can revisit them together to more easily discern the common themes or the hooked barbs that stand out.

Despite being emotionally drawn to this piece, there were a few aspects that grated and disrupted the smoothness of my engagement.
-The order in which the paintings are presented to you is randomised to such an extent that it happened multiple times that I saw the same one twice in a row, which significantly diminished the impact of the described images.
-The memories attached to the paintings are sometimes proffered as the direct inspiration for that specific work. I don’t claim to understand how a painter’s inspiration works, but the link between a specific memory of an event and the painting that supposedly flowed from that event felt strained to me at times.

In the concluding sequence, you are given the chance to finish a work that your loved one lightly sketched on the canvas. This is done by adjusting several features of a actual visual image of a painting. I was excited by this opportunity to try my hand at giving creative input and steering the artwork with the impression of my chosen loved one’s spirit still fresh in my mind as guidance.

However, the flat and bland computer-rendering of what should be a heartfelt handcrafted painting made me wish deeply that the author of Imprimatura had opted to just describe this final painting in the same sensitive and eloquent manner as the previous works of art in the game. The words of the writer struck much more closely to my heart, elicited much more honestly felt emotions in me, than the dull and texture-less picture my choices produced on the computer screen.

What should have been a cathartic and freeing experience of closure turned out to be an emotionally drained excercise in Paint™-for-beginners.

Very impressive, deeply felt, visually evocative and imaginative writing. Seriously flawed and disillusioning in the design and execution of its conclusion.

(based on the IFComp 2024 version)


----<nagging voice>“This game is way too big for IFComp. How can I be expected to play even half of the list if people dump these kinds of behemoths in there?!”</nagging voice>----

I’m very grateful some authors make these big games and enter them in the Comp. It’s a brave gamble, because we are obliged to determine our scores after an alloted maximum of two hours, and big games often take their time to draw the players deeper and deeper into focused engagement with the world of the game, the style of puzzles, the mood of the map.

I haven’t finished Hildy in the two hours of sessions I’ve spent in it so far. I don’t expect to finish it in another two or even four hours. I will play it until the end, even if this means nibbling some time away from other entries. Because playing IF is ultimately about enjoying the game in front of you, and I can hardly imagine a game further down the list will be so right up my alley as this one.

Many of you will already know what this means: a big parser with a sprawling map to explore and draw, a variety of not-too-hard but slightly twisted puzzles, moody and evocative images in the descriptions, solid writing with a generous sprinkling of humour.

Since I haven’t solved the entire game yet, I will look back to the very start of my experience and show you my reaction after a mere 45 minutes of play. This is the (lightly edited) PM I sent to the author to share how impressed I was after playing the intro and getting to know the protagonist:

A protagonist with a name (“Hildegund”) that sounds like a character from Wagner’s Ring der Nibelungen, but who acts more like 'Lil Ragamuffin from @bitterkarella’s Guttersnipe series of games. Fantastic!

I’ve played the intro (bathing and getting dressed after ), and I already know I’m going to love every bit of this game.

In that short opening sequence of tasks, Hildy has earned my complete and utter trust. I’ll go wherever this game takes me, die a hundred times and still happily restore to do it all over again.

Funny and compelling writing, captivating PC-personality. And pruning all the boring bits out of the magic system while giving perfectly appropriate in-game justifications to succeed in maintaining the direct link to the Enchanter-universe: brilliant!

Rovarsson

After 75 more minutes of playtime, I stand with everything I wrote in this first enthusiastic impression. If anything, it’s getting even better.

Hildy is classic text-adventure material, happy to stand on the shoulders of giants, but not so intimidated by the Imps that it shies away from stretching the mould and putting its own stamp of creative ownership down.

Great game.

Edit:

A HOLLOW VOICE BOOMS OUT: “I just finished it. The endgame’s fantastic!”

(based on the IFComp 2024 version)


Stuffed peppers! Garlic broccoli! Balsamic roasted veggies!

The main objective of this game felt like a nice hot plate of comfort food to me. Cooking. Fussing over recipe-books, matching entrée to main course to side dish. Going to the market on a tight budget and somehow finding everything I need for that one course I had in mind but wasn’t sure I’d be able to buy all the ingredients for.

The frame-story and the mildly fantastic setting add lots of flavour and variety, with good-natured acquantances to make, fragments of the setting’s history to discover, spontaneous acts of good will to help villagers in need to fill out the world and your protagonist’s place in it.

I found that Eikas kept a good balance between allowing the player time to explore the village and the valley, and dropping enough reminders to add a little pressure to shop for groceries, plan your menu with care, and prepare the Great Hall for the evening of the feast.

My main naggle is that I couldn’t switch or add ingredients to the predetermined recipes. Adding a handfull of lemon basil to a deluxe kedgeree will bring out a freshness and aromatic quality that parsley alone would not, for example…

Very fun exploration/resource-management hybrid.

(based on the IFComp 2024 version)

You’re in your grandfather’s library, looking to bring his studies into the arcane to an end, and carry out the implied task that reveals itself through the research.

When entering the library, I had expected it to be the starting point of an oldschool quest to the Illuvian Empire. It soon became clear that, aside from a few short magic-teleportations, the bulk of the game is the library.

Instead of grand halls, twisty little passages and ever-winding corridors to navigate, you must make your way through the shelves and heaps and stacks of books and tomes. Instead of using a compass-rose to traverse a map, you must sift through layers of implementation during your search for the necessary bits of information and, to prepare you for what may come, for sources of magic to enhance your powers and protection.

This design makes Forbidden Lore a bit of a textual hidden-object game. Most libraries in IF-games have a few books mentioned by title, signalling that those are the important ones. Here, the books named in the first layer of description, upon X BOOKS, comprise but a small fragment of the total of books you need. You’ll need to examine separate sections of shelves, individual thematic categories in the bookcases, parts of parts of parts of the library.
There’s at least one game-critical non-book object in the room that is hidden in a similar manner. I only stumbled across it buried in an object-description while fastidiously examining all the nouns. ((Spoiler - click to show)The armchair is standing on a rug.)

Now, I enjoyed this. Digging through layers of description and finding new books to read, and then trying to infer what to do with the information I learned was fun for me. However, I would have liked it if the nouns were a bit more distinguishable: in place of expecting the player to X BOOKS ON DESK, it would have been easier to find the right command if, instead of another pile of books, there had been only rolls of parchment on the desk, enabling X ROLLS.

The few trips outside the library are welcome intermezzos, they open up the space of the game and cut through the catacomb-like feel of that single book-filled room. The final such outside trip leads to the endgame, and it was there that I felt let down.

The player’s expected to enter a bunch of commands that were not foreshadowed enough or introduced in some sort of training-wheel circumstances. After checking the walkthrough, I did think : “Oh, yes, that was mentioned in one of those tomes I ploughed through in the beginning.” The amount of references and information in the books makes it difficult for that one particular piece of knowledge to stick though, especially without a chance to practice beforehand.

I also noticed more disambiguation failures (“Did you mean the (Spoiler - click to show)shrine or the (Spoiler - click to show)druidic shrine?”) in the endgame, which makes me suspect this game was finished while Mr D.E. Adline was looking over the author’s shoulder.

I really liked the detailed library search, the hints and glimpses of ancient history, exotic cultures, powerful spells in the myriad of tomes. Player-friendliness could be improved by clearing up unintuitive commands and more obviously distinguishable nouns.

Good game.

(review based on the IFComp 2024 version)

Disorienting.
Discomforting.

Strange…

198BREW drops the player in a nearly incomprehensible setting. Just familiar enough to wander around and explore. Hints of backstory, glimpses of history, fragments of memories,… paint an icy, fractured picture of a World, a Church, a Queen, and of some of the unfortunate people inhabiting the City.

The writing is splendid. Descriptions feel alien while still evoking detailed-yet-disturbed images, the sequence of events and actions draws the player along with urgency, without ever gaining clear motive. There’s an interesting juxtaposition of the large-scale prologue with the practicality of the apparent game-objective in the opening scene, especially since that down-to-earth practical objective is twisted and spun and distorted during the game that follows.

I loved this, but precisely because I can see the potential, I also grew frustrated. While the descriptions are very impressive on the surface, it takes but a minor scratching to see that the implementation is sorely lacking in depth. Many nouns are not recognised. characters who seem interesting turn out to be cardboard figures with only one conversation-trigger, commands that flow naturally from the setting are dismissed by a default rejection-response, plausible alternate courses of action () are not accounted for,…

This game excels as a mood-piece, it has provided images that I will probably see in my dreams, it suffused me with an undefinable feeling of strangeness. However, to become the truly masterful IF-piece it carries the kernel of, more polishing and shaving is needed.

(review based on the IFComp 2024 version)

A murder-investigation within the confines of a polar research station. Which provides one of the most convincing in-game reasons as to why the investigator is just a regular guy I’ve read so far. The complete opposite of the strained Miss Marple situation.

Searching the crime scene (or the rest of the station) for physical evidence is but a minor aspect of the investigation, and when it does happen it seems more triggered by the game-state than by the player’s systematic exploration. The most important tool in your investigation by far is the questioning of your cohabitants in the research center.

Despite being centered on interrogation and conversation, Winter-Over did not succeed in convincing me of the “reality” of the characters. I kept having the image that they were actors dutifully reciting their scripted lines, but without passion for or connection to the part or to the other characters.

Finding out when to go where to find a specific person to talk to or ask help from requires a lot of walking around the station, in the hope of bumping into someone you haven’t met yet. Each such meeting is added to your (very handy!) notebook so you gradually compile a schedule for each NPC. I found this tedious at times, and I kept wishing one of the crew would have stuck a note on the fridge with a complete roster for me to find.

The notebook is a great feature, serving not only to compile a table of when to find who where, but also as a checklist of characters and their alibis and statements. It provides a simple way to compare their words against other clues you’ve already gathered, and it helps to keep track of your immediate subgoals.

Tempo picks up as events are triggered in the station out of the player’s control, heightening the tension. It’s through these events that the claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing feeling of being locked in a small container with a killer on the loose is really emphasised.

The mental state/condition the game takes its name from, the “winter-over”, is similar to cabin fever, or perhaps “winter-over” is the specific term for exactly this condition as experienced on an isolated polar station. In the game, it’s a possible explanation for the killer’s violent behaviour. It’s also set up as a narrative device for casting doubts on the sanity of the player character, raising suspicions in the player’s mind that the PC may be a wholly unreliable narrator. This didn’t work too well for me; apart from some descriptions where the protagonist explicitly questions his (I pictured the PC as male) own mind, I found no reason to distrust the protagonist’s account of events.

I enjoyed working through the mystery, but my experience was more that of a distanced observer than a fully engaged participant.

(review based on the IFComp 2024 version)


Your local publican Jack is desperate. The beer tastes awful, but there’s no sign of contamination or pipe problems. And the bar-ladies say they’ve noticed other strange things also. Up to you to get to the bottom of this foul beer situation.

Viv Dunstan’s previous games Border Reivers and Napier’s Cache (which I both loved) had a strong historical angle. Bad Beer gently softens this influence, it plays more with a sense of awareness of past times. The setting, a centuries-old English pub, reminded me of the feeling I get in castle ruins or old churches, or other places with a lot of historical background. It seems as if time itself is thin, echoing with past events. Very effective mood-building.

There is one central problem to be solved (calling it a puzzle would not be accurate). More than as a challenge to the player, it serves as a nudge for the reader to engage with the focal point of the game (as I experienced it) that with past, present and future so intimately connected, little confluences of events can lead to large and unfortunate consequences, and reverberate through time.

Bad Beer is a small, touching story that had me musing on time and ripples for a good while.

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"She is not any common earth
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye
Where you and I will fare."
[T.H. White, The Once and Future King]

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>\>LISTEN
You hear the hiss of the kerosene lamp and the quiet chatter of your friends.

Frank Leandro and his fellow soldiers are playing cards in their barracks, winding down from a day patrolling the Vietnam jungle.

>The pale lamp casts dark shadows across the room and onto your faces, even as this war does the same to your souls.

After saving his friends from a surprise attack in a particularly heroic (and lethal) manner, Frank is intercepted in the afterlife by King Arthur and sent to Avalon. Unimaginable dangers threaten the world, and to ward them off, a Quest on this dream-like isle must first be undertaken...

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Thus, right after the brutal prologue of Once and Future, you are transported from the realities of the Vietnam War to an idyllic fantasy-setting. This contrast is repeated further in the game, and it's what gives it its own personal feel.
Fantasy adventures, no matter how serious the threat, always retain an escapist feeling of relief to me. The distance in time and space and plane of existence of the imaginary world lessens the urgency of the need to act. Sure, there may be an Evil Warlock threatening to lay waste to the Land, but in the meanwhile I'm strolling through the forests and mountains, gawking at the wondrous sights, secure and far away from the real world.
Once and Future shatters this escapist solace on multiple occasions. These intermezzos not only impress upon the player the immediacy of the horrors of war, they also serve to load the larger fantasy-side of the story with a more weighty significance.

Having pointed this out, I hasten to add that, in itself, the Isle of Avalon is indeed all one could wish for in a fantasy game. Forests, lakes, and mountains, with mythological references and fanciful creatures, diverse areas with their own moods, from oppressive to playful, blinding fog-filled vales to far-reaching mountaintop views.
Unfortunately though, the entire island is mapped onto a rectangular grid of NESW-connections. The artificiality of this layout, which was emphasised by drawing my map by hand, clashes painfully with the unpredictability I associate with exploring the wilderness.

The game does partly redeem itself in later stages. The Isle of Avalon is a sort of "overworld", reminiscent of the Sundial Zone in Trinity. While the objectives of the several subquests are to be found here, obtaining the information and objects to even begin contemplating their solutions requires travelling to other realms, which do have somewhat more adventurous geographies.

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>\>LOOK

---Old Woman's Laboratory

Strange brews burble and froth in cauldrons scattered around this room. Ancient alchemical devices are intermixed with more modern chemistry equipment. The shelves are stocked with bottles of all sorts and sizes. A podium fills one corner of the room. To the east is a formidable looking door.

Location descriptions are ebullient and evocative. On several occasions after reading a paragraph, I found myself closing my eyes to paint the room in my mind. Many memorable images and colourful impressions found their way to my imagination while I was going over my progress in the game during those not-quite-dreaming moments right I fell asleep.

>---Fantastic butterflies laze their wobbly paths through the air with tiny artworks on their wings. One flits past your face and you are left with a brief flash of the Mona Lisa, while another lands on a flower, giving you a clear view of Whistler's Mother

Every once in a while, a cut-scene or conversation dumps a page or two of continuous text. I found these interesting and entertaining each time, a welcome pause from my investigations and a chance to savour the writing without plans for my next commands taking up space in my head.

While these descriptions are a joy to read and visualise, that joy is layered and muddied. There is always a menacing undercurrent of dread, caused by the player's memories of the harsh and gruesome war-scenes.

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>\>
You freeze for a second, startled by a sudden noise.

I love how even an absent-minded stray press of the ENTER-button without typing a command first is incorporated into the flow of the story. As this example shows, the implementation is mostly deep and detailed. SMELL and LISTEN almost always give location-specific responses, and XYZZY is approriately dark and gloomy.
More importantly, there is an abundance of synonyms and alternate commands, and many failed attempts at a puzzle-solution do give a veiled explanation of why it didn't work, nudging the player's problem-solving faculties along.

Most puzzles and obstacles, especially those involving object-manipulation or the timely application of magic, flow naturally from the setting, their solutions intuitive from within the perspective of knightly tales and Arthurian Legend.
There are also several logic-problems, one of which became a bit of a tedious excercise because of the length of the chain even after I had deduced the basic mechanism.

The most difficult are the puzzles where assistance or information from NPCs is required. The ASK/TELL-mechanics (without TOPICS) are not up to the task of ensuring the player happens upon the correct conversation branch with the right NPC, which left me flailing in the dark quite a few times.

And while I'm on the subject of talking to NPCs, here's an excerpt of my notes scribbled furiously while in the middle of an important conversation with Merlin:

>Damned conversation bug!
Each topic triggers twice, and a dismissive response is slapped onto that for good measure. And some other stuff. Depending on the question, the character I'm asking , and the precise dismissive response, I've smacked into a list of no less than four "Dingledoofus doesn't have anything to say about that," in a single reply to ASK DINGLEDOOFUS ABOUT TINGALING.
Then I go exploring a breathtaking new part of the map, everything is interesting and moody and intruiging... I forget all about my conversational annoyances...
"Oh, here's Donglebupkis! I'll ask Donglebupkis about the Tingaling."
And then Donglebupkis does have important things to say about Tingaling, but still her response is followed by "Donglebupkis grunts dismissively."
Bang! Right back to gritting my teeth.

But as play went on, and as I grew accustomed to this idiosyncracy of the conversation system, my annoyance subsided to the point where I just skipped over the redundant final dismissive response to my questions altogether.

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From what I've read about Once and Future before I started playing, this game was made over several years, all the while debated and eagerly awaited by the community.
Although I think it largely succeeds at fulfilling its ambitious potential, here and there it feels like the author overreached a tad. Or, by the end of the development period of years, the final push was a bit too hasty, leaving some burrs and sand where it should have been smoothed out.

An engaging puzzle-heavy Arthurian story, with added gravitas through its references to the real-world Vietnam War.


Very, very good.